I started this first post-deployment week off with the best of intentions. I had plans, you know. I was going to get things done.
But then I learned that Dawson’s Creek is now available for streaming on Netflix and spent the weekend — yes, the entire weekend — drinking wine, eating cheesy pasta from a box, and realizing that my high school crush on Pacey Witter has, in fact, not diminished over the last fourteen years.
Because these are the things I had available to me without leaving the house.
Long before Bella went batshit for Edward and Jacob, teens of the 90’s were fatefully divided between Team Pacey and Team Dawson. And even though their names were ridiculous and they had the vocabulary of tenured english professors, the adorability factor was undeniable.
I’m fighting demons. And they don’t stop with Pacey fantasies.
My allergies have turned my nose into a faucet, my ears into pressure valves, and my chest into a lead weight. Also, I smell.
And also, my neighbor invited me to a wine drinking ladies’ social event last night (or so I’d been told), but it was really a jewelry selling party where I only felt slightly out-of-place among the perfectly kept housewives to the point where I may have overindulged in the boxed wine that they swore was delicious because the box, after all, was black and fancy, but let me just go ahead and tell you that it was not. That said, I still managed to have a nice time because, lo and behold, they were great women. Fun, witty, and very content with their lives. There was even a former Miss USA title winner in the bunch who kept everyone laughing with her running man talent.
Needless to say, I’m not feeling 100% this morning.
And I’m tempted — oh-so-tempted — to turn on the Dawson and sink into mindlessness.
But I won’t.
Yet.
I’m thinking the best way to battle my lethargy is to work on a reward-based system. If I get something done, I earn an episode of Dawson’s Creek.
Primer is up? Great! Watch as Jen falls back into her bad girl ways.
What? You painted that first coat? Awesome! Find out who Joey loses her virginity to.
You hung the organizing system, de-cluttered the garage, stained your shelves, pressure washed the house, cancelled Justin’s phone service, wrote your post for Apartment Therapy, and finished decorating your bedroom? Congratulations, friend — you just earned yourself a full day Creek-a-thon of brainless nostalgia.
Obviously, I’m still working out the details. But I’m thinking I’ll train myself the way I train the dogs. With positive reinforcement.
And since my dogs are so well-behaved, I know this will work.
Storm clouds were rolling in fast, and every so often a bright streak of lightning left me wondering if inside a metal box with metal wheels on metal tracks was the safest place to be sitting.
My mom fretted over the fact that we’d left Lexie outside, while Ed reassured her that the huge porch roof and open sun room left plenty of places for the small pup to take shelter.
Get there get there get there, I thought.
Justin squeezed my leg.
Outside, the rail yards looked gloomy and foreboding. Like the set of a scary movie. I heard warning bells and saw an intersection quickly approaching — protective red-and-white striped arms lowering to block passage. My heart raced as we didn’t slow down — we’re going to zoom right through!
Oh, wait.
We are the train.
Of course we wouldn’t stop for the train warning.
I laughed out loud, and the other three looked at me quizzically.
“It’s nothing –” I stammered. “I just panicked for a second when I thought we weren’t stopping for the train.”
Blank stares.
“But then I realized… you know… that we’re on the train.”
I heard the lady who’d been sitting with her husband and young child across the aisle snicker.
They laughed. Banter ensued. Somehow, as seems to be usual for conversations with my mother these days, the talk turned to kids. When are you having some? I want to be a grandmother. You’re not getting any younger, you know.
Yes. I know.
“I just don’t know if I can handle it! Especially while Justin’s in the military. Having kids takes work. And brains. And I’m sorry, but it just seems like the longer I’m married, the dumber I get.”
Justin laughed.
“It’s true!” I said. “I don’t need to think as much, now that I’m married. Stuff just gets done. Why would I want to screw all that up with a kid?”
The woman across the aisle actually gave me a knowing nod and a wink.
And yes, while the whole idea seems ludicrous to say out loud, there’s some merit here.
You see, it has been over 85 hours since Justin has vacated the premises, and already I’ve had to get my man on no less than 3 times.
No, that’s not as inappropriate as it sounds.
What I mean is that I’ve had to do tasks that are deemed “man territory” in most heterosexual relationships — tasks that men (and single and/or apparently more self-sufficient women) manage to handle with the ease that comes with long-term established expertise but that I, through some glitchy wire that has progressively made me less self-sufficient since the moment I said, “I do,” never bothered to learn.
Take, for example, the vacuum cleaner.
