The Ultimate in Just No

There's Kate on her back porch.

Y'all, as soon as my sister-in-law Kate sent me this story, I asked if I could share it with you guys because oh my Lord, people just be acting all crazy. It's the first post on her blog in like three years, but we need to convince her to revive and renew her blog now that she's living out on the forty acres next to the haunted church, with some kind of redneck Sasquatch probably roaming her property. I know I would enjoy reading a mommy blog from this milieu. I still think about this four year-old essay she wrote on lipstick at least once a week.

Anyway, Kate is a licensed mental health counselor and is growing shiitake mushrooms on a log. You want her on your team. 

Without further ado, her tale:

This week I've had a flurry of mommy dates.  And there is one thing I've learned: just because we are moms, it does not mean that we should be friends. This is a rookie lesson, I'm sure.  But, man, I'm learning it the hard way. It's strange. This new mommy socializing world. It really feels like dating. Sort of. Anyway.

Take today, for instance. I drove thirty minutes to meet a mom and her two kids at a Cracker Barrel for breakfast this morning. Note: breakfast. As in, both G and I had on clothes and our hair was brushed by 8AM. This is sacrificial in my world. I do not do anything quickly in the morning. But, she had initiated this date a few weeks ago and I wanted to get to know her.  

I was running a few minutes late and so I texted her to let her know I'd be there shortly. I got there before her and waited a little while. Well, G is at the age that if I put him down in a Cracker Barrel we would end up having to buy a couple of throw pillows and some glass frog figurine because he would destroy it all. So, since I couldn't stand around holding him for long, I got a table. After we were seated, I texted to let her know where our table was.  After about fifteen minutes, she still hadn't responded to either text, so I decided to go ahead and order. I mean, after twenty minutes into a restaurant excursion with a toddler and there is no food on the way, you start getting strategic. Another fifteen minutes went by and I rechecked my texts to confirm the location/time. You know how you do. I even sent another text to let her know that we were ordering (she's a texter, by the way). And, of course, I called my husband to announce that I'm pretty sure I was being stood up for the first time. 

Well, our food came and we ate and it was a good forty five minutes after she was suppose to meet me, so I started to get a little worried. One more text of "Is everything ok?" and she immediately calls me. And, I kid you not, she starts with "Ohhhhh, hey!" and then proceeds to go into a long explanation of how she had both of her children dressed and ready to go and then she got distracted filing papers. Filing papers. And then she actually DESCRIBED to me the papers that she was filing and why they needed to be filed. And, btw, she doesn't work outside the home, so the paper was, like, her mail. I was all HUH? What? OK.

Then, THEN, she goes "Well, what are you doing later today?" And, I'm all "Oh, Yes! Let's totally get together.  I really want to spend more of my time on you today!!!" No, I was not. Instead, I tried to get off the phone as quickly as possible (I had reached the point of letting G play with the creamers on the table). And then she says "Awww, but I was really looking forward to hanging out with you!" And I'm sure there was an apology in there somewhere. But my eyes had gone crossed and I was done with the conversation.

I mean, for real ya'll. I told my mom there are many more excuses that she could have given me that would have given our friendship a chance. But there is something about the filing of the papers--even though your kids were dressed and ready?!--that let me know that we just won't be friends. You know? And, let me add, she better be glad that G is content to sit and eat.  Because I know some other mommas who would have taken their earrings off. You don't make a momma with a toddler wait on you.

No indeed you do not. Thank you for bringing us this tale, Kate. My eloquent response to this was, "omg rude."  But I think there must be something wrong with that woman. And I totally agree, that non-excuse would let me know that I could never count on her for another thing, ever again. What form of craziness IS that?

I mean, do whut?

I Have Been Taking The High Road Since Dawn

I mean, seriously, before actual dawn I was not excoriating this random dude who was unnecessarily pedantic on my SubMat facebook page, and instead even enjoying it, as it was a human moment for humans. As I told our mutual friend, we all need to be patient with each other in these turbulent times.

Now for the tennis portion (Matt said to only give you the short version! Can you believe that guy!):

It was cold here today with gusty winds, and yet, tonight was the night that my tennis friend T and I had arranged to play a rained-out Sunday makeup match with these girls from another neighborhood. This other neighborhood is first place in our league, and we are second place, so it's an important match. And it was a bear to agree on this day and time.

Sidebar: I told Pretty Neighbor, "I can't even blog about the difficulties of scheduling this match because I JUST BLOGGED ABOUT my frustrations in scheduling the other match and at a certain point, people will be like, 'Becky, perhaps you are the common denominator here!'" It's like I'm the Taylor Swift of rec tennis, maybe I'm the problem. No I'm not.

As soon as our team's five matches were rained out Sunday, each pair of partners began contacting their counterparts to schedule the makeup. Short version: T and I offered them five (5) different days. They wanted the other day, the day we didn't offer. We said, "We have team practice that night." They said, "Tough." Actually that's pretty much how they said it, and if they'd been nicer from the get-go, we might have said, "Okay, we'll skip practice and play Thursday." But they were inflexible and curt.

So, what we said: "The weather is going to be chilly and iffy, but let's play Monday."

What we should have said: "Because we can't agree among ourselves on a time, we will abide by the league rule and play the match at the default time of this Saturday at 1pm." We could have said this knowing that T and I will be in town Easter weekend, and almost nobody else will--our opponents had already said the weekend was out. So we could have shown up, waited while they didn't show, and then taken the match by forfeit. If you wanna be a total stickler about it.

Okay, whatever, short version!

We agreed on tonight at 6. I thought, this is going to be rough conditions, 40 degrees and windy. But it's still tennis. It is not working in a mine. Or cleaning the grease traps at a Checkers. Probably no real cause for bellyaching. I mean, again, it's tennis.

But Reader, oh Reader. If only you coulda seen these bitches.

The minute T and I got out of the car, one of the girls was complaining. "I saw snow flurries." I said that if it snowed on us or got too wet, we would indeed play Thursday night, but that we were here and we might as well play. "This is ridiculous," she said. And then her partner appeared and they were like, so mad. It was obvious they each had monologues prepared about the injustice of being shackled and forced to play tennis by people so difficult as we.

I listened to them as we walked onto the court. They really thought we were going to say, "You know, you're right, let's not play this match that you agreed to play at this time and which conditions do not prohibit." We just reiterated that we had our Thursday team match on Thursday morning and our practice Thursday night, and we didn't think it was too much to ask that they make themselves available some other day. Which got them all revved up again. We had broken past the barriers of politeness in a way and with a swiftness that was surprising to me. They were acting really aggrieved and T was getting into it with them. I just said, "Hey, let's not get off on the wrong foot. Let's go ahead and start. I brought bananas and waters if anyone wants a snack."

Bananas! Yay!

And I was sure that would be the end of it. That once resigned that this match was happening, they would settle into the idea. Oh ho!

They never stopped fuming and griping the entire time. The whole match! I was embarrassed for them, it was so odd. I mean, the normal way of adult behavior is that, having agreed to do something, you set to it with a will, right? Not like a whiny child who wants to be sure her protest is noted at every moment.

I pumped up my partner and we started. They were pretty good and won the first couple of games, and I said to T, "Okay, we're going to have to play hard." She was downcast and murmuring because they were so mad, but I bucked her up with some of the motivational lingo I have picked up in my association with academics and other learned folks. I think my exact words were, "I don't give a shit. Let's beat them."

Short version!

We won the first set 7-5. Close set. I knew then that we had them; they didn't seem like they wanted to hang around and win two more sets to take the match. During the set break, T and one of the girls went to the ladies' room. I sat on the bench with the other girl.

"So Mandy," I inquired pleasantly, "Do you play Thursday tennis?"

"I work," she said.

"Oh, that's right, I think I saw that you're a teacher?"

"Yes," she said.

"Tell me," I continued, "Your kids must go to that new school, Kelly Mill, is that right?"

"Yes," she said.

We were having so much fun! Then I considered my small talk duty to have been discharged and I studied the horizon. The sun was going down, and a duck flew by. The girl looked at her phone. "My daughter is texting me, 'I hope you're not freezing.' Well I am freezing," she shared.

Okay, honey? Now you're just being a baby. I get it, it's winter. You agreed to play tennis in winter. But it's not colder for you than it is for me so please can it with the whining.

