My brother's taking his little family on a vacation to Disney World and I offered to drive them to the airport this morning. I woke up about three o'clock and just lay there, peering at the clock, convincing myself that if I closed my eyes I'd slip into a drooling sleep coma and not hear the doorbell and then everyone would miss their flight and my nephew would grow into a sullen anti-establishment pain in the ass kid in a 24-hour hoodie because he didn't get to hug Mickey's neck when he was two.
I did all of that until about 7:18 at which point I fell into a sleep so reptilian that Randy had to kick my shallow-breathing husk onto the floor to get me to hear the doorbell.
They made it on time. Buying us at least another couple of months before I'm yanking my nephew's earbuds out by the cord during dinner.
In other news, I'm super old and extra mean.
Totally different topic. We have three cordless phones in this house, right; one in the office, one in the kitchen, and one in the family room. There's a truly hideous Bang & Olufsen phone in our bedroom that I paid two hundred dollars for five years ago in a desperate attempt to distract Randy long enough to rid my life of this jet ski phone:
Worth every penny. The best two hundred bucks I ever spent (excluding dares and bail). I can't forget to throw this piece of crap back into the top of the closet before Randy gets home or he'll be all, "Hey, jet ski phone!" and I'll be forced to go buy a three thousand dollar NASA space phone from the astronaut store.
There's also a working antique pay phone in the Pool Table Room. It rings like this: "BLAAAAAAARGH I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE TECHNOLOGY BLAAAAAARGH!!!" It's essentially a migraine hanging on the wall that takes nickels.
Okay! So that's five telephones. Only three of the five, the cordless phones, have Caller ID, so basically you can go fuck the other two. It's 2008, seriously, I don't have time to play Russian Roulette when the phone rings. Sometimes I'll use the B&O phone to make an outgoing call, but it's roughly the size of a collar stay and trying to get the stupid thing back in its stupid base is like trying to jam a toothpick through a telephone pole without the aid of an F5 tornado. And no one ever uses the pay phone for anything because it's a rotary and thus its very presence in this century is probably in direct violation of LIFE. There's also the very real fear that if you attempt to approach it, it will suddenly start to ring and then you'll have to go to the hospital.
So! Three phones. Three phones to choose from. We bought these cordless phones in a three-pack from Costco in 2002 for $89.99. The batteries last an average of seven minutes. The phone in the office is on a table directly behind a four-pound wooden picture frame supported by a leg made out of cardboard. If you call and I answer on the phone in the office, the first thing you'll hear is a loud crash followed by, "FUCK! Hello?"
The phone in the kitchen lives on a low windowsill behind the kitchen table. An eight passenger table squeezed into a nook built for a four-seater made sense when the kids were small and ate food here, but now we keep it primarily so there's a giant obstacle between us and the phone all the time. If I'm in the kitchen and the phone rings, I have to throw three chairs across the room and then flatten myself like a ferret to slide between the counter and the table.
The phone in the family room is just a phone in the family room. I'm looking at it right now and I can't find anything particularly obnoxious about it, save the fact that if it rings I have to stand up, but that rule pretty much applies to anything that's more than a foot and a half away from me at any given time.
All of this assumes that the phones are at any point actually resting on their charging stands, which they aren't, ever. They're all invariably in the laundry room or in the bathroom or in the pantry. Completely dead, of course, because it's been longer than a commercial break on TBS.
Something else I should mention, too, is that our home phone line is also our fax line, and our fax machine is always on. And set to three rings. So everything I said about running, finding, sliding, dropping, and answering the phone? It all has to happen in under six seconds. Realistically you've got a better chance of getting a hold of me with smoke signals than you do by calling me at home. If you absolutely can
not be bothered to save my cell number in your contacts or if you're living in some parallel universe where it's perpetually 1995 and thus everybody hasn't downloaded a mobile Gmail application directly into their brain stem, you had best be ready to fax me some shit.
Two thousand dollar bike NUMBER TWO. Number One got stolen.
