If You Need Any Drywall or Used Day Planners, You Have Come to the Right Place
Comments(16)Several months ago, while I was doing something beneficial to society, I heard from the TV, which was on in the other room and which I was not at all watching, a commercial for Entertainment Tonight that breathlessly announced the marriage of Gary Coleman and promised the “exclusive details!” on that evening’s show. Initially, I thought, “so? The guy who played the dad in The Brady Bunch movie got married. That isn’t interesting.” Because this is the kind of thing that happens when you hear that Gary Coleman has gotten married. Your synapses get all messed up. If this is the first you’re hearing of this, your thought processes are similarly wonky right now. Perhaps this illustration will help:
Once I had made the required mental correction and realized that it was Coleman who had gotten married, I had a few questions. First, Gary Coleman is married? And second, what the … ? Then I promptly forgot about it because it’s Gary Coleman. I can’t spend my time thinking about Gary Coleman. I have other far more important people to think about, like Ben Bernanke or Anson Williams.
Then a couple of months ago, while I was healing the sick, I heard from the TV, which was on in the other room and which I was not at all watching, that Gary Coleman and his wife Shannon Price were going to be on “a very special episode of Divorce Court.” Well, this can’t be good. He’s only been married a few months; he shouldn’t be thinking about divorce. Plus, the last time he was in “a very special episode,” the Maytag repairman tried to take pictures of him wearing nothing but his Underoos. In any event, the whole thing sounded very sad and trashy and pitiful, so naturally I recorded it. Then I promptly forgot about it because it’s Divorce Court. I can’t spend my time watching Divorce Court. Judge Judy is on. (Actually, I hate Judge Judy, but that’s a whole other post. You’re excited already. I can tell.) Yesterday, while I was going through the approximately eleventy billion disks lying next to the TV trying to find a blank one, I ran across the Gary Coleman Divorce Court episode and watched it. I would tell you all about it, but it was boring and I’ve already forgotten what happened.
The point is this: I need to clean my house. I mean, no, my house is clean, in the sense that you can eat dinner here or take a shower and not pick up some type of deadly virus, but it’s not neat. I own a lot of stuff. Most of it is piled on top of other stuff that I own.
This is the problem with having two spare bedrooms and a lot of closets. You can’t just have empty rooms; it would be too lonely. Therefore, you should have one room that contains:
- VHS tapes containing every episode of Survivor ever made (except for Survivor Africa because those people started out all whiny and boring and who knew Lex would later turn out to be so delectably insane and threaten to cut everyone’s head off?)
- approximately 50 back issues of Sunset and Real Simple magazine because one of them has a recipe for Smoked Chicken Pasta Salad in it you just don’t remember which one but one day you’ll go through all the magazines and find it and then it will be smoked chicken and pasta for everyone and happiness will be ours!
- a bunch of old T-shirts that you are going to cut up and use for cleaning rags
- a shoebox containing five antique brass lightswitch plates that you need to polish, which you will do as soon as you go to Home Depot and buy some Brasso, and just because they’ve been sitting in that box for the last six years doesn’t mean you’re never going to get around to doing it, you are totally going to do it just as soon as you have some cleaning rags that you can use to apply the Brasso
- the original boxes and packaging from every piece of electronic equipment you have purchased since 2001 because what if you need to move one of your pieces of electronic equipment? You have to have the box! If you don’t have the box, you’ll have to throw your electronic equipment away!
- nine million shopping bags
And then the other spare bedroom can be used for junk.
I’m pretty sure I also have at least ten magazines containing articles about how to clear out your clutter and organize your house. These always have useless suggestions involving color-coded file folders and putting up cubbyholes in your mud room. I don’t have a mud room, but I’m sure if I did, it would house cat toys that no longer smell like catnip but that I can’t throw away because look how cute! They would be in a box next to the box containing 14 broken umbrellas.
My neighbors across the alley decluttered their house last year. They’re two spinster sisters who have lived in that house since 1960 and based on the fact that it took them six months of putting out an extra garbage can every week and three extra recycling cans every other week, I would say they hadn’t thrown anything away since 1960 as well. I don’t want to spend my old age trying to determine if I really need these twelve gallon-size paint cans each containing a half-cup of paint, a spare headlight for a 1980 Volkswagen, and these leftover pieces of pipe insulation, or if I can safely dispose of them. So my project for the next couple of weeks (okay, months) is to get rid of all the crap in my house. And I’m going to start as soon as I watch the videotape of Blood Vows: The Story of a Mafia Wife starring Melissa Gilbert and Joe Penny, which I taped three years ago. I feel certain I won’t be sorry I held on to it.
Happy Birt … Oh Skip It
I turned 45 recently, which is so old it’s almost dead. Though, I probably shouldn’t joke about that, lest the universe decide to fulfill the prophecy in some slow, painful, pustulant way culminating in an afternoon in the near future when a group of people standing around a freshly dug grave will speak in hushed tones.
“How old was she?”
“She just turned dead. Dead years old.”
“What a shame. It seems like only yesterday she was 45.”
“It was yesterday.”
“Oh. Well, no wonder then.”
BUT DON’T WORRY ABOUT ME. I AM DEALING WITH THIS JUST FINE. Also, do you have any Geritol? The liquid kind, so I can mix it with my creamed corn and applesauce. If you do, please bring it soon; I want to eat dinner at 4:30 and then cry myself to sleep by 7:00.
