Spring Threatens

image found here
This morning, I took Wally downtown for a job fair. It was tricky to find and in one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city and one of the places referred to as "The 'Hood". It was the first black neighborhood in the city and the houses were all built sometime during the last few years of the 19th century. Once upon a time it was a stop over for jazz musicians, porters and waiters on the cross country trains and then the thrill seeking Beats. Our little city had it's own artsy Harlem. But then the trains stopped running as frequently... Twenty plus years ago, I stumbled into this neighborhood and the once festive store fronts and club entrances were either boarded up or in shambles. The houses had sagging porches, peeling paint and trash in the yards. The cars lining the streets were as dilapidated as the buildings and houses. I had a few co-workers who lived there and they told me I was foolish to go down there and stay there even if it was an accident because any given time you could hear people shouting at each other, gun fire and squealing tires. I’m still naive enough to think a white woman would have only garnered curious stares rather than attracting violence. A few years after that, community groups started a re-gentrification project, the gang violence was under a little better control and a sense of pride had returned to the neighborhood. My co-worker who had once been so negative about the place was now passionate about saving her home and making it something to be proud of. The old jazz clubs re-opened and the soul food restaurants started advertising. The light rail moved in and the neighbors could get work on the other side of town and the white folks from the SE could come and gawk and spend their money. Ward, me and the boys went down there one Sunday afternoon many years ago. It was a chance to ride the train--something the boys loved--and a novel way for me and Ward to see something other than our Fabulous Suburb. Besides the restaurant I wanted to try was one of the oldest restaurants in town.

The train wound its way through the deserted Sunday afternoon streets in the financial district downtown before moving past the train yards and to Five Points. We got off the train at the end of the line. We stumbled off the train a little disoriented; neither of us had been down there on foot. We walked a couple of blocks along the main street and I spied the houses down the side streets, most of them still looked a little shabby but more hopeful with old mass plantings of heavily scented purple and yellow iris, old spirea, snow ball and forsythia heavy with blooms all surrounded by patches of bright green grass. We stood on the raised platform and looked around below us. The street was empty but the businesses had an efficient rather than derelict air about them. There were a few men sitting on the sidewalks in the shades of awnings, some were asleep some sitting on their haunches and staring at us. There was a kid standing near the train stop and he was hunched over with his hands jammed into the pockets of his over ample pants. We stepped off the platform and I started walking towards the young man. Ward was about to stop me but I was too far ahead. This kid didn’t give me a chance to ask him a question before he was questioning me.
“Whatchu want?” He leaned back, took his hands out his pants and crossed them over his chest like some kind of Biggy Small wannabe. I think he was trying to intimidate me but he didn’t realize I had a long history of working with gang bangers, junkies and your average street thug so nothing shook me up too much. Especially on a Sunday afternoon, in a city with the reputation of being more Cow Town than Mean Streets.
“I’m looking for Mamma’s; it’s supposed to be around here.”
“Over der. Good food , too. “ He relaxed a little and continued to size me up, his head nodding up and down, still unsure I wasn’t a cop or a warrant officer or a social worker or a bounty hunter disguised as a white suburban housewife.
I tossed thanks over my shoulder as I walked towards the family and we approached the poorly marked restaurant with a rickety and decrepit door.

We walked into the restaurant and the contrast between the bright afternoon and the dark room temporally blinded us; my guess is we all looked stunned for a few seconds. Once my eyes adjusted I noted we were the only people in the restaurant except an elderly gentleman and an older woman in a smock apron. The room was simple and painted a industrial/institutional green. Each table had four chairs and red checkered oil cloths. Near the back, the only thing on the wall was a picture of Jesus. Predictably, it was white Jesus. The people were sitting at the table under the picture of Christ. The man addressed us after he stood up using a cane for support. He had a suspicious tremor in his voice, and probably had good reason to distrust white people. He was old enough to remember the danger of making eye contact with a white woman or not duck his head in the direction of a white man.
“You folks lost?”
“No sir, we heard about your restaurant and would like to have Sunday dinner here if you are still open.” Ward was respectful but direct and completely nonplussed by this adventure I had taken us on. His parents had been incredibly liberal and politically active in the 1950’s and 60’s. Had they not had teenagers at home, my guess is they would have been registering voters in Alabama and Georgia; marching on Washington, the whole deal.
“We open?” he turned his entire body towards the seated woman who was looking us up and down and up and down again.
“We open.” Was her quiet answer. She heaved herself up and went into the kitchen.