Strangely enough, the more I wear my glasses, the more I seem to rely on them to
see shit. Which is fine, both my parents wear glasses, I'm 32-years-old, I think my delicate ego can digest the fact that these glasses serve a purpose other than banal fashion accessory. The problem is that if I take more than two steps outside during the day without sunglasses, my entire face tries to fold up like a clam shell; last week I attempted to check the mail without my sunglasses and I ended up crouched in the front yard with my fists balled into my eye sockets until dusk. It was a really unproductive way to spend ten hours. Not to mention probably in violation of our HOA.
The compromise: when I'm running around during the day I wear my cheap Target sunglasses to drive and then I switch to my prescription glasses when I'm safely inside wherever it is I'm going. The end result of all this switching-- sunglasses, prescription glasses, sunglasses, prescription glasses-- is that by the time I get home my brain thinks its been staring through a kaleidoscope all day and I'm ready to throw up.
Yesterday morning I was cleaning out the drawers in our bathroom and I ran across a pair of dusty prescription sunglasses. I don't even remember
getting prescription sunglasses-- they might not even be
mine. They're the same boring style as the glasses I'm wearing now, though, and when I put them on my eyes don't cross uncontrollably, so I'm assuming they are. They must date back to my gratuitous student loan days-- or maybe even
way back to my twenty thousand dollar credit limit days. Those were good times-- just ask my two thousand dollar bike. Or my bankruptcy attorney.
I had a bunch of errands to run yesterday, so I cleaned all the makeup debris off the found glasses and I tried them out; I wore prescription sunglasses that potentially belonged to an ex-roommate circa 1999 while I was driving, and regular glasses with my prescription from 2003 the rest of the time. When I got home I still wanted to throw up, but in a much more complicated and expensive way. Which I'm calling an improvement. Maybe if I root around a little more I'll find that 18
th century gold-plated monocle my platinum Discover Card bought off eBay in 1998 and I can really round this shit out.
Would it help if I chewed more gum?
Yesterday I went to get my teeth cleaned for the first time in two years. Ordinarily I'm an "every six months" girl, but I haven't had health insurance so I've been counting on my Sonicare toothbrush and my platinum dental record to steer me through the gap.
I've never had so much as a hint of a cavity, no aches, no pains, no trouble. My brother's the same way; neither one of us grew up with any compulsive tendencies to scrub our teeth for thirty-five minutes at a pop, either, so I can only assume our childhood drinking water was fortified with fluoride and deck sealant. I could chew through a leather armchair and come out stronger on the other side.
Knowing this, it wasn't that I was particularly concerned about getting to the dentist, but more that I missed the gratuitous praise. Listening to the dentist commend the condition of my mouth is a lot like listening to my grandmother praise me over the dinner table for being a good eater. If I could just get my mom to recognize my talent for growing hair and fingernails, my self-confidence would be through the roof.
So I was reclining in the chair yesterday, mouth clean and open, readying myself for the role of overachiever, when the hygienist ran her finger around the outside of my top teeth. She paused and hoisted my upper lip.
"Oh," she said, "You've got some exostosis here, huh?"
I'd never heard that before. And since it didn't sound anything like,
Wow, you've got great teeth, I was at a loss.
"Okay, what
is that?"
"It's
extra bone that grows underneath your gums," she explained. "It's usually not a problem. Does it bother you at all?"
"No." Seeing as how I'm not in the habit of yanking my lip up over my ear, I didn't even know it was there. I'm sure it'll start bothering me first thing tomorrow, though, thanks.
The hygienist explained that if it became painful I could look into having it removed. As best as I was able to ascertain, it's a very simple procedure wherein your gums are peeled down and your mouth bones are ground down with a Dremel sander. I was disappointed to hear it's also fairly cost-prohibitive because now I have to choose between having
this done or going ahead with my original plan to have my right arm cut off and then reattached with binder clips.
While I was busy eeny-meenie-miny-moe-ing my surgical torture options, the hygienist started poking around my lower teeth where things, believe it or not, took a turn for the worse.
"Wow!" she breathed, gently probing at a molar, "There's a six millimeter pocket here."
