Last year I signed up for a six-month long master essay/memoir workshop at Denver’s only independent writing school, the kick-assish Lighthouse Writers Workshop. I laid down my good money and my essays for people I hardly knew so that they could tell me what they thought, and in turn I would tell them what I thought about their work. We squirm and giggle before each class, and make disclaimers before having our pieces read and critiqued. We apologize in advance for what we are about to submit. “It’s really rough,” we say, or, “For those about to read this piece of crap, I salute you.”
We turn in our stuff, dead trees be damned and wait for the slings and arrows, and of course, my classmates are not hiding in the bushes the next day to napalm me on my way to the car. Nor am I filling their gas tanks with sugar and figuring out how to do them bodily harm with their own manuscripts. We are nice and tender and supportive while being honest and helpful; the way I’d like to be treated with my craft and calling, yes, but it’s also the way I’d like to be treated in general.
It’s no worse than a lot of other vocations, but it’s a hard gig, this writing thing, and without role models, without community, it’s too easy to be too hard on one’s self. I made the mistake of trying to work in a vacuum for several years, and because I’m me, tried taking inspiration from the suite of quality programming at VH1. I would spend my lunch hour watching Beyonce Revealed, or The Fabulous Life of Christina Aguilera, or Behind the Music, shows that weren't helping me develop any sort of skill, but that started me on the important tack of thinking that success in the arts is possible. Period. The problem with these shows is that, while they do mention the struggles and sacrifices these stars-to-be had to make to further their careers and empires, it’s easy to overlook them. What we don’t see and can’t see in these glossy shows are the real doubts, the hurdles, and backbreaking, soul-breaking setbacks that artists must endure to bring their works to light. What we don’t get is the journey vs. destination philosophy. We get a lot of imagery, but none of it has anything to do with real heroism. Well, duh. What did I expect?
Once I’d drawn the conclusion that one can only spend so much time with VH1’s reality shows without risking brain injury, I imagined other heroes of the journey. Every time I pushed myself away from the desk and said, “This is too hard,” I would remind myself of Jane Austen, who had to use a well of ink and a quill by candlelight for god’s sake to do her writing, which was frowned upon in the first place, since she was shirking her other womanly duties like using her spindle and loom or something. But eventually I decided relying on Austin was lame, too, because to be honest, I don’t really identify with someone whose work I haven’t read since high school, and even then I was only pretending to read it. As long as I’m telling the whole truth, I should also say that the things I know about her are only secondhand; they’re bits and pieces of facts I’ve heard my well-read friends mention, and I’m probably making up a fair bit of it to fill in the gaps.
But forget all that, because today it’s with great relief that there’s a new hero in town, and her name is Patry Francis. She’s the author of the just-released novel, Liar's Diary. **UPDATE** Penguin Group, publisher of THE LIAR'S DIARY is offering a 15% discount if you order direct from them. To receive the discount, type PATRY in the code field.
To use the lovely and talented Susan Henderson’s words from LitPark (with permission), here’s why:
“What if you worked for years as a waitress and then went home at the end of the day to your husband and four kids, and in those rare minutes of free time, you dared to dream that one day you might write a book? This is the story of my friend, Patry - a story that leaves out years of false starts, revisions, and rejection slips. It's a story that writers know intimately, though the details are different. Every one of us is well acquainted with the struggle of getting a story on paper, of honing it and believing in it enough to send it out, only to receive rejection, or worse, silence for our efforts.
Imagine, after many years, you beat the odds. You finish that book. You find that agent who sells your manuscript. Your dream is about to become a reality. But just as your book is due to be released, you discover you have an aggressive form of cancer.
Patry's story struck such a deep chord with many of us, not just because she is our friend, but because those of us who know her or read her blog have relied on her company through the ups and mostly downs of trying to write and sell a book. She is our buoy. She has shown us time and again her great gift for shedding light in the dark. Even her blog post about her cancer showed this - in her greatest time of need, she was still somehow comforting all of us and showing us glimpses of joy. Patry is part one of this amazing story.”
What happened after that is like one of those holiday movies about giving and love that you can’t help but watch again and again, despite the corniness and what your cold-hearted husband might say. (As if he doesn’t cry like a baby during every episode of Little House on the Prairie ever taped.) Uh-hem. On New Year's Day, or thereabouts, author maven Laura Benedict wrote to author maven Susan Henderson, calling her attention to Patry's publication date. "Perhaps we could do a 'Patry Francis/Liar's Diary' blog-o-rama or carnival or something to promote the book?" she wrote. "I'm such an amateur at this stuff that I don't know what's possible."
Susan didn't give a moment's thought to what we might try to pull off, or how; Susan simply said, "Yes! Let's do it!"
Susan writes:
“In less than one month, over 300 bloggers, writers, readers, and just big-hearted people signed on to take part in this day. I am overwhelmed and grateful for every single person who said yes or helped spread the word, but let me reserve some enormous thanks for the people who traded hundreds of emails with me to put this together: Karen Dionne of Backspace, Jessica Keener of Agni and The Boston Globe, Dan Conaway of Writers House, and Alice Tasman of the Jean Naggar Literary Agency.
What began as a personal gesture of caring for a friend became an astonishing show of community - writers helping writers; strangers helping strangers; and most surprising of all, editors, agents and publishers, who have no stake in this book, crossing "party lines" to blog, to make phone calls, and to send out press releases.
This effort has made visible a community that is, and has been, alive and kicking - a community that understands the struggle artists go through and rejoices in each other's successes. It's a community made up of many small voices, but - guess what? - those many small voices can create some noise. So while today is for Patry, it's also a symbolic gesture for all of you who work so very hard for little or no recognition, for all of you who keep going despite the rejections, and for all of you who have had illness or other outside factors force your art or your dreams aside. We are in this together.”
So Patry Francis, when I’m struggling or fighting with myself or isolating myself from what’s wonderful and right, I will think of you—and Laura, and Susan, and all the other friends I’ve met along the way. I salute you. And as my three-year-old likes to say, “Love you, mean it.”
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
The Right Thing to Do, but Not That Tasty of a Way to do It
Every year I see pretty much all my doctors for checkups at the same time, which only used to take a few appointments. Now it takes an entire Franklin Covey day planner, two tanks of gas, and a withdrawl from my savings account to cover the co-payments. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve built up quite a stable of medical personnel, which makes me wonder if I should start hosting those MLM home parties, but instead of inviting my friends over to buy Tupperware or PartyLite Candles, or vibrators (I’m looking right at you, Carol), you could get a Johnny On the Spot appointment with the medical specialist of your choice. And I call dibs on the dentist’s tank of nitrous. The rest of you can play rock-paper-scissors for the proctology appointment.
The good news is that I have no big-time complaints about my health right now. My eyeglass prescription is still the same, although my taste in eyewear continues to worsen. (The next thing you know, I’ll be shopping for my next pair of frames from the Bea Arthur collection.) The bad news is that I now have an extra item of health-related paraphernalia for the bedside table. “Try keeping your eyes more moist to reduce the redness,” said my eye doctor, after I told her that when asked what color my eyes were, Sophie said, “Mommy’s eyes are red.”
“Was it worse when you lived in Vail?” she asked me, making notes in my chart.
“Everything’s worse in Vail,” I told her. “I think that’s the town motto, as a matter of fact.” And then we affirmed to each other that it’s just so dry here. Before I could edit myself, I then just sort of blurted out what must be the truth: “I think my body is just really sick of not living by the beach.”