All I remember before we had our delicious food as the kids were thankfully and remarkably well behaved; and the buzz from the window air conditioner was so loud if you had wanted to tell secrets you didn’t dare. I do remember the man coming to our table asking why we had bothered to come all the way across town for dinner. We explained we had heard what was happening in the neighborhood and wanted to see it. His daughter (the chief) came out every few minutes and joined in the conversation, warming up to the idea of white folks coming in for lunch. He told us there were still people living in the houses they were born, some close to one hundred . He was proud of his home, a pretty place with old iris blooming in the yard and big leafy trees along red stone sidewalks. The roasted chicken was smothered in gravy; the greens were smoking hot with cayenne, the mashed potatoes buttery and the corn bread sweet. My then three year old ate a quarter of a chicken and his picky eating older brother had almost that. The food was simple and straight forward but there was enough different about it I felt like I had stepped into another part of the country when I got off the train.

I grew up in Texas but don’t remember eating southern style food as a kid. Years ago, my black co-workers thought it was because I was a racist until they figured out I had never had opportunity to try it. So they would bring crazy things for me to try just to see if I would eat them and then have a big laugh over the white girl from Texas who loved chitins but didn’t much care for the pickled pigs’ feet and gushed over mixed greens. I can still hear one of them saying: “Baby, those ain’t nothing’ but weeds that grows in the ditch!” (I remembered that line when I fixed our collards last summer) So my palate had a bit of a swagger to it that afternoon at Mamma’s.

Today, I drove down that same street and the restaurant is still there. The front has been repainted and the tiny sign has been replaced with a fancy new sign. It cheered me to see one of the oldest restaurants in town was still open. The notorious jazz clubs from the thirties and forties were there, too. I wondered if the now famous jazz names would stop in and jam after their real gigs, like they did fifty years ago. Inviting benches lined the sidewalk and invited people to sit and watch the world go by. It wasn’t terribly early in the morning nor was it cold but their weren’t kids skulking around on the corners or older guys sitting against buildings like there had been in the past. I drove the side streets and the yards were clean, the houses were painted and had many had been carefully restored. The Queen Anne style homes rivaled the one’s I had seen in San Francisco a couple of years ago. All of the yards had shrubs and plants threatening to bloom and there were even a few scraggly and ancient cherry trees already in bloom. Spring was threatening to return to Five Points. I knew I was going back one sunny spring day armed with my appetite and my camera.

Barbie Versus The Red Power Ranger or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Bombs

I made a commitment to myself to blog every day I’m home. Just at home days because if I blogged on “school days” each entry would read something like: “blah blah…drunk guy…blah blah stupid computer system…blah blah crazy old woman…blah…blah…poop everywhere…blah.” So I’ll spare my readers and just write four days a week. Anyhow, this blogging everyday is going to be a hefty challenge because I’m sorta lazy. But at the same time it is forcing me to think about what’s happening around me and then make it interesting without sacrificing the truth. Telling the truth is important to me. I remember studying reality in nonfiction eons ago at school and it fascinates me because the truth is lost the second something happens. But If I were keeping a blog about my fictive life I would probably regale everyone with stories about new shoes and cocktails with George Clooney and Sharon Stone on my yacht in the South Pacific; Valentino would appear every once in a while with a gorgeous vintage gown just for me and I would be about eight inches shorter and sixty pounds lighter... (Cue up a little Brad Paisley “On Line”)

So I was on the treadmill this morning and reviewing what I wanted to accomplish today; number one on the list was figuring out how to practice forgiveness towards Ward rather than my knee jerk standard white hot anger. I was reminding myself with each step that ultimately my anger wasn’t going to change his behavior or our shared history. The only thing I have control over is me. Trust me, this mantra was not repeated in a soft sing song uber Zen chant but rather it echoed in my head like a DS issuing orders. I was also reviewing all the stuff I’ve learned as a result of mothering sons versus daughters. I’m really thankful to the one hundredth power I didn’t have daughters. I grew up with a sister and we fought with one another a lot. It wasn’t the mix it up, hurl insults at each other in a big whoosh of ten second bad energy, either. Rather, it was more like a slow torturous emotional burn. This past year it’s been great watching Wally and Beav move away from the CONSTANT taunts and physical teasing to a camaraderie of fun, games and secrets siblings often have with one another. I was pretty surprised to learn they were text messaging one another a few times a day this week while Beav was in Texas. So I’ve learned what it looks like to have a brother. They have always mixed it up one minute like mortal enemies and the next minute they are best friends again. I could use a lesson in forgiveness from my kids.

