Catalympics

by tess

Each morning we are awakened hours before the alarm by our sweet nine-year old Wellington Wallis and our loving one-year old Quintus Maximus, both of whom happen to be the very best, most perfect, bravest, sweetest, strongest, and most beautiful babies ever loaned to man (and woman) by Bast, cat goddess extraordinaire.

Like all true Olympians, our competitors embrace the dark, dormant early morning. They warm up with a quick 400 meter relay, racing back and forth over our still-prone and pretending-to-be-asleep bodies. Next they mount the balance beam (our bed’s very narrow headboard) to demonstrate their cutting-edge skills and cat-like grace. A perfect dismount is key; there are additional points awarded for landing on the pillows as close to the judges’ faces as possible.

Having convinced one of us to feed them, a round of freestyle wrestling ensues en route to the kitchen. Upon arrival at the second venue, our combatants practice vaulting over the breakfast bar in a bid for gold, or at least tuna florentine. Once the judges have retired back to bed, a quick slalom across the balls on the pool table prepares our participants for the final event of the morning: the ten meter platform dive, or drinking out of the toilet.

Synchronized marathon napping is still under review by Olympic committee officials and is, therefore, considered an unofficial event. If television sponsors can convince the committee officials that there is a valid international market for the event, it is likely to be added to the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver.

Having spent all day preparing for the evening performances, Welli and Quinty greet us at the door in the midst of the 110 meter hurdles. A risky sport, the hurdle event requires leap-frogging across one another and as many obstacles as may be located. Like the shot of a starter gun, the dulcet tones of Rachael Ray’s endearing voice marks the beginning of the 200 meter sprint out of the family room and down the hall to the office. Assuring them of Rachael’s departure, an extended heat of speed skating rounds out the late afternoon hours during the laser pointer chase.

Hardcore competitors require massive quantities of sustenance. A quick match of volleyball with the Minky Mouse toy prepares our athletes for a well-earned dinner of terrific turkey giblet tenders. During dinner, Quintus performs his patented race walk maneuvers as he repeatedly carries each bite of moist food to the carpet for chewing, then returns to his bowl for another bite.

Night time rituals include the high jump from the top of the refrigerator to the open catwalk, and the ensuing cross-country ski through the dust on the catwalk which meanders from the kitchen through the family room across the dining room and into the living room. Finding himself alone at the opposite end of the house with nowhere to dismount, Quinty is particularly vocal après ski, singing his anthem at the top of his lungs. Meanwhile, high points for difficulty are awarded to Welli’s triple jump from couch to lampshade to cat tower to valance.

Finishing strong, our competitors move on to the final venue of the evening, the bathroom, for two litter-related events. First up, we observe Quinty’s soaring high jump over the bathtub edge and into the litter box. On his second attempt, he high jumps out of the litter back over the tub and settles in to observe his challenger’s performance. Welli’s second high jump, from tub to bathmat, terminates in a boisterous steeplechase gallop as Quintus pursues his sister through the bedroom and living room down the hall to the guest room around the track through the family room and out the cat flap onto the deck.

And so concludes another exciting day. There were highs and lows, agony and ecstasy, failure and success. Fortunately we don’t have to wait four years for another chance to witness the poetry-in-motion of the Catalympics. As softball announcer Terry Venables infamously reported during the 1984 Olympics: "If history repeats itself, I should think we can expect the same thing again."


(Disclaimer to my parents who will be cat-sitting soon: "The events depicted in this blog are fictitious. Any similarity to any feline living or dead is merely coincidental.")

Home Alone: Day Five Discoveries

by gretchen

1. You should measure the area where you are planning to place rug.
2. You should probably also measure the rug.
3. Your animals, though with good intentions, are not qualified to help you move a rug.
4. If you are home alone and you lose interest half way through a poorly conceived project, it's not going to magically get done while you are napping on the couch. Which is crap, in my opinion.

