In Jeopardy

We are little more than a month away from the Terrible Twos and already, Baby is training for it like she's preparing to compete in a toddler version of Jeopardy!

I'll take "Hell, no!" for 200, Alex.

"A-B-C-D-F-uh-G." She sings this variation of the ABC song about a hundred times a day.

"Baby," I say patiently. "It goes like this. A-B-C-D-E-F-G..."

"No!" She shouts, and continues singing. "A-B-C-D-F-uh-G."

"A-B-C-D-E-F-G," I sing back sternly.

"NOOOOO!" Nine in the morning and already, I'm treated to a Terrible Two specialty. She has taken to screaming 'No!' so loudly that her face turns bright red and she shakes with the effort. Composing herself quickly, she continues singing, "A-B-C-D-F-uh-G..."

"Let's try something else," I offer. "Old McDonald had a farm..."

Gamely, she picks up the rest of the lyric, singing a resounding, "No, no, no, no, NOOOOO!"

I try again. "And on that farm, he had a cow..."

"No! No! No! No! NOOOOOO!!!" she finishes.

Couple her way of no'ing with her newfound insistence on calling me 'Lu-SEEEN-da!' and I realize I've got a lot to look forward to.

'What's in a name' for 600.

"Lu-SEEEN-da! I wan' cookie!"

"No. I'm Mommy."

"No. Lu-SEEEN-da!" She crows triumphantly.

She's even taken to walking around the house singing it. "Oh whir, oh whir has my eedle dog gone! Lu-SEEEN-da! can he beeeeee!" By the mischievous gleam in her eye, I gather that she believes now that we're on a first name basis, she's essentially in charge.

And she's essentially... right.

Now, when we're home alone together, her shenanigans are funny, really. For all her stubborness, she's also a big-time cuddler, which makes it impossible not to forgive her .

But when we're in public, it's a different story.

I'd like Baby Talk for 1000, please.

"Look, Baby," I said the other day as a fleet of emergency vehicles whizzed past us on the road. "Fire trucks. Do you see the fire trucks?"

"C*ock!" She shouted. "C*ock! C*ock!"

"No, it's not a clock," I said, "It's a truck."

"No!" She insisted. "C*ock!"

I sighed and turned up the radio. This stubborness was getting a little old.

A few days later, we pulled into our driveway after an outing to the grocery. Across the street, a group of men stood beside a large utility truck, no doubt plotting how to create the maximum amount of damage to my neighbor's yard while digging up the water line.

Baby, of course, noticed the utility truck immediately. As I pulled her out of her carseat, she pointed at it frantically and shouted "C*ock!" The men turned and stared.

"A truck!" I shrieked in forced merriment. "That's right, Baby, a truck!"

"No, Lu-SEEN-da!" She said in frustration, pointing again in the men's direction. "C*ock! Big c*ock! Big c*ock!"

In desperation, I put my hand over her mouth and ran for the front door. "Is this how it's gonna be?" I muttered to Baby as I unlocked the door and stepped inside. She chortled in affirmation.

I can tell already I'm in for one hell of a year.

An important message for parents everywhere

February 25, 2006

Robert Mueller
Director, Federal Bureau of Investigations
935 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20001

Dear Mr. Mueller,

I realize you're pretty busy trying to catch terrorists and stuff, but I have a problem that I believe to be of global, if not universal importance.

I'll be frank. Aliens have invaded the bodies of my adolescent stepdaughters.

I know it sounds odd, but the evidence is overwhelming. Six short months ago, my 12-year-old was a cuddler. A hugger. A baby talker. Today, hugging her is like trying to embrace a wooden Indian in a cigar store, with equally embarrassing results. The baby talk has been replaced with outrageous jargon like, "Dude." "Harsh." "Chill." And cuddling? Um. No.

All this is accompanied by many sighs and vacant stares, slumped posture, and a weird insistence on sharpening her colored pencils on the playroom carpet instead of over the trash can. This, Mr. Mueller, is not normal behavior.

I must admit that I did not initially trace these symptoms to aliens until yesterday, when my 15-year-old stepdaughter's body was similarly overtaken.

Ordinarily kind and upbeat, 15 came home yesterday accompanied by an acquaintance named Britany. The acquaintance in question exhibited the same symptoms as my 12-year-old. I carefully noted the same hunched posture, the same one-syllable responses, even the same smudged Great Lash mascara on her eyes. Within minutes, the effect had transferred to my 15-year-old! For the last 12 hours, she has been surly, cynical, and heaping on the eye makeup.

You see where I'm going with this, don't you Mr. Mueller? Of course you do. You're not the head of the FBI for nothing.

The aliens have sent decoy "teenagers" to our planet, to walk among our children and infect them with some sort of extraterrestrial, attitudinous goo. It's so obvious; I can't believe it took me this long to figure it out. It is now clear that my 12-year-old's best friend (Denise Anderson, for your records), is an alien decoy as well. I can trace 12's body snatch to the week that she and the alien "girl" began "chilling" together!

Now that I think of it, Mr. Mueller, this has been going on for some time. I distinctly remember a pair of identical twins at my high school (Ambrose and Alistair de Margrave. They should be in your files somewhere), who, it was whispered, were leftover spies from the Russian cold war, sent to glean the secrets of Atlanta's most prominent families. One, it was said, was merely an automaton, created by scientists to allow the other to move freely and gather information.