The other thing I realized is my taste in “films” is much different than it was before they came along. I’ve always enjoyed science fiction but not action or war movies until I had boys. Now, I’m the one suggesting we go see the latest and greatest Car Blows Up Bad Guy Dies or post apocalyptic story. The bigger the FX budget the better in my book. I’ve also learned to appreciate inane comedies like Night At The Roxbury and Zoolander. Ten years ago, I had this fantasy we would be going to art films and by the time they were teenagers we would have left behind the pyrotechnics and space ships. Now I’m the one all antsy to see the latest sci fi movie and they are just sort of meh on them. I almost bribed Wally with ten bucks to see Star Trek this summer but in the end The Girl went with me and I was spared laying out extra cash. (sad, very sad, isn’t it?) So this afternoon, we went to the “Sticky Six” (Dollar theater, wish I could say I coined that phrase) for the latest Denzel Washington flick about a post apocalyptic world. Thank goodness we didn’t invest more than five bucks because this movie is right up there with the Pokemon Movie as a“Thing -I-did-with-my-kid-and-hated-every-second.” I have a pretty high tolerance for violence and seedy subject matter but after about fifteen minutes into the movie, I look over at Wally and he is text messaging . So I give it another five minutes and decide this is The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly meets Mad Max and take a big chance on the “wrong” answer when I lean into Wally and ask:
“Are you really invested in this movie?”
“Nah, I can watch Mad Max at home”
Thank God because this movie was a grim and a cheap heartless version of The Road and it was going to be two hours of my life I would never get back. Much like the hours of Barney and Pokemon those two owe me.

After we left, I realized we had never left mid movie before. In fact, the only other movies I have ever left: a film with Kevin Spacey about flesh trading in a concentration camp, Dogville and Reds. (in my defense: we left Reds because we were drunk and it was moving a little too slowly for sloppy 20 year olds. I tried to watch it sober a few years ago and found myself wishing I was drunk.)

Years ago I could speak Power Rangers and dinosaurs which was invaluable at the preschool snack table. Now I find myself able to speak airplane, car, Parkour and Army. The Beav has turned me onto Top Gearand I find myself watching it even if he isn‘t around. I could probably intelligently purchase a car in England now. A valuable skill for a Semi Suburban-Semi Stay-at-Home Mom in the US, dontcha think? Army is still a language I’m learning and can understand about 75% of what is said to me. Fortunately, the unintelligible 25% no longer elicits an eye roll from Wally. He is a little more forgiving nowadays.

I don’t think I would have done too well with girls. I have a salty mouth and a cutting way with words and I would make her cry every time she was in trouble. I was a girly/girl but now I think toys marketed for little girls are insipid and just perpetuate the stereotype girls need to sit back and play quietly. But denying a little girl (or boy for that matter) the toys they gravitate towards just makes them all the more salient. Years ago, when I was pregnant with Beav and we didn’t know he was Beav yet, I asked Wally what he thought of having a little sister. My very sage three year old told me: “If she had Barbies I would cut their heads off and hide them from her.” And he would have had my full support.

Being daughter free means I don’t have to speak Sparkly Vampire or Jonas Brothers. Nor do I have to deal with daughters leaving the house looking like hookers, which would probably make my head hurt more than trying to understanding Beav’s mumbly speech and gritting my teeth when I see Wally’s saggy pants.

Good Morning Yesterday

I swear, my Texas accent returns the second I step off that airplane. Hell, I even start thinking with a Texas accent. Years ago, when I was an even bigger bitched up snob than I am now, it would have unnerved me slide back into that drawl! Now it just cracks me up to hear the stuff coming out of my mouth. I’m never about to do anything. Nope, immediately, I’m fixin’ to do something or go somewhere. I’m not southern enough to “bless” someone’s heart but that will probably happen after I visit Wally on family day in the Deep South. TG is from the Midwest and she thinks the accent is charming. I must admit Sophocles sounds preposterous with a Texas accent and it was at that point when we were doing this play in high school my accent began to fade. Mr. Evans, bless his heart (snerk) tried to educate it out of us.

Which brings me to the real subject of this week’s entry: my high school reunion (nice sequay, huh!)