The good doctor gave me some eye drops to use before and after sleep, and I said, “Awesome, this must be the warm-up for the portion of the show when I travel with an extra carry-on bag just for my prescriptions.” On the bright side, I’ve got some relatively innocuous stuff on my nightstand: saline nasal spray and an asthma inhaler—and now eye drops. The three of them are probably talking right now, wondering when the Ben Gay is going to show, along with his wife, Aspercream, and some sort of stomach acid remedy for those occasions when I go crazy at dinner and eat something like a boiled potato. Woo! I’m looking at my scaly shins and feet ashy enough to convince anyone that I make my living as a firewalker, and can understand why the nice-smelling skin lotion is probably standing off to the side, alone, feeling all snotty and self-righteous about how she’s the last vestige of evidence that I was once a normal young woman. The poor thing, she’s been relegated to the back of the drawer, no doubt snuggling up to the KY for comfort, wondering what will happen to her the next time I clean out my drawers.
Like a lot of folks, I’ve been known to mix up my physical and emotional health in an entanglement that has traditionally been called psychosomatic. But if you asked just about any wellness practitioner who has even a dash of common sense, he or she will tell you that just about all illnesses are caused at least in part by an emotional or intuitive component. The mind-body connection is a strong one, and there’s no better indicator that I’m ignoring some suffering that’s going on inside than some condition or other that’s going on outside.
For months on end, I’ve had some low-grade, all-over, nonspecific feeling of unwellness that doctors so love trying to treat. During the summer, my asthma was pretty bad, and I was tired and fatigued all the time. My body ached and my head hurt, and I wondered if the Grave’s disease was making a comeback and trying to film a sequel entitled Goiter II: Son of Goiter. (This time, it’s personal.) The last time I felt this way, my friend Lisa, who is usually the voice of wisdom among 500 channels of nothing on, asked me, “Have you tried entering your symptoms into WebMD?” And I told her that, on paper, that was a fine idea, but that WebMD scares the shit out of me. The last time I consulted the digital physician, my condition was either pancreatic cancer or a pulled muscle. So I chalked my symptoms up to having just moved for the third time in eighteen months with a toddler, two dogs, and a husband who can’t be bothered with packing anything besides his outdoor sports gear and his collection of ‘80s vintage ski sweaters.
And then the unignorable happened. My nose completely stopped working. I know that this is bound to happen from time to time, and so I dealt with it as I usually do. I unearthed the humidifier from storage, I cranked the air purifier up to eleven. I dug the Breathe-Rite strips out of the plastic tub full of medicines in the linen closet and put them next to my asthma inhaler, saline nasal spray, and eye drops. (Sigh.) Mostly, though, I just waited, remembering with just a touch of panic that the last time I had rhinitis this bad, it was because I was pregnant. (Going back to the tub in the linen closet for the spare pregnancy test elicited an even bigger sigh—of relief over the negative result.) And then I waited some more, and wondered what I was all stuffed up about in the metaphorical sense. The answer was likely, “Everything.”
Three months later, I went to see my general practitioner, an MD in family practice. He’s a long winded fellow who takes his time, shares endearing and comforting personal details about himself, and doesn’t interrupt me when I speak. His office has an overcast, unloved quality to it, though, and the tattooed members of his staff teeter into the room on platform heels. It’s kind of a weird scene, but it’s close to my parents’ house, and when I have an appointment, I can drop Sophie off for an hour of the ice cream and candy therapy my dad is famous for administering to all the young members of the family. Just by looking at the place, and at our friendly doctor, I have concerns. I wonder if his heart is in this. It’s the thing that keeps me from really trusting him like a good patient should, even more than the statement he made in passing several years ago that ruffled every pro-choice feather I’ve got. But—but!—he is available.
When I am confounded about what seems a minor health issue, I don’t have to wait weeks on end for an appointment with someone who doesn’t have time for me and my nose. I don’t have to take a brow beating for why I’m bothering an over-busy doctor with my irksome respiratory constipation. He makes it easier for me to seek medical attention, whether I need it or not, which for me is a net gain. He is the closest I’ve ever gotten to my dream doctor, who I imagine looks and sounds like Wilford Brimley, the Quaker Oats TV pitchman of days of yore: older and rolly-polly, with Old West country doc sensibilities peppered with just a touch of motivational speaker. If the members of Cake were looking for a girl with a short skirt and a looooong jacket, I’m looking for a nice, gray-haired doctor who will chuckle at my jokes and tell me that everything’s going to be all right. And I want him to call me by a pet name like Pumpkin or Sweet Pea while he does it.
“Allergies,” he said with confidence. “Take some Claritin and wait for the first frost.”
I waited, ditching the Claritin and ten other over the counter preparations that didn’t touch the congestion. I took what could be called extreme measures ridding the house of whatever it was that had aggravated my immune system into the extended dance remix of one of those movie scenes in which angry villagers arm themselves with torches and gardening tools to flush out whatever offender has disturbed their peace. “It sounds like you have a cold,” was the statement used by every single person I spoke to over the phone between July and October, which was heart-warming at first, and then later became…tiring. “Hello, it’s allergies,” was how I began answering the phone sometime in November.
In December, practically weeping nonstop from the sleep deprivation and overall annoyance that comes with having a perfectly fine-looking nose, but being unable to use it for its intended purpose, I made an acupuncture appointment. This was a big step for me, as not only was I asking someone else for help—again—but I was asking someone with sharp objects for help. These were desperate times.
Let me just say that I hate acupuncture treatments. I feel hot and cold at the same time, I lay on the table with literally a full-body shudder going on from what feels like an electrical current running all the way up and down my body. I get sweaty with the extra added bonus of my hands and feet alternating between ice and fire. Nine times out of ten, which is actually two times out of three, I leave feeling slightly nauseated and just the least bit disoriented, like one of those wild animals that has been sedated, tagged, and left in the field to figure out why she’s wearing a great big new earring.
The treatment my acupuncturist had in mind for me didn’t just include needles, but needles topped with a pile of herbs that he intended to light on fire. “It will be smoky,” he assured me, “but it won’t burn your skin.” I almost walked out at the idea of becoming a kind of fleshy birthday cake, but then I remembered that while the acupuncturist was asking me a million questions about my body and its various peccadilloes, I mentioned that I’d been feeling, quote, sad. My allergies were actually starting to ruin my life. And so I lay down and watched this nice young man with crooked teeth and a long goatee, the very antithesis to Wilford Brimley, poke eleven holes in my body. “Ow,” I said.
“What kind of feeling is it?” he asked, scrutinizing the offending needle.
“Like there’s a pin in my foot.” I said. And then he went to work with his Bic lighter, and I meditated on the phrase, “Smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em.”
A month later, things were just as clogged, and even my acupuncturist encouraged another visit to my doctor, just to make sure that I hadn’t grown a grapefruit sized tumor in both nostrils, for example. I went back to my doctor and explained, “It’s like the inside of my nose is totally swollen and engorged.” And it was. It was like my nose had this ridiculous, errant, adolescent-type erection. “I just want someone to take a look, just to make sure that nobody’s hiding up there without paying rent.”
“You have allergies,” said the good doctor. “God!” I said, pulling my hair, “that can’t be.” And after we went down the list of things that could alleviate them, and after I said, “That didn’t work” after each one, I looked at him with my saddest eyes. “Is there anything you can do for me?” And he patted me on the shoulder and said, just like Wilford Brimley would have, “Well Sweet Pea, I can give you a shot of cortisone.”
I said, “Will it do anything to me that I’ll hate?” knowing full well that if he had told me that it would give me anthrax in addition to crystal clear nasal passages, I would have said, “Let’s do it.” Because when it comes right down to it, I have no pride. Once my suffering threshold has been reached, I just want relief. He could have told me that we could try putting a leach on my head, and I would have swept my bangs aside to give that slimy, creepy crawler a nice place to sink its teeth.