So we started up again and I could feel that we were going to beat them even worse that set. And we did, 6-2. They beat themselves, actually. I swear, they were so irritated to be playing that they hit the ball badly. They did shake our hands, unpleasantly. As they did so, I said, "Thank you for playing, I know it wasn't your preference." The girl responded, "Unnnngggghhh."

I told T, "They could have beaten us if they hadn't been in such a snit," and she said, no, we were better than they were, and I was like, I don't think so, but today we were.

And she goes, "We should have told them that we're from Alaska and that we grew up playing in this." Ha!

That was honestly the short version. Sorry.

mwah!

Edited to add: OMG, in such a situation as this, winning feels better than almost anything. Just so, so good.

I Hope It Wasn't Nutkin

Last Tuesday the Wildlife Exclusion Specialist came from the exterminator and set about addressing our roof rat scourge. Go back and read up on it if you missed any of the skittering creature sounds and the marital intrigue that naturally resulted. The Wildlife Exclusion Specialist was a very tall, broad man named Mark. Mark looked like he knew a lot about hard work. But still he was only one guy. I had been kind of expecting a small squadron, each with a different job function. Maybe one would be the communications guy, one the brains, and one the grease man, okay this is starting to sound like Ocean's Eleven, I don't know.

But I said, "Are you going to do it all yourself, Mark?"

"Aw Ma'am," he said (I SWEAR), "There really ain't nothin' to it."

Well, okay, but I am paying a lot of money for this service, I want to feel that it's fiendishly complicated, you know? A little too perilous? But Mark wasn't the sales arm of the Wildlife Exclusion biz, he was the doer of the thing. And it actually did look pretty perilous once he had to take that ladder all around the outside of the house.

"How about this wind?" I said.

"It's blowin'," he said.

So Mark sealed up the roof line and then went up in the attic with baited traps. All this took about four hours. Then he came to me with a printed schedule of when the traps would be checked. I said, "Will you be coming back, Mark?" And he said no, that it would be a different person, which was a shame, because I had enjoyed our talks, and he seemed really very capable. But away he went.

That night it seemed like I could hear even more skittering, I supposed because the creatures weren't able to get out for their nightly forage? Matt observed, helpfully, that we had chosen the course of action that closed the rats in with us. It was not a soothing thought. As I sat in the evening, and as I lay down that night, I was half listening for the sound of a trap slamming shut.

I began to consider different nightmare scenarios. One was: the traps quickly became full, the other rats couldn't get out, and so chewed their way down into our living space. I wanted to call Mark or somebody to come check the traps the very next day. But I refrained. I looked at their printed schedule and noted their five to six-day intervals, and I thought, maybe they know what they're doing. So I waited.

I heard a few little skitters for a couple of days. Then it got quiet, then we left for the mountains.

And while we were in the mountains, I considered another doomsday scenario and grew fearful: The rats are up there in the attic, sealed in. Some of their number are dead in the traps. There is no food. The house is quiet, and sensing that its inhabitants have abandoned it, the stronger rats chew their way into our living space and basically live it up all weekend. Sunday night, we walk through the front door with our bags to see them lounging on the sofa, reading the new Vanity Fair and eating the little bags of chips that are only supposed to be for school lunches.

I am not lying when I tell you that I entered my kitchen last night with a slight but real feeling of trepidation. But no gnawed apples in the bowl, no tiny rat cigarette butts anywhere. Also no smell of decomposing rat. Just our calm house. Phew.

And this morning, as per the schedule, a young man came to check the traps. His name was Troy, and he was somewhere earlier on the path to becoming a fully-fledged Wildlife Exclusion Guy like Mark. So he went up in the attic and was there a long time. I posted on facebook about it. I sipped my coffee. I waited for news from the front.

Troy reappeared with a white garbage bag that had something in it. EW! He took it straight out to the truck, then came back and told me that the traps had caught three flying squirrels.

Flying effing squirrels?!?

Where are the horrifying rats? "I was told there'd be rats," I said, or words to that effect. "Well, if they're in there, we'll get 'em," Troy said. Then he told me that one other trap had been tripped, but the critter had gotten the bait and got away. So awesome, there is a super-smart, canny King of Rats up there, waiting for us to exhaust our pitiful tactics so he can launch Phase 2 of his rat plan.

Matt came home tonight and sat down to dinner with me. "So as I understand," he began, "we paid over a thousand dollars to murder three squirrels?"

"Murder seems like a strong word," I replied. "More lentils, dear?" Then I told him how Troy had said to me that squirrels were really just cuter rats but equally pestilential. And then I realized that I couldn't say the word "rat" even one more time. And we enjoyed our supper in silence.

I told you I'd keep you posted and now I sure the heck have.

Of Unusual Size

My sister-in-law Kate, she of the forty acres in the country and the haunted church, posted this picture on facebook this morning. "This giant groundhog keeps trying to get into my house," she said. Adding, lest we thought she was kidding, "I'm not even kidding." She said he had tried the patio door, the garage, and the front door, and was just then staring at her from the backyard.

This led Amy to comment/wail, "Why are rodents attacking our family??"

WHY INDEED.

And speaking of which. The professional mouseketeers are coming tomorrow morning to begin mitigating our roof rat situation. 

When last we checked in on the delicate marital dance--the dance that ensues when a man and woman love each other very much and they buy a house together that some rats love to nest in--I had turned the decision-making process over to Matt and had given him the contact info for Tim the critter guy. I figured that he would talk to the guy and either negotiate some reduced level of service or just pick his brain or I didn't know what.

I had turned this issue over to Matt in a spirit of wifely submission. And here's what I've learned about wifely submission: For wifely submission to work, like, as a maneuver, it can't be a maneuver, it has to really be the authentic thing. I was all, "I surrender this issue to your judgment and if you want to make a hobby out of catching rats in your spare time, I will never issue the first peep of second-guessing you because we are one flesh and I don't think you are wrong and I don't even want to be right."

Or I didn't say all those words, but it was like, the gist.

What happened was that Matt decided he didn't even have the time and braincycles to spend on talking to the guy. Which was a good proof-of-concept of the truth that if he didn't have time to talk about some rats, he didn't have time to stalk, bait, trap, and dispose of rats.

And that is how that is turning out.

So tomorrow the professionals will be here. I will have smelling salts nearby in case I have to actually lay eyes on a rat.

If that groundhog had been laying siege to my house, I would have totally let him in and tried to figure out what he might like to eat. Then I would have made him a bed in a laundry basket and later, just maybe, put him in a bonnet. You?

Genus Rattus Species Rattus

You guys. So the other night I happened to be sleeping without the single earplug I usually wear. (I am a side-sleeper and I wear one earplug in my top ear, so I cannot hear the dog breathing and the music of the spheres and whatever, but so that I can hear it if someone speaks my name or if absolutely all hell breaks loose. Yes, I do move the earplug from ear to ear during the night.)

So there I was, having heedlessly fallen into slumber with my ear canal unplugged, when I was awakened by something. I lay there and tried to determine what had disturbed me. Then I heard it: a skittering in the ceiling above my bed. A skittering and a scuttling. It was quite loud, an almost urgent-sounding kind of skitter. In my sleep-fogged state, I tried to alert Matt. I remember tapping on his hip and trying to murmur, "Critters." But I can't be sure that my mouth was really working right and I might have just patted him and sussurated in his direction.

Later, awake and vertical, I remembered that when we bought this house, the attic was home to some number of flying squirrels. So when the exterminator guy happened to be here, I confided in him about the skittering. He went up into the attic. When he came down, I was sitting on the living-room couch. He said, "Well, I've got bad news. It's not flying squirrels, it's rats."

Reader, when he said that, I actually shushed him. Shushed him like you shush a child in church. Then I put my hands over my ears. He looked compassionately at me and waited.

He explained that there are these black rats, he called them roof rats, that live in trees and high places, and like to come sleep in our attic after they've been out foraging for food. They're using our insulation for nesting material. I wailed a bit and asked why we couldn't have something cute up there, like raccoons. His eyes grew big and he said, "Oh no. You don't want raccoons. They never leave."

Then he went outside and performed various calculations and observations. When he came back in, he said that for $1360, they would go over every bit of the roofline and seal it up, then set traps and come every couple of days to check them until the problem was solved. I agreed to this and established a day and time for the work to commence, then he went away.

Well, you can imagine what Matt's reaction to this was: We will trap them ourselves, he said.