I was one of those rare people who really enjoyed high school. Yeah, there were days I thought the world was ending. I had my heart broken in small pieces on two momentous occasions. I broke a heart. I was teased about my height, my skinny and endlessly long legs and returned the teasing in kind. Despite all of this, I loved high school and was lucky enough to make lifelong friends. So I always look forward to these ten year reunions. Each gathering has been completely different, too. Each one better than the last in some ways and I always learn something about me and people I was lucky enough to grow up with.

This year, I got to see a woman whom I never fail to remember when I see a Goth chick walking into my boys’ preppy high school. My high school was all about preps and sports and I thought the key to survival and therefore happiness was to be just. Like. Everyone. Else. She was a little bit hippy and a little bit punk and had the most amazing hair I have ever seen. When we were all ensconced in our helmet head Farrah do’s, Her hair was dressed simply and spilled down her back without a drop of AquaNet on it. When we were girls, She genuinely liked and got on with everyone because she was such an individual everyone knew her not because she was the girl who got pregnant or busted for dope or had to miss school because she lived in a terribly abusive situation but because she was just She and completely unlike the rest of us desperately trying to conform. She is still wildly original and creative. She’s also extraordinarily beautiful and appears to have been cryogenically sealed and frozen for the last thirty years because she looks absolutely the same only with a touch of experience around her eyes. What a pleasure to talk to this woman who wasn’t afraid to just be herself. Too bad I said something terribly awkward and goofy (I haven't changed, either) I hope I can fight the urge to stop one of the art chick’s at Beav’s school to tell them this story! (can you imagine the level of humiliation I would visit upon him if I did this…hmmm maybe I can use it as a threat to get him to make his bed)

Another amazing woman, shares my name but with a sharper edge. EdgierJuneCleaver has five children. Five. That’s a lot of children. I would be drunken-in-and-out-of-rehab JuneCleaver if I had five children. And while she is proud of them and has nursed one of them through the unspeakable experience of cancer, Edgier has her own life and a career. Edgier is the Quiescental Texas Girl: smooth as butter but can cut you like a knife. She also has those classic Texas looks: beautiful and leggy.

I was lucky enough to be escorted to both parties with my original Prom Date (PD). I was his galpal in high school and we spent a lot of time hanging out together. PD always had an opinion about what I was wearing or my hair. So he was better than a girlfriend because he would tell me the truth. One day, I was fussing about my hair or something stupid and he gave me--to date--the funniest compliment I’ve ever received: “June, out of all the girls I know you always look consistent [this was good, really!].” It’s the “consistent” word that cracks me up. He was a Mathy boy so variables are something he spent time thinking about.

This year neither of us had dates or spouses in tow and we talked to one another like we did all those years ago: as one another’s sounding boards and confessors. I learned to trust him when we were kids because he was the only person out of all my friends who had the courage to tell me the boy I had dated for almost two years was also seeing one of my friends. He of course shrugs it off as, “It was a question of loyalty.” Loyalty in friends goes a long way with me. So months later, we find ourselves without dates to the prom; we decided to go together. The people we wanted to go with had other dates. But I don’t remember feeling like a consolation prize because PD was one of the people I most liked spending time with. Besides that, he borrowed his brother's hot car and wasn't afraid to wear a baby blue tuxedo so we matched. And I knew he was a gentleman.

He still is a gentleman. Thankfully he left his baby blue tuxedo at home.

Happy Birthday!

My blog is a year old this week, hence the really scary cake. And what the Hell is that cake trying to communicate to us? I love it! Just ridiculous enough for me to say, yup that looks like my kind of gif! (the freeze frame doesn't do it justice, see it here)

I don’t have much to say today except thank you to my invisible friends, real life family and real life friends who stop by my blog and read it. I’m honored and touched every time someone says,”Hey, I read your blog this week and I thought. . .” I do the Sally Field thing in my head: “they like me they really like me!”

It’s been a weird week: I got it in my head I needed a break from the Chaos of the Fifth Circle Of Hell and worked a couple of night shifts. Just enough to screw up my circadian rhythm and make me appreciate I don’t have to work nights. It didn’t help that after Night 2, Bob the builder was crushing concrete about 30 feet from the side of the house, shaking the house and my precious perennial garden. I didn‘t bother to go to bed until about 4:30 that afternoon. Once upon a time I could sleep through anything: including having a roof installed directly over my head while I slept off a night shift. But that was 22 years ago. I seriously slept through our bungalow roof being stripped of shingles. The noise was steady enough it became white noise. What I couldn’t sleep through, nine years later was a two year old poking me in the forehead with his wet thumb saying: “Mommy UP! NO SLEEPING.” The Beav is still a post night shift buzz kill. He called the second I shut my eyes Monday evening to lecture me about NOT taking something to the post office.