“No, it’ll just clear up your nose,” he said.
It was supposed to take a week to work, but the next day, the angels began to sing and the world in all of its frozen splendor looked sparkly and new, like White Christmas, instead of hopeless and dark, like Doctor Zhivago. For the first time in six months, I was breathing through my nose again. I almost cried, but didn’t want to take any chances stuffing up my nose again. I stood very still and looked down at my nose, dizzy from the enjoyment and from crossing my eyes, wondering how such a miracle happened overnight.
I have this fantasy that ends with finding out that my doctor filled the syringe with nothing but saline, a placebo, in stunning proof that such things happen, and that I was in the hands of someone who knew how to exploit those things. “Salt water,” I imagine him telling me with a sly smirk, “Pumpkin, you just needed a little nudge.” But who cares? Saline, cortisone, flesh-eating bacteria. Whatever works.
And now I have yet further proof that it is an act of strength to ask for help with something “silly,” and that that being honest about what’s killing me makes me transparent, but not invisible and there’s a difference. What They say is true, no one is coming to save me, and thank goodness; I might not like who shows up. I’d rather do the hiring—and I don’t always have to go in-house. Sometimes, I can outsource, like everyone else. I can still be a self-help enthusiast without doing everything myself. So, I will get into the habit of asking so that I can receive. I’m not above it all, I’m a part of it all. Please pass the fancy, nice-smelling lotion. (Note the obvious absence of any mention of the KY.)And I can be nicer to myself. Watch me. It’s my new thing.
The good news is that I have no big-time complaints about my health right now. My eyeglass prescription is still the same, although my taste in eyewear continues to worsen. (The next thing you know, I’ll be shopping for my next pair of frames from the Bea Arthur collection.) The bad news is that I now have an extra item of health-related paraphernalia for the bedside table. “Try keeping your eyes more moist to reduce the redness,” said my eye doctor, after I told her that when asked what color my eyes were, Sophie said, “Mommy’s eyes are red.”
“Was it worse when you lived in Vail?” she asked me, making notes in my chart.
“Everything’s worse in Vail,” I told her. “I think that’s the town motto, as a matter of fact.” And then we affirmed to each other that it’s just so dry here. Before I could edit myself, I then just sort of blurted out what must be the truth: “I think my body is just really sick of not living by the beach.”
The good doctor gave me some eye drops to use before and after sleep, and I said, “Awesome, this must be the warm-up for the portion of the show when I travel with an extra carry-on bag just for my prescriptions.” On the bright side, I’ve got some relatively innocuous stuff on my nightstand: saline nasal spray and an asthma inhaler—and now eye drops. The three of them are probably talking right now, wondering when the Ben Gay is going to show, along with his wife, Aspercream, and some sort of stomach acid remedy for those occasions when I go crazy at dinner and eat something like a boiled potato. Woo! I’m looking at my scaly shins and feet ashy enough to convince anyone that I make my living as a firewalker, and can understand why the nice-smelling skin lotion is probably standing off to the side, alone, feeling all snotty and self-righteous about how she’s the last vestige of evidence that I was once a normal young woman. The poor thing, she’s been relegated to the back of the drawer, no doubt snuggling up to the KY for comfort, wondering what will happen to her the next time I clean out my drawers.
Like a lot of folks, I’ve been known to mix up my physical and emotional health in an entanglement that has traditionally been called psychosomatic. But if you asked just about any wellness practitioner who has even a dash of common sense, he or she will tell you that just about all illnesses are caused at least in part by an emotional or intuitive component. The mind-body connection is a strong one, and there’s no better indicator that I’m ignoring some suffering that’s going on inside than some condition or other that’s going on outside.
For months on end, I’ve had some low-grade, all-over, nonspecific feeling of unwellness that doctors so love trying to treat. During the summer, my asthma was pretty bad, and I was tired and fatigued all the time. My body ached and my head hurt, and I wondered if the Grave’s disease was making a comeback and trying to film a sequel entitled Goiter II: Son of Goiter. (This time, it’s personal.) The last time I felt this way, my friend Lisa, who is usually the voice of wisdom among 500 channels of nothing on, asked me, “Have you tried entering your symptoms into WebMD?” And I told her that, on paper, that was a fine idea, but that WebMD scares the shit out of me. The last time I consulted the digital physician, my condition was either pancreatic cancer or a pulled muscle. So I chalked my symptoms up to having just moved for the third time in eighteen months with a toddler, two dogs, and a husband who can’t be bothered with packing anything besides his outdoor sports gear and his collection of ‘80s vintage ski sweaters.
And then the unignorable happened. My nose completely stopped working. I know that this is bound to happen from time to time, and so I dealt with it as I usually do. I unearthed the humidifier from storage, I cranked the air purifier up to eleven. I dug the Breathe-Rite strips out of the plastic tub full of medicines in the linen closet and put them next to my asthma inhaler, saline nasal spray, and eye drops. (Sigh.) Mostly, though, I just waited, remembering with just a touch of panic that the last time I had rhinitis this bad, it was because I was pregnant. (Going back to the tub in the linen closet for the spare pregnancy test elicited an even bigger sigh—of relief over the negative result.) And then I waited some more, and wondered what I was all stuffed up about in the metaphorical sense. The answer was likely, “Everything.”
Three months later, I went to see my general practitioner, an MD in family practice. He’s a long winded fellow who takes his time, shares endearing and comforting personal details about himself, and doesn’t interrupt me when I speak. His office has an overcast, unloved quality to it, though, and the tattooed members of his staff teeter into the room on platform heels. It’s kind of a weird scene, but it’s close to my parents’ house, and when I have an appointment, I can drop Sophie off for an hour of the ice cream and candy therapy my dad is famous for administering to all the young members of the family. Just by looking at the place, and at our friendly doctor, I have concerns. I wonder if his heart is in this. It’s the thing that keeps me from really trusting him like a good patient should, even more than the statement he made in passing several years ago that ruffled every pro-choice feather I’ve got. But—but!—he is available.
When I am confounded about what seems a minor health issue, I don’t have to wait weeks on end for an appointment with someone who doesn’t have time for me and my nose. I don’t have to take a brow beating for why I’m bothering an over-busy doctor with my irksome respiratory constipation. He makes it easier for me to seek medical attention, whether I need it or not, which for me is a net gain. He is the closest I’ve ever gotten to my dream doctor, who I imagine looks and sounds like Wilford Brimley, the Quaker Oats TV pitchman of days of yore: older and rolly-polly, with Old West country doc sensibilities peppered with just a touch of motivational speaker. If the members of Cake were looking for a girl with a short skirt and a looooong jacket, I’m looking for a nice, gray-haired doctor who will chuckle at my jokes and tell me that everything’s going to be all right. And I want him to call me by a pet name like Pumpkin or Sweet Pea while he does it.
“Allergies,” he said with confidence. “Take some Claritin and wait for the first frost.”
I waited, ditching the Claritin and ten other over the counter preparations that didn’t touch the congestion. I took what could be called extreme measures ridding the house of whatever it was that had aggravated my immune system into the extended dance remix of one of those movie scenes in which angry villagers arm themselves with torches and gardening tools to flush out whatever offender has disturbed their peace. “It sounds like you have a cold,” was the statement used by every single person I spoke to over the phone between July and October, which was heart-warming at first, and then later became…tiring. “Hello, it’s allergies,” was how I began answering the phone sometime in November.