Actually, I can’t decide if turning 45 bothers me or not. It’s a matter of context, I believe. My perceived youth/decrepitude depends entirely on what I’m doing at the time. If I were wearing Daisy Duke cutoffs, people would say I was too old. They might also laugh or possibly throw up. On the other hand, were I to run for President of the United States, people would say I was too young. Some of the more perceptive of those folks would also say that I am too stupid, but to that I would offer the following rebuttal:
Now that I think about it, I don’t want to do either of those things. Therefore, existential crisis averted!
But just in case I had any lingering doubt about my relevance as a human being and whether it survives into one’s fifth decade, I thought it would make me feel better to look up famous yet still unwithered people who, like me, were born in 1963. So I searched IMDb and came up with the following:
Helen Hunt. Well, crap. Have you seen Helen Hunt lately? She recently did a movie with Bette Midler, which I did not see primarily because it’s a Helen Hunt/Bette Midler movie; nonetheless, I did see the previews. In this movie, they play mother and daughter, but seeing the two of them together, you cannot say with any degree of certainty which of them is playing the mother and which is playing the daughter. And for reference purposes? Bette Midler is 62 years old.
Brad Pitt. Um. No. The man went from looking 18 to looking 57. Plus, why is he so dirty all the time? I swear, you look at his photo and can smell the B.O.
Lisa Rinna. Sigh. Are you kidding me with this, IMDb? If she ever lets her lips deflate, the bottom half of her face will fall down her blouse. Next please.
Whitney Houston. Yeah. Like I want to look like Whitney. I don’t think she even has teeth anymore.
Brigitte Nielsen. ALL RIGHT FINE I DON’T WANT TO PLAY THIS GAME ANYMORE.
Next, I thought it might be helpful if I took that Real Age test to see how old I am based on my family history and health habits (as opposed to how old I am based on how old I am). After answering approximately one billion questions, the Real Age website informs me that they are doing some high-level calculations and will email my results to me in an hour or possibly two. I hope I live that long. In the meantime, I’ll just sit here quietly, listening to my Coolio* records and enjoying this bowl of creamed banana.
__________________
* Born Artis Leon Ivey Jr., The First Day of August, Nineteen Hundred and Sixty-Three
Also, I Think I Ate Too Many Vegetables Yesterday
I have done absolutely nothing useful today. However, I plan to fry a hamburger patty later, so the day won’t be a total loss.
The day got off to a weird start because the last dream I had before I woke up was about attending an Obama fundraising dinner, which started off great because I was sitting at the same table with the Obamas and the senator agreed with me that every American should have the exact same health care plan that all members of Congress have. Then the cast of Annie came out and sang “Tomorrow.” During the song, I looked over at Senator Obama and saw that he was wearing a curly red wig. Michelle seemed to think this was okay, but it struck me as odd. I’ll still vote for him though. I don’t mind at all that he’s a huge celebrity like Paris Hilton or Andrea McArdle.
Second, I cannot get the theme song to 21 Jump Street out of my head. And I don’t know most of the words; therefore, all day long, the inside of my head has sounded like this:
We mmmm mmmm mmmm mmmm mmmm a place where we beloooooonnnng
No need to mmmm mmmmm mmmmm mmmm mmmm mmmm mmmm mmmm
No mmmm mmmmm mmmm mmmm indecision mmm mmmm mmmm
Now JUMP!
Down on Jump Street!
Say JUMP!
Down on Jump Streeeeet!
Third, I started to wonder what it would look like if cats had a yearbook. So I spent two hours making this:
And finally, my office phoned and asked me if I used to work for [Unnamed Software Company]. A woman who I’ll call Bernadette since that’s almost her name called them looking for someone with the same name as mine who she used to supervise. As it turns out, she was looking for me. God only knows why. I haven’t seen or talked to her in years, and the company itself has long since gone out of business. Moreover, I always hated her. She was a horrible awful woman. She was so awful that whenever other people in the company found out I worked for her, they would immediately rub my back in little circular motions and then later bring me chocolate. Another woman who worked there, who was ordinarily very nice, out of the blue and with no prompting expressed her feelings for Bernadette thusly: “I would like to put a big dead dog on her desk.” Here’s an example of the kind of person Bernadette was. She insisted that no one put anything in my inbox. They were to put all my mail and phone messages in her inbox and then she would review them and give me the “pertinent” items. Except she would almost never give me anything, so I would have to wait until she was at lunch and then go through her inbox, read my stuff, and put it back so she (a) wouldn’t know and (b) could throw it away. One year before Christmas, someone put a flyer for me about the Christmas gift exchange (which was a “Yankee Swap/White Elephant” kind of deal because really the whole company was clueless in a Dunder-Mifflin kind of way) in her inbox, which I saw but which she declined to actually give me. Immediately before the staff meeting where the gift exchange was to take place, she hurried over to my desk and was super apologetic about “forgetting” to tell me about it and she hoped I wouldn’t be too embarrassed to be the only one there without a gift and oh she just felt awful awful about how mortified I was going to be and could I ever forgive her for the humiliation I was about to suffer and so on and so forth. I reached into my bag and pulled out a wrapped gift. “That’s okay! Kathy told me about it! So I’m set! Let’s walk over together!” We did and just as everyone got settled in around the conference table, she turned to me and loudly asked if I had forgotten to wear a bra that day. So that’s Bernadette. She wants me to call her. What a shame that no one gave me the message. I’m so embarrassed about that.
