I used to flip through my mom’s novels — you know, the ones she kept on dusty basement shelves — and look for the dirty bits.
I’m not going to lie.
It started when I was bored. I’d already gone through my stack of library books and Mom said, “Go find something in the basement. I have tons of books down there,” and then suddenly my mind was opened to the likes of John Grisham and Sidney Sheldon and their twisted, dramatic worlds of crime and greed and super soft-core suggested sex.
Sex?
People can write about sex?
This was news to me.
See, I’d picked up a paperback by Karen Robards called Heart Breaker, which was probably spankin’ new at the time but now has those tea-stained yellow pages with curled corners — the charming kind that smell like dusty antique stores when you flip them past your nose* — and it promised to have action and romance and, if I was lucky, a little kissing, so I snatched it up and let me just say Boy, was I surprised when I got to page 251.
Or it could be because, through years of diligently studying the field detective tactics of one Horatio Cain and his partner, Eric Who-Cares-What-My-Last-Name-Is-Have-You-Seen-My-Ass-In-Magic-Mike? on CSI Miami, I’ve honed my forensic skills to a startling level of hyper sensitivity.
But probably not. Most of the time, I have the awareness level of a sloth toked out of its mind while drooling over Johnny in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Is it just me, or does it not even really feel like the Fourth of July?
I mean — it’s the 4th. Of July. Literally. But does it feel like a holiday? Probably not, if you’re not in the U.S. And probably not if, like me, you are in the U.S. but aren’t planning any grilling/feasting/playing-with-explosives-while-consuming-large-quantities-of-fermented-beverages activities.
Fireworks make me nervous.
They’ve always made me nervous. Even as a kid. So while I won’t hesitate to rappel waterfalls in Costa Rica or jump from a Cessna Caravan soaring high above the Hawaiian Islands, the thought of setting off Black Cats and Roman Candles and spinners and even “harmless” sparklers and those little popping sperm-like things you throw on the ground that explode with a mini-fierce CRACK that really probably aren’t harmless at all because seriously — what’s “harmless” about exploding sperm? — the thought of all that makes me twitchy and paranoid and inclined to repeatedly shout things like, “Be careful!” and, “Run!” and, “I once heard about a kid who lost his entire hand from an errant Black Cat — his hand!” and other general phrases that make people who are actually enjoying the dangerous, drunken festivities want to tie my leg to a rocket bomb and set it alight, just to see what happens.
Take my word for it — there’s nothing fun about exploding sperm.
So there I was, all motivated to start writing at night and knocking out posts, and then Wednesday happened.
On Wednesday night, I had my book club meeting. Remember that?
So I went to this book club meeting at this great local Indian restaurant (because sometimes I like to pretend to be all edumucated and worldly, when really the reach of my intellectual knowledge hit a brick wall in 2007 when I graduated from college, and Indian food makes me break out in a sweat-stache).
The truth is, I’m not as smart as I’d like to be.
See that? That’s a Barbara Taylor Bradford novel in the foreground. It was mindless. And awful. And didn’t even have any good sex scenes. But I picked it up on the bookstore on a whim because I had a gift card and it looked like an easy summer read and apparently I have zero respect for the world of literature. Please don’t show this to my book club. Also, I haven’t read the Ron Paul book yet. It’s my attempt at trying to become more politically astute. But so far it’s been a very good paper weight. Also, I have very crooked ears. My wonky glasses don’t lie.
Where was I?
Oh, yes. Book club meeting. After the meeting, I followed my friend Ava to her apartment so I could pick up the Hunger Games book she’d borrowed from me and The Game of Thrones I’d intended to borrow from her.
And that’s when my would-be predictable week of takeout and Dawson’s Creek turned… not so predictable.
In her parking lot, there were lights. And confusion. And stunned onlookers holding kids and puppies and, if they were lucky, the other precious things they could grab as they fled. If they weren’t, they held only the plastic grocery bags they’d carried home, only to find that home was no longer there.
Now. I want you to imagine for a second that you live on the far side (thank God) of the 3rd floor of a building that suddenly looks, for all intents and purposes, like the shriveled ass end of a used cigarette butt — all necrotic and charred and this was its good side — the back was far worse.
I also want you to imagine that your significant other is deployed, and you have no way of reaching him save through the Red Cross who, judging by the seedy motel in a questionable side of town they offered to put you up in, may not be the most reliable avenue for getting things done.
But hey. You’re grateful for the toothbrush.
And also, imagine for a second, that you’re pregnant. (This is where it might start to get tricky for the guys. But you can do it — connect with your feminine side and imagine that womb with its resident parasite, dependent on you for its very survival. Okay, wait. That’s even hard for me, and I’m a chick.) But anyway, you’re pregnant. For the first time ever. You feel nauseated and bloated, head filled with questions about feeding and sleeping and how to raise decent little humans.
Yep, plural. Because you’re having twins.
But wait, there’s more.
A friend of yours, whose husband is also deployed and who also is pregnant, is scheduled to arrive at the local airport in T-minus 15 minutes. Just 15 minutes after you realize you may have just lost all of your worldly possessions. She’d been having baby stuff shipped to your apartment for the past few months and was planning on living with you until she found a place nearby for her family.
Imagine all of that.
Now.
What’s the first thing you would do?
Ava, who had reached the scene a few minutes before I, in her state of semi-shock and baby brain and sheer exhaustion at the thought of hassles that might lie ahead, knew exactly what she wanted to do.
I was told by an officer that she’d gone inside with the Fire Chief and that I should “stand by.”