In December, practically weeping nonstop from the sleep deprivation and overall annoyance that comes with having a perfectly fine-looking nose, but being unable to use it for its intended purpose, I made an acupuncture appointment. This was a big step for me, as not only was I asking someone else for help—again—but I was asking someone with sharp objects for help. These were desperate times.
Let me just say that I hate acupuncture treatments. I feel hot and cold at the same time, I lay on the table with literally a full-body shudder going on from what feels like an electrical current running all the way up and down my body. I get sweaty with the extra added bonus of my hands and feet alternating between ice and fire. Nine times out of ten, which is actually two times out of three, I leave feeling slightly nauseated and just the least bit disoriented, like one of those wild animals that has been sedated, tagged, and left in the field to figure out why she’s wearing a great big new earring.
The treatment my acupuncturist had in mind for me didn’t just include needles, but needles topped with a pile of herbs that he intended to light on fire. “It will be smoky,” he assured me, “but it won’t burn your skin.” I almost walked out at the idea of becoming a kind of fleshy birthday cake, but then I remembered that while the acupuncturist was asking me a million questions about my body and its various peccadilloes, I mentioned that I’d been feeling, quote, sad. My allergies were actually starting to ruin my life. And so I lay down and watched this nice young man with crooked teeth and a long goatee, the very antithesis to Wilford Brimley, poke eleven holes in my body. “Ow,” I said.
“What kind of feeling is it?” he asked, scrutinizing the offending needle.
“Like there’s a pin in my foot.” I said. And then he went to work with his Bic lighter, and I meditated on the phrase, “Smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em.”
A month later, things were just as clogged, and even my acupuncturist encouraged another visit to my doctor, just to make sure that I hadn’t grown a grapefruit sized tumor in both nostrils, for example. I went back to my doctor and explained, “It’s like the inside of my nose is totally swollen and engorged.” And it was. It was like my nose had this ridiculous, errant, adolescent-type erection. “I just want someone to take a look, just to make sure that nobody’s hiding up there without paying rent.”
“You have allergies,” said the good doctor. “God!” I said, pulling my hair, “that can’t be.” And after we went down the list of things that could alleviate them, and after I said, “That didn’t work” after each one, I looked at him with my saddest eyes. “Is there anything you can do for me?” And he patted me on the shoulder and said, just like Wilford Brimley would have, “Well Sweet Pea, I can give you a shot of cortisone.”
I said, “Will it do anything to me that I’ll hate?” knowing full well that if he had told me that it would give me anthrax in addition to crystal clear nasal passages, I would have said, “Let’s do it.” Because when it comes right down to it, I have no pride. Once my suffering threshold has been reached, I just want relief. He could have told me that we could try putting a leach on my head, and I would have swept my bangs aside to give that slimy, creepy crawler a nice place to sink its teeth.
“No, it’ll just clear up your nose,” he said.
It was supposed to take a week to work, but the next day, the angels began to sing and the world in all of its frozen splendor looked sparkly and new, like White Christmas, instead of hopeless and dark, like Doctor Zhivago. For the first time in six months, I was breathing through my nose again. I almost cried, but didn’t want to take any chances stuffing up my nose again. I stood very still and looked down at my nose, dizzy from the enjoyment and from crossing my eyes, wondering how such a miracle happened overnight.
I have this fantasy that ends with finding out that my doctor filled the syringe with nothing but saline, a placebo, in stunning proof that such things happen, and that I was in the hands of someone who knew how to exploit those things. “Salt water,” I imagine him telling me with a sly smirk, “Pumpkin, you just needed a little nudge.” But who cares? Saline, cortisone, flesh-eating bacteria. Whatever works.
And now I have yet further proof that it is an act of strength to ask for help with something “silly,” and that that being honest about what’s killing me makes me transparent, but not invisible and there’s a difference. What They say is true, no one is coming to save me, and thank goodness; I might not like who shows up. I’d rather do the hiring—and I don’t always have to go in-house. Sometimes, I can outsource, like everyone else. I can still be a self-help enthusiast without doing everything myself. So, I will get into the habit of asking so that I can receive. I’m not above it all, I’m a part of it all. Please pass the fancy, nice-smelling lotion. (Note the obvious absence of any mention of the KY.)And I can be nicer to myself. Watch me. It’s my new thing.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Thanksgiving is Going to the Dogs
"Lou, you've known me ten years now, just a few months short of your whole life," I told my dog, "I'm probably not going to kill you with the vacuum cleaner." Lou hates it when I vacuum. He hates it when the washer begins its spin cycle. He hates it when the dishwasher door swings open. In fact, about the only thing he doesn't hate is when I accidentally leave the room with dirty dishes on the coffee table, but hates it once I re-enter the room, to find him with his little spotted snout all but impaling a plastic container, his tongue dislodging every last molecule of flavor from it. He cowers under the dining room table when Sophie digs her play broom and mop out of her toy box and pretends to clean house. And there's something especially frightening about living entities inhaling or exhaling or opening the mail anywhere within a four mile radius of him while he's drinking from his water dish.
But don't let Lou's fragility fool you. Woe is the well-meaning fundraiser who comes to the front door to sell candy bars or memberships to one environmental organization or another. You Girl Scouts and your cookies better look out. And all you deer out there who think you can just walk up to one of the trees and start munching without having your eardrums burst wide open from the most ferocious bark in three states can think again. Losers. And just after I adopted him TEN years ago, he was pretty sure that performing stealth attacks to my head while I slept was the very best possible way to spend an early Saturday morning. "If I were going to kill you, Lou," I ducked down under the table to explain, "it would have been then, and by the way, I wouldn't use a Swiffer to do it." It's also for this reason that I don't usually reprimand Sophie for her propensity to body tackle Lou once he's sound asleep in his chair.
We've included in our last three moves a big, old, and now very gross and beat-up stuffed chair, simply because it's Lou's Chair(TM), and I swear that if we ever buy land, I'm putting at least one sheep on it so that Lou finally has a proper way to unleash his desperate instincts to herd things. He's Lou, a forty pound cattle dog-mutt and the exact behavioral replica of Alex, only in dog form. He's the little guy I found in a poor, drug-addled town on the Colorado-New Mexico border, trembling and growling in equal measure at anyone who might harm him. And from the looks of it, pretty much everyone did.
I was not prepared to take a four month old puppy with substantial mental and physical difficulties home. I had already stuffed a dog--a big one--into my tiny townhome, and was working all the time. But there was something about Lou that was ornery and sweet in all the right places, and that convinced me to ply him with hot dogs until he allowed me to put him in my lap and give him the petting of his life. (What no one would have guessed about Lou is that he's one big tickle spot.) He fell asleep there, much to the wonderment of people who never got the memo about how holding down a puppy and docking his tail with an ax pretty much puts the kibosh on a dog/human relationship based on love and trust. So there's that.
I took Lou home, where I promptly paid my vet's student loan every month trying to figure out what was the deal with the daily torrent of bloody diarrhea. I spent the rest of my cash undoing what I came to call Lou's little home improvement projects: The trench he dug down the middle of the living room carpet had to have been my favorite. A few months later, I met Alex, who I think actually married me to get to Lou. They are high-strung, skittish males who are annoying and lovable at the same time, and live to run and play. They are intent on rolling in dead stuff, passing gas in close quarters, messing up the house on a constant basis, and can't be bothered with listening to anything I have to say. Whenever I take either one of them out, I use a short leash that I abandon the second I catch a glimpse of a certain sad face...and a whiff of something that can trigger a coroner's gag reflex.