So as you can see, I’ve had a lot of important things on my mind today. Maybe I’ll get some work done tomorrow. The only foreseeable problem is that if cats have a yearbook, then probably dogs should have one too.
Just Like a National Geographic Special, Except With More Panicky Flailing
Yesterday morning as I was getting ready to step into the shower, I heard a scratching noise coming from the ceiling fan vent. I occasionally hear birds walking around on the outside cover of the vent on the roof, and when I do, I don’t turn on the fan until they’re gone because I know that even good-size birds can get into small openings and I don’t want to run the risk of accidentally julienning one that has gotten inside. Thus, I left the fan off, opened the bathroom door to let the steam out, and proceeded to shower.
After my shower, as I was putting sunscreen on, I heard the scratching noise again. That seemed odd since birds don’t usually hang around on the roof that long. I started to worry that one had gotten inside the vent, and I figured if it got in, it could probably get out, but perhaps it needed some encouragement. So I very gracefully climbed up on the toilet seat, reached up and banged on the vent cover a couple of times. I listened. Still, I heard a scrabbling noise. Hmm. Possibly he needed more encouragement. I decided that it would be useful to pull the plastic vent cover down and tap on the metal pipe inside the vent. I reached up and pulled the cover down just far enough to reach in but not to detach it when all of a sudden WASP! WASP! WASP IN THE VENT! WASP OUT OF THE VENT AND INTO MY BATHROOM! AIIIIEEEEEEE!
I have never seen a bigger wasp in my life. This wasp was huge. It had a torso. And a waist. It was probably carrying a little wasp briefcase with a sandwich and extra venom in it. The only thing I can think of to compare to this wasp was last seen eating Tokyo in a movie from the 1950s. It was just plain big.
The first thing I do is shut the bathroom door so it won’t escape into the house because then I’ll never be able to catch it. Now, I know the sensible thing to do would have been to go get the can of Raid and spray the monster, but I really like to avoid killing bugs if I can. I don’t want to get into the whole Buddhist philosophy of reincarnation to which I subscribe, particularly since I am inconsistent and subject to suspending my deeply held convictions when what we are talking about is 500 ants setting up a farm in my basement, but, in general, if I see a crawling bug, it gets scooped up and taken outside. If I see a flying bug, it gets trapped in a cup and taken outside. As a matter of fact, I keep a styrofoam cup and a small piece of cardboard for the specific purpose of returning insects to the wild. I can neither confirm nor deny that I hum “Born Free” upon their release.
So clearly, the thing to do was get the cup and piece of cardboard and collect the wasp. Possibly I should have put some clothes on first, but I could hear him in my bathroom flying into every available surface and buzzing in a rather menacing fashion, so time was of the essence. I got the cup, steeled myself, and reentered the bathroom. The wasp was throwing himself against the glass cover on the overhead light. “BZZZZZZ!” Thwap! “BZZZZZZZ!” Thwap! Well, this wouldn’t do. I needed him to land on a flat surface so I could put the cup over him. I turned off the light, thinking he would head for the wall near the window. He did, but in a very skittery, scary way, and then he proceeded to buzz up and down the wall in a random fashion. I think he was on meth. After a couple of minutes he calms down and confines himself to a relatively small square of real estate and makes these happy “bzzz bzzz!” noises. Stealthy as a cat, a giant sunscreen-wearing cat, I come as close to the wasp as I dare and quickly trap him against the wall and under the cup. “BZZZZZZZ! BZZZZZZZZ! BZZZZ BZZZ BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!” I slip the cardboard between the wall and the top of the cup then catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I’m naked. My hair is wet and uncombed. The combination of shower, no fan, closed door, August, and sheer terror have caused me to sweat like I’m getting paid for it. I am covered with white streaks of unblended sunscreen. And I am holding a cup containing a wasp. I feel I have not lived correctly.
When the world has gone haywire, the thing to do is put some pants on. And if you’re a girl, a shirt is also a good idea. But first I have to park this crazy bug somewhere. I carefully place the cup on the floor leaving the cardboard cover in place. And, because a weightless piece of cardboard is no match for a determined wasp, I also place a bar of soap on top of the cardboard so that he can’t escape and exact a revenge killing on me. I put on the big T-shirt and pair of shorts that I slept in, carefully pick up the cup, the lid, and the world’s most irate meth-addicted flying insect, take it outside, pray that when I remove the lid, he will fly away from me, remove the lid, thankfully watch him fly in the general direction of the junior high school, go back inside, and get on with my day.
This morning, I entered the bathroom, listened carefully, and heard no sounds of birds or bugs or nature of any kind. Secure in their absence, I flipped on the fan and showered as usual. As I was drying off, I realized that at some point last night while I was asleep, something or, should I say, someone stung my big toe. Well played, Mr. Wasp. Well played.
I’ve been SHOT! Oh. Just Tagged.
Stinkypaw was kind enough to tag me with a meme, and since it is hot and General Hospital is kind of boring today, I am happy to oblige.
