July has apparently had a suspicious change of heart and
that job-- the job of my dreams that was supposed to start LAST OCTOBER-- actually starts tomorrow. Like with money and everything. Not a minute too soon, since I was
this close to selling my... wait, I don't own anything. Oh, my bad, I was about ready to start
stealing some shit. Sort of the same thing. One of the great things about this job is that the pay is staggered over the course of a year dependent upon my completion of certain milestones. So I can't, say, take the whole lump sum tomorrow and accidentally buy enough sequins to fill the guest room. This first fractioned check I get tomorrow is going straight into the bank and toward my bills. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a trifle concerned I might feverishly spend it on twenty-six consecutive spa days instead, but hey. I'll do my best. I gave up trying to saddle my personal steed of untamed financial logic long ago. I've accepted there are just some things I can't control: my immediate affinity for people who accept offered gum, my intrinsic distrust of colored tortilla chips, my inability to not purchase sixteen sets of
ShamWow towels when given the opportunity... it's all related. Shit piles up on the DNA strand, you know, like dryer lint. You can get it off, sure, but it'll cost you like six easy payments of $29.99.
Sock Zombie Cozies.
I didn't end up unplugging and unbatterying everything in the house before bolting for the Motel 6 last night as I threatened. Partly because the more I thought about it, the less stuff I could actually unplug and take the batteries out of. The refrigerator, as an example. And all the television components-- all that shit's behind a wall and held together with spider webs and prayer. I called the store where we bought the slot machine and asked what happens when you unplug the machine-- indignantly hoping, of course, that I'd be told that
nothing happens, that the machine actually
enjoys being unplugged and if we
don't unplug it every few weeks or so it'll eventually explode.
SLOT MACHINE GUY: What kind of a machine is it, what brand?
ME: It's a Bally.
SLOT MACHINE GUY: Yeah, don't unplug it.
So by the time I ran through the list of shit I could actually unplug to make my point, I was down to like five lamps and the alarm clock; Randy wouldn't be defeated, he'd just be confused. Three weeks from now he'd go, "Hey, where'd the batteries for the fan remote disappear to?" And meanwhile I'd be crawling around along the baseboards, swearing under my breath and replugging in my computer, my sewing machine, my modem, my mixer, my hot rollers, my hair dryer, my printer, my scanner, and my camera.
Good in theory, though. I got even in my brain which has to count for something.
Terry left a comment on an
earlier post suggesting I cover my scorching hot gear shift knob with a sock zombie cover. It's the best idea I've stolen in a long time.
They come with hats. I love them. I think you know I'm not exaggerating when I tell you this made my week.
110% worth it.
Randy and I had a big fight this morning over the fact that I unplugged the noisy slot machine from the wall. According to Randy (seventeen times) unplugging the slot machine is tantamount to beating the shit out of it with a sledgehammer. I told him if I'd known that, I would have grabbed a fucking sledgehammer and gone to town because I'm SO OVER listening to that stupid thing hum like a hive of stoned bees twenty-four goddamn hours a day and I don't CARE if it blows up, frankly, because I'm not really sure why we need to OWN a slot machine since we're not running a fucking
saloon and no one's even
touched the thing in three years except for my two-year-old nephew who has a thing for flinging nickels around the room.
I paused then to swallow the blood that had filled my mouth, granting Randy the opportunity to
also mention that he'd appreciate it if I wouldn't take the batteries out of the remote control because that can cause it to lose its internal memory, at which point my larynx strongly and painfully suggested he go to work already.
So if I've done my math right, I've got roughly seven hours to unplug everything in the house and take the batteries out of everything we own before I need to go make myself a bed in the ski boat for the night.
Moving on.
The top half of the gear shift knob in my car is made out of aluminum and I live in Phoenix. Meaning six months out of the year, when I slide into my 138 degree car and attempt to shift it into gear, the palm of my right hand is immediately seared to the knob. Come September I should be able to teach high school kids how to master the 6-speed shift pattern simply by waving and showing off my engraved skin burn.