While the task of vacuuming has usually befallen to me via some unspoken marital code, (the same code that keeps Justin up to his elbows in soggy gutter leaves, moldy refrigerator leftovers, and drain hair goo), Justin is usually the one who cleans the vacuum itself. Dog dander, carpet fuzz, and dead skin cells just aren’t my thang, so I never bothered with it.
That is, after all, why we get married, isn’t it?
So we can legally bind ourselves to someone who will do the tasks we like the least?
Okay, and maybe for love and commitment and stanky morning breath and all that jazz too.
But an unspoken bonus is the division of labor. And while a couple may never actually sit down to discuss how said labor gets divided, it is my understanding that the roles generally evolve over time. Which is how I’ve become the vacuumer, but Justin is the vacuumer of the vacuum.
You dig?
So when I set about my task of vacuuming yesterday, I reached an impasse upon completion. I could, as usual, put the vacuum back in the closet where it magically gets emptied and cleaned before its next use, or I could clean it myself. I was pretty sure the more desirable of the 2 options — the one where I do no work at all — wouldn’t be effective this time since the vacuum fairy is currently wielding military camouflage in some far off land, so I was stuck with Option 2. Figure it out myself.
Damn.
I emptied the bin with no trouble at all (I already knew how to do that — I just didn’t have to do that since it fell on the other side of the Division of Labor line). But then I noticed an unhealthy buildup of lint and who-knows-what-else around this grid suction thingie inside the bin.
And I couldn’t get to it.
So I tried this latch thing, and that didn’t work.
Then I tried this other latch thing, and that didn’t work.
Then I tried a combination of latch things and, you guessed it, I still could not penetrate the plastic force field of frustration.
I thought about pulling out the screwdriver set or just banging it on the ground, but then I remembered how well that solution didn’t work out when I used it on my printer, so I dusted off the one tool I haven’t had to use in the past 6 years — the reason I’ve gotten progressively dumber since my nuptials — which is the other half of my noggin.
Enter Google.
And YouTube.
And a bottle of beer. (I may or may not have had to use a jar-opening tool to unscrew the cap.)
And all of the modern-day research tools I have at my disposal to solve a problem.
And there was my solution. It was painfully simple. I should have felt incredibly stupid. But I didn’t. Instead, I felt a bit of that swelling pride that comes when you figure something out on your own. When you get your hands dirty. When you can’t just call for the vacuum fairy to come do it for you.
I will be the first to admit that marriage, in a way, has made me lazy. It’s made it far too easy for me to whine for help when I can’t figure something out in less than 12 seconds. Which, it turns out, is an excellent way to regress.
And that’s not really what this whole living thing is all about.
It’s easy to become dependent on another person — especially when you happen to live with that person, and especially when you happen to sleep with that person. And, while it’s always nice to have a crutch on-hand if you really need one, isn’t it better to strengthen your legs and learn how to walk on your own?
In the clarity that comes when calling your significant other is no longer an option — that, aside from helpful friends and neighbors who love you but not enough to come over and remove the spider from your bathroom at 3 a.m. — I’m learning that eliminating the need in a relationship does not eliminate romance. In fact, clearing away all that mucky dependency leaves room for something much more interesting — true intimacy. Encouragement. Maybe even admiration.
So.
Maybe you’re the type who already does everything on your own, and now you have a headache from rolling your eyes throughout the duration of reading this post.
But maybe you’re not.
Maybe you’re like me. You have a short attention span. You ask for help before even thinking about whether the task at hand is something you can achieve on your own.
If so, I want you to try something. Try not asking for help. At least not until you really need it.
But then I also had to say goodbye to my other childhood dog, Lexie. (I lost the first just last year, remember?)
Affectionately known as Lexie-Bear and Booger-Butt, she would nibble my hair by way of greeting.
She was the first of the litter to run to me, all fuzzy fur and fluffiness and everything wonderful about a puppy. And, as she grew, she made it impossible to argue that dogs don’t have personality.
Sometimes I think she thought she was a cat.
But she was a dog. One of the best dogs. And I will miss her dearly.
So. After spending the evening sitting in a puddle of my own snot and tears, I had a moment. A moment when I realized, Hey. Of the three of us, meaning Lexie, Justin and Myself, two of us are in the least desirable situations.
And I’m not one of them.
Which means, my friends, that I had an epiphany. I could wallow and bemoan my current lonely lot in life, or I could peel my Domestiphobic self off of my unswept laminate floors and make the most of this situation. Use the alone time to evaluate myself, progress my career, and catch up on missed episodes of The Bachelorette.
Important stuff.
I know from experience that the next several months will be full of ups and downs — moments of clarity and moments of wallows. But if I can remember that this time is also a gift, maybe I’ll learn not to waste it.