Can't be taught

Uh, despite the cautionary tale below, I find myself -- at this very moment -- watching the documentary on the Haunting in Connecticut. My not-husband is away, so I'm here with the lunatic animals who make all kinds of freaky noises when moving about the house. Now, I can't decide was is more stupid:
1. Having read Tess's post yesterday and watching this at home, ALONE, anyway
2. I have already seen this documentary series THREE TIMES and I still can't turn it off and I'm still scared out of my mind right now.

Anyone out there able to identify with this stupidity on my part?

ADDENDUM: Not only did I watch two hours of this documentary before bed, I left the television on after I went upstairs and got to listen to it again around 2am, which is just the best time to hear spooky stories, right? Yeah. Awesome.

Forbidden

by tess

The Hubs travels for work. A lot. We’re both certain that’s how we’ve survived a ten year marriage. He drives away and I immediately miss him. I remember all the funny stories I forgot to tell him. I worry that he’s dead in a ditch. I wonder if he misses me and our cats. I brood over all the times I should have been sweeter to him.

And then he comes home and my life feels brighter, more focused having him there. He entertains me with charmingly sarcastic travel- and client-related stories. He always brings me some completely inane gift, like the 2-ounce ketchup bottle from his room service tray or a drink stir stick that lights up when you twist it. And just about the time when I’m ready to again embrace my privacy, he starts talking about his next trip to Cincinnati. Or Seattle. Or Munich.

Like most spouses who suddenly have time on their own, I live a very different life alone than I do as half of a couple. I eat food I’d never eat with him (mango sorbet for breakfast, cinnamon toast for lunch, blueberry waffles for dinner). I stay up late at night indulging in What Not to Wear, Little Britain, and Army Wives. I wallow in an assortment of my favorite movies like Big Eden, Steel Magnolias, and Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

There are only two things that The Hubs absolutely, positively forbids me to do in his absence. I may not read scary books and I must not watch spooky movies. But I am drawn inexorably to them. I can hear the cries from my Stephen King bookshelf: Pennywise the Clown, Jack Torrance, and the Man in Black are calling. If I know that The Ring or Fright Night is playing on another channel, the wacky hijinks of Bart and Homer cannot hold me hostage. I am entranced by the “View Last” button on the remote control. Darting back and forth between channels. Closer and closer to the scary part. Dare I watch it? Tearing myself away at the very last second, I imagine the scene on the hallucinatory screen overlaying Friends. Only to return again and again to the horror that will undoubtedly render me unable to sleep for days and nights on end.

It all began with Dark Shadows. My friend Karen wasn’t allowed to watch it at her house but I was a latchkey kid. So after school Karen and I huddled around the 10” black and white Zenith in our fashionably mustard- and olive-colored kitchen, eyes wide and pulses fast. The crash of the sea beneath the Collinwood estate and Victoria Winters’ words beckoned us. Our palms would sweat during séances. We’d bite our lips when vampire Barnabas Collins strode manfully toward the mausoleum. But the scene that made us sprint screaming from my house was when Victoria looked in the candle-lit mirror of her dressing table and watched her own reflection grow old.

Fortunately I don’t run shrieking from the house much anymore. Then again, I don’t spend stormy afternoons watching Dark Shadows anymore either. But as God is my witness, to this day I avoid looking into unlit mirrors after dark for fear that I’ll be forced to watch the march of a hundred years across my face. Just like Victoria did that fateful night.

Five Things on Cable That I Can't Stop Thinking About

by gretchen

1. Vince, the Sham-Wow guy, "Because we can't do this all day." Yes, you can. And you do. And we would like you to STOP. I think his Sham-Wows all fell off the back of a truck in Jersey.

2. Rock of Love Bus, "I Just Specifically Asked You Guys Not To Be Slutty." I want to know how this guy got his job as Slut-O-Meter and what his qualifications are. Personally, considering the girls on this show, asking them not to be slutty is the equivalent of asking Joan Rivers to be polite.