I’m pretty shy about telling people I keep a blog. When they ask me what it’s about and I say ’stuff’, I get the baffled blink. What I should say, “It’s a place I can vomit my feelings and insights and goofy humor without being interrupted.” Sometimes that‘s all this place is, a big ole’ vomitorium. aren’t you glad I didn’t find a gif for that? I confess I looked for one but my 48 year old brain shushed the 12 year old so I didn‘t post either of them. Besides, I couldn’t decide which would be less offensive: Stan from Southpark just sort of letting bile run out of the corner of his mouth; or a smiley that turns to the side, pukes what appears to be a piece of bacon and then turns back to face the reader flashing us a big smile. Which is actually hilarious is you’re a nine year old but I hope there aren’t any nine year olds reading because my sailor mouth gives this blog a NSFW rating. I could change the title to Edgyjunecleaver’s Vomitorium. Or not. Because, ick.

I’m probably not going to blog next week because I’ll be working until the minute I leave for the airport for my high school reunion. I’m pretty nervous about going: I’m not the same person I was ten years ago. About the only thing that’s the same is my gender and my political affiliation. But if it’s boring or I am overwhelmed with shyness I’ll just hang in my hotel room or go home to Dad’s. The last two reunions have been a blast and completely without drama (as far as I was concerned if you experienced drama at either previous reunion, for the love of god, email me and dish about it!) This trip to Texas is going to be bittersweet because Dad has decided to sell his house and move to a different part of Texas. Except for a semester of college and the summer after I graduated I never lived in that house but it still remains the place I call “home”. Which is ridiculous because I’ve lived here for twenty-two years and haven’t lived there since 1984! I suppose it’s home because it’s where my parents lived. So now a different part of Texas will be home? But it won’t be because I haven’t lived there since I was four. Oldest Friend has written several essays which deal with feeling homeless and wandering. She was an army brat and her parents continued to move every few years after her father retired. She refers to herself as a wanderer and she has indeed continued to wander as an adult; living on the other side of the globe. Her parents last home was the city where we met. It’s a place that haunts me because this is the place the façade of my safe little family began to erode. According to OF, our “raw suburban houses were without soul”. Twelve years ago, I returned to the neighborhood after her mother’s funeral. The trees had grown and the edges were softened but the souls acquired were sort of desperate and sad; like the mesa that once surrounded them. That the city is perhaps one of the ugliest on Earth doesn’t help with the whole emotional subtext, either. The only other place more repulsive than Albuquerque is Lubbock Texas. And I can’t get away from Lubbock because I dream about it. And I’m dreaming about I more because I’m working a story set in Lubbock. It is rare I dream of Albuquerque. Thankfully my parents didn’t settle there; I would have felt without roots long before now.

I can’t imagine how my father must have felt this past year; his house being a sort of monument to my mother. Gah, I would have sold it last November but he is sensible and waited to be sure he was ready. The only reason I’m not ready is I’m hopelessly sentimental. It’s just a simple house in a quiet and humble neighborhood. It isn’t like they lived there from the time they were married until my mother died. My family wandered until the early seventies and I in turn wandered for ten years until I settled--purely by default--where I am now. I know the attachment rests in the fact my adolsesnce was spent in North Texas with all those rights of passage. I guess my definition of home is where the most important rights of passage occurred. My only right of passage in San Antonio was my birth. (insert groan or guffaw here, your mileage may vary on the pun)

We are planning on moving back to Texas after Beav is finished with high school but this sentimental bent to my personality leads me to waffling about ever leaving here. I’ve been here almost half my life and I’m contemplating leaving late in mid-life to start another life. I’m compelled to leave because I despair over winter and the cost of living is much higher here than it is in Texas. But are my sentimental feelings cloaking a fear of making a decision? I’m not one of these people who travels in a big posse of friends so it‘s not like the going away party would be at a hotel with caterers to accommodate all the well-wishers and friends. Trust me this absence doesn’t bother me because the idea of a huge posse of friends exhausts me on a core level. But I do have enough history with this city I can experience three degrees of separation. It’s a cozy feeling for me when I‘m out with a friend for coffee or whatever and we run into someone we both know who knows someone one of us knows but the other is meeting for the first time. However, this kismet is something I’m likely to miss out upon if I leave because I’m just introverted enough it has taken years for me to achieve this sort of thing. Besides that, the place I live is a small town wrapped up in a big city package. Where I want to live is much bigger. My other consideration is my boys. If I moved would I be taking the roots with me? Would my sons feel homeless if I left here? Fortunately, I have four years to beat this with a stick. I just hope my tiny cadre of readers comes along for the ride.