Stand by? You took my pregnant friend inside her smoke-filled apartment? Did you notice that unmistakable pregnancy indicator known as a belly before you let her in? And did I mention she’s pregnant?
She came out a few minutes later, a look of relief on her face, hugging tightly to her chest not photo albums or her laptop or legal documents, but books.
Two of them.
Hunger Games, and The Game of Thrones.
“I got the books!” she yelled across the lot.
I laughed. It’s all you can really do in a situation like this. Thankfully, the firemen were willing to escort me back in where, with the help of an industrial sized fan and their skilled use of a flashlight, I was able to navigate the eerie haze to rescue her laptop, hard drive, some important files, and stuff my purse full of her underwear.
Hey.
It turns out you never know what you’ll deem important in life until you’re faced with the pressure of time, limited arms, and the option to choose.
The front.
The back. (Photo by Ava)
Ava, cute firemen, and reporter butt. What? A girl can look…
I picked Stefanie up from the airport while Ava got examined by the paramedics and spoke with the Red Cross, and now I have displaced roommates.
Two of them.
Five, if you count the babies.
And for 2 nights, I made them all sleep in 1 bed. But now we have another, and each our own room, and I’m actually thinking this roommate thing is kind of fun.
Loneliness, it turns out, is like sensory deprivation —
You don’t fully comprehend what you’re missing until you miss it no longer.
And for me, that’s been laughter. And company. Someone with whom to share a meal and discuss the weather and debate the realisticness (yep, I’m going with that word) of the show Army Wives.
Stefanie makes a mean curry soup.
And I’ll admit — sharing my house has been an adjustment, but I’m going to miss them when they find a new place to live.
Yesterday I got home from work and my lawn was mowed.
Obviously, I didn’t mow it. That’s not my job.
And Justin didn’t mow it, since I’m pretty sure his superiors in Afghanistan would consider that an excessively long lunch break.
So it must have been the scrawny, bronze tanned stoner kid I hired to do it but was fairly convinced would forget, what with all of the bong-hitting hours between the time I hired him and the time he was scheduled to mow.
What he did forget, apparently, is the fact that I showed him, told him, and texted him to be careful about not cutting the dogs’ electric fence.
Yes, I electrocute my own dogs.
But it’s only because I love them.
Wouldn’t you love faces like these?
Anyway.
So I came home yesterday to fresh-cut grass and the incessant beep of the dog detainment system, indicating a cut wire.
Not surprising.
Also, I can’t find where the wire is apparently cut, since most of it is buried.
Also not surprising.
So now I feel like the helpless girl who can’t figure out how to fix a damn fence.
This is surprising.
Because normally, given enough time, I can figure things out. I can get ‘er done. But this time, I’m stumped. And frustrated. And for someone who owns canines whose progressive learning capabilities closely resemble those of the Jurassic Park velociraptors, we could be in trouble when they realize their collars no longer beep.
So.
As satisfying as it is to do things on my own, to get my hands a little dirty, to experience the stiffness and stench after a day of manual labor, I realize.
Sometimes I just want someone to do it for me.
I think I could be happy if my hands and my office always looked like this. As long as someone else is mowing my lawn.
I know they say that money can’t buy you happiness, but I think having enough money to pay people to do stuff for me would, in fact, make me very happy indeed.
At least in the sense of immediate gratification.
And there’s nothing, as far as I can tell, wrong with immediate gratification. Like a handful of Reece’s Pieces and an angst-filled episode of Dawson’s Creek. Or a cool glass of Riesling and a book on the back deck. Or a morning jaunt with some literotica and my vibrator.
What?
Just seeing if you’re still paying attention.
My point is that satisfaction earned is not necessarily better than satisfaction bought. That, in this life, some ventures are worth our time and others are not.
It’s a first-world privilege, and I’m willing to accept it.
For lack of a simple response, let’s just say I’ve been elbows-deep in plumbing fixtures, wood stain, boxed pasta meals, and the funk of my own melancholy.
I realize, as a semi-serious blogger, that I’m supposed to be meticulously recording my daily actions, organizing the resulting mixed media, and assembling it all into some witty and coherent piece of informative evidence here on this blog.
And I have been. Recording it, that is. It’s just that whole organizing and writing part that seems to petrify me into paralysis these days.
Instead, I distract myself by taking photos of my dogs, my wine, or my food (when it doesn’t happen to involve shell shaped pasta or processed cheese) and posting them on Facebook or Instagram in the vain attempt to gain some kind of social media validation that the way I’m living my life these days is, in fact, worth while.
Suffice to say, I haven’t exactly embraced the pseudo-single life.
Though it has, despite my best intentions, managed to embrace me. In a crazy, cyclic carousel of ups and downs. Motivation and melancholy. Like the San Andreas Fault, I appear to lie dormant for a time, building up my energy, storing up my drive, and then I release it all at once in this impressive display of calamitous frenzy.
Frankly, it’s exhausting.
Both physically and emotionally.
But I do have ideas.
Lots of ideas.
They’re scattered about on yellow sticky notes and inside notebooks and on pieces of scrap paper everywhere. The key, I’ve discovered, is going to be learning how to write at night, when I have the most time. When I don’t have to be to work in 45 minutes. When, unfortunately, my flow of motivational steam has been fully depressurized by the soul-sucking realities of spending my days as an almost-30-year-old assistant.
But I’ll get there.
All I ask is that you stick with me.
It’s a process, you know.
But we’ll get through it together.
In the meantime, just take a gander at how I currently spend my evenings.
I think you’ll find that a little time spent on… I don’t know… intellectual pursuits wouldn’t hurt me.
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.