I have to wonder if Honda releases two versions of this car: one with a metal shift knob for drivers in warm climates like mine, and then one with a liquid ice-pack gear shift for people who live in Wisconsin.
My mom took an overdose of pills in an effort to commit suicide last Saturday night. She had been drinking, and afterward she confessed what she'd done to my dad who of course immediately called an ambulance.
I don't really even remember the phone call or the ensuing conversation because at some point my brain went, "Oh, I get it! It's a test, right?" and then went directly to screen saver.
Physically she's fine now, mentally and emotionally she needs more help than I know how to gather. She was back home eight hours later, horrified and repentant. When we spoke, I did everything in my power to assure her that I love her more than anything, that we're going to do whatever it takes to get her healthy and happy again. At some point the gravity of the matter lessened and she started lamenting the fact that she'd ended up at the hospital both shoeless and without her glasses.
"And it took a couple of hours to see a doctor," she said. That seemed weird to me, given the circumstances. True, my entire portfolio of medical knowledge begins and ends with eleven seasons of ER, but I don't remember ever having seen a suicide survivor kill hours in the hallway waiting for Noah Wyle to show up. But maybe that's just because it's only an hour-long show.
"Huh," I said. "Well, what had you taken?" I didn't even know. Still in
emergency broadcast system mode, my brain had no doubt been running through the Super Mario Brothers dungeon level when it might have seemed pertinent to ask.
"I had a bottle of herbal sleep aids and I took those."
"You took... what?" Seriously. "Herbal sleeping pills?
Herbal?"
"Well, you know I never like to take anything really strong."
I barked a laugh, I couldn't help it.
"You took over-the-counter
herbal sedatives to kill yourself."
"When the doctor came in," she went on, chuckling, "he held up the bottle and said, 'You could take a whole bottle of this and it wouldn't kill you. The only way you're going to die swallowing these is if you happen to choke on one.'"
At which point I mentally slid the Mario Brothers to the side and completely lost my shit.
"And then," she went on, laughing, "the police asked me if there were any other guns in the house. 'Any
other? We don't have a gun in the house.' 'Ma'am, there's a .22 caliber rifle under your bed.' I guess your dad brought it home when PaPa died. I didn't even know it was there."
Oh, we laughed and laughed, Mom and Luigi and the Princess and I. Because seriously, what's funnier than taking ineffective herbal sleep aids to kill yourself only to discover you could have just shot yourself in the face instead?
Yeah. It's a real knee-slapper, all right.
Is there a crisis plug-in or an add-on I could buy and download into my brain, maybe? Because I'm not kidding, I am dangerously close to running out of room on my hard drive.
Emergency Holding Pattern.
Hold please. I appreciate your patience.
Thank you.
I can't thank you enough for the sweet comments and emails. And you're right, it does get easier with time. Why just this morning I drove all the way home from the grocery store with the trunk of my car wide open; it was the most normal thing I've done in a week. Watch, in a month or so I'll accidentally set my hair on fire with a pair of reading glasses and a compact mirror and I'll
know I'm on the road to recovery.
Home.
I'm home. I don't know what to say about the trip. It was a lot of work and... a lot of work. Maybe I'd been expecting too much. I needed it to be too perfect, I think it was destined to inevitably fall short. So I'm leaving it there.
****
My last night in South Carolina, I leaned over the hospital bed to say goodbye to my grandmother. My plan, being the emotional mercenary that I am, was to keep it as light as possible.
"I'm so happy," she said, her little voice, "that you and Randy are getting married." I adjusted her oxygen tube around her ears and leaned in to her. "I prayed about it," she said. "I prayed about it so much."
"MeeMaw," I laughed, probably too loudly, "if I had known that, we would have gotten married years ago."
"And Marshall and Sunny," she went on, smiling, "they got married and oh, I was so happy. Kiss them for me, and that sweet baby. Your mother tells me he is just so smart."