Thanks for reading. Thanks for being my friends. Happy birthday blog!

Serendipity

This week the weather finally cooperated on a day I wasn't being held prisoner in the hospital so I stayed outside most of the day. I'm not a big tree hugger and didn't even realize it had even been Earth Day until yesterday so I thought it would be fun to post a few of my pictures along my walk.
We live next to green space which most of the time it is a blessing. The only downside is sometimes the wild life get too close and it sort of freaks me out.

We had buckets of snow and it's thankfully melted and left behind green grass and shoots of things threatening to bloom. We don't always have marsh behind the house. At first I thought it was beaver damage but then I realized it was flooding.

There is a wide paved path but I took the scenic route along the water. Kipper loved it, lots of good smells and interesting scat. The creek is very deep, usually you can hear it over the rocks from the back yard but it's a bit lazy because it's so full.


Once upon a time we lived in south Texas and it was a marvelous place to grow up. I loved playing in the forest and marshes. I especially loved wading in the creeks. As an adult, whenever there is a body of water, like a stream, I am drawn to it and have almost an obsession with crossing them just to see if I don't fall in. I was sorely tempted by this large branch but I weigh more than I did in 1968 and I had the dog with me. Besides, I tested the depth of the water with another stick and it wasn't deep enough to NOT touch the ooky bottom when the branch gave under my substantial weight.
It is actually wider than it appears in this photo. Here it looks like I could just jump across. After leaving temptation behind I crossed the real bridge, and watched the water for a few minutes. Ward was a fly fisherman and when he would fish I would rock hop (again with the obsession) to the middle of the stream and just watch the water. I never wanted to learn to fish, too much fiddly flicking of the wrist and pulling lines and worrying after hooks in my ass to be any fun; but I did want to wade the streams. I regret never having donned waders and just sloshing around.

The view from the path is especially breathtaking on clear days, too. At first the snow covered peaks appear to be clouds. No wonder Kipper likes to take walks along the canal path. Too bad his nose is always to the ground so he misses the view.

I came home to work, lay in the sun and finish reading a juicy Gothic novel which echoes Jane Eyre for creepy phantasmagorical elements. Imagine how happy I was to take the cover off my seedling tray and discover I have a miniature forest of cucumbers and radishes. I love this photo of the cucumber shoot, you can see evidence of it's recent history as a seed on the edge of the tiny leaf.

The plan was to start hardening them off today but alas the weather has turned again and it is damp and cold. An Irish day.

The Sawdust Did It

There is a fussy German frau living inside this haphazard housewife. Some days I can let the dust and the mystery ick in weird places go, others not so much and today was one of those days. I found myself mentally shaking a fist at the people who live here because they splash dishwater down the front of the cabinets, leave finger prints on light switches and the ‘frig; allow dust to build up on bathroom counters and splashes accumulate on the mirror. How could they do this to me? I have a laundry room to decorate: with paint, tile and hardware to select and wall art to create. I clean on Tuesday’s and it didn’t go so well today because I would rather be looking for tile and paint. So I half-assed it because I’m sick of doing it. Which will piss me off next week when the house is doubly hard to clean because it was half-assed to begin with. The truth of the matter is I love to clean but lately it’s become a big fat ugly chore. A chore like cooking is a chore. A chore like balancing the checkbook is a chore. A chore like anything-I-should-do-but-I-don’t-care-to-do-in-the-moment is a chore.

I blame the sawdust.

For a couple of weeks The Girl has tirelessly been building cabinets for the laundry room. So there has been a lot of sawdust scattered through the house. It’s driving me crazy. Our house was a blank page when we moved in almost two years ago to the day. A foreclosure, the realtor/developer came through with a paint sprayer coating every vertical surface with white paint; "updating the floors with the crappiest carpet and vinyl flooring imaginable.