A few years ago, we added "cancer survivor" to Lou's resume, an impressive record that also includes "porcupine survivor" and "prairie dog catcher." And come to think of it, Lou has outlasted and survived just about every thing that was in my life the day he walked into my house and promptly peed all over it. The job, most of the people, the house, the cars, the late, great, incredibly soft Bobo Reale. He's seen a chunk of my adulthood that made me want to cower under my dining room table, and I'm thankful to have had his little furry body next to me for it, the nervous, ungrateful bastard that he is. He's our dog, Lou, the only one of his kind. Lucky us.
But don't let Lou's fragility fool you. Woe is the well-meaning fundraiser who comes to the front door to sell candy bars or memberships to one environmental organization or another. You Girl Scouts and your cookies better look out. And all you deer out there who think you can just walk up to one of the trees and start munching without having your eardrums burst wide open from the most ferocious bark in three states can think again. Losers. And just after I adopted him TEN years ago, he was pretty sure that performing stealth attacks to my head while I slept was the very best possible way to spend an early Saturday morning. "If I were going to kill you, Lou," I ducked down under the table to explain, "it would have been then, and by the way, I wouldn't use a Swiffer to do it." It's also for this reason that I don't usually reprimand Sophie for her propensity to body tackle Lou once he's sound asleep in his chair.
We've included in our last three moves a big, old, and now very gross and beat-up stuffed chair, simply because it's Lou's Chair(TM), and I swear that if we ever buy land, I'm putting at least one sheep on it so that Lou finally has a proper way to unleash his desperate instincts to herd things. He's Lou, a forty pound cattle dog-mutt and the exact behavioral replica of Alex, only in dog form. He's the little guy I found in a poor, drug-addled town on the Colorado-New Mexico border, trembling and growling in equal measure at anyone who might harm him. And from the looks of it, pretty much everyone did.
I was not prepared to take a four month old puppy with substantial mental and physical difficulties home. I had already stuffed a dog--a big one--into my tiny townhome, and was working all the time. But there was something about Lou that was ornery and sweet in all the right places, and that convinced me to ply him with hot dogs until he allowed me to put him in my lap and give him the petting of his life. (What no one would have guessed about Lou is that he's one big tickle spot.) He fell asleep there, much to the wonderment of people who never got the memo about how holding down a puppy and docking his tail with an ax pretty much puts the kibosh on a dog/human relationship based on love and trust. So there's that.
I took Lou home, where I promptly paid my vet's student loan every month trying to figure out what was the deal with the daily torrent of bloody diarrhea. I spent the rest of my cash undoing what I came to call Lou's little home improvement projects: The trench he dug down the middle of the living room carpet had to have been my favorite. A few months later, I met Alex, who I think actually married me to get to Lou. They are high-strung, skittish males who are annoying and lovable at the same time, and live to run and play. They are intent on rolling in dead stuff, passing gas in close quarters, messing up the house on a constant basis, and can't be bothered with listening to anything I have to say. Whenever I take either one of them out, I use a short leash that I abandon the second I catch a glimpse of a certain sad face...and a whiff of something that can trigger a coroner's gag reflex.
A few years ago, we added "cancer survivor" to Lou's resume, an impressive record that also includes "porcupine survivor" and "prairie dog catcher." And come to think of it, Lou has outlasted and survived just about every thing that was in my life the day he walked into my house and promptly peed all over it. The job, most of the people, the house, the cars, the late, great, incredibly soft Bobo Reale. He's seen a chunk of my adulthood that made me want to cower under my dining room table, and I'm thankful to have had his little furry body next to me for it, the nervous, ungrateful bastard that he is. He's our dog, Lou, the only one of his kind. Lucky us.
Have a Merry Christmas...Somewhere Else
I ate lunch the other day with my friend Mickki. She's a doll who put up with my singing "Oh Micky you're so fine" three days a week at the job I had a million years ago right up until the day that she reminded me that I am four hundred and twenty seven years old, and she was something like 21 at the time. I think she said something like, "I've never heard the original version of that song, I've only heard other people sing it to me." But when we're not contemplating the fact that I'm over four hundred, we're just two kooky gals who both like eating lunch at Noodles.
"I can't believe they're playing Christmas music already," she said. And it was true, the sterile Musak version of Oh Come All Ye Faithful was oozing out of the overhead speaker onto me and my strogonoff, reminding me of one of my most genius ideas: Tiered Christmases.
One of the problems with Christmas, you see, is that everyone celebrates it at once. There's no escaping it. It's everywhere. So I, Jody Reale, propose the following: The US Regional Holiday Plan. Here's the idea:
For example, we could say, "Red states, your Christmas season happens in the summertime; blue states, your Christmas happens in the winter." That way, the white Christmas enthusiasts could travel to, say,Maine Massachusetts while they're celebrating their Christmas season, and Coloradoans like me would be psyched out of their damn minds that they didn't have to risk their lives driving to the mall in bad weather the day before the big gift exchange.
Or, maybe we could say that the Eastern Seaboard, the middle states, and the West Coast are all assigned different Christmas seasons. Or each state is given its own week of Christmas time, leaving the US with two full weeks out of every year during which Christmas is prohibited. Not personal enough for you? OK, your own Christmastime could be assigned to you based on the first three numbers of your social security number, or you could draw dates from a lottery.
Think of the possibilities; the lessening of airport mayhem and travel frustration. The steady flow of consumers to stores all year-round. The potential to make what can be an anxious time of year more palatable to those of us with seasonal affective disorder. Are you on board?
I'm sure Santa's going to fight this one with every fiber, but screw him. He's had a good run all these years working one day a year. He can start outsourcing like everyone else.
"I can't believe they're playing Christmas music already," she said. And it was true, the sterile Musak version of Oh Come All Ye Faithful was oozing out of the overhead speaker onto me and my strogonoff, reminding me of one of my most genius ideas: Tiered Christmases.
One of the problems with Christmas, you see, is that everyone celebrates it at once. There's no escaping it. It's everywhere. So I, Jody Reale, propose the following: The US Regional Holiday Plan. Here's the idea:
For example, we could say, "Red states, your Christmas season happens in the summertime; blue states, your Christmas happens in the winter." That way, the white Christmas enthusiasts could travel to, say,
Or, maybe we could say that the Eastern Seaboard, the middle states, and the West Coast are all assigned different Christmas seasons. Or each state is given its own week of Christmas time, leaving the US with two full weeks out of every year during which Christmas is prohibited. Not personal enough for you? OK, your own Christmastime could be assigned to you based on the first three numbers of your social security number, or you could draw dates from a lottery.
Think of the possibilities; the lessening of airport mayhem and travel frustration. The steady flow of consumers to stores all year-round. The potential to make what can be an anxious time of year more palatable to those of us with seasonal affective disorder. Are you on board?
I'm sure Santa's going to fight this one with every fiber, but screw him. He's had a good run all these years working one day a year. He can start outsourcing like everyone else.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Grossing Out, Twice Removed
I wish I had a dime for every time Alex has asked me to drop whatever I’m doing so that he can show me some random dude’s film of some other dude skateboarding off his roof, or chugging a beer in record time and then burping the 1812 Overture. He watches them on the Internet of course, at a site that is the equivalent of YouTube’s younger brother; the littler one with chew stuck in his teeth. The stuff is, in general, a little ruder, harder, and delves right into the dark, so that after you watch the guy skateboard off his roof, you can also get a close up of his naked femur after he breaks his leg in half. Probably not coincidentally, the site’s name is Break.com. I have bowed only twice to watching a few choice offerings there, and both times, showered afterward.
I love mindless media, just ask the people at VH1 who are happy to deliver the Celebreality tripe I consistently clamor for in 55 gallon drums; it’s not that. It’s that Break is the Web site equivalent of the guy who drives a car with a “No fat chicks” bumper sticker on it, with his Jerky Boys tape turned up to 11. And I realize that, not only am I not hurting his feelings with these observations, I’m probably just encouraging him. So be it.