3. The Ped Egg. You know this one: it's a cheese grater shaped like an Easter Egg and designed to hold the nasty scraping of your nasty feet as a souvenir of your home pedicure until you are ready to empty it at which point you'll marvel at the skin shavings within. Let me tell you: these commercials should come with a warning -- all pedicure commercials should come with a warning because they show some hideous, disgusting, X-rated gore. Seriously.

4. RuPaul's Drag Race. That's it: I officially LOOOOOVE Drag Queens. This is THE BEST THING I have ever seen. You must watch. YOU MUST.

5. 18 Kids and Counting. We had a conference about at work and we have all agreed that while rare, waiting for your wedding day to kiss your spouse for the first time is fine (although I don't think that's the time to find out he/she is a bad kisser; you can't retrain that). What we CANNOT abide is doing it publicly. Who's first kiss didn't involve some sort of humiliation? Man, the first time I tried to kiss a boy I MISSED and bit his eyebrow. First Kiss should be a private humiliation. And then you should share the humiliation with me because I love that stuff.

Why I can't wear stretchy pants

by gretchen

Christopher is the master. I bow to his ability to torture me for over 20 years by uttering one simple sentence.

Chris is my older brother. Seven years my senior, he has long been the sophisticate to my spaz, the intellectual to my idiot. He'll say none of that is so anymore (possibly untrue), but he cannot argue the validity of this fact when I was young.

Older brothers who lack younger brothers and are, instead, shackled with younger sisters, have it rough. They can't truly embrace their god-given right to torture their younger versions of themselves because those younger versions scream like Nathan Lane on helium and mothers aren't keen on that. So he had to be creative with his torture.

First, there is the art of the bruise-less punch. There's a little spot, right above the knee where the quad muscle splits that every man alive knows can cause leg-numbing pain with one swift knuckle hit. BAM! And you are in agonizing pain and can't move your leg. Scream to mom all you want, there's no evidence.

Then there's the mental torture. And this, this my brother made into an art form. I didn't realize this was so until I was wearing my Victoria's Secret Stretch Cords today. See, the idea of stretchy pants is alluring to me. They are forgiving on water or cookie-retention days. They are merciful during the holidays. They can convince you that you are a size 6 when you are really a size 12. But half way through my day today, I realized I can never wear them with confidence.

As I said, I blame the brother.

He was home from college, a cool Villanova pre-med student who was writing stories and knew about things. He was interesting, had a style about himself that I can only describe as worldly. Elegant. Yes. I was totally in awe of him. And I wanted him to think I too was worldly, elegant. Which is hard when you are in junior high with zits, lop-sided, feathered hair, wearing florescent clothes and pale blue eyeshadow and braces. Many, many descriptive words, there, friends. Elegant and Worldly are not even close.

I stood next to him at St. Paul's, third-row from the front. Little known fact: families of five are PRIME candidates for bringing up the gifts. They love to get you. And we hate it. WE HATE IT. But we got nailed all the time. You are sitting there before Mass starts, minding your own business, and some lady with sensible shoes and a frumpy dress leans into your mother, sitting on the end, and asks if you would bring up the gifts. Mother smiles and agrees and all three children shoot her looks of death (very Catholic) and brand her (again) as traitor. And such was the case that night. You know, if you come late and sit in the wings, this doesn't happen.

So we were standing there, praying. I was immediately worried about what I was wearing because everyone will see me. I was a catholic school girl: I didn't know anything but navy blue and plaid. Any time out of the uniform was a problem. I stressed and stressed. And stressed. Who would see me? Would I trip? Would I do something wrong? I calculated the possible calamities. And then, about ten minutes before we needed to walk back to get the stupid gifts, my brother whispered those haunting, terrible words:

"Your fly is down."

Now. I am familiar with his work. I know he's a joker. I know he'll get you to buy into the most ridiculous of stories. I know he's good. And so I stood there, thinking I needed to be cool, smart. Then again, you can't CANNOT walk down the aisle with your fly down. I mean, you might as well move to another country after that; you are not living it down. So I tried to figure out if he was messing with me without looking down.

I wiggled to see if there was airflow coming in unexpected places. Couldn't tell.