Reader, I said nothing, said it in the most tolerant and understanding wifely way that you can imagine.

I did not wish to quash either his thrift or his can-do spirit, but I did quibble with his choice of pronoun. No, I demurred, there could be no "we" in the case, as I could neither trap a rat, look at a rat, think about a rat, or really even know about a rat.

Then I said, "Sweetie, do you have the time and energy to devote to this issue? Because I do think this could be the sort of thing where we either pay now or pay later, having thrown just enough money and time at it to decide that you don't want to tackle it, given the many and various demands on your time."

Then I postponed the attic work for a week to give him time to think about it. And I gave him the critter guy's business card and suggested he chat with him.

Then I discussed it with several girlfriends, both at home and abroad, who understand the delicate marital dynamics of having rats in one's attic.

Tonight I discussed it with our house guests. "I think I heard them," our friend said. In the kitchen, Matt announced, "I went up into the attic today and I have a plan. It seems very doable."

I listened to the plan and it may be doable, I don't know. I just asked that he call the critter guy and tell him not to come, because I am ready to remove myself from that loop, and that we do something fun with that amount of money. My tennis friend just got back from a trip to Dominica that she got with a Groupon, something like that would do okay.

I will keep you posted, trust.

Badly Done Indeed

It's been forever since I told you a story about people showing their asses in tennis, so gather 'round. Lest you think that bad behavior is a common problem in recreational tennis, it's really not. I don't report on the majority of cases, in which everyone is lovely, our kids all go the same preschool, and we pour the balm of sisterhood all over the court before enjoying a delicious lunch. I mean who wants to read that.

This was a few weeks back, at the last Fall match for my Sunday team. To review: in Spring and Fall I played on two teams, one with matches on Thursday and one with a Sunday schedule. The two teams include a lot of the same ladies. There are many opinions circulating about the difference between Thursday and Sunday tennis, but in my limited experience, Sunday is when all the bad behavior goes down. Also a lot of husbands come, and most of these women's husbands, I'm like, I don't know, whatever.

So I was playing in line 3 or 4 with S, my Venezuelan sometimes-partner. She was my partner for the last tennis story I told you, where those terrible girls wouldn't hand over the balls. JUST HAND OVER THE BALLS.

S and I played our first set with these two girls and it was fine. They were more interested in chatting with each other than in making small talk with us, but that's okay, doubles is about being united with your partner. They beat us 6-3. In the second set, we sort of figured ourselves out and played better. We were up 5 games to 2, and they hit a shot that S called out on the left sideline. It was right there at her feet, and I was over on the right side of the court. She was in a much better position to see it, and she called it out.

Instantly, both of our opponents were like, "No way! That was on the line! That was in!" etc. Now, Reader, I thought they could have been right. From where I was standing, it looked tight. AND, if I had been the one to make the call, and they both instantly questioned it, I might have backed off on it. If you aren't sure, the call goes in your opponent's favor. So from where I was standing, it looked like a close ball, but I just said, "I couldn't see it." I wasn't about to disagree with my partner unless I was sure and maybe not even then. S stood her ground and said, "It was out. I'm sorry but it was. If you want, we can replay the point." Then I stepped in and said, "No, there's no replaying the point, the call is the call. If you saw it out, the ball is out." S is not an assertive person, and the fact that she was being insistent on this point made me want to back her up.

So there is no court of appeals or higher judge in rec tennis. We called the ball out and it was out, that gave us the second set 6-2, meaning we would play a third deciding set.

OMG they were so mad. They were fuming and fussing, but we took a break before the third set, and I ate a banana with ostentatious cheer and figured it would blow over.

Reader, it did not blow over.

They acted like such total bitches in that third set. With one part of my brain, I noticed this, but it didn't seem like a really serious problem because most of my brain was focused on the game. There was a lot of negative chatter coming from them, but you know what? They were standing kind of far away from me, and when someone on the other end of a tennis court mutters something nasty, you can't hear it. They were like two angry, muttering little raisins way over there. The people watching on the sidelines could hear it though, and there were little snark skirmishes breaking out in the bleachers, but I mostly stayed focused.

Only in retrospect did it even dawn on me how assy they were being. At one point, we hit a shot and I didn't hear their call. I asked, "Was it in?" One of the girls, the angrier one, just flipped the frack out. She started shouting, "Her call is her call! If she calls it out it is out!" and etcetera, in a way that was intended to mock S. As often happens when someone is completely losing her shit, I feel that my body is filling with a cool fluid, time dilates, and I have all the time in the world to respond. I just said, "Thanks for clearing that up." And then when they hit the next ball and it sailed long, I said, "Now THAT was out."

That is my only utterance that I am not 100% proud of, as it could be seen as flame-fanning.

Then I started to get worried, because their anger was making them play better and we got to 6-6 in the third set. As we took a break before the tiebreak game, I was all happy and TAKE NO PRISONERS LET'S DO THIS. My partner was going to serve first, and I walked back to her to give her a quick "Atta girl!" She said, "I can't talk, I'm going to cry." She told me that she was upset by all their negativity. I could feel her turning to jelly right there in front of me. I was honestly surprised and I tried to tell her not to worry about them. I said, like, "Heeey, honey, this is just tennis! Don't let them get to you, I think they're funny! We have them scared, we can win this," etc.

What I wanted to say was, "There is no crying in tennis! Big girl panties, stat!" I mean, come on!

But she served and we played the tiebreak and we won it 7-3. So, like, decisively.

Then, THEN, the angrier one of them refused to shake our hands. That is unheard of in ladies' tennis. My parents were there, they can testify. As soon as we won the last point--they hit a shot long--I retrieved the ball and walked straight to the net. Our opponents scurried to their bags and busied themselves there. I thought, "She's going to have to work harder to snub me." So I went over to them and said, "Great playing ladies, great match. Thank you." And I gave the angry girl's shoulder a friendly pat. She mumbled something and did not turn around. Her partner managed to thrust a hand in my direction. S got the same treatment. Then I turned to the spectators and exchanged 'O' faces with one of my teammates, who had practically popped popcorn for this exchange. My friend T said, "I'm about to come love tackle you."

When we walked off the court we had to make S feel better, because she had been traumatized by their rudeness, but I was all IT MAKES ME STRONGER OOH RAH. And I just couldn't believe how twisted up they got about that call. You do not lose a match because of a call that goes against you.

I'm still kind of in disbelief over it.

Lord, longest story of tennis ever? Blogging every day and all! xoxo

More People Who Are Bad

Friends, I am really upset. Due to a cascade of screw-ups, some mine, some GoDaddy's, my suburbanmatron.com domain expired without my knowing and was scooped up by some garbagey company who stalks expiring domains so they can buy them and redirect them to ads for cheap viagra. So now my links all over the internet are broken. Unless you are in the market for some cheap viagra.

GoDaddy is supposed to "park" a domain when it is in the final stages of expiring. That is, when you go there, you see a GoDaddy page that lets you know something is up. But my domain worked fine--I updated this blog on the 14th--and then all of a sudden, it was whisked away.

This business of buying up expiring domains is a whole shady corner of the internet. The guy who got mine is a 21 year-old who lives in his parents' basement in Chicago. He offered to sell it back to me for $5,500.

Think of all the boner pills that would buy him.

Or don't think of it.

So, I don't even know. Any advice or ideas you have are welcome. I'm left with the plan of trying to continue to get my correct links out through facebook and twitter, though I know this only reaches a small part of my readers. I mean, it's not like this domain was my livelihood, but I'd been building it for over four years.

Maybe I'll still get it back. I can't think that the traffic generated by people google searching my blog will generate this domain-stalker any real money. Certainly not enough to live on his own and maybe kiss a girl one day. We'll see.

Makes me way madder than my purse being stolen.

I will still be here, and if you have me linked on your blog and are seeing this post, please change your link to the URL that is up top, www.suburbanmatron.blogspot.com. And follow me on fb and twitter and all that so I can keep you in the loop. And if you are following SubMat on fb, maybe share this news with any friends you have who are also readers. Sniff.

Meanwhile I'm going to go do some emotional eating. But first I'll favor you with an emoticon.

xoxox

Mean Streets

CSI: My Neighborhood

Y'all! Yesterday afternoon I parked my car up at our neighborhood clubhouse and took Hank to his tennis lesson right at the adjacent courts. My neighbor arrived a little after me, and we were both watching the kids' play for about thirty minutes. We got back to our cars to find our windows smashed and our purses gone.