Four Things You Should Know About Me Before You Invite Me to Your House
1. I will eat any food that you plop down in front of me, even if it makes an actual plopping noise when you serve it up. There is no food I will not eat. I have no food allergies, and I’m not picky. There are some foods that I don’t really enjoy all that much, but if someone goes to the trouble to make it for me, I’ll eat it and say thank you. I just won’t ask for the recipe. But just in case you are planning on having me over anytime soon, could we not have lamb? If we do, I will still eat it, but I hate to waste all that cuteness on something that tastes like a foot.
We assure you that we are not the least bit delicious.
2. I’m a big fan of handwashing. I’m not at the Howard Hughes level of germophobia, but give me a few years. Therefore, if food or drink is at all involved in the visit, or if I’m just going to be there long enough that a visit to the bathroom wouldn’t be overstepping, then I would appreciate it if there were soap and a clean towel of some sort available. The towel that’s still damp from your shower doesn’t count. On the other hand, you shouldn’t feel too much pressure about this, since I’m never without one of those purse-sized bottles of Purell. I don’t care what people say; this is perfectly normal.
3. I probably won’t come over anyway. Why would I go to someone else’s house when I have a house? What? What? THIS IS PERFECTLY NORMAL.
4. You know how whenever I’m not in a relationship and you try to fix me up with some guy who you say I have a lot in common with, and I ask you what we have in common, and it turns out that what we have in common is that we’re both single, and I say that that isn’t enough, and you say why not, and I say just because, and you say just meet him, and I say no, and you say I just want you to be happy, and I say I am happy, and you say I’m not happy enough, and I say nevertheless I’m not meeting him, and you say well fine forget it then, and then a couple of months later you invite me to your house, and I come to your house, and there he is at your house? Please don’t do that anymore.
And there you have it. I’ll now go sit by the phone and wait for the invitations to come in. If you want to play along with this meme, consider yourself tagged.
I don't even have a blog.
The New Phonebooks are Here! The New Phonebooks are Here!
First of all, how in the hell did it get to be August 4th so quickly? Wasn’t it just June a couple of days ago? I have almost no memory of the last two months, and it doesn’t help that I just watched the remake of Sybil yesterday. Although actually I would like to have a split personality because my hallway needs to be painted and since there’s no one here but me, I’d like to disassociate for at least as long as it takes to go to Home Depot and drive into the parking lot while day laborers run alongside my car and smile at me hopefully but ultimately fruitlessly.
Back to the task at hand, PHONEBOOKS! And allow me to apologize in advance if there exists some type of smart phone out there called a Phonebook, and you landed here all excited thinking that I was going to rhapsodize about the ability to now access the internet even when I’m taking a bath or having a mammogram or otherwise not near a computer. Frankly, I don’t need to be online at all times, and my current phone doesn’t even have a camera, much less internet access. Or maybe it does. I haven’t really figured out how to work it yet. I’ve only had it for two years; DON’T RUSH ME.
No, I’m talking about the actual paper books with pages that have a lot of names and numbers in them that get thrown into your shrubbery once a year by a guy with only three of his own teeth driving a van with no hubcaps. Actually, for the last few years, I’ve been receiving phonebooks at least three or four times a year. Because there’s no such thing as one evil monolithic phone company anymore and instead you have your choice between several smaller but no less Satanic companies, they each get their own homuncular delivery person to toss their smaller, less useful book somewhere in the vicinity of my front door. Still, there’s only one real phonebook, and that would be the one that contains my phone number listed next to the fake name that I use for all directory purposes and which I change every few years. The fake name isn’t strictly necessary, but it helps me determine the level of attention required when I answer the phone. If the caller begins by asking to speak to, say for example, Miss McCracken or Mr. or Mrs. Buick LeSabre, then I know I can set the attention level to “low.”
Well, there’s no need for excitement, I suppose. Like all things, the phonebook isn’t what it used to be. I mean, sure, the ads for dentists that contain the words “nitrous oxide available,” and the ads for lawyers that prominently feature either an American flag or the American eagle with a picture of a slightly shiny looking guy superimposed over it are always good for a laugh, but where are the listings for Dial-A-Prayer and Dial-A-Joke and … the hell? There’s a listing in my current book for Dial-A-Blonde. I am tempted to call the number to find out what it’s about, but I’m afraid that if I do, the vice squad will show up at my door.
I used to enjoy reading the phonebook, particularly the yellow pages, and especially the “Education” section of the yellow pages. It used to be that every profession had its own school. Florist. Barber. Cameraman. Private Investigator. Secretary. Interior Decorator. Anything you wanted to be, there was a school for it. I suppose this is still true, assuming that what you want to be is an unemployed person who has completed a four-month course in either Medical Billing or Massage Therapy. My favorites were of the, “Be a Model! Or just look like one!” ilk for schools like the Carolyn Hansen Modeling Academy or the Barbizon School of Modeling. As if being a model were simply a matter of getting the requisite number of credits. When I was 16, I worked at Carolyn Hansen for, literally, less than a day. They hired me to make follow-up calls to girls who had expressed interest in the school. Some of the girls had come in and left photos of themselves; most of these looked like the “she married him?” girl on classmates.com:
Not that there’s anything offensive about the classmates.com girl, but she’s not going to make anyone forget Christie Brinkley. Or David Brinkley. After the first few calls, I felt bad enough about it to quit. Although the course was being sold as a “self-improvement” class, the girls clearly believed they were going to be working models at the end of it and I wasn’t supposed to disabuse them of that idea. The woman who hired me also wanted me to take the course and hinted that I might then be a model myself. Even at 16, I knew that there wouldn’t be a huge market for a model who was short, chubby, perpetually growing out a bad haircut, and who would have to leave the photo shoot early to get to the orthodontist and have the bands on her braces tightened.