I tried clasping my hands (in prayer) in front of my jeans, but still, couldn't tell.

I rubbed the side of my hand across the fly which made me looking like I had a "condition" but still, couldn't tell.

And then, I came up with it: I would put my hands in my pockets and pull. Too much give would mean the fly was down. Not much give meant I was fine and my brother was an ass. And so I did it. And I was pretty sure the fly was up. So I did not do the embarrassing thing he wanted me to do which was to look down. I was smarter than him.

Indeed.

But as we walked back, I started to worry. Maybe it was down and I just hadn't felt it. Was I willing to risk walking in front of the whole church with my fly down? Was I willing to have half the church see me checking my fly? Apparently, I was not. And so I did not.

I spent 42 minutes obsessing about this damn fly. Kept putting my hands in my pocket to test the give. The give was really the secret. It had to be, right?

Well, when I got into the car, I finally looked: my fly was up. And so I knew two things:

1. The hands in pockets to make sure the fly is up is a good test.

2. My brother is smarter than me.

Today I was standing in front of several coworkers, and I put my hands in my pockets. And let me tell you, there was lots of give. LOTS. OF. GIVE. My test was telling me that I needed to check my fly and fast. But I didn't know how to escape the conversation without looking obvious. Then again, the longer I lingered the more people were apt to catch on. I tugged at the bottom of my sweater. I twisted my hips so that I wasn't really facing them. I put my hands in my pockets and tired to push the sides of my fly together. It was the longest ten-minute group conversation in the history of the universe.

I slipped back to my desk and sat down at my computer. When no one was looking, I reached down to zip up, blushing, embarrassed.

But my fly was not down. You see, the overly-stretchy pants were not a true indicator in this case. When I pulled, the stretchy STRETCHED. How would I know if my fly was down? I could be walking around with no discreet test, no way to know! NOTHING! I HAD NO PLAN FOR THE STRETCHY PANTS. The stretchy pants' fly could be wide the hell open and I had no way to discreetly tell. No way. Disaster.

I stopped. I caught my breath.

And I realized:

1. My brother scarred me for life in church that day.

2. How much I admire his work.

The Subject Line

by gretchen

Tessa, next to my dear, long-suffering not-husband, is my favorite. She really is. And as my favorite, I've become privvy over the years to her little quirks and tiny hot buttons. For example, do not, I repeat: DO NOT try to help her collate unless you are a professional collator and have the degree to prove it. I tried once. She made me cry. I bring this up as often as possible to try to make her feel guilty. She doesn't.

Among my favorite quirks is her annoyance when you don't fill in the subject line. SUBJECT LINE GOES HERE. She wrote that over and over when responding to work emails I sent that lacked a subject line.

I don't like putting in subject lines.

It's too much pressure.

It's like titling a paper and when I was in college, I prided myself on having unique and wonderful titles. "The Danse Macbre With Grammar" was among my favorite. It was a paper written about Dom Jean LeClerq's book on mideval monks. I hated the book so much that I threw it in the shower when I finished the paper. And confessed the crime to my professor.

Anyway. I spent quite a few years emailing back and forth with a highly intelligent and witty man. He was the type of writer who made you want to write in complete paragraphs, with topic sentences. I loooooved writing to him. But I started to put this immense pressure on myself to have incredible subject lines to sum up the wonder that would flash upon his screen when he clicked on my name and opened my letter. "That Gretchen," he was supposed to think, "she's an amazing writer." This, by the way, is the fantasy of all insecure writers. That and an agent who really gets your work.

The problem is, my subject lines started to stress me out and while the email would be crafted in a few minutes, I could sit for days on a draft, waiting for the flash of brilliance for the subject line. This was when I was watching a great deal of Law and Order and I think it started to rot my brain. After awhile subject lines deteriorated to, "I've got nothing" or "Something witty goes here." Pathetic, I tell you.

We stopped writing. I think he was disgusted with me. I was disgusted with me.