Damn!

I'm usually a little more wily about not leaving valuables visible in the car, even though I've never had this happen before. When I'm parking up there to go play tennis or go to a swim meet for hours, I never leave anything in the car. But as I was taking Hank to the courts, I ran back in and got my purse, thinking that I might run to the store during his lesson. Then I left my purse on the front seat and watched him play instead. For such a short time. Dumb. Dumb!

What the guy got was my wallet, but not my ID or check/debit card, which were in a separate wristlet that I ALSO LEFT IN THE CAR but that he didn't see. But that wallet filled with miscellaneous junk and instantly-canceled credit cards was inside my beloved Marc Jacobs Sophia bag. Oh double damn.

I am a major purse person and I bought that bag in a time when we had actual money instead of a house, two kids, and a video game company. I haven't carried it a lot over the years, it's been on light duty. They don't make that bag anymore, and a quick look at ebay shows that the authentic bags available now have the years of wear on them that my bag didn't. Because I kept it in an argon-filled chamber behind bulletproof glass. So it is kind of irreplaceable. I feel like I'm a little too hung-up on it, but I'm feeling a little hung-up on it. It's maddening because I know it's been thrown away by now, unless the bad guy has the good sense to list it on ebay. I'll be keeping a lookout.

The nice sheriff deputies came and then the CID guys came and got one good fingerprint off my neighbor's door. There is a security camera at the clubhouse that should have captured the whole thing perfectly; they were downloading the footage last night. Hank was with me, and he was very troubled/fascinated by the whole thing. "Mom, I'm really mad that somebody did this!" he said. Me too buddy.

The deputy said to me, "Ma'am, don't let this steal your sunshine." I assured him that my vast sunshine reservoirs were untapped. If we ever did drill into my stored sunshine, it would go a long way toward ending our Dependence on Foreign Oil.

So, whatever, the window is getting fixed today. And the happy thing of the day is that Matt is taking me somewhere this weekend to celebrate our anniversary. I don't know where. Betty is coming this afternoon to keep the kids, and we'll be gone until Monday morning. I know it involves driving somewhere a medium distance away. I asked Matt what I should bring, and he said, "Bring a swimsuit, some good walking shoes, and some nice-enough clothes." I am going to go upstairs now and ponder the "nice-enough" part. Nice enough for a cockfight? A coronation? We'll see!

Have a good weekend! I will report.

I Guess It Wasn't Awesome Behavior, I Don't Know

So this is kind of far up the butt of the rules and codes of conduct governing the Atlanta Lawn Tennis Association, ALTA, but it's been rankling me today. I'm rankled! There was rankling.

We hosted a home match today. (I made pasta salad with farfalle, pesto, green onions, tomatoes, and feta.) The rules state that the home team opens a new can of tennis balls with which the match is played. If the home team loses the match, we take those old balls and go home. If the home team pair wins, the visiting team gives us a can of new, unopened balls to replace the ones we played with. We then give them the game balls to take away as a consolation prize. It seems complicated and the first season I played, it was confusing, but it boils down to this: one way or another, the loser is out a can of balls.

Today I played with S, a girl I don't know well but I really like. She is Venezuelan and we have a slight language barrier, but she is very sweet and we have always won together. Today we won again. Now, to set the scene: It was 88 degrees, no shade anywhere. I was wearing heavy-duty sunscreen from my hairline down to my ankles. I'd been hydrating since breakfast and my urine was as clear as a pure mountain stream. I was ready to play. Also a part of the scene: I am a nice person. Okay.

We beat them 6-0, 6-0. They barely won any points in those games. I was thinking, they must be really new, 'cause S and I play fine but we are not, like, killer tennis monsters. I was all Nice Becky during our two quick sets, being cheerful because I AM cheerful, making pleasant chat between games, calling out "good shot" when they hit a good shot, etc. One girl seemed happy enough to be playing but the other one was like a wet rag. I don't know. When we won our match point, I went right to the end of the net to shake hands and all that, and S and I said the standard things, "Great match, thanks for playing, you played some great points, etc." These girls didn't really want to be friends, it seemed, so we all started packing up our stuff.

At this point there is usually the business of gathering up the game balls and putting them in their can. I would say, "Here you go" and give them the old balls and they would hand over a new can. We would thank them, sisterhood would flourish. But that's not what happened. I held out the can of old balls and one girl said, "You keep them," and then they both bee lined for the gate.

When they were gone, S said, "See, I thought they were supposed to give us balls, right?" I said, "Yes, they are." And I knew that they knew it, because in the little chat that we were able to squeeze from them, we established that the wet-rag girl has been playing for two years. They were avoiding the ball handover. Which made me want to make a thing out of it. I said to S, "Do you want to me to mention it?" And she said, "Yes, you do it, you can make it sound better than me."

So I don't know what got into me, and this is not how manners operate, as I have understood them all my life, in years of being drilled in ladylike modes of not seeming to put oneself first and never drawing attention to the lapses of others, etc. But I went and ASKED FOR THE NEW BALLS.

S and I followed those girls to the picnic area and as we got there, I called out, so breezily (BREEZY!), "Lisa, do you have a can of balls?" And that girl did not speak to me, she just rooted in her bag and pulled out a can and handed it to me with a little pronation of her wrist that I can only describe as pure bitch. I am sorry but you would have thought the same if you'd been there. When I am faced with that kind of attitude, I become like the freaking Homecoming Queen. Amy, you know what I'm talking about. I trilled my thanks to her and passed them to S. Then I knelt down to the girl's little daughters who were standing there by the picnic table and said, "Do you guys want some watermelon? And did you see these cookies?" I was the soul of warm, inclusive festivity. Their mother said, "They saw them."

Fun!

So okay, I KNOW that I should have just let the whole ball thing go, and I have on other occasions. New players sometimes don't have the whole ball trading token ritual thing figured out and so what. A can of balls costs three dollars. Not a huge prize. But rules are rules, and the main thing is I sensed that those girls just DIDN'T WANT TO HAND OVER THE BALLS.

HAND OVER THE BALLS!

(At this point I am like balls balls balls, how many times can I say balls?!?)

So Reader, I know I did not exhibit top drawer behavior. I felt equal parts grubby and vindicated after the whole scene. And as we sat on the bleachers, eating our chicken salad croissants and watching the matches that were still going on, our captain came over and said she'd just caught the tail end of a convo at the picnic table in which one of my opponents was saying, indignantly, "Well it's a shame because it's supposed to be about having fun." And I wanted to turn around and yell, "I'M HAVING FUN." But she was probably talking about something else.

I came home and told Matt about it and several minutes later, I said, "But was I wrong to ask for the balls? I wanted S to have them back!" And he was like, "Rules are rules. Are we still talking about this? What?"

I know that you would like it if I would take my tennis balls and jog slowly away toward the horizon right now so you can stop hearing about this world. The good news is, today was our last regular season match. The bad news for you is, we made the playoffs!

Oh yeah baby, coveted bag tag here I come!

Seacrest out.

Shee-nanigans: That Party Report

I don't know what was weirder: how vanilla this "passion party" was; or how weird the world would be had it NOT been so vanilla. If you follow.

Exhibit A: The thing I'm holding in this picture. It's a feather tickler on one end and the world's tiniest, most adorable riding crop on the other. It's like a sex toy for an American Girl doll. (Probably that new Marie-Grace, amiright?) I smacked my tennis friend over and over again as hard as I could--you know, like you do--and I don't think she even felt it.

(Exhibit B, an unrelated exhibit: Those are my new fancy jeans. Matt took me out on Saturday afternoon and I tried on a zillion pairs of incredibly tight jeans for my now-skinnier bohiney. It was the world's most awesome date, y'all. My kind of romance. The bad phone picture makes the color/fade on them look really extreme, but it's not. Where was I? This might be another post. Definitely.)

I'm getting ahead of my story. Pretty Neighbor and her hubs played a quick set of tennis with Matt and me Saturday night before the party. She and I were into going to meet and greet--it was just around the corner--but we weren't sure we were up for the spray tan. Logistically, getting a full-body spray tan in the middle of this event was seeming like a hassle to me. The invitation suggested wearing dark, loose clothing so the tan solution wouldn't stain them, and even said, "Just come in your bathrobe!" Both PN and I were like, ah, no thanks. I was all, "I don't want to go to a party in my pajamas, I want to go in these new jeans I just got that I can only stand up in!" So we decided we might bring sweats to change into post-tan, because I was curious about the tanning, having never had one.