"He is. He's very smart, MeeMaw, the doctor says he's exceptionally advanced." I've told her this every day but she likes to hear it and I like to say it.
"Isn't that something." Just like she always says it; full of wonder, constantly in awe of her own good fortune. She looked at me then. "How's your mother?"
I looked back at her. "She's better," I said. I squeezed her hand. "She's going to be fine." And she is, she will.
My grandmother passed away this morning. Peacefully and painlessly. She was ready and not afraid, we knew how much she loved us and she knew how much we loved her. I keep tallying those points up in my head thinking it's going to somehow make it easier, but it doesn't.
Ouija Scrabble is my favorite, I think.
We leave for our houseboat vacation on Lake Powell tomorrow. We do this every year with all the kids and everyone they know and some people
those people know and like one total stranger, and every year it's the quintessential perfect vacation. Ninety percent of the trip is tradition: everything we eat, everywhere we go, all the games we play, and there's a lot of comfort in that familiarity and a lot of peace in the resulting nostalgia.
We all seriously need to get out of town for a while. Randy's oldest son and his wife are coming for the full week this year-- they generally only stay until Wednesday so he can get back to work-- and they're bringing their baby girl! Baby on the lake! Randy's so proud; he had all of his own kids up on water skis before their shriveled belly button nubs fell off.
I'm not bringing my laptop this year because the internet connection is always expensive and tenuous, and fundamentally it's just one more thing to drop in the water and wreck. If my Blackberry works in our destination canyon I'll check in. I just changed my automatic signature from "Sent from my Verizon Blackberry" to "Sent from my Verizon abacus". That's how you'll know it's me.
In the meantime, read all these posts I've already written about Lake Powell. That should keep you busy.
Sorry, math.Lightening can't get you while you're peeing.
I don't care if "ambidextrousness" isn't a word.
Crazy Eights!Ouija ScrabbleKayak Valet: $10.What DOESN'T it go on, that's a better question.
She wasn't spotted at ALL, is the kicker.
I had to take a break from talking about my grandmother. There's still a lot I want to say about the experience but I needed to mentally break from it for a while. Give my heart a rest.
So I was out in the way-back backyard yesterday playing soccer with The Jake when the small granddaughter of our neighbor walked up to the split-rail fence separating our yards.
"Your dog's pretty spotted!" she remarked. I just had him shaved to the skin so she was correct, he does appear to be particularly spotted right now. There are many responses to this observation that would have qualified as appropriate. But for some reason I can't put a finger on, possibly a Tourettes/Crotchety hybrid condition, I immediately defaulted to a conversation I overheard between a rafting instructor and a rafting kid while
on the Salt River several months ago. The kid, a boy, watched the instructor climb into a kayak roughly the size of a kazoo and announced with lots of amazement, "That's a small kayak."
"
You're a small kayak," the instructor shot back, deadpan. It was the funniest thing I'd heard in a long time. I repeated it the rest of the day without provocation.
"Can I have that towel?"
"
You're a small kayak."
"You want a bottle of water?"
"
You're a small kayak."
"
You're a small kayak."
"Turn around and stop fucking looking at me."
Like that.
So when this little girl-- cute, you know, with the soft shiny baby hair and the being short and whatnot-- told me my dog was pretty spotted, I did what came naturally.
"
You're pretty spotted."
So less time in the backyard, I think. From now on.
Annoying Questions To Which I Received No Response: Part 9 of 17
[Asked of the bank lobby at large after rushing out of the house to cash in The Big Glass Bottle of loose change upon discovering I was significantly overdrawn thanks to a poorly timed student loan payment, hopping up to the teller on my left leg because my right flip-flop broke when I pressed the gas pedal on the drive over thus rendering my right foot completely naked and not clean, and realizing that even after my deposit of $86.73 I was still thirty-four cents in the hole:]"Hey, can somebody loan me a dollar?"
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8