If we had only looked at this house a week earlier undoing what "Ladies Man" did in an effort to move the house from 1969 Suburban Chic to 1990’s Slum lord would have been one of those bad daydreams you brush away with a shudder. Every goddamned room in this house needs or needed work. (to clarify, we nicknamed Fannie Mae's realtor "Ladies Man" after this character)

I thought any minute he was going to invite us over to his place for some Courvoisier so we could “discuss further the ramifications of my highly esteemed organization replacing the furnace that may or may not be faulty.” To say this guy pissed me off is an understatement. Thinking about him still pisses me off and raises my feminista hackles . But I digress.


It must be the sawdust.

Today, after I finished damning my family to a level of hell where they see the menace of dust but aren’t allowed to do anything about it; I started ruminating over the latest neighborhood I discovered in our Next Town; the place we will probably move after Beav finishes high school. One of my time sucking hobbies is partaking in real estate porn cruising houses on Realtor.com. The city we are looking at is considerably cheaper so it’s fun to do a dollar to dollar search. Next Town is in Bible Belt and people sort of freak out when I tell them where we are considering making a home. It's also my home town and a place I vowed never to return. I am choosing to egnore warnings it could be Redneckville and we won’t be greeted with open arms and a basket of muffins but something akin to: “Y’all sisters?…or what?…” cue ominous sound of a shotgun being cocked But really, who cares if Billy Bob and Dar Leene hate us because Jesus hates dirty homosexuals! We can afford a lovely house with a pool! Yeah! The pool will not only refresh us in the southern heat but will make a great place to extinguish the burning crosses. The unhealthiest part of the obsession with House Porn is when I dial down the price and discover the fixers in the same neighborhoods. I find myself swoony over the footprint and the bones of certain houses. Nightmares even more nightmarish than the one I live in. “Oh look at those cabinets they just need to be refinished. . .I bet that has hardwood underneath it. . .I could take that window out and put a door to the patio. . .a little paint would be perfect. . .and it’s so cheap we would be able to just pay cash and fix it up for next to nothing!” I found another one just the other day. It has an interior atrium to die for and a kitchen in such bad shape TG would jump off a cliff before she agreed to this house.

Oh. My. God. I need a twelve step program. Best friend Ms. A has a friend, Pilot, who came up with the idea of creating a Flippers Anonymous Program. Pilot has it bad, too. In the last three years he has done two houses. And he lives in them while he renovates. Sick, sick man. But I totally get it. I blame being a control freak. I have to make everything my own; put my mark on it. Like Kipper, only it’s paint not pee when I mark things. This also explains why (as hard as this is going to be for TG to hear) the idea of a turn key ready house is a terribly boring concept to me. I hate boring.

Which is probably why I’ve never had a proper laundry room (or adequate closets for that matter) because I am usually drawn to quaint little houses with big souls? The closest thing I have come to a laundry room was a designated area in the basement of Mrs. Ward Cleaver’s Fabulous House in the Suburbs. But it wasn’t a proper laundry room; it was where the hook ups were in the basement. A special room designated to cleaning clothes makes me feel terribly grown up. I think this grown up feeling is why, when we discussed redoing the laundry room one of my first questions was: “Can we have a chandelier in there? I think it would be a pleasant surprise to see a chandelier in the laundry room.” And wouldn't this fixture be adorable in a peach oned laundry room.

I wish I could blame the sawdust.

A Pity Party In Self Importantville

Last week was a busy week for me. Between working on tedious nursing research projects and shepherding The Beav from one place to another, I was having a midlife pity party. Not the most productive way to spend my time; if I had any sense it could have been a midlife crisis and I would be sporting a new pair of Jimmy Choos or a driving a new car or driving a new car in a pair of Jimmy Choos. Some premenopausal women have hot flashes, insomnia or memory issues but not me. Nope. I have crying jags. Better yet I have--according to a dear friend--existential crisis’.

All of this was precipitated by catching a glimpse of people I went to school with thirty years ago, messing with my shaky self confidence and tottering self esteem. Those beautiful girls still look the same. Perfect hair, perfect faces, perfect teeth. Perfect. And don’t get me started on how gracefully the men have aged.