Because this didn't sound anything like,
Great job, you've earned a sticker, I opted not to reply with
Aw, thank you.
"You've got some bacteria impacted underneath your tooth inside your gum," she went on, "and as it gets worse and becomes infected, you lose bone in that area. We measure the bone loss in millimeters on a scale of one to twelve. And right here," she poked, "You're at a six."
Oh.
She reached down and unfurled a 16" x 20" full-color poster to really punch her point home.
This is the only relevant picture I could find online. It is not at ALL representative of the poster to which I was subjected. This picture is all pink and polite and clinical. The poster I saw was covered in graphic photography. There was blood and oozing and what may or may not have been live insects digging below the gum line.
I was too horrified to say anything, I just sat there and stared, disgusted, wondering how far into my jaw bone the weevils had burrowed. It was like "
Scared Straight!" for dentists. Only Scratch n' Sniff could have made a more direct statement.
The nurse rolled the poster back up.
"When was the last time you flossed?" she asked.
"Uh, the last time I ate corn." I was too terrified to lie.
"And when was the last time you ate corn?"
"I don't like corn."
She left me then to let the billing department know they needed to compile an estimate before sending over someone from the hard-sell team to explain why these particular antibiotics weren't covered by my insurance and then sell me a timeshare in Omaha.
Needless to say, I left without a sticker. Two hundred dollars worth of medicine later, I have learned three things: 1) My teeth are not the bionic, indestructible instruments I claim them to be, and as such I can no longer take them for granted, 2) I seriously need to learn to like corn, and 3) if my gynecologist whips out a poster next week, it's going to be a problem.
Crammed Organisms
I found out earlier this week that I was accepted into the giant
Crammed Organisms plush show in St. Louis beginning in June. In celebration, I present to you... Pirate Zombie.
Someone remind me to invite my parents.
Randy and I are still on board for
getting married, for those of you wondering whether we just brought it up, got everyone all excited, and then promptly forgot about it again. Like that time we were supposed to celebrate Christmas for the 2,006
th time in a row only I
forgot about it until December 28th. Or that time I told my nephew if he would just lie down and close his eyes already he'd wake up covered in peanut M&Ms. Or that time anyone I've ever known had a birthday.
So... We've decided to go to
Belize next February!
That's it. That's all I've got.
Given the shameless lack of juicy details, I'm trying my best to keep the subject as casual as possible. "Oh, you're getting married?" people ask. "Yeah, but it's really not a big deal," I say, hoping to keep the conversation train from taking the now almost inevitable plunge into Bridal Canyon. It usually works, though I'm not sure if it's the dead end tone I employ or the ensuing fake narcoleptic seizure. It's amazing how few people seem to want to discuss wedding gowns while I'm face down in a plate of fried chicken.
Every now and again someone with good intentions will hint about needing to plan a shower, and I immediately begin laughing it off by yelling, "NO!" which isn't laughing it off at all, really, it's just yelling. Bridal showers are perfect and lovely for young women who are entering into a new phase of life with their soon-to-be partners; friends and family coming together to provide sage advice and some much needed home essentials? Beautiful! For a woman who's been living in sin for eight years in a house with not one, not two, but
six fondue pots? Seems a tad gratuitous to me. And honeymoon gag gifts lose their punch when the couple in question has already made it through the seven-year-itch. I'm all for celebrating, celebrating is great! Thank you! Yes, let's celebrate! Pick a night and I'll cook you dinner. Bring a bottle of wine. And a fondue pot-- apparently we're collecting those.
I am excited, truly, just in an "inside voice" way. There's not much to be done, so I don't spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about it. I'll need to get a dress, sure, and make sure someone brings a camera. We're leaving the country, so honestly my biggest challenge is getting my passport renewed sometime in the next ten months. At least I won't have to worry about a name change; Randy's son, Chris, and Erin
2 are getting married in November, and as much as I would love to make the rest of our lives a slapstick series of misdelivered mail and credit snafus, initial reconnaissance efforts tell me that Erin
2 has already staked a claim to every name specific email address across the domain globe. Like Christopher Columbus and beach front property, that shit is spoken for. I was 95% sure I wasn't going to change my name anyway-- I already adopt Randy's last name when I call the cable people to make clandestine authorized changes to our premium channel lineup-- but the thought of not having a relevant gmail address shot that last 5% in the chest.