So, now you are asking yourselves, “uh, point?” No point really, except that I am tired of being a telecommuting lawyer and would prefer to be a telecommuting … see, there’s the rub. I want to do something else, I just don’t know what. I have to be able to wear a big T-shirt and ratty shorts, not comb my hair, and not actually leave the house while doing it, so that’s going to eliminate me as Katie Couric’s replacement on the CBS Evening News, although I’m not sure I had a huge shot at that anyway. Okay, I might be flexible on the grooming and leaving the house business, but other more rigid career requirements include not ending the day with dirty fingernails, not having to touch anyone’s feet, not being exposed to live electrical wires, not having to be polite to people who are not polite to me, no selling, no answering stupid questions, nothing to do with science especially if it involves the word “specimen,” and no climbing up on ladders. Is that so much to ask? I have tried to think of jobs that meet these requirements and so far I have only come up with: phonebook delivery person. I think I will think about it some more.
I Did NOT Cry Over This Video, and I Have NEVER Cried Over This Video!
By now, you could hardly have missed seeing the video of Christian the Lion being reunited with his former owners, since it has not only been all over the web, but also has shown up on various news shows. The video itself was shot in the early 1970s and was posted to YouTube about a year ago. Just recently, it began receiving millions of hits, probably because it was linked on Cute Overload. Despite being overlain with Whitney Houston wailing away on “I Will Always Love You” as if she were being paid by the decibel, it’s still a really lovely video.
This morning, the two men who once owned Christian, John Rendall and Anthony Bourke, were interviewed by Meredith Viera on The Today Show. The nicest aspect of the whole thing is that it’s brought a lot of attention to the George Adamson Wildlife Preservation Trust, which operates two wildlife preserves in Tanzania and Kenya and also provides educational and medical support to the people living in villages surrounding the preserves.
For those of you who don’t work at home in your pajamas with the TV on, you can see the interview on the Today Show website. It’s about nine minutes long and includes the YouTube video, in case you somehow missed it. There will also be a 15-second commercial at the very beginning, either for Immodium A-D or for MiraLax, because they want to make sure they hit all the demographics, bowel-wise.
There are also a couple of articles on the Today show website. This one is mostly a summary of this morning’s interview, while the second one has a little more background information on how the two men came to own Christian and later return him to his natural habitat.
The only other thing I want to say about Christian and His Two Dads is that I’m certain that among the YouTube comments or in some of the many many blog posts on the topic, there are people who are gassing about how it’s WRONG to sell lions in department stores, which: Duh, and how Rendall and Bourke are no better than POACHERS, which: incorrect. Not to mention that it ignores everything that happened after 1969. Really, this is just an odd little story about two young men who rescued a lion from what likely would have been, at best, a life in a zoo or a circus, and eventually returned him to Africa to live the way a lion should. Because of that, a lot of good work has been done and continues to be done on behalf of endangered animals by the George Adamson Trust, and the Trust itself is now getting a nice boost because a year ago some guy decided to post a video that wasn’t even his. So, hooray for copyright violations!
I Told My Cat I Admire Her, Yet She Continues to be Aloof
Whenever I drop off a box of old clothes and miscellaneous clutter at Goodwill, I have to go into the store itself and take a look around. I’m amazed, first, at some of the things that people donate and, second, that the Goodwill employees deem these items salable. White patent leather belts. Used underwear. And my personal favorite, Hershey’s Cocoa tins. Not full of cocoa. Just the empty can on sale for a quarter. My local Goodwill store always has at least 20 of these on the shelf.
Oh. When I went to look for a photo of the tin I was talking about, I found it on an antiques site that is selling that same tin for $18.95. Could you excuse me for a bit? I need to go to Goodwill and pick up a few things.
I do like to browse the books section at Goodwill. If you ignore the 9000 copies of The Clan of The Cave Bear that they have in stock, it’s a good place to find out-of-print books for under a dollar, whereas the same book at Half-Price Books would be placed in the Collectibles section and go for $20. In fact, our Goodwill even has an outlet store, where the books go for 30 cents. And for $3, you can buy as many clothes as will fit in a garbage bag, though the patent leather white belts still aren’t selling.
The last time I was in the book section, I was ecstatic to find a good-as-new copy of one of the most disgusting books ever, The Total Woman by Marabel Morgan. This book was a huge hit in the early ’70s, and it’s from this book that the suggestion that a wife wrap herself in nothing but Saran Wrap and greet her husband at the front door when he returns from work purportedly originated. This is Marabel:
I don’t know. Maybe wax paper would be a better choice.
In any event, the book was originally published in 1973 and became something of a bible to women of the era who preferred not to have rights or respect or any of those other pesky things that only ugly girls think are important. It’s ostensibly a self-help book that shows you (meaning, you the wife, whose sole responsibility it is) “how to make your marriage come alive!” but Marabel really didn’t need a whole book to get her point across. Allow me to condense the 251 pages of Marabel’s wisdom into a few brief words: Women of America! Go lie down on your front porch by the door! When your husband wipes his feet on you, try not to grunt, even if he is wearing those spiky golf shoes!