Despite my outward criticisms of such media, I don’t begrudge Alex his enjoyment of it, as long as I don’t have to drop whatever I’m doing to watch it myself, or hear about it over the phone while I’m trying to work. (I have to wonder what else he does at work.) For a few weeks running now, Alex explained to me, there’s been one video making the rounds more than any other, generating a buzz that was hard for Internet video-watching America to ignore. It was called, ominously, Two Girls, One Cup, a video that the vox populi touted as unwatchable. Not being one to ignore a gauntlet, no matter how juvenile, no matter how “betcha can’t” or “double dog dare,” Alex bucked up, gave it his all, and “was only able to make it eight seconds,” he told me, dialing up each of his friends to initiate a long-distance game of “betcha can’t” tag.
As I wondered how all of these men make incomes that are triple my own, one friend was only able to make it five seconds, with another, grittier guy just barely making it all the way through. Another friend had to stop watching it after ten seconds, and even after turning away from the picture, was unable to listen to it. “I don’t understand,” I said, unable to even guess at what would make these grown men—these ungross-outable men—so grossed out. “Is it snuff?” I asked, reaching for the most terrible genre I could think of.
“No, it’s poop,” I saw Alex wince. “And puke.”
A movie with poop in it that’s sweeping the nation. It’s these kinds of phenomena that make me wonder why I’m not a millionaire yet.
I won’t narrate the plot here; you can read about it yourself, literally ad nauseum, just by Googling the title. But the notes on the story line are these: Nude or nude-ish girl meets girl. Girl and girl meet all manners of the most rude and foul activities that one can perform with the body’s humors.
Right, so that’s all fine. I get it. I’m the girl who almost vomited during both Jackass I and II, not because of some of the more nauseating stunts, but because I laughed so hard during them. (I’m thinking specifically of one gag—no pun intended—in particular, entitled “Fart Mask.”) And I’m still not watching Two Girls, One Cup, all high-pressure tactics notwithstanding. I’m no sensor, no puritan. I’m not taking a stand, I’m making a choice, and it’s to think more about puppy dogs and Skittles than about two girls, one cup, and the interesting-but-not-that-interesting motives behind the camera. Maybe you’ll choose the same, or maybe you’ll let the curiosity get the better of you, pussy cat. No harm, no foul. Just count me in for hayrides and show tunes, and out for witnessing women take the Pepsi challenge with a cornucopia of each others’ body fluids.
Oh, and by the way, our friend Jeff has seen the whole thing five times now, the best part about that being that it’s so fun to watch him watching it that he threw an ad hoc viewing party in which he sat facing his computer monitor and his guests sat facing him. Who knew such a thing could be so entertaining? As it turns out: the Internet knew. They know everything.
Now, not only can you watch Two Girls, One Cup, (or not watch it, as the case may be) you can watch videos of people watching Two Girls, One Cup. A cottage industry!
So I told Alex that, as a consolation prize for my refusal to answer the call to jump off the bridge like everyone else, I would gladly appear on-camera, as a person watching a person watching Two Girls, One Cup. I’m such an innovator. Mom will be so proud.
I love mindless media, just ask the people at VH1 who are happy to deliver the Celebreality tripe I consistently clamor for in 55 gallon drums; it’s not that. It’s that Break is the Web site equivalent of the guy who drives a car with a “No fat chicks” bumper sticker on it, with his Jerky Boys tape turned up to 11. And I realize that, not only am I not hurting his feelings with these observations, I’m probably just encouraging him. So be it.
Despite my outward criticisms of such media, I don’t begrudge Alex his enjoyment of it, as long as I don’t have to drop whatever I’m doing to watch it myself, or hear about it over the phone while I’m trying to work. (I have to wonder what else he does at work.) For a few weeks running now, Alex explained to me, there’s been one video making the rounds more than any other, generating a buzz that was hard for Internet video-watching America to ignore. It was called, ominously, Two Girls, One Cup, a video that the vox populi touted as unwatchable. Not being one to ignore a gauntlet, no matter how juvenile, no matter how “betcha can’t” or “double dog dare,” Alex bucked up, gave it his all, and “was only able to make it eight seconds,” he told me, dialing up each of his friends to initiate a long-distance game of “betcha can’t” tag.
As I wondered how all of these men make incomes that are triple my own, one friend was only able to make it five seconds, with another, grittier guy just barely making it all the way through. Another friend had to stop watching it after ten seconds, and even after turning away from the picture, was unable to listen to it. “I don’t understand,” I said, unable to even guess at what would make these grown men—these ungross-outable men—so grossed out. “Is it snuff?” I asked, reaching for the most terrible genre I could think of.
“No, it’s poop,” I saw Alex wince. “And puke.”
A movie with poop in it that’s sweeping the nation. It’s these kinds of phenomena that make me wonder why I’m not a millionaire yet.
I won’t narrate the plot here; you can read about it yourself, literally ad nauseum, just by Googling the title. But the notes on the story line are these: Nude or nude-ish girl meets girl. Girl and girl meet all manners of the most rude and foul activities that one can perform with the body’s humors.
Right, so that’s all fine. I get it. I’m the girl who almost vomited during both Jackass I and II, not because of some of the more nauseating stunts, but because I laughed so hard during them. (I’m thinking specifically of one gag—no pun intended—in particular, entitled “Fart Mask.”) And I’m still not watching Two Girls, One Cup, all high-pressure tactics notwithstanding. I’m no sensor, no puritan. I’m not taking a stand, I’m making a choice, and it’s to think more about puppy dogs and Skittles than about two girls, one cup, and the interesting-but-not-that-interesting motives behind the camera. Maybe you’ll choose the same, or maybe you’ll let the curiosity get the better of you, pussy cat. No harm, no foul. Just count me in for hayrides and show tunes, and out for witnessing women take the Pepsi challenge with a cornucopia of each others’ body fluids.
Oh, and by the way, our friend Jeff has seen the whole thing five times now, the best part about that being that it’s so fun to watch him watching it that he threw an ad hoc viewing party in which he sat facing his computer monitor and his guests sat facing him. Who knew such a thing could be so entertaining? As it turns out: the Internet knew. They know everything.
Now, not only can you watch Two Girls, One Cup, (or not watch it, as the case may be) you can watch videos of people watching Two Girls, One Cup. A cottage industry!
So I told Alex that, as a consolation prize for my refusal to answer the call to jump off the bridge like everyone else, I would gladly appear on-camera, as a person watching a person watching Two Girls, One Cup. I’m such an innovator. Mom will be so proud.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Boxer Shorts and Black Socks: A Love Story
The other day our friend Jim came by to pick something up. It was as lazy of an afternoon as we’re capable of having, and Alex answered the door in his standard post-bike-ride best: A pair of striped boxers and the black dress socks that he’d put on for work at least forty eight hours before. Jim looked at him, scowling, shaking his head. “What are you doing?” Jim asked him, motioning with his hands to Alex’s exposed torso. Alex puffed up his chest, sucked in his belly, then let it all out and farted.
I can’t believe it myself, but this is the very thing that drew me to Alex all those years ago: An unashamed appreciation for life’s simplest, greatest pleasures. I literally fell in love the afternoon I witnessed Alex eating a sandwich over the sink, wearing nothing but his boxer briefs and the twenty dollar Timex Iron Man digital watch that he publicly considers his best purchase in twenty years. It looks like since then, he’s decided to keep his feet warm, too—thus the socks—making me wonder: Is there anything sexier than common sense?