When I email Tessa, I try to see how many I can send before she puts something obnoxious in the subject line to remind me that she NEEDS TO KNOW what she's about to read before she commits her precious time to doing so. Thing is, I never wait to that point. The memory of the Collating Fiasco still vivid in my mind, I cave after two emails and start putting lame-ass subjects in there.

I resent the subject line now.

I rarely use it.

Which is very annoying to people who get my emails.

Not the least of which is dear Tessa.

Who will, shortly, tell you all the reasons why it was logical to make me cry when I tried to help her collate.

Manipulation

by gretchen

The Kriesens are cat people. We don't know about dogs. We don't understand dependent animals that need you to let them out to go to the bathroom or who greet you when you come home. We valued the independent and the graceful, the intelligent and the beautiful. The snobs of the animal world. Cat people. To. The. Bone.

In my house, it was totally acceptable to decline helping with anything by uttering one simple statement: "I can't; the cat's on me." This was invariably followed by my mother calling whoever was next in line to help. In fact, from time to time, when no one was looking, some of us were known to pick up a nearby cat and put it on our laps just after being called to set the table. I wonder if our mom knows we did that. But hell, we weren't lying. There's that.


So when my sister and I found a little black cat screaming her head off in the woods near our house, we were prewired to bring the cat home, only partially to increase the probability of being able to get out of chores. We brought her to my mother and the three of us stood on the havast-gold linoleum floor that summer night, devising our scheme to get past The Warden (Dad).

The Plot is an art we Kriesen women learned to master at a very young age. It involved the "illegal shopping trip" with our mom, who was using a credit card he thought she had given up. Imagine the scene: the three of us pull in. One is sent inside on recon and reports back regarding his whereabouts. Someone is designated "the distractor" who has to go strike up a conversation with him and/or keep him downstairs in his shop by breaking something he needs to fix immediately (note: I chose poorly once and my sister is still ranting about the porcelin doll I sacrificed for the cause). While this sham goes on, the other two grab all of the shopping bags and stuff them into the closet farthest away from him. We never, ever got caught. That is, until he intercepted the mail and found the credit card statement, by then three months late because my mother had been hiding it. That day was a good day to go to a friend's house for as long as possible.

Now, imagine a similar situation: only this time, we have a cat to hide. We determined he was downstairs, watching television. Michelle was supposed to go down there and ask him to help with her Trig homework (which would result in a 45-minute homework session with him -- that's called taking one for the team). Meanwhile, I was supposed to shuffle the cat to my bedroom. We were going to see just how long we could hide her there.

Not long.

On my way up, this mouthy cat first blew her cover by screaming her head off. She then assured herself jail time by running top speed down the stairs and into The Warden, who she proceeded to climb on, lick, and snuggle into. The three of us ran down -- shocked and guilty as hell.

"We've had that for months!" I shouted (panic), forgetting she wasn't a new sweater I was trying to convince him he hadn't noticed before. Everyone stared at me.

"She just ran in the house," my sister stated calmly, looking him dead in the eye. Accomplished liar, that one.

"Now, Arthur," my mother started. "The poor thing was down by the side of the road..." and off she went into the sob story, only 27% factual. She finished. We stood before him, waiting for him to banish the cat who stupidly ran right to him and sat down. Served her right. Dumb kitty just sat there, purring, perched on him like she owned him. "Arthur, if you don't want her, then you have the chore of marching up those stairs and throwing her out yourself."

"I can't," he said. "The cat's on me."

Under where?

by tess

Fundamentals you learn in all-girls Catholic high school:
1. The girls at the rival Catholic schools are all ‘hos.
2. The boys at the “brother” Catholic schools are all dorks, but not geek chick a la Bill Gates, just plain old regular nerds.
3. You must buy all new underwear whenever you have a new boyfriend; it would be super-slutty to wear the same panties with one boy that you wore in front of another.

Boys may know instinctively who’s a dork and which girls are destined for late curfew on Friday night, but rule #3 doesn’t pertain to them. Cases in point: The Hubs has worn the same skivvies since I started doing his laundry 15 years ago. And I am almost positive that my father still has the shorts that were issued to him during the war. The Korean War.