So really right now it's business as usual. My brother called a couple of weeks ago and left a message: "Hey, I hear congratulations are in order!" I had to call him back to figure out what the hell he was talking about.
"Oh yeah!" I said. "Thanks! We're going to Belize next February. You want to go?"
"Absolutely! So next February," he went on, "Does that give you enough time to plan everything?"
"IT'S REALLY NOT A BIG DEAL," I said. And then I had to hang up because I couldn't talk with my head mashed inside a bowl of Cobb salad.
Plus you know his nest is gonna be HUGE.
It's been so beautiful outside lately I've been leaving the doors and windows open all day. The
good news is that The Jake can now achieve his soul's desire to lie exactly half inside and half outside the house like a bumpy, whiny welcome mat. The
bad news is that I realized today there's a woodpecker somewhere and I'm pretty sure he's working on devouring our house. Either that or there's some guy hiding in our attic, banging on shit with a hammer. I'm hoping for woodpecker; a guy with a hammer is going to be a hell of a lot harder to shoo away with a tennis ball.
The Spooooooky Colon.
I guess maybe in a perfect world, Randy would prop his feet up on his desk and pry open his freshly delivered
colonoscopy card, chuckle at the adorable little pink heart, take a starry-eyed second to marvel at my bottomless well of compassion, and then immediately pick up the phone to make an appointment with his doctor. But we don't
live in a perfect world, we live in a world where six business days have gone by and the card hasn't even made it to Randy's office yet. Either
that world, or a world where the card
did make it, but Randy lies. Either one of those worlds. Crap shoot.
Luckily I commissioned multiples. This one by
Anna Ruby King is the second:
That's a
colon, see. A Pac Man maze of colon. Which is really very fitting because Randy is a huge fan of Ms. Pac Man-- we actually have the full-size arcade game that hasn't been played in over a year to prove it.
This is the inside. That middle "good guy" has me a little concerned, but Randy really likes cherries (and hates ghosts haunting his intestinal track) so I think it'll all work out.
After that it's Prostate Exam. And then Opthalmalogist. And then MRI, but not for any real reason.
There's a whole list of stuff I try to regularly bug Randy about. Stuff like, oh, getting the giant school bus out of our back yard. And getting a colonoscopy. Getting the colonoscopy is actually at the top of the list because the school bus belongs to Chris and so technically I'm supposed to bug
him about that. Unfortunately the little punk is hard to nail down; I'm going to start leaving trays of fried chicken out in the yard inside a giant trap, and one morning I'll find him out there, a twenty-four year old man caught by the ankle with a chicken leg in his mouth, and he and I will have nice long conversation.
Randy is definitely due for a colonoscopy. I know this because both my parents just had colonoscopies, and that's how I gauge; I talk to my parents once a week and it's like having an Old Person Manual. But it's been close to a year and I seem to have inexplicably run through all of my standard nag techniques (whining, making fun of, threatening, bargaining, shaming, bribing, flicking) to no avail. So I did what any woman does when she's struggling to convince a loved one to undergo a long and awkward medical procedure that forces said loved one to examine his mortality: I went shopping on Etsy.
And I had some cards made. Colonoscopy reminder cards.
MuffinTopsyTurvy designed the first card for me, and I think it's completely adorable:
And inside:
Isn't it the cutest colonoscopy card you've ever seen? I know. I'm hoping this card campaign works so I can go ahead and have cards made for other crap on the list. Like finally having his vasectomy checked. As much as I'm looking forward to getting unexpectedly knocked up and wearing a laminated paternity test around my neck for nine months, JUST GO AND DO IT IN A CUP, ALREADY.
That's a colon, see. A Pac Man maze of colon. Which is really very fitting because Randy is a huge fan of Ms. Pac Man-- we actually have the full-size arcade game that hasn't been played in over a year to prove it.