Today IS another day.
I have lots to share with you, so stay tuned. Just have to get my photos together.
I’m home, Justin’s home, the pups are home, and finally, besides the fact that it feels like I’m waking up at 5 when I’m really waking up at 7, all feels right with the world.
I have a lot to catch you up on, I know, but I have less than 48 hours of quality time left with that guy who stuck a ring on my finger back when I was like 9 (which, incidentally, makes me only 16 years old, which is all kinds of awesome) before he leaves for Afghanistan, so I figure I should spend it not on the computer.
I will have plenty of time for this, and you, in the coming months.
And trust me — I have a lot to share.
So for now, lets just start with the biggest news:
Yep.
I took a fashion hint from this dog and decided to get bangs.
Probably right about the time Hollywood’s fashionistas have once again declared them unfashionable.
Not because I’m the type who likes to roll against the grain, but because I’m the type who takes so long to make a decision that trends are over before I have a chance to jump on the wagon. Either that, or I’ve been on the wagon for so damn long that trends come back in style before I knew they were obsolete.
Unless you follow my Facebook page, in which case you know we hopped a plane to Denver a couple of days ago and haven’t been seen or heard from since.
Unless you frequent the Coors brewery in Golden, Colorado, which case you probably came to know me and my high altitude sunburn and my affinity for Batch 19, a pre-prohibition style lager quite well.
The trip wasn’t exactly spur-of-the-moment. But for some reason, it seemed really far away for a very long time, and then suddenly it was here, and I was throwing the majority of my clothes into a suitcase on the morning we left while Justin impatiently tapped his foot in the kitchen and gently reminded me that we still had an hour drive to the airport and would I please hurry up because it’s raining and we still have to go through security and GOOD GOD, WOMAN there’s no way this suitcase weighs less than 50 pounds.
And then we got to the airport, where our combined suitcase weighed exactly 49.5 pounds thankyouverymuch, and anyway it was free because he’s active duty military and oh, also our flight was delayed for 2 hours due to inclement weather between Raleigh and Dallas so sit back, relax, and have another cup of very expensive java.
These things always have a way of working themselves out.
Justin just doesn’t understand how I roll.
So now we’re here, in Colorado, partaking in the consumption of beer and mountain scenery and beer.
When we finally arrived after many delays and plane-sittings and plane farters and children who kick seats, I entered what can only be described as Mecca, otherwise known as the Denver Airport Ladies’ Restroom.
Obviously, I had a hard time capturing the true beauty with my iPhone. And I was a little nervous that the cleaning lady, who was already staring at me with bemused curiosity, might call security if I pulled out my DSLR.
It’s only the second time we’ve visited my mother in the 6 years she and Ed have lived here, so it’s amazing how we fall into a routine, like we only live a few hours away and do this every weekend. Wake up, fix coffee, stare at the display of distant mountains to see what kind of view they care to give today: mysterious haze, sharp lines and saturated contrasts, shimmering mirage. Always something new, sometimes slapped rolling and haphazard across the horizon with careless impressionist watercolor abandon — and other times sketched carefully with such detail and accented with dark oils that they actually look real.
Soon, Justin’s family will come wheeling into town (a couple of his aunts already live here, which is just sheer good fortune), and we’ll spend that overwhelming chaotic time together eating and laughing and drinking and my mom will feel, for the first time in a long time, what it’s like to have lots of family around at once.
We all want to spend some time with Justin before he goes to Afghanistan, and I suppose I’ve learned that I have to share.
It doesn’t hurt that his family is awesome.
But here’s the thing, in case you were wondering.
I know I’m domestiphobic.
I know this so well that I made up this whole word to describe my aversion to all things domestic and I think, on some level, that most of you can relate.
At least a little.
But that doesn’t mean that I won’t miss my husband.
All it means, in the end, is that I won’t miss his laundry.
It’s a national holiday — a day off from work, when we buy exorbitant amounts of ground beef and encased meats and charcoal and propane. We light fires and start motors burn fuel like it’s free and we’ll never run out. We consume large quantities of fermented beverages and potato chips and baked beans. The sun crisps our faces to a nice, lobster red — raccoon rings around our eyes from our UV protective sunglasses prove we still have some standards when it comes to caring about our health and our bodies. Our feet stay bare, and, if we’re lucky, we dip our toes into the pool or the lake or the ocean. We create a day of brilliant indolence. We drink in life.
We also wave flags and remember those we’ve lost. Those who likely wore uniforms on the day they died and whose empty boots, vertical rifle, protective round helmet — now jobless and forlorn — form the battle cross of the fallen soldier. Unaffiliated with religion or dogma or faith. Just respect.