Do you know any woman who wears undies that old? I mean, we may own lingerie that is ten years old, but it’s in the back of the drawer, on the bottom. And we may keep it for any variety of reasons: just in case we lose that extra 60 pounds we gained during the Clinton and Bush administrations, on the off chance we ever want to "get jiggy wit' it" again, or even a remembrance of a long ago kinky afternoon, but we don't actually wear it.

Essentially underwear represents something different for women than it does for men. We think of it as experiential, even costume-like. Remember the sleek, red, shiny bikinis that revved the engine of the race car driver? How about the animal prints that brought out the tiger in the otherwise-nerdy zoology student? And who could forget those Lolita-pink, ruffled, cotton briefs for the Lit professor?

So setting aside the warped Catholic school education, why do we dispose of (or at least hide) our old undies while men continue to wear theirs? Are men more frugal on the jockeys front? Is lingerie more fashion forward and thus must be updated more frequently (like women's shoes versus men's shoes)? Are panties simply more accessible and top-of-mind than boxers/briefs? Do men not wear theirs as frequently and so they last longer? Might it be that we women simply wash ours into an early grave?

Now that I’m an adult, I wish I had some XXXL underoos. Not because I think I’m Batman of the Bedroom or even The Shadow of the Sheets, but wouldn’t you just feel more invincible if you were wearing Superman underpants? I know that I would. And there are so many classic superhero catch phrase opportunities to make a real statement with your ‘roos.
He-Man: “I haaave the poowwwerrrrrrr!”
Wolverine: “I’m the best there is at what I do.”
Radioactive Man: “Up and atom!”
Venom: “I’ll eat your brains.”
Spiderman: “With great powers comes great responsibility.”
General Zod: “Kneel before Zod.”

See? I’m thinking cottage industry here … adult-sized and -themed superhero knickers! “PluckyPants for the Provocative Plus Size Gal! Be Tantalizing yet empowered; flirtatious and defiant; coy but courageous. Collect them all! Now at a store near you!”

And on the sixth day

by tess

My family room alarms people who fear color. Visitors with a conservative aesthetic run screaming into the streets never to darken our door again. Feigning illness, my parents wear sunglasses in the room until twilight falls.

An intense array of yellows and golds with blazing orange, shocking blue, and fire engine red accents, there is admittedly much saturated color that is certainly not for the faint of heart. Hoping to make the area coalesce into a finished space, we removed the red Oriental rug. Shunning the ancient and filthy beige carpeting, The Hubs asked what we could use instead. With a chuckle of derision, I replied, “Anything but that bright yellow rug. That’s one too many yellows even for us!” His eyebrows shot up and quick as a flash he returned … carrying the yellow rug that hasn’t moved since. The uber-experts of HGTV indicate that one’s flooring should ground the room both literally and figuratively. How better to ground a vibratingly bright room than with a boldly designed lemon yellow carpet?

Our wall-sized television and stereo components sit opposite the yellow rug from Command Central. The nerve center of the family room emulates the flight deck of the Starship Enterprise complete with twin Commanding Officer recliners outfitted in bright yellow leather. The soulless, ultra-modern, metal and glass tables house the parade of remote controls that operate the TV, cable, DVR, receiver, DVD, ROKU, iPod speakers, lights, and blinds.

Thus we encamp for our Saturday afternoon BBC America horror fest. For those of you who have lives, I’ll summarize below.
You Are What You Eat: A troll (aka nutritionist) evaluates the deplorable eating habits of fat and slovenly Brits. She begins the process by stacking every single item they’ve eaten in the past month on the dining room table creating a disgusting pile that would sicken even the most stalwart of gluttonous gourmands. After a thorough examination of their feces (which is called “pooh” and is inevitably found wanting in size, color, texture, odor, and vitamin content), she provides a diet rich in completely inedible ingredients. Finally she follows them around haranguing them publicly for snack-sneaking. The 30 minutes concludes with the poor sods thinner and happier (albeit starved and brow-beaten) swearing they’ll stick to the diet after the cameras are gone. Uh-huh.