I didn’t buy the book because I thought it was interesting sociologically, however; I bought it because I thought it would be hilarious. It sometimes is, but the grossness of Marabel’s entire approach to her marriage overwhelms the humorous aspects. Here are some of the chapter titles: Accept Him, Admire Him, Adapt to Him (which also includes a chapter section entitled, “Oh, King, Live Forever”), and Appreciate Him, you know, for all of the things that he lets you do for him. She developed this method after her husband Charlie became justifiably angry that she had selfishly made dinner plans for them on a night when he had also made plans for them without telling her because he is a man and men don’t have to tell you shit, apparently. He then told her that from that point on, when he made plans for them to do something, he would tell her 20 minutes beforehand, and she would use that time to get ready to go, and there would be no discussion of it. After she stopped crying, she realized what a shrew she had been (what the … ?), and began the whole Accept, Admire, Adapt business. The day that Charlie came home early from work to surprise her with a new refrigerator/freezer, she knew she was on the right track!
So now you are asking yourselves, “how can I get my man to buy me a new refrigerator/freezer?” Or possibly, “I don’t have a man. If I ever pull myself together enough to get a man, how can I get my man to buy me a new refrigerator/freezer? What’s that you say? I should get an education, have a career, make my own money, and buy my own refrigerator/freezer, and if, along the way, I meet a nice man I want to share my life with as a full and equal partner, then that will be great, but if I never meet that man, then I can still be happy and have foods that are cooled to the appropriate temperatures? I CAN’T HEAR YOU I CAN’T HEAR YOU! LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA!” Well, you have come to the right place, my friends. Here are the actual techniques used by Marabel that saved her marriage and put her in large appliance heaven.
1. As soon as you finish feeding your husband breakfast, decide what you will feed him for dinner. You never want to be caught at 4:30 in the afternoon with nothing on hand but the fixings for something he doesn’t enjoy, like chicken a la king or tuna casserole. How is your king supposed to live forever without the proper nourishment?
2. Let your husband be in charge of the finances. Never tell him what to do with his money. You must accept him in his role as provider and as head of the family. Your job is to take care of the kitchen, and if you do it well, you might get a new toaster to go with that shiny new fridge! What’s that? You don’t like toast? That’s okay. Your husband does and that’s all that matters.
3. Admire him when he talks to you. Put down your magazine and listen while he talks about football, even though you, being a woman, have no interest in football. Don’t interrupt or be preoccupied. Let him know he’s your hero. Tell him you love his body and that you’re impressed with his muscularity. Why, in no time flat, he will be opening jars for you! (But don’t overdo it, girls; only give him the jars that you really can’t handle.)
4. If your husband doesn’t come home for weeks, don’t mention it to him. Instead, make his home life so wonderful that he won’t want to disappear to Las Vegas or Bangkok or where ever it is that he goes to get away from your shrewish nagging. Marabel doesn’t say what will happen if he continues to disappear for weeks on end, but I wouldn’t worry. Penicillin is inexpensive and readily available!
5. If you and your husband have a disagreement about which restaurant to go to, tell him your preference, but then let him make the final decision. If you force him to go to the restaurant you prefer, you will only end up giving both of you indigestion. And while your digestion is of little consequence, there is also his digestion to be considered. He is a king! Respect the alimentary canal of your king!
6. If your husband comes home at 6:00 PM, take a bath at 5:00. Remove all those prickly hairs (I suggest you use Nair) and brush your teeth, floss, then brush again, and finish with mouthwash. (I am not even kidding, people. This is what she says.) Greet him at the door, and spice things up with a costume or two. Marabel had great success with a pink babydoll and white boots, but the important thing is to keep him off guard: be a pixie one night, and a pirate the next! While you want to use discretion, your kids will love your outfits too! As Marabel says, “Can’t you just imagine Junior on the sandlot telling his friends, ‘I’ve got to go now, guys. Got to see Mom’s outfit for tonight.’”
And scene. There’s actually more, but I don’t want to throw up again. It’s interesting to me that the business about the Saran Wrap is not actually in the book, although Marabel is always credited with doing this. And I mean “credited” only in the attributive sense and not as though she did something praiseworthy because if there is one thing that even the best naked bodies don’t hold up well under, I would imagine it’s being made to look all squashed down and shiny. I’m going to hope that the Saran Wrap scenario appeared in one of her other books because the alternative, that someone took a look at Marabel and thought it would be cool to promote the image of her wrapped up like a block of cheese, is pretty demeaning to her, even despite the fact that she built a career on demeaning herself.
It’s also interesting, by which I mean horrifying, that if you go look at the customer reviews for this book over on Amazon, they’re mostly positive. Thirty-five years after women thanked Marabel for egregiously insulting them, a new generation is thanking her again, and amongst themselves recommending other helpful books, such as The Surrendered Wife, Becoming the Woman of His Dreams, and How to be the Almost Perfect Wife: By Husbands Who Know. I mean, I realize that I’m just a mean-spirited, stunningly beautiful old spinster, or at least some of the words in this sentence, but how about some books about how if your guy won’t buy you a smooth-top range unless you scrub yourself down in the middle of the day and squeal over his big muscles, then maybe get a cat? Cats are nice.