A way to honor the place where a soul has vacated the premises.
Photo by Dusan Vranic, Associated Press.
Whether we agree with how they died is irrelevant.
On what we should all agree is that we are grateful. Grateful we’re here to enjoy the day. To sunburn our bodies. To fill our bellies. To laugh and sometimes cry but mostly, if we’re smart, to smile.
I hope I never have to spend this holiday like many other spouses in this country —
On my knees, in the grass, at a stone.
So. For those who mourn, and for those who don’t: It’s important to enjoy the day. Bask in the company of our family and friends. Wear sunscreen. And take, if you will, at least one moment of sobriety to remember the point.
Yesterday afternoon, a veterinarian laughed at me.
Yep.
Apparently I’m that crazy dog mother who, even though I never dress my dogs in sweaters (or any kind of clothing save the occasional reflective vest on nighttime walks), appears utterly ridiculous to non-dog owners.
And veterinarians.
And all of the assistants in the veterinarian’s office.
But for some inexplicable reason, I feel inclined to tell you — no, I need everyone to know — that I’m really not that kind of dog mom — the kind who takes her dogs to the vet for every little ailment.
If I were, we’d have been there 547 times in the last 5 years for various catastrophes, but we weren’t. I handled them at home. Like the time they ate a bunch of toothpicks so I fed them cotton balls dipped in coffee creamer to ease the passage. And the time they ate a bag full of chicken wing bones so I fed them cotton balls dipped in coffee creamer to ease the passage. And the time Capone ate one of those bathroom poufs and slowly expelled netting from his derriere for days.
That time, I didn’t feed him cotton balls.
But then, a few nights ago, Mara started acting strange. She tucked her tail between her legs, got all shivery and panty, and hid in our bathroom for several hours.
I did things. Things that would make Caesar Milan roll over in his grave if he were, you know, not actually alive.
I pet. I coddled. I lay with her on the cold bathroom floor.
I knew she was hurting, but she couldn’t tell me what was wrong. It was the most frustrating feeling in the world.
Then, miraculously and right before bed, she was fine again.
Until the next night.
Same thing, same time.
For three nights in a row.
So you see, I had to take her to the vet.
What if she had diabetes? Or Cushing’s? Or cancer?!
The internet is a very scary place when it comes to self — or pet — diagnosis.
So I booked an appointment and took her in.
Where they laughed.
They laughed and told me she was perfectly healthy and definitely does not have diabetes and sure they could charge me for all kinds of blood work and X-rays and the like if I wanted to screen for cancer, but she showed no obvious signs of the disease which, if she had it, would not be particular about the time of day it displayed its symptoms, and maybe I have a ghost in my house.
Maybe.
But, more likely, she felt sick that first night, got treated with all kinds of love and attention, and decided to do it again.
Or she’s picking up on the strain of Justin’s imminent deployment.
Either way, she’s fine, and they decided to not charge me for the visit since the intense humiliation overbearing dog mothers are forced to feel upon examination is payment — and entertainment — enough.
And the bitch of it is, I feel like if I were a *cough*real*cough* mother and not just a dog mother, I’d just be all, “What’s wrong with you? Your tummy hurts? Just pop a Pepto, dust it off, and go back to bed. Mama just opened a bottle of wine.”
But there’s something about these faces…
(or is it these faces?)
…that makes me do crazy, crazy things.
And that, I think, is probably what it feels like to be a mother.
P.S. You should probably check out this post of yore for some exceptionally hilarious faces.
Okay. To those of you thinking of building yourselves a closet organizer made of plumbing pipes, because people do that all of the time, I have one piece of advice for you:
Don’t.
It’s only 8:30 in the morning, and already I’ve used up my math cache for the entire week.
Yep. See, I only have a limited cache of math skills. It’s so limited, in fact, that I’m forced to dole out math-related problem solving brain cells in carefully regimented quantities throughout the week so that I don’t run out before they have a chance to replenish.
And this project is using them all.
Even if you’re great at math, I would still not advise you to take on this project, unless you want Home Depot employees to run screaming for the exits every time you enter the store out of fear that you ask one of them to spend 2 hours — two hours! — custom cutting and threading galvanized pipe to your specifications in order to save a little moolah.
Obviously, I’m not above that.
And I’m going back today.
Crap.
I probably shouldn’t publicly warn them on the internet.
Because I’m sure they read this blog, just to see if the crazy woman with graph paper and an extensive plumbing fitting vocabulary plans on coming back.