“Tomorrow’s our anniversary,” I told Jim, which elicited a response that Jim’s famous for in our circle of friends. I heard it for the first time eight years ago, the night the three of us crowded into a ski town hotel room for the night; the night that I saw Alex perform for the first time what I guess was standard operating procedure—if you happen to be at summer camp: Reserving the bed he wanted by yanking down the comforter and his pants at the same time, and rubbing his bare bottom on the sheets. “Got dibs on this bed!” he cheered, pulling up his pants. Jim and I looked at each other, slack jawed, before Jim said, “I don’t know how you do it, Jody. I just don’t know.”
We met in the fall of ’98, at a party that he and his friends weren’t even invited to. Because it was the time in my life when I decided working ninety hours a week would be a good idea, it took us about two weeks to speak to each other again and agree to go on our first date. I pressed for lunch, he pressed for dinner and won. Since then, he’s taken me to live in three different cities in four different houses. He has sent me to Italy, and also in a separate turn of events, quite literally over the edge. I saw a therapist once, and as I was explaining why I was in her office sitting on her purple futon, this therapist, a person who is trained to look neutral and serene and blameless while you tell her things that are quite the opposite, smote herself on the head and said, “God! What was he thinking?”
Ever since we were married in Las Vegas of all places, here, during a four-day whirlwind nuptial extravaganza in the company of 90 of our closest friends and family, I’ve heard a lot of “I don’t know how you do it”-type sentiments, including:
You two don’t match
You really keep him grounded
Did he just do what I think he just did?
You’re a saint.
And yet, here we are: October 14, 2007. Alex and I are together for nine years, married for seven. A time when, for reasons that are unknown to me, and that I didn’t bother looking up, a couple’s destiny is ruled by an entity or phenomenon commonly known as the seven year itch.
I may be a lot of things on this day in history. Flaky, tired, overwhelmed, and in dire need of highlights and an all-day moisturizer specially formulated for acne-prone combination skin, but itchy isn’t one of them. It’s true that things have changed in seven years. For one, gray hairs. I’ve found a few in my own head of hair, but not Alex’s, that lucky dog, and have plucked them from my head, knowing that these things are like roaches; for every one you see, there are at least ten you don’t. And for another, I now have collected something like seven different doctors, one for each organ or gland, with a spare, free-range, after-hours-friendly one who is willing to call in a prescription on the fly for acute maladies that present themselves between the hours of midnight and three: Pink eye and ear infections and other delights fresh in from preschool, like SARS and Ebolla.
But Alex is no spring chick either.
In most recent years, he’s earned a secret nickname: Rapunzel, for his long, long locks of hair that also happen to also be his eyebrows. “What’s with the eyebrows?” I’ve been known to say, plucking a few of the more noticeable strays from the pack by twirling them around a doorknob a few times and then slamming the door. “Do you have to tuck your eyebrows behind your ears when they check your eyesight at the DMV?” I asked him once. And then I probably pushed the envelope a few inches too far the day I told him I was starting a grassroots organization called M.A.M.E.: Mothers Against Mammoth Eyebrows.
The difference between us is that he doesn’t know he’s any older. In fact, he’s still pretty sure he’s going to camp next summer, to learn some new tricks, like how to burp the alphabet, or make a bong out of a tennis racquet. He’s got big plans, and they involve first finding his old pair of parachute pants—“They’re around here somewhere”—and then restoring a ’71 GTO in the garage, despite the fact that he’s a man who loves great gas mileage more than Al Gore. More than Bono. I’ll let him figure out that one out on his own; the parachute pants I cannot abide, however, and if it were in the least environmentally safe, I would have burned them in the wood stove several winters ago. I will hide them someplace I know he will never look: With the cleaning supplies, or with the vacuum, a thing he hasn’t touched since the Carter administration, and only then was it a means to torturing his sister.
“How about taking me to dinner for our anniversary, so that I can have a martini for the first time in like twenty seven years?” I asked him after Jim had left the building, still shaking his head and muttering. “You can have a drink, too; don’t worry, your eyebrows said they would drive.”
We went to a nice place while Sophie was at a friend’s house, and laughed and teased each other at the bar, where we like to sit, even when there are perfectly nice tables available in the dining room. I pointed out that he speaks Spanish in a way that sounds like he’s recently sustained a head injury. He remarked that the suitcase I brought home from a trip a month ago is still sitting out in the living room, still fully packed, and he’s starting to tell our guests that it’s sculpture.
Parenthetically, on the compatibility side, we’re both extremely frugal, but for different reasons. His frugality originates with the belief that, no matter what job he has, he’s always ten minutes away from losing it, leaving us all out on the street with a sign that says, “Kidneys, cheap to a good home.” My frugal behavior is inextricably linked to laziness. Bringing another nice thing home means that there’s just one more thing to vacuum/dust/wash/keep the dogs and a sticky toddler away from. And entering a mall makes me want to spin my head around on its axis and throw the nearest clergyman down a flight of stairs.
That’s when we saw Nina, a woman from the tiny town we lived in, whom we know only by first name, which is an upgrade from what we called her for the first two years we knew her: Good Diction Woman. Apart from speaking with balls-on precision no matter what she’s doing, Nina is the real-life version of that sitcom character who works every job in whatever small, funky, fictional town the show’s set in. So in the morning, she’s taking your deposit at the bank, and then your lunch order at the diner, drives the kids home on the school bus that afternoon, and then looks up from her weeding in the community garden to wave at you as you’re driving home from work that night.
Nina, as we learned from our table in the bar, is a bit of a baseball nut, and with the Colorado Rockies going to the World Series, she was beside herself with joy and victorious anticipation. She looked to me to back her up on just what a boon this was to all living creatures in the great state of Colorado, to which I explained, shrugging, “I hate all professional sports, except for the World’s Strongest Man/Woman competitions.”
She looked at Alex like I had sprouted a second head and said the most profound and unprecedented thing anyone has ever said to us, “You’re a very patient and forgiving man. I don’t know how you do it.” Ladies and gentlemen, what a night!
So maybe we’ll chalk this one up to being lucky number seven, instead of the year of the itch. Maybe we won’t have to fight it this year, or maybe we’ll have to gulp down a boxcar full of Benadryl and slip into a Calamine bath. Who knows? Maybe we will complain about and to each other; I about how I envy him. He makes everything—everything—look so easy that it makes me nuts. And he that I have the memory of a whole herd of elephants and boy can I carry a grudge. Maybe we’ll just not even notice the slightest whisper of an itch, and this year will fall away like years do, leaving us at the door of number eight, wondering where the time went. And so on, until Alex is opening the door for Jim in his black socks and Depends.
***
Blogger’s note: A few weeks ago, the lovely and talented Susan Henderson at LitPark wrote about love. If you don’t know Susan, or the Park, please do yourself a favor by getting to know the two of them.
I can’t believe it myself, but this is the very thing that drew me to Alex all those years ago: An unashamed appreciation for life’s simplest, greatest pleasures. I literally fell in love the afternoon I witnessed Alex eating a sandwich over the sink, wearing nothing but his boxer briefs and the twenty dollar Timex Iron Man digital watch that he publicly considers his best purchase in twenty years. It looks like since then, he’s decided to keep his feet warm, too—thus the socks—making me wonder: Is there anything sexier than common sense?
“Tomorrow’s our anniversary,” I told Jim, which elicited a response that Jim’s famous for in our circle of friends. I heard it for the first time eight years ago, the night the three of us crowded into a ski town hotel room for the night; the night that I saw Alex perform for the first time what I guess was standard operating procedure—if you happen to be at summer camp: Reserving the bed he wanted by yanking down the comforter and his pants at the same time, and rubbing his bare bottom on the sheets. “Got dibs on this bed!” he cheered, pulling up his pants. Jim and I looked at each other, slack jawed, before Jim said, “I don’t know how you do it, Jody. I just don’t know.”