Here’s the thing. Emotionally, I don’t think that men and women are all that different. And for my part, the last thing I want is some fool ironing his jeans and shedding tears of joy every time I scratch my ass. Every woman has dated that guy at least once, and it is both painful and sometimes kind of frightening, depending on the level of slavish devotion exhibited. So I can’t imagine that a man would want a woman who is obedient and worshipful and who answers the door dressed as a cowgirl or an astronaut on a regular basis, or at least that’s not what he’d want in the long term. Then again, maybe I know less about men than I think I know, and that is in fact what they want. If so, and you are one of these men, might I suggest you get a dog? Dogs are nice. And dog food? Requires no refrigeration.
Gossip Girl: The Early Years
Overheard at the park, where three 5-year-old girls were playing on the very safe and unfun-looking apparatus that must be what passes for a jungle gym these days.
Girl #1: I did NOT pee my pants, and I have NEVER peed my pants!
Girls #2 and #3: . . .
Girl #1: WELL??!!??
Girl #2: I think you did.
Girl #3: HA!
Not All Firsts are Included, But I Can’t Remember Any Others That Are Memorable Anyway, If You Get My Drift
As you may have surmised, I am old. And if there’s one thing old people love to talk about, it is the past. Good Lord, how we love the past. We like to talk about how bread used to be 40 cents a loaf and how everything on our body used to be higher than it currently is. Therefore, when I saw this meme over at Sauntering Soul’s, I knew I had to wait eight days, then jump right on it.
1. Who was your first prom date? I only went to one prom, and it was with a boy I’ll call Tom, since that’s almost his name. It was my senior prom, held at the Park Hilton, which, like all Hilton hotels and 50% of Hilton family members, was somewhat déclassé and could have been cleaner. When we were taking our prom picture, Tom’s friends stood off to the side and yelled, “Dead Puppies!” at us. I do not know what the purpose of that was. Tom and I had dated for a while before the prom, and my most prominent memory of him was that whenever we were sitting next to each other, he would wind the stem of my watch backwards. I’d tell him to stop, and he would moronically insist that it was “good for the watch.” This was a watch that I had stared at in the window of Friedlander’s Jewelers for months but never asked for since it was $100 and therefore way too expensive. Despite that, my mom surprised me with it for my 15th birthday. In short, I loved this watch because it was beautiful and my mom had given it to me, even though at the time she and my dad were wearing watches that probably cost $15. Therefore, I really didn’t appreciate Jughead winding the damned stem backwards until he finally broke it. Idiot. I had the watch repaired, but it never did keep time right after that. I don’t wear it anymore, but I still keep it in my jewelry box. I don’t know where Tom is, but I’m sure that where ever he is, he’s doing something stupid.
2. Do you still talk to your first love? No. We stayed friends for many years after he moved to Los Angeles and would often travel back and forth to visit each other while in college, but when he got engaged, we fell out of touch. His roommate at the time helped that along as, whenever I would call, he would say, “Um? Mike’s not at home? Because he’s at Monica’s? Monica is his fiancée? Oh, but I’ll be sure to give him your message.” He was so bitchy about it, you’d think he was the one engaged to Mike. I just Googled him and it looks like he’s doing well enough professionally that he’s the kind of guy you can Google. I don’t know about his personal life, but I hope he’s happy. He was a good guy.
3. What was your first alcoholic drink? I don’t remember, but I’m going to guess Rainier beer out of one of those little squatty bottles. I do remember that when I became old enough to drink legally, I often ordered ridiculous drinks like Singapore Slings and Blue Moons.
4. What was your first job? Counter girl at the Hickory Rib Pit in the Seattle Center Food Circus Court. The uniform was a brown and white checked shirt, an orange head scarf, and brown gauchos, which I wore with gym socks and baby blue Nikes with a yellow swoosh. Despite having to walk from the Seattle Center to downtown Seattle at 10:00 at night to catch the bus home, no one ever bothered me, presumably because in that outfit I appeared to be clinically insane. I made $2.90 an hour, plus a free meal if I worked more than four hours. It was years before I could even look at barbecue sauce again. The manager was named Chuck and he once yelled at me for putting an olive on someone’s salad. The assistant manager was named Bob, and he always wore a paper hat, even though it wasn’t required and wasn’t part of anyone’s uniform, so I guess he just thought it was a smart look. Once a week, elderly people would come to the Food Circus Court to eat and to dance to a swing band. I always thought it was terribly romantic to see these couples who looked like they’d been married for forty or fifty years dancing and looking at each other like they were teenagers. They were always really sweet when they came through our food line too, and were the only people who ever tipped. My idiot coworker Oscar would usually manage to ruin everyone’s good time by loudly referring to one of them as a fogey just as they were walking away with their trays.
5. What was your first car? A 1981 Honda Civic, in the most hideous shade of gold. I drove that car for years and when people found out that it had been purchased new, they invariably said, “and you picked that color?” I didn’t, actually, but THERE’S STILL NO REASON TO BE SO RUDE ABOUT IT. I thought Honda retired the color after 1981, but just yesterday I saw a 2008 Accord in the same putrid gold, so I guess they found some leftover cans at the plant.