How Clean Is Your House?: Two mega-cleaners invade and clean grotesquely filthy homes. I am thoroughly unimpressed by cleanliness and don’t believe it’s anywhere in the vicinity of Godliness, but these houses are so repulsively squalid that I am inevitably shocked. The “dust-busting divas” (according to the BBCAmerica.com site) scrape up bits of filth from different rooms and have it analyzed to identify the germs, diseases and insects present in the home. The goal is to encourage healthy homemaking while showing the slob how to clean and organize the house. Returning a month later, we see that the house is inevitably careening back toward its putrid starting point.

This might represent the best of what television offers. Not only can one learn nifty nutrition tips (pooh should be solid, but not hard, and completely odorless) but also some helpful cleaning tips (vodka lifts tough pet stains from carpeting and upholstery).

So if you need to reach us on a Saturday afternoon, you can find us in our blindingly colorful family room. We’ll be manning Command Central while noshing on mayo-laden sandwiches, swilling a bottle of wine or two, and pointedly NOT cleaning the house, but smug in the affirmation that at least we’re not having our excrement examined on national television.

Adventures in Cleaning

by tess

Sadly, I am to cleaning what Carrot Top is to comedy: the living, breathing antithesis of the art.

For years we've had a lady come and clean our house every two weeks. She's a nice woman and has done a perfectly adequate job. The thing is: she doesn't speak any English. And, not surprisingly, I speak no Brazilian Portuguese. I had assumed she spoke Spanish and occasionally printed out different instructions to her from a free online translator. Since they were in the wrong language, she couldn’t read them. How was I to know? But even had they been translated to the proper language, free translations aren’t always accurate. I asked a Spanish-speaking friend to review one of these housekeeper notes; she spent two solid weeks laughing at me. So just a word of warning about that: you could get in lots of trouble inviting your new Chinese neighbor to a dinner of “benumbed hot vegetables fries f*ck silk” (NO, I didn’t make that up!! I’m just not that clever!) when you’re actually preparing hot and spicy garlic greens stir-fried with shredded dried tofu.

So our wonderful new non-economy of the new millennium has drastically cut into our disposable income which means, of course, that the housekeeper had to go. It was sad telling her (via hand gestures) because I knew I wasn't the first struggling to make her understand that I just couldn't afford her even though I know she needs the money. Not an awesome day for either one of us.

And even less awesome is The Hubs and I cleaning for ourselves. You’d think that two college-educated, middle-aged homeowners would be capable of this feat. You’d be wrong. Although we don’t live in squalor, we are admittedly less impressed by cleanliness than others seem to be. Our neighbors, the Obsessive Osbornes, have thrown out a mop every single month for the past five years. How can two people create so much filth that a mop must be discarded every four weeks? I lived alone for ten years without ever feeling required to buy one, and The Hubs and I have owned exactly two in fifteen years. I’m betting that eating off their driveway would be cleaner than eating in our kitchen. But, really, who’d want to?

When The Hubs and I first met, I observed him “cleaning” his furniture for one of our dates. This “cleaning” consisted primarily of The Patented Spit and Rub Technique wherein he licked his fingers and rubbed the cat fur into a little ball, then dropped the fur-ball to the floor. Repeatedly. Picture it: this means that you're re-licking your now cat fur-encrusted hand. I believe my reaction might have been, “That’s disgusting! Do you have any more beer?”

Today during my very first vacuum-the-white-fur-off-the-black-dining-room-chairs event, I worked for at least 15 seconds before wondering how the housekeeper ever managed to remove the fur. I'm assuming that she spent more than 15 seconds, but even at 20 seconds … very little progress. Spit-and-Rub to the rescue. It worked a zillion times better than our top-of-the-line vacuum which requires a PhD in Physics to operate. The only problem being that gruesome fur-ball lodged in my throat. Fortunately I have a beer to wash it down.