Going to school in North Texas during the 1970’s was almost Hell for me because at almost six feet tall, leggy (not in a good way) skinny, with scraggly thin hair and glasses I was the antithesis of the ideal: 5'5, an over abundance of fluffy hair and the body of a goddess. Fortunately, I found a niche at school and all in all had a lot of fun as a girl. But last week you would have thought I was the school’s whipping girl, always alone, too weird for friends. So weird even the teachers made fun of her. I probably was too weird for friends but luckily my friends didn’t realize it. (Maybe they did and they were just being altruistic and kind…hmmmm) But because I am terribly shallow, the adolescent experience of being average looking left a little scab on my psyche. So I took the opportunity last week to pick at the tiny scratch until it was a big festering, oozy wound. Given the tearful email I sent to Oldest Friend and the phone call I made to Best Gay Boyfriend, you would have thought my life was over because those Texas Women are still drop dead gorgeous, thin with Pilate's bodies and from what I can tell wildly successful and happy. In fact, I text messaged one of my --wildly successful, gorgeous and happened-to-be-vacationing-in-Paris--friends from high school:

“ When r u home? Feeling antifabulous surrounded by the beautiful peeps from 1979. Im the only 1 old and fat. The rest of u are beautiful! Oxo, ugly betty[*]. Srsly if u txt me u hkd up w/ jdepp I will cry myself 2 sleep.”

I think that text message just raised the bar for pathetic, don’t you?

But wait, there’s more: OF is farmed out to New Zealand because the state of academics in US is so piss poor English professors must outsource themselves, and their families, to island nations all the way around and upside down from the US. OF is mostly miserable, she can’t find a job, not too fond of the very expensive NZ and feels removed from the rest of her family. But because she is my OF she doesn’t tell me:

“Get. A. Fucking. Life. Please! Email me with real problems rather than worrying about the wrinkles on your forehead, you too short hair and trying to find new glasses that don‘t make you look like a bull dyke gym teacher.”

(she would use the word “fuck” in that context. Years ago, I had to turn the Net Nanny off because it wouldn’t allow me to read her emails) What we did have was an engaging exchange discussing how brutal our culture is on older women. OF was funny and sweet with her reassurances that I would not allow myself to devolve into Blanche Dubois; laying around and crying about all I have lost. If I'm going to dissolve into a dysfunctional middle aged woman, I think Little Edie is a much more interesting choice.

And who better to call when you are having an ugly and/or fat day than your Best Gay Boyfriend (BGB)? I sniveled and sniffed my way through the whole story about feeling fat, old and ugly, never bothering to ask him how he was doing. BGB is such a sage, this is what he said and he said it because he knows where I live: Self Importantville:

”Oh dear, you are having an existential crisis! There isn’t anything I can say or do to make this better, is there?”

Au contraire BGB: you just made it sound so important and meaningful! I’m not having a hormonal breakdown! Or the most facile person on the planet. No no no no no no! I’m having an existential crisis. Emphasis on the “crisis”. I felt infinitely better after talking to BGB. He turned my frown upside down into a crisis! That he was kind and supportive speaks volumes for my choice of BGBs, especially since the last thing he wanted to listen to was some middle-aged woman nattering on about her lost looks. As we were talking, BGB was multitasking and in the midst of winnowing out most of his worldly possessions trying to decide what he could live without in order to preserve a roof over his head. A day or so later, I winced when I thought about my emotional conversation with him. I felt like Paris Hilton, walking up to this woman : “Um, does this bag clash with my shoes?”

Fortunately, my existential crisis ended after twenty-four hours of self flagellation and carb consumption. It also helped to make an appointment with Nurse Poison for some Botox. A birthday present to my loved ones so they don’t have to hear whining about the lines etched over my face me.

What really shut the party down was when an old friend called and left me a message that started: “Hello beautiful. . .”

Because I am shallow like that.




*For the record, I thinkAmerica Ferrera is hot and Ugly Betty is adorable.

GTT

I have an uncanny ability to remember trivial details from Texas History class and "GTT" stands for "Gone To Texas" carved into cabin doors in Tennessee and Kentucky during the 19th century when pioneers were seeking their fortunes in Texas. Consider me GTT.

I found my fortune here. I'm blessed with a father who is 80 years old today and the picture of good health.

Derange pas ta tendresse

"Don't break your tenderness"

As a romantic, I would like to think Kerouac murmured these words to Neal Cassadyduring a passionate encounter. It has become one of my favorite quotes and this photo is a favorite from our weekend in Austin. The day promised to be hot without slipping to that cloying oppressive heat central Texas is known for. Thanks to the Artygirlz, this challenge gave me a chance to rummage through my files and enjoy our trip all over again.