We met in the fall of ’98, at a party that he and his friends weren’t even invited to. Because it was the time in my life when I decided working ninety hours a week would be a good idea, it took us about two weeks to speak to each other again and agree to go on our first date. I pressed for lunch, he pressed for dinner and won. Since then, he’s taken me to live in three different cities in four different houses. He has sent me to Italy, and also in a separate turn of events, quite literally over the edge. I saw a therapist once, and as I was explaining why I was in her office sitting on her purple futon, this therapist, a person who is trained to look neutral and serene and blameless while you tell her things that are quite the opposite, smote herself on the head and said, “God! What was he thinking?”
Ever since we were married in Las Vegas of all places, here, during a four-day whirlwind nuptial extravaganza in the company of 90 of our closest friends and family, I’ve heard a lot of “I don’t know how you do it”-type sentiments, including:
You two don’t match
You really keep him grounded
Did he just do what I think he just did?
You’re a saint.
And yet, here we are: October 14, 2007. Alex and I are together for nine years, married for seven. A time when, for reasons that are unknown to me, and that I didn’t bother looking up, a couple’s destiny is ruled by an entity or phenomenon commonly known as the seven year itch.
I may be a lot of things on this day in history. Flaky, tired, overwhelmed, and in dire need of highlights and an all-day moisturizer specially formulated for acne-prone combination skin, but itchy isn’t one of them. It’s true that things have changed in seven years. For one, gray hairs. I’ve found a few in my own head of hair, but not Alex’s, that lucky dog, and have plucked them from my head, knowing that these things are like roaches; for every one you see, there are at least ten you don’t. And for another, I now have collected something like seven different doctors, one for each organ or gland, with a spare, free-range, after-hours-friendly one who is willing to call in a prescription on the fly for acute maladies that present themselves between the hours of midnight and three: Pink eye and ear infections and other delights fresh in from preschool, like SARS and Ebolla.
But Alex is no spring chick either.
In most recent years, he’s earned a secret nickname: Rapunzel, for his long, long locks of hair that also happen to also be his eyebrows. “What’s with the eyebrows?” I’ve been known to say, plucking a few of the more noticeable strays from the pack by twirling them around a doorknob a few times and then slamming the door. “Do you have to tuck your eyebrows behind your ears when they check your eyesight at the DMV?” I asked him once. And then I probably pushed the envelope a few inches too far the day I told him I was starting a grassroots organization called M.A.M.E.: Mothers Against Mammoth Eyebrows.
The difference between us is that he doesn’t know he’s any older. In fact, he’s still pretty sure he’s going to camp next summer, to learn some new tricks, like how to burp the alphabet, or make a bong out of a tennis racquet. He’s got big plans, and they involve first finding his old pair of parachute pants—“They’re around here somewhere”—and then restoring a ’71 GTO in the garage, despite the fact that he’s a man who loves great gas mileage more than Al Gore. More than Bono. I’ll let him figure out that one out on his own; the parachute pants I cannot abide, however, and if it were in the least environmentally safe, I would have burned them in the wood stove several winters ago. I will hide them someplace I know he will never look: With the cleaning supplies, or with the vacuum, a thing he hasn’t touched since the Carter administration, and only then was it a means to torturing his sister.
“How about taking me to dinner for our anniversary, so that I can have a martini for the first time in like twenty seven years?” I asked him after Jim had left the building, still shaking his head and muttering. “You can have a drink, too; don’t worry, your eyebrows said they would drive.”
We went to a nice place while Sophie was at a friend’s house, and laughed and teased each other at the bar, where we like to sit, even when there are perfectly nice tables available in the dining room. I pointed out that he speaks Spanish in a way that sounds like he’s recently sustained a head injury. He remarked that the suitcase I brought home from a trip a month ago is still sitting out in the living room, still fully packed, and he’s starting to tell our guests that it’s sculpture.
Parenthetically, on the compatibility side, we’re both extremely frugal, but for different reasons. His frugality originates with the belief that, no matter what job he has, he’s always ten minutes away from losing it, leaving us all out on the street with a sign that says, “Kidneys, cheap to a good home.” My frugal behavior is inextricably linked to laziness. Bringing another nice thing home means that there’s just one more thing to vacuum/dust/wash/keep the dogs and a sticky toddler away from. And entering a mall makes me want to spin my head around on its axis and throw the nearest clergyman down a flight of stairs.
That’s when we saw Nina, a woman from the tiny town we lived in, whom we know only by first name, which is an upgrade from what we called her for the first two years we knew her: Good Diction Woman. Apart from speaking with balls-on precision no matter what she’s doing, Nina is the real-life version of that sitcom character who works every job in whatever small, funky, fictional town the show’s set in. So in the morning, she’s taking your deposit at the bank, and then your lunch order at the diner, drives the kids home on the school bus that afternoon, and then looks up from her weeding in the community garden to wave at you as you’re driving home from work that night.
Nina, as we learned from our table in the bar, is a bit of a baseball nut, and with the Colorado Rockies going to the World Series, she was beside herself with joy and victorious anticipation. She looked to me to back her up on just what a boon this was to all living creatures in the great state of Colorado, to which I explained, shrugging, “I hate all professional sports, except for the World’s Strongest Man/Woman competitions.”
She looked at Alex like I had sprouted a second head and said the most profound and unprecedented thing anyone has ever said to us, “You’re a very patient and forgiving man. I don’t know how you do it.” Ladies and gentlemen, what a night!
So maybe we’ll chalk this one up to being lucky number seven, instead of the year of the itch. Maybe we won’t have to fight it this year, or maybe we’ll have to gulp down a boxcar full of Benadryl and slip into a Calamine bath. Who knows? Maybe we will complain about and to each other; I about how I envy him. He makes everything—everything—look so easy that it makes me nuts. And he that I have the memory of a whole herd of elephants and boy can I carry a grudge. Maybe we’ll just not even notice the slightest whisper of an itch, and this year will fall away like years do, leaving us at the door of number eight, wondering where the time went. And so on, until Alex is opening the door for Jim in his black socks and Depends.
***
Blogger’s note: A few weeks ago, the lovely and talented Susan Henderson at LitPark wrote about love. If you don’t know Susan, or the Park, please do yourself a favor by getting to know the two of them.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Now That We're BFFs, Let's KIT
Let's say that you're a guy or gal who likes to receive the very occasional email update from pithy writers and bloggists from around the globe. Can we say that? Good! Because the Jody Reale e-mailing list is here to serve you. To be sure, it's not your mother's email list, which means that you'll never--ever--receive emails from me forwarded from my mom's friend's daughter's sister-in-law's roommate from college about some terrible scam that was just--moments ago!--perpetrated against her boss's wife's cousin.
At the most, you'll find out exactly when there's a new addition to my Web site, or--or!--that I'm giving something away for free. So subscribe today at Yahoo Groups, where managing your subscription is a real snap, by sending a blank email to jodyreale-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
PS. Here's a fun link to a site dedicated to the game Cornhole...who knew there was a game called Cornhole?
At the most, you'll find out exactly when there's a new addition to my Web site, or--or!--that I'm giving something away for free. So subscribe today at Yahoo Groups, where managing your subscription is a real snap, by sending a blank email to jodyreale-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
PS. Here's a fun link to a site dedicated to the game Cornhole...who knew there was a game called Cornhole?
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