So Right and Yet So Wrong

Have you ever done something that you know won’t turn out well but you just can’t resist? Dated the wrong guy? Lied in an interview? Trusted a hair stylist with a blue faux-hawk? Tried to run over the little slut who stole your boyfriend?

I thrive on bad decisions. Some might say that I’ve lived an entire life based on poor Outcome Selection Skills. That’s what it was called in my eighth grade “Decision Making” class. I don’t have my old report cards here but I bet that my grade in that class was similar to the one I received for Latin II. And I can guaran-dam-tee both of those grades were changed well before my parents saw my report card. Ahhh, the olden days when a minus became a plus with just a flourish of the right color pen!

Spicy tomato sauce is one of my more recent (albeit persistent) bad decisions. It gives away my age to tell you that when I think of spicy tomato sauce, I imagine a sixth Spice Girl -- a robusty Italian caricature who prances around in a tiny tomato-red dress with matching platform go-go boots warbling inane tunes and snorting coke to stay thin, but looking great. And isn’t that what really matters?

So spicy tomato sauce (the kind on spaghetti, not the “Tomato Spice” girl) gives me heartburn or indigestion or acid reflux or some non-specific ailment remedied by Tums-type products. I know this fact and have known it for a long time. So why do I not refrain from eating the delicious foods that make me feel unwell? I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s related to poor Outcome Selection Skills?

Those of us who imbibe the occasional 12 or 18 beers after a stressful day of web browsing recognize that the forthcoming morning will be a tad less enjoyable than a sunrise sans spirits. Still we soldier on, continuing to embrace our Inner Inebriant and swallow the Spirits of Hangovers-Yet-to-Come.

If Tomato Spice is a mini-skirted, pill-popping pop tart, then who are the Spirits of Hangovers-Yet-to-Come? Might she be a classic Dickensian ghost who looks a bit trailer-trash trudging past the whiskey locker in her old robe and a single bunny slipper, swearing she’ll never drink again? Is he the quintessential gin-blossomed, hoary bum hiding his bloodshot eyes behind broken sunglasses, expelling his putrid morning-after breath while cackling his cigarette-hardened laugh into your throbbing, gin-marinated brains?

I’m guessing that, like us, Tomato and the Specters made choices that felt right before it all turned wrong. I mean we all make bad decisions knowing that there will be hell to pay but are still unable to resist that last slice of pepperoni-onion-anchovy pizza or just one more Rumrunner for the road. All we can do is to live our lives. Laugh and cry; love and suffer.

So here’s the choice: Live a safe little life resisting anything with a potential down side, or with your dying breath seize that last double-chocolate cupcake and embrace your inner bad girl. Would I be willing to trade the misadventures I’ve survived thanks to my perpetually poor Outcome Selection Skills for always being right?

Hellz to the no.

My Sole Hurts

by tessa

I’m wearing these completely adorable blue shoes today. Wait, that’s a lie. These perfectly adorable new blue shoes are sitting BESIDE my newly enraged and be-blistered feet.

Shoes always fit perfectly well at the store and NEVER fit the next day when you actually wear them. Is it that you just want them to fit in the store? I mean I get that you try them on for 15 seconds and take maybe five steps versus wearing them for eight hours and tromping around endlessly (or sitting at your desk playing on the web accomplishing nothing).

Still, I wonder if there isn’t some sort of Demented Orbit of Denial that we enter when we try on shoes, clothes, jewelry, glasses, makeup, hairstyles, whatever. Part of us still believes that this one magical change will somehow transport us into being The Better Self we truly believe lurks beneath The Crappy Albeit Temporary Self of the Present Who Still Has the Potential to be Completely Awesome.

Why do we keep believing it? Do we ever lose that certainty? I’m not sure whether or not I want to lose it. I mean it’s an expression of a fruitless and immature pining for something that will never be, but who are we without at least a tiny glimmer of hope that somehow we can be a better/thinner/prettier/braver/smarter self?