Honestly, Reader, it was knowing that I needed to get the full experience to report to you that spurred me on. You make me want to be a better (wo)man.

So PN and I calculated that the proper arrival time was 30 minutes after the start time given on the invite, and we sidled over and picked up our tennis friend T. Now, T had told me that she wouldn't be tanning because she wasn't into the nakedness required, but then she comes out of her house in actual jammies and slippers, saying "I hope I'm not the only one in pajamas!"

Well, T needn't have worried. We were greeted at the door of a beautiful house by our hostess, who was clad in--and I would never kid you about this--fleece, leopard-print footie pajamas that zipped from her crotch to her neck. As she welcomed us inside, we said, "Have you already tanned?" and she pulled us under a brighter light and then unzipped her jammies. Unzipped them rather a lot. We admired her golden-brown boob, and then I was like, "Oh goodness, shall I just leave my purse right here?" and "I'll just find a place to put this wine."

It was a very Just Us Gals moment and it set the tone perfectly for what was to come.

Then we joined the party and PN caught a glimpse of the sex toy presenter lady, who had a little table and a giant pink suitcase full of her wares, and was like, "Oh, I know her." She was super nice, Columbian, outgoing, and plays A2 level tennis. So we chatted with her and took in the scene. Lots of nice food and probably forty girls there, many of them in their pajamas.

Pretty Neighbor and a Giant Bundt Candle

It was certainly raucous. At one point, prompted by what I don't know, our leopard-footied hostess raised her voice and proclaimed, a little heatedly, to everyone, "I don't have a dildo, I don't need a dildo, I don't want a dildo, I am a GOOD CATHOLIC GIRL." PN and I risked neck injury by whipping around to look at each other. It was a rich instant of human life. If I didn't have a blog, one would have sprung fully-formed into existence right then, willed by the exigencies of the moment. I'll just note that it seemed rather like protesting too much.

Eventually we all perched on the furniture in the living room for the "passion party" portion. This was where, EVEN HERE, my congenital need to be the good student surfaced. The presenter lady was having a hard time being heard over the outbreaks of laughter and general rowdiness. As you might imagine. So I wanted to show my best respectful listening, and I even had the Hermione Granger impulse to be like, "SHHHH! You guys! She's talking about PHEREMONES! This is IMPORTANT!" I didn't though.

But it led to the presenter having to raise her voice and basically scream, "LADIES, GOD HAS BLESSED US WITH A CLITORIS!" Those were her exact words. And all the people said amen. She said it several times for different products.

From the catalog

So, the products. This was really interesting to me, to see how this was all presented. The catalog starts (and her spiel started) firmly in the familiar discursive space of self-pampering. Ladies, ya gotta take care of yourselves and find pleasure in everyday activities like bathing, grooming, etc. Body lotions, oils, and sprays with names like Entice and Glow can ease the drudgery of living. Everything is an "experience" or a "transformative escape" that will make you feel "deliciously irresistible." This should tell you what it was like, this first part: there was a pack of 100 silk rose petals for you to strew on your sheets (and clean up after, I suppose). They came with four tealight candles and "an invitation for your lover." T bought them.

Every product was lickable or edible. She went around and squirted some kind of goo on everyone's fingers and was like, "Try it!" I was like, "Uh no way am I EATING that stuff that just came out of that tube." I mean, I am game for just about whatever, but please.

It all smelled pretty good. Mangosteen is an important fragrance in this world.

Okay, so there were these various unguents, then some lube, which seemed pretty good, then more products that make your skin tingle in various ways and locations. One of them is called Nympho Niagra. Believe.

Then we broke for more wine before she brought out the big guns.

First we looked at these little chapbooks. Tickle His Pickle and Tickle Your Fancy. The pickle one promised, improbably, 50 ways to tickle that pickle. (Cue Paul Simon? "Ya just blow some air, Claire.")

I apologize. For this whole post. If you have better gags please share. I am truly over my head here.

The Tickle Your Fancy book was For Us, and contained hints for "self-pleasure and "awareness." LADIES, GOD HAS BLESSED US...

So Pretty Neighbor had the most concise critique of the night, I thought, when she observed, "Hey, in the pickle book it's all pictures of the woman pleasing the man, and in the girl's book it's all pictures of her by herself. Doesn't anyone wanna help her tickle her fancy?" Yes, truly. That was the overall tone of much of what was presented: spicing up your sex life is a DIY project, ladies.

Okay, I got to hand it to the copywriters of this catalog, and to whomever trains the sales presenters, they get through the whole shebang and never, never say any ugly words. They are at particular pains to avoid "blowjob." The preferred term is "oral favor." Which I actually found kind of sweet. I don't know. I was into my third glass of wine by that point.

One of the little vibrators plugs into a USB. And one looked like a lipstick. Everything comes with cute drawstring sacks so the cleaning lady doesn't have to see it. One had a suction cup base, and she stuck it to the mantle. I took a picture but I don't want that picture looking at me on the front page of my blog for days and days.

I also took a picture of Pretty Neighbor holding a really complicated dildo in each hand, but she hissed, "Don't you dare put that on your blog!"

Presented without comment and I will not answer questions, Mom.

So I said this whole thing was vanilla, but you know, by the end, if you flip to the back pages of the catalog, the train takes you straight to Funkytown. The product range passes through every kind of dildo--all the Sex and the City girls ones--and gets right into what most people would think of as kinky.

Before it gets there, though, it passes through silly. When I was telling Matt about the whole night, I got as far as, "There's a c**k ring that looks like a Goodyear tire," and he burst into a giggle of pure joy. Like a child on Christmas morning.

And as unlikely as it seems, that product is reversible? There is also pink duct tape.

Then, at length, properly prepared and educated in the worlds of exploration and escape, we arrive at the section entitled, "A New Sensation!" You get me. (I don't want those searchable terms on my blog forever and ever.) And here I must say, Mom and Dad, that I had no idea what it was talking about and I flipped through a copy of Readers Digest Condensed Books instead. I mean, I knew what all the words meant but not when put together in that way!

Okay, I'm lying on the fainting couch now.

Now I'm back.

And Lord, the hooting and hollering at every moment of this.

This post is already way, way WAY too long and I haven't even gotten to the tanning! Which was seriously a whole separate experience. Tomorrow! There is no way you have read this far!

Wishing you pleasure and awareness.
xo

Those People Are Not My People

There is a certain species of parent who seems to crave attention and approval from her child's coaches and teachers. Attention and approval not for her child, even, but for herself.

Have you observed this?

This afternoon at Hank's karate class, I witnessed an especially squirmy sub-type of the attention-hogging parent. I don't even know what to call it. The mom who wants validation of her mothering from the youngish male karate instructor. The mother who wants to have just-us-girls laughs with this dude about the humdrum details of her domestic existence (that's what blogging is for, duh). And this karate teacher is like, a dude's dude, but in that also-great-with-little-kids way, so I could kinda see why she thought he might want to pull up a chair in her kitchenette and listen to how totally bananas everything is at her house right now, how she's just a cute poster kitten on a tree branch Hanging In There, but he does not want to pull up that chair. He does not.

Hank and I were at the dojo early. They like the parents to hang around and watch the class, because sometimes we help hold pads and stuff. I had just come from working out, so I was already parked in a chair having my cool down, and Hank was already in his place sitting on the edge of the mat, when the second mom came in. She was all blustery and hausfrau'd, with an actual red face from blustering around. Like, everything she does is done with maximum effort and you better know it. She made a whole kabuki thing out of finding her son's index card in the little file and all the other pre-class business, talking to herself at normal conversational volume the whole time. The teacher greeted her son, and she took that as an invitation to start talking in his direction. I had not yet tuned in to her actual words, but gradually the tones of their voices made me look up from my ancient Veranda magazine.