6. Who was the first person to text you today? What is this “texting” of which you speak? Is it like a telegram?
7. Who is the first person you thought of this morning? I have no idea. Myself probably.
8. Who was your first grade teacher? Mrs. Grove. She had graying black hair cut in a pixie, big eyeglasses, and wore a smock every day. I can only remember little things, like sitting in a circle reading out loud, or practicing our writing on that beige paper with the hugely spaced lines, but I can’t help but think of her with great affection. Oh! The snowman! We came in one day to find three paper grocery bags stuffed with shredded paper and shaped roughly like balls that Mrs. Grove had stacked and attached together. In the weeks before Christmas, whenever we finished our work early, we could glue little pieces of white tissue paper all over it, until one day, it became a snowman. It sounds kind of janky now, but, to a 6-year-old, it was magic.
9. Where did you go on your first ride on an airplane? Hawaii. I was eight years old and reading a MAD magazine that, that month, was satirizing the movie Airport. I really enjoyed the cartoons of planes going down.
10. Who was your first best friend, and are you still friends with him/her? My first best friend was Tracy who, on the first day of kindergarten, was seated behind me and tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around and she said, “my mother says not to be friends with people who call me [the n-word].” I was amenable to these terms and we became friends. Gradually we drifted apart, and by junior high were down to just saying hi as we passed each other in the halls. In the 8th grade, she got into a fist fight with a boy that resulted in bloodshed and was expelled. I have no idea what became of her.
I hadn’t realized how long this meme is. I’m not even halfway through. I’ll try to be less verbose.
11. What was your first sport played? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha hooooooo! You’re funny, meme.
12. Where was your first sleepover? At Lynette’s house. We used to sleep over at each other’s houses all the time in grade school. When she stayed at my house, my mother always made pancakes and bacon for breakfast, and Lynette always picked out something of mine, declaring, “I want this,” and taking it. When I stayed over at her house, we had to get our own cereal, which we ate while her mother sat on the couch putting fresh eye makeup on over the old cruddy eye makeup that she hadn’t removed the day before. As far as I know, the woman never washed her face. When we were older, her mom became the kind of mom who would buy beer for us.
13. Who was the first person you talked to today? It’s only 6:30 in the morning, so no one yet.
14. Whose wedding were you in the first time? Fun fact about me: I have never been in a wedding.
15. What was the first thing you did this morning? Isn’t the answer to this the same for everyone? I think it is.
16. What was the first concert you ever went to? Foreigner, I think.
17. What was your first tattoo or piercing? I had my ears pierced when I was 16; other than that I have no piercings and no tattoos. But if I did have a tattoo, it would be an eagle clutching a snake. Or a bunny.
18. What was the first foreign country you went to? Canada. I went on a Sunday. It was closed.
19. What was your first run-in with the law? Oh man. When I was 15, I went with my friends Mindy and Fali to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show. We stopped at a 7-11 beforehand to buy beer, and geniuses that we were, we asked the guy coming out of the store if he would go back in and buy it for us. Seeing as he was all of 19 and was just in there buying beer illegally for himself, he declined, but assured us that we would not be carded. He was correct. We got to the parking lot of the theater two hours before the midnight showing, proceeded to drink our beer then throw the empty bottles out of the car and onto the concrete, letting out a raucous cheer each time the glass shattered. Because, did I mention? We were geniuses. Shortly thereafter, or possibly many hours thereafter — it’s hard to tell how much time has passed when you’re both shitfaced and a moron — a County Deputy Sheriff knocked on the passenger side window, showed me his badge, and told me to step out of the car. I believe I said something alluding to fornication and how he should enjoy that in a solo fashion, although I do not technically remember this; I’m merely going by what he later told my dad on the phone. It was also reported that I then told Fali simply to drive away, although that would have been difficult since she was standing five feet away from the car showing her license to the other deputy. By all accounts, I was foul-mouthed, Mindy kept trying to sneak away quietly as if she had never seen us before, and Fali behaved reasonably enough that the two deputies let us get in the car and drive away. What the hell kind of law enforcement is that? I am outraged! I demand that they go arrest some other 15-year-old right now! Anyway, they called all our parents; Mindy and Fali told their parents that it wasn’t us drinking beer and throwing bottles, it was some guys in a Camaro, and their parents believed them because their parents? Also geniuses! I told my parents the truth, got yelled at, and never did anything quite that stupid again. I still haven’t seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
20. When was your first detention? I never got detention.
22. Who was the first person to break your heart? Some worthless boy who I won’t even bother to give a fake name to. Go rent Freaks and Geeks and watch the “Tests and Breasts” episode. He’s Daniel Desario and I’m Lindsay Weir. Except that it took me something like six months to catch on.
23. Who was your first roommate? I never really had a roommate, but for the one year I lived in a single-room dorm in college, I had to share a connecting bathroom with the girl who lived next door. Usually, I give people fake names on this blog, but I have to give her real name because it’s so apt: Ah Sook. She used to blow her nose in the shower. Just out of her nose and into the drain. Or, you know, near the drain. She was getting an MBA and planned to get a Ph.D. in business because, as she explained, it would allow her to marry higher up the social scale when she returned to Korea. When I asked her if she was planning to use her degrees for, oh say for example, work, she just laughed. She used to have really loud sex in her room. She was a big fan of Olivia Newton-John and had all of her albums which she never tired of playing. She’s pretty much the reason I never had another roommate.
24. Where did you go on your first limo ride? From the airport to the hotel? I can’t remember.
Way to end on a strong note!
Twelve hours later, I edit this post to note that I just now realized how redundant the title is. I can’t remember anything that’s not memorable. By the same token, I can’t think of anything that doesn’t come to mind, nor can I eat this inedible food. Once again: Genius!