That’s right — due to my extensive research, I can talk flanges and elbows and tee fittings and nipples with the best of ’em.
I can even say “nipples” to a male Home Depot employee named Kelly without cracking a smile.
I’m that good.
So.
My point?
Unless you have beyond stellar math and 3-dimensional planning skills and an extensive knowledge of pipe fittings and absolutely no fear of possible retaliation from disgruntled Home Depot employees, you probably don’t want to make a closet organizer from plumbing pipes.
But if you do, I’ll have the instructions for you eventually.
Unless the HD peeps slash my tires and start sending threats to my family.
Last week I posted photos of our back shed and proclaimed to all the internet (or maybe 1/1,000,000,000 of the internet) that my husband is a hoarder. Really, the post was intended to be a giant metaphor for how far I’ve come in accepting the fact that the person I live with is human and that it’s possible to find ways to form our habits so they complement each other, rather than fight each other. And… okay… maybe a little bit to call him a hoarder.
So all I would like to say to those of you (beloved readers) who defended Justin in the comments section, claiming his hoarding issues aren’t true hoarding, for shame.
I know you probably did it because he’s hot.
And he is.
But that does not negate the fact that he cannot throw anything away. That shed was an unfair example because I’d already taken half of the mess out before snapping the photo.
So.
You need further evidence?
I’ll give you further evidence.
Behold:
This is what I originally set out to clean.
See that flower pot on the right side, near the garage door?
I’d intended to move that and a few other select gardening tools out to the shed and then get back to this particular mess.
Let me break it down for you: The old ceiling fan from our bedroom, a broken tool organizer that our neighbor was going to throw away (it is currently still broken and holds zero tools), 2 televisions, a wood pallet, bags of mulch and garden soil, 5,287 empty cardboard boxes (those might be my fault), worn, crusted gym clothes, old doors, cement board, laminate flooring, wood scraps, shoe molding, trash, trash and more trash, and billions of DIY home supplies.
And so the garage turned back into a veritable dumping ground for everything we couldn’t deal with — physically and, apparently, emotionally.
So.
Who isn’t a hoarder?
Because I’m pretty sure it’s not this guy:
(By the way, I feel like I should mention that Justin added a dead bolt to our front door, hung crown molding in the kitchen, and switched out an outlet that had been driving me crazy this weekend. I’m pretty sure the fact that he had a clean shed, courtesy of moi, was the underlying motivation. It just makes sense that I should get credit for all things awesome. Mwahahaha.)
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you already know that I have a soft spot in my heart for people who break convention.
For people who say, “I don’t care what the sheeple want — I want what I want, and if it means that the so-called Rule Makers of the Universe — the Simon Cowells and the Joan Rivers and all of the popular girls in all of the high schools in all of the land — point their snide noses in my direction, then I must be doing something right.”
See, in this world, there are good rules, and there are bad rules.
Good rules, like having to wear seat belts in moving vehicles to we don’t pose a danger to ourselves or others by becoming flailing, rubbery, projectile objects during the event of a collision, help protect us from our own laziness and stupidity.
Bad rules, however, like those that tell us we can’t drink at baby showers and we can’t wear a black shirt with brown boots, only exist because someone who was once the slightest bit influential (and is now likely dead, in rehab, or no longer relevant) once said it out loud.
And puh-leez. Black and brown go with anything. So why wouldn’t they go with each other?
Imagine my excitement when I received an invitation — nay, an order, from the Queen of Hearts herself, to follow the White Rabbit to a “simply mad” tea party wedding, where all of the guests would be wearing vintage inspired clothing and hats.
It was going to be like make-believe for grown ups.
I mean, c’mon. You wouldn’t have to twist my arm to get me to jump down that rabbit hole.
Or any rabbit hole, now that I think about it.
Except maybe a real one.
Anyway.
Hop on in:
The details were out of this world.
I was there, too. Showing off my mad croquet skills.
This is me. Winning.
I’m pretty sure they didn’t have cell phones in Wonderland, people.
Yep. That one’s mine.
This part was way cool. The DJ played music from Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, and the bride’s parents came out as the King and Queen of Hearts.
Makeup change! She even got her groom to wear the hat for 30 seconds. Thirty seconds of AWESOME.
Like photographing Grace Kelly on set.
This “bouquet” must have weighed 35 pounds. It was incredible.
There were only 35-or-so guests at this Alice in Wonderland theme wedding, and each one played along, which really made it magical.
Most people scoffed when the bride told them her plans.
All I can say is, I’m glad they didn’t bring her down.
I think it’s Taylor Swift who sings, “People throw rocks at things that shine.” And shine, that evening did.