Blustery lady was standing at the edge of the mat, and Mr. Karate was standing on the mat facing her, but looking at a spot maybe to one side of her knees. I'm not sure of this guy's age. He could be 28 or he could be 35. It was clear that he'd given her his attention for a moment and was now trying to withdraw it. She said, "As if our lives aren't crazy enough!" I don't know what this was in regards to, but she clearly hoped he'd encourage her to go on. What he did was to look over at the children coming in the door and begin to shift his attention in that direction. I knew before she spoke again that she was going to repeat herself, and she did: "AS IF OUR LIVES AREN'T CRAZY ENOUGH!" At this point I began to feel a painful embarrassment for her, sympathy for him, and just pure pleasure to already be installed in a comfortable chair for this performance. I mean, I don't think I can convey the awkwardness of this.

When she spoke in that heightened tone, he dragged his eyes back to her and made some slight noise of encouragement. She never let him speak a whole word, but took that as her cue to launch into a long brag disguised as exasperation about how her son is now part of some science olympics thing, in which he is going to study rocks. I don't know, but it involves fourteen practices. She kept repeating that, "FOURTEEN practices." The way I have just told it to you is electrifying compared to her narration.

Then, THEN, the teacher, who I know used to be a geologist before he began teaching karate, opens his mouth and says, "I'll bring in some of my nice rock samples for him..." AND SHE DOES NOT LET HIM FINISH. She talked over, sideways, and through him, on and on. All on the theme of gracious sakes, she is the busiest mother in the world! It was so rude. And so BORING. I mean, you would have faked your own death at about nine points in this monologue. And the whole time, her body language was strangely aggressive, she was leaning forward into the mat, his space, and projecting at top volume. Aggressive, but there was a little Kathy-Bates-in-Misery about her too. ODD.

And oddly transfixing. I might have let my mouth fall open a little bit. I know because I saw myself do it in the giant entire-wall mirror.

It is a delicate distinction that I'm not getting across, but her performance wasn't that of someone who just talks too damn much all the damn time, it was that she somehow needed validation from Mr. Karate for all her hard work.

Fortunately, before Mr. Karate had to gnaw his leg off to get away, enough other kids came in that her effect was diluted. I kept my eye on her the entire class. Like, seriously, I kept looking over at her to see if she was going to do something crazy.

So I'm not sure if she is a subspecies of the Attention Hogging Parent, but she might be. What has your fieldwork in this area gleaned?

I think that, from the point of view of Laura's, and now Hank's, various coaches, I probably come off as almost aloof. I think it's partly because I want to bend over backward to not get in the coach's business. I don't want them to think that I need them to be my friend, or that I want to pump them for info/praise of my child, or that my idea of my own or my child's worth is even based on their impression of my child's performance. Whew, I will tell you, the mental gymnastics I've got going on over here are exhausting. But do you know what I mean? All of this adds up to a relationship conducted in a pleasant but distant mode.

But clearly, other parents have a different approach. They're the ones buttonholing the coach the minute he appears at the pool/field/court, preventing him from attending to the group with some unnecessary story of Aunt Fanny and a Russian sleigh ride. Then they're engaging the coach's attention whenever possible during the practice, then they're trailing after him and standing by his car, complaining or fishing for compliments or just chewing the air.

Speak to me of this.

I Am Kind Of The Normal One

Did you guys know my sister and her family are visiting from Australia? Goodness! If I would stop blogging about tennis for even one minute, I could have filled you in on this important fact. They landed a week ago today, and I had them all, plus my mom and dad, at my house for a few days, and then they went up to mom and dad's mountain house, where the kids and I joined them for the weekend. Apparently the weekend lasts through Monday because we are still here. Anyway.

A campfire is a necessary ritual.

Foil-roasting the s'more leads to better melting.

This happened: my father roasted and ate a cricket at our s'more campfire. For some reason, little crickets kept leaping into the flames, maybe drawn by the heat? It was a disturbing thing, this cricket suicide. We saw one on the rocks, poised to leap, and Dad said, "Wait, I will eat him!" The kids reacted with shock and squeals of disbelief. They didn't think he would do it. I squealed because I knew that he would indeed do it.

He caught the cricket in his hand, and finding it to be too small to properly skewer, he stuck it to a half marshmallow left on his stick.

That bothered me more than the outright eating of an insect, the mixing of the cricket with another food. Ew. I think there are some food cultures where the eating of insects is acceptable, but I am pretty sure they don't mix the bug with marshmallows.

Then he roasted it and ate it. The kids were very, very impressed. Then he ate another one. Then the little boys wanted to be shown edible plants. I ate a second s'more while this was happening.

Later on, the kids were tucked in bunk beds in the basement, and I was lying down with Hank for a few minutes. I started to receive a flurry of emails and texts from upstairs, summoning me to come play cards. I hauled myself up stairs to see that Amy, Jason, Mom, Dad, and Aunt Kathy were all arrayed at the table with the cards shuffled and dealt.

They waited for me as I went to the kitchen and started making tea. I wandered to the table, played a card, and went to get my tea. They made noises of impatience which I ignored. I was ready with the tea, but then I espied a chicken leg in the fridge, so I pulled it off the bird and hastened to the table. There was much protestation from the assembled company: "Oh now we're going to have chicken grease on our cards!" and "Don't you want a plate? Gross!" Like I was the one who ate a bug.

I gave them a no-chicken-grease guarantee and then sat at the table to play my turn. But just then I had a chicken leg malfunction. As I bit into the chicken, the whole top part of the leg separated from the bone and was dangling from my mouth. Obviously I had to go to the kitchen to tend to it, even though by now I was taxing their patience to the last reserve, and I can assure you, they were annoying me way more than my chicken situation was delaying them.

So I handled the chicken problem and came back to the table, and Dad passed the deck to me. It was my turn to deal. But I found that the vigorous wiping I had given my lips had left them feeling chapped. I said to the gang, "I really need to go get the Burt's Bees, my lips are chapped. Do I have to shuffle these right this second?" And they all died of vexation. And they were dead. The end.

No, that's not the end. My dad pulled his Carmex out of his pocket and said, "Shuffle!" Then he dabbed his finger into the Carmex and applied it to my lips. I leaned towards him so he could get good coverage and I shuffled and dealt so they would stop bitching for one tiny second.

Then, as we all looked at our cards, my dad said, "I used the cricket finger."

Cricket finger!

I said, "But you took a shower!" He said, "Yes, but I kept it wrapped in a bread baggie."

And then those people had the nerve to gripe about how poorly I'd shuffled.

There is no moral to this story, but it is something that happened.

Amy stuffing a s'more into her face. Ha! Revenge.

I hope you had a good weekend. Look out for Cricket Finger.

He'll Be Here All Week, Please Tip Your Server

While I was having all that cancer treatment last year, nobody else in the family got any routine medical care. I guess I was going to so many doctors, I just couldn't schedule an appointment for anyone else. Matt did not get his physical. Hank did not have his four-year checkup. The dog did not get her shots. (Laura didn't darken the door of a doctor all year either, but she exists on some higher plane of super-awesome health and rarely even has a sniffle.) I did manage to take Hank for one sick visit and you may recall, I wound up crying, so that was excellent.

Now Hank has started pre-K and the school wants his immunization record, and he turned five this summer, so today I took him in for a checkup. He'd just gone for a dental checkup on Tuesday, and I thought there might be some resistance to more doctorin', so I didn't tell him he was going until I picked him up from school. I knew he would ask if he would get an S-H-O-T, and I knew I'd have to tell him he would. I don't remember Laura having this much fear of needles, I'm not sure why he is different.

But isn't it rational to dread getting stuck with needles? Towards the end of my chemotherapy, I remember telling Matt, "I don't mind the chemo but I am just really effing tired of being stuck with needles." Anyway.

We had some time to kill between school pickup and his appointment, so I took him to get a lemonade. We faced each other over a small table. "Will they give me a shot?" he asked. "I am not sure," I said. "But I think they probably will. If they do, it will be very short, and only hurt for a second. And you can handle it."

Thus I laid out all my talking points:

• It will be quick
• You are a big boy
• Sometimes we have to do things we don't want to
• The shots are to keep you from getting sick
• I'll be right there with you
• Then I will buy you some Legos

Okay, that last one wasn't in my pitch to him, because I know that I can and should ask my kids to do hard things without a bribe. I do know this. So I stuck to the other talking points. He processed all of this with equanimity. We went on to chat about his school day and some fun things, and just when I thought he might be distracted, he said, "I am still thinking about the shots. I might cry in there." We talked through it again and I told him that crying was absolutely okay, but struggling or fighting was not allowed, and he agreed. Then we got on the road to the doctor.

I thought the cloud of the impending shots might make him sulky for the whole visit. Au contraire. These two young, pretty medical assistant girls were hovering over him, doing his work-up and his vision and hearing screen. In the warm glow of their attention, Hank became positively suave. There was nothing like him. They exclaimed over his weight and stature. He beamed with pride. When he identified all the pictures on the eye chart, and they praised him, he did the little dance that a football player does in the end zone.

And then, THEN the lead girl held up a little paper cup and explained to Hank that he was going to give them a urine sample and how to do it. He said to her, "Um, what's your name?" She said it was Stephanie. He said, "Stephanie, be warned, because my aim is not very good."

Yes he did. May lightning strike me dead if those were not his exact words. I mean, asking her name first?!? Like a drunk ladies man at a bar, "C'mere, what is it, Stephanie? Lemme tell you a little somethin'." The girls just absolutely lost their shizz. They were doubled over laughing. I threw my arms up into an exaggerated shrug so that all of heaven would see that I have NO IDEA where this kid gets this stuff. I mean, "Be warned"??? He is beyond, I do not know. I just drive him around.

And he just knew he killed with that line. Killed. That room was his.

That's why it was so sad when he still had to get shots. Poor buddy! All his charm and suavité couldn't save him. When the doctor came in to do her portion of the exam, he looked at me and said, "She doesn't have any shots in her hand." I told him it was still to come. And when the medical assistant came back into the room with the little tray, I held him on my lap. She was quick, but with three shots, there is plenty of time to cry out in pain and fear. The first one takes you by surprise but by the third one, you know it's coming. I hated it for him. She had the band-aids on in a flash, but he was still crying, crying like his feelings were hurt.

I said, "It's over, see? It's all over!" And he said, "I was brave but I still feel horrible!" This caused my heart to break yet more. And let me mention that Hank still doesn't have the /r/ sound, so what he said was, "I was bwave but I still feel hawwible!" The nurse said that one of the injections would make a sore lump, so I felt like I'd lied about how it would only hurt for a second. And I felt pretty hawwible too.

Then he managed to stop sobbing and tell his preferred lollipop color, and then we were on our way. In the car, after we discussed his band-aids and his pain levels and the likelihood that I would have to carry him everywhere, he said, "Since I was so brave, could I maybe get a toy?"

Reader, I wish I could say that I held to some good yankee common sense Protestant line about how we don't get toys for doing the things that are expected of us and blah blah, but have we met? Hi, I'm the mother who drove straight to Target and let him pick out a Lego police car. It was miraculous to see the way his soreness disappeared as he ran toward the toy aisle. Later on, though, the soreness was back and he is like an awful Tiny Tim in a community rep production of A Christmas Carol. I dosed him with tylenol and he asked if he could sleep on a cot in my room tonight and I SAID YES OKAY?

Except for all the pain and crying it was a pretty awesome day, really. How is your back-to-school going?

Epic Basement Action

It took me all day yesterday to recover from what went on in the basement Thursday night. I've been too tired to even tell you, omg!!!!1!

Our builder dudes were finished with their work on Tuesday, a bit earlier than was expected. In accordance with his scheme, Matt then spent all day Wednesday and Thursday down there hanging drywall in three additional rooms. Since our marital discord around this plan the other day, I had kept my mouth shut and waited to see what would happen. I was busy with life on the main floor, but I thought maybe it would work out or maybe he would change his mind once he got into the project, and then we would move ahead with our floor staining and painting.

Matt did tell me that he had done drywall before. I was like, "Really? When in our sixteen years of marriage, a time in which I've been pretty closely observing you, did you manage to get around and hang some drywall?" (That's me keeping my mouth shut.) He reminded me that he did construction one summer in college. Ah. I hadn't remembered that. I just remembered how tan and muscly he was when he got back to school. So yes, drywall. Drywall is hot!

And then, lo, he got it done, he got all the drywall in place. One thing I forgot in this situation is that Matt is like a force of nature. Once he decides to do something, something that is important to him, he will not stop. Honey badger don't care.

So it got to be Thursday evening and Matt had not surfaced from his basement activities. I knew that according to the timeline he had in his head, he wanted to have the first coat of stain on the concrete floor by bedtime. That meant that the drywall needed to be taped and have the first round of mudding done. Then the storage area--a  room we call the bomb shelter--needed to be cleared out because we're staining the whole floor, even in the unfinished areas. Then the bare floor needed to be cleaned, and cleaned well. Then the stain needed to be put on.

I decided that I better step in and help, and that this situation was covered in some portion of our marriage vows. I can't remember which part but I know I promised a buncha things. So I put the kids to bed Thursday night and went down into the depths about ten o'clock. Our bud (and Matt's coworker) Lincoln showed up to help.

Reader, we worked until 6:30 Friday morning. OMG. Yes, to the break of dawn!

It was not the all-nighter that dreams are made of.

First I got a crash course in taping drywall. It involved getting up and down off a stepladder a lot. Then I got to apply the joint compound. That was kind of fun--the joint compound is the consistency of heavy-duty frosting, and it was like decorating a fugly cake. When that was done I was kind of tired.

But nobody showed any sign of slowing down. The whole time Matt and I had been working on the drywall, Lincoln was emptying the bomb shelter. He picked things up and carried them out the back door for two hours. We chatted. They talked about work a lot. I frosted the walls.

Then that was done and the entire 1500 square feet of basement floor was cleared off. We swept. Then I vacuumed, and then Matt vacuumed. That white dust that sheetrock produces...oh man, we sucked so much of that off the floor and out of the crevices. At one point the vacuum cleaner gave signs of walking off the job, and Matt took it out into the backyard and gave it a talking to. Or cleaned the filter. Then Lincoln and I mopped, the old-fashioned way, with two buckets of water, one for clean water and soap, and the other to rinse.

Have you ever mopped a concrete slab? It does not make you feel like the smiling housewife in a 1950's commercial. More that the water disappears before your very eyes, soaked into the concrete, and you hardly feel like you're doing anything, except the mop and then the water and then you get filthy. And this feels like progress. Also, mopping is hard. It wasn't like schmooping or schmopping or whatever my hardwoods, with the cute microfiber mop head and the darling spray bottle. This mopping made my back sore. And it was a lot of floor and it's not smooth, frictionless floor.

Even so, morale was high. There was a definite esprit de corps, and many hands make light work and all. It just got later and later. And Matt showed no signs of stopping. Like the Oompa Loompas in that one part of that movie. Or like Kurtz. Dude was determined. Did I totally get the timeline and the urgency? Do I now? Not really, but I didn't want to be the weakest link.

Somehow in typing all this it doesn't seem like that much work. But at the time, I swear, I thought, "We few, we happy few! The bards will sing of what we have done this night!"

We got the floor clean, and it was dry almost immediately. Matt rigged up the sprayer with the concrete stain and put the first coat down. We sprayed our way out of the basement and up the stairs. I staggered into the dawn and realized that Laura was getting up for school. I got her on her way, showered, and fell asleep. And Hank, bless his sweet heart, slept until after ten o'clock.

Not much was accomplished on Friday. I was too tired to work out with my neighbor. But not too tired to roll over there and eat birthday cake with her family. I figure I burned a lot of calories mopping that concrete slab.

So the floor is coming along. Matt put a second coat of sealer on it this afternoon. I'll do a post with all the floor details, it might be edutaining for someone. Here's what it looked like after the first coat of sealant.

Shiny!

So that is what is going on below decks. And the whole night, Matt and I got along beautifully and never squabbled. Until today when he started talking about something crazy and I was all, uh, not on my watch beeyotch, and he was all ??? and I said, um, I didn't mean for that to sound as negative as it did and he said, yeah, you couldn't have meant for that to sound as negative as it did.

I'm paraphrasing.

Longest post ever.

Happy Saturday, my dears!

My Neighbor's Opossum

See this nice old lady? That is Miss Terry. She is holding Louise. In case you're too polite to mention it, yes, Louise is an opossum.  She is Miss Terry's pet.

Miss Terry would love to talk to you about that possum.

I snapped this picture today when Miss Terry sidled up to my car window to chat.  I was bringing Normal Neighbor home from chemotherapy, and Miss T lives right across the street from her.  She was standing at the end of her driveway like someone who wanted very badly to be chatted with, so I obliged.  I kept the engine running because otherwise I would still be there, God love her.

This is actually the second possum that Miss Terry has kept as a pet.  This story is now engraved in the book of neighborhood lore: Some children were playing in the creek down behind Miss Terry's house and found a little half-drowned baby possum. They brought it to her and she nursed it and raised it, in the process learning quite a bit about the thriving subculture of people who keep possums as pets. Or she tells me it's a thriving subculture. I have yet to perform the first google search.

The first possum and Miss Terry shared several happy years together, until one day, it got out of the house and went missing.  For more information, call 1-800-COYOTE.

We moved into the neighborhood in the dark days following First Possum's disappearance.  These days, in neighborhood chronicles, this is referred to as the Interpossum Era.  I heard all about First Possum from Miss Terry herself, when she cornered me at a cocktail party at my next-door neighbor's house. She was so distraught when telling about losing that possum, we both cried.

But word spread throughout the land that Miss Terry loved having that opossum and would be thrilled to get another one.  You can't exactly buy them at Petsmart though, that was the problem. At length, somehow, another baby possum turned up. I think someone rescued it from a roadkill situation. (A mother possum on the side of the road may have babies in her pouch; the possum lovers always stop to check.)

So Louise came into Miss Terry's life and neither one of them could be happier. Or Miss Terry couldn't be happier, I am not that sure about Louise.  Seems like a pretty nice life.  Miss T says that they are trainable, about like a cat, and make very agreeable house companions. Her fur is very soft, and if you can get over the long, long, ratlike tail, she is cute.  Her little nose is quite mobile and her ears remind me of bats' wings.

Laura told me that she went to Miss Terry's house and fed grapes to Louise while Louise climbed all over her. I only have to suppress the tiniest of shudders when thinking of that.

It is a measure of the crazy stuff that goes on in this neighborhood that I have never blogged about Miss Terry.  You can see why I need this forum for working through these things.

Shortly after I snapped this photo, Miss Terry convinced me to open my car door and let a Basset hound climb in.  The dog was roaming around loose and Miss T wanted to take Louise for a walk. I wish I were making this up.  I wanted to tell her that I would rather hang around and watch the Basset hound eat the possum.  But instead I collected the dog and drove it to its house, the home of the Mystery People. Figures.

Dog's name is Bess.

I hope you've enjoyed this slice of life in my 'hood.

The Woman Has A Case of Crazymouth

Matt's mom Betty is visiting us, and she had a close encounter of the Frenemy kind this evening. I eagerly collect stories of other people meeting Frenemy Neighbor and thinking she's as strange as I do. Like, "Look world, it's not me, it's her, RIGHT?" Anyway, Betty took Hank up to the pool to swim before supper, and Laura was already up there swimming with Frenemy's daughter P.

Betty, because she has the social skills that we expect from adults, engaged Frenemy in conversation, asking her if P was on the neighborhood swim team. This should have been a perfectly safe conversation starter, as it is not demanding and it enables Frenemy to talk about her kid. This would normally lead into both parties saying, yes, how nice that these neighborhoods have swim teams, what a great opportunity for the kids, how fun for them, Laura and P are such lively and accomplished girls, blah blah blah. I mean "blah blah blah" in the nicest possible way, as I regard such bread-and-butter smalltalk as the actual glue of actual civilization.

But it did not go down that way. No my friends. Here's how it did go down:

Betty: So is P on the swim team with Laura?

FN: No, we don't do aggressive.

OMG. Pause. "We don't do aggressive?" What in the sweet fancy hecks? But here's where I love my mother-in-law. Whereas I have a congenital need to always appear to understand the utter nonsense that is coming out of someone's face, Betty is completely willing to play dumb when needed. I think this is where Matt gets it. We have a game we run on my doctors that we call Smart Cop, Dumb Cop. That's a whole 'nother post. Anywah . . . let's wade back into our scene, where Frenemy has just said that P doesn't do swim team because they don't do aggressive.

Betty [squinting]: Are you saying that swimming is aggressive?

FN: Yes, and it's all about winning, and the parents get so competitive and aggressive. We don't care about winning and losing.

Betty [all astonishment]: Do you think that Becky gets competitive and aggressive??

FN: Well . . . no.

At this point in the conversation, Betty said that Frenemy "began mumbling something about golf." Her daughter P, she explained, plays golf. Because apparently golf is a model-in-miniature of Utopian social relations and how they could burst into full flower if we would all only control our aggressive impulses and vain strivings for personal glory. Also, while playing golf, the ten year-old P is unlikely to encounter poor people. Or persons of color. Not so fast, Tiger.

So there you have it. First, let me explain. Here are three things: shit, shinola, and what goes on in swim team. These are three things that Frenemy has no idea how distinguish between. She doesn't have the first notion of what swim team is like. P has never been on swim team, despite the fact that Frenemy has spent money on one-on-one lessons for her. I remember that P has, in the past, even expressed a desire to do swim team. I think FN probably said no for two reasons:

One, for the five or six weeks that the swim season is in full swing, it takes a lot of time. Practice every day and meets every Thursday night.

Two, when one is swimming with a large crowd, especially with children from other neighborhoods, one is immersed in fluids with people whose church home may be unknown to you.

But the fact that Frenemy has been steering P into golf ever since she pulled her out of school to home school her is the perfect emblem of that child's isolation. And also an emblem of her mother's striving for class security. I'm sure P goes to play golf or hit golf balls with her mother, and NOT with other ten year-old children. I can guaran-damn-tee you that. (Oh I said "tee"! Titter titter!)

Lord, why am I such a bitch? Oh yeah, it's the dexamethasone. And come on, you love it. I just cannot stand when people talk nonsense and get all smug about their nonsense, ESPECIALLY when it is in response to politeness, like, "Oh you thought you would ask me a nice question and boy did I make you sorry! But listen to this important Thing! That I Think! I Thinked a Very Important Parenting Policy Thing!"

In conclusion, moments like that are why I think my mother-in-law is so awesome. She will not suffer your bullshit, your total frenemizing bullshit.

In further conclusion, my fourth and last chemotherapy infusion is tomorrow. By which I mean, Wednesday the 23rd. Waiter, may I please get a "Woot"? Raise the roof y'all.

And in an epic example of awesomely great planning, I am also having Hank's 4th birthday party tomorrow afternoon, after the chemo. It just worked out this way, and I'll be feeling fine, but I may be making goody bags while they're hooking up my IV. Also the air conditioner guys are coming some time between 12 and 6. I like that window. Like, "We are coming some time between the Treaty of Versailles and the release of the iPhone 4. We'll call thirty minutes out."

It's all good.

Anyhoo, that's what cooking in Crazytown.

Pardon Me While I Blind Myself

This picture doesn't do the situation the terrible justice it deserves, but I saw this fine fellow in a Cracker Barrel today. I know, Cracker Barrel. I came home and told Matt and he said, "Well what did you think you would see there?" Here he is again.

A bunch of us stopped in for lunch at a Cracker Barrel near a big outdoor mall in Alabama. I know: Outdoor mall + Cracker Barrel + South Alabama = We really deserved whatever came our way. I say that in love, South Alabama. When this gent swaggered in--and he did swagger, he thought he looked good, baby--I threaded my way all through the crowd, with quiet but excited purpose, to alert every member of my family to this sight in our midst. When my dad spied him coming out of the bathroom, he turned to me and said, "Telling me about that was an an act of hostility." Then Amy said, "Take his picture. Why did God create iPhones?" So I oh so casually followed the dude and his wife around the store, trying to get the shot. He was wily, though. Like Bigfoot. All I could get were blurry scraps of tantalizing half-evidence.

So that happened. I think he was about 60 years old. And not the guy you expect to be flaunting his bod. You have to understand that there was nothing underneath that shirt, and it was unbuttoned down to the top of his tummy, which protruded gently like a little shelf. Also he was totally hairless. My dad remembered him as slightly sweaty also. The really striking thing was his whole attitude. He was truly the cock of the walk. Like, "Hey LADIES, I'm over here by the saltwater taffy! Better hurry 'cause I can't stay all day."

Oh, and as my dad pointed out, he definitely knew his shirt was unbuttoned, 'cause he went into the bathroom while he was there and came out still rocking this look.

Reader, I guess I'm just. . .confused. And I'm wondering, why? Just a lot of unpleasant emotions.

Also, if I hadn't already had a blog, I would have started one this day.

This is my day-after-the-day-after-Christmas card for y'all, my dears.