And yet now, I'm not entirely convinced that both twins weren't in fact a cruder model of alien invader. Certainly strange things happened when they were present. Solar eclipses. Disruptions in the magnetic field. Parents coming home unexpectedly to find a raging kegger in their living room.

While that alien experiment obviously failed when Alistair dropped out of school two weeks before graduation in order to nurse the herb garden in his "mother's" kitchen window, the aliens have had at least a few hundred light years to modify and improve their teenage decoys.

They walk among us, Mr. Mueller. I am urging you to do something about it now, before it is too late.

Sincerely,

Lucinda

The Accidental Haikuist goes grocery shopping

~

I need deveined shrimp.

You no longer carry it?

Someone. Shoot me now.

~

Ogle my Google

You didn't think I'd let February pass by without my monthly advice column, did you? Oh no. There are way to many Googlers out there in need of my help. Therefore, once again, I am honored to present...

Lucinda's Advice Column

Good Advice for Bad Googlers

Sasha Cohen hot- Jackson, MS

Figure skating boobs- Houston, TX

These two searches illustrate the clear differences between a man and a woman.

As women watched the women's figure skating championships Tuesday night, their thoughts ran along the lines of, "What a great triple toe loop!" "Sasha's red lipstick looks fabulous. I wonder if she uses M.A.C?" and "What possessed Irina Slutskaya to go the Slim Goodbody route with that outfit?"

Meanwhile, their husbands were thinking, "Mmmgh. Sasha Cohen. Hot," and "Figure skating. Boobs. Rgggh."

Glad you figured out how to work that keyboard in pursuit of your ice slut sex dreams, dudes.

Mature mom's sexiest fantasies- Fairbanks, AL

Lucinda arrived home from a long day of carpooling to find her husband upstairs with a bottle of champagne and a bowl of chocolate dipped strawberries. Behind him, a warm bubble bath was drawn. Rose petals were strewn across the water.

"Hop in, toots," he said seductively. Lucinda smiled. She could only imagine what was coming next.

As she undressed and settled into the water, her husband pulled a toilet brush from the closet and began scrubbing the inside of the commode.

The sound of someone else doing housework was music to her ears. Ahhhh, I'm in heaven, she thought, closing her eyes...

Peeing stall site-Carrollton, TX

Yup, maw, it's time fer some indoor plumbin'. I'm shore tarred of that ole outhouse. I got me more butt splinters than huntin' coons. I think I'm gonna get on this yere puter and look fer some instructions on buildin' one o' them peeing stalls. Yep'm, that's whut I need. A peeing stall site.

How snake making a babies- Malaysia

Firsting, the snake she is find a he snake with which to make couple. The snakes they are form one snake for little time. Yes. Then is the female snake make the eggs. Hatching, the eggs are making snake babies! Any more questions you ask?

Young perky A-cup pubic hair picture- Gig Harbor, WA

Forget the other stuff. I just wanna know who's going around telling people I have an A-cup. I'll kill ya! I'll kill ya!

How to hide a voice recorder in a car- San Francisco, CA

Okay. This one's easy. Radio Shack carries voice activated tape recorders, so the easiest thing to do is just hide it underneath the seat and hit record. A little duct tape would help it not slide out. Not that I know anything about this. I'm just sayin'.

Dog leggings- Seattle, WA

It is actually not that surprising to me that this searcher hails from Seattle. The question is, why are you here?

My husband uses prostitutes- Brisbane, Australia

God. That sucks. I guess you have a hard time figuring out what he really means when he says he's gonna be in the bush for a while. Did I just say that? Oi, oi, oi.

Sew your own adult diapers- Little Rock, Arkansas

I'm really at a loss for words with this one. I'm not very crafty, but Susie Sunshine just might have a vintage adult diaper pattern you could borrow...

*Editors Note: I am in no way saying that the young and beautiful and fully bladder-competent Susie Sunshine might actually be in need of adult diapers herself. I am just saying she's a sewer. With patterns. That's all.

Greetings from She-Who-Shall-Feed-Herself-Alone

A Pubic Appeal

As I was getting dressed this morning, I pulled out my lip gloss and unscrewed the top. There, stuck to the wand, I saw...

A pubic hair.

How did this happen? And why did it happen to me? And. Ew.

It's a stark reality that none of us much like to talk about. Pubic hairs. In the most unlikely places. On the living room mantle. In the freshly changed hotel bed. Under the toaster oven.

Where did they come from? How did they get there? Why do we feel compelled to keep this disturbing phenomenon to ourselves?

It is most unnerving of all for those who have no pubes. Because there is a 100% chance they are touching someone else's genital hair. And that makes my, I mean, one's skin crawl.

So ladies, and especially gentlemen, I implore you, for the sake of public health and mental stability, keep your pubes to yourself. Particularly when I've gotten out my lip gloss.

Thank you.

Because I care about you.

Please read this and pass it on to someone you love. It happened to my sister-in-law's third cousin's dog's veterinarian's wife and it is real. Hopefully, you can spare someone else from having to go through this.

A few months ago, a woman named Adelaide Hoffenpepper stopped at a gas station on her way to work. As she got out of her car, she was approached by an elderly woman asking her for a ride to the doctor's office. Although the woman seemed familiar, her bushy beard and mustache made Adelaide uneasy.

Even though Adelaide felt sorry for the woman, she said she could not give her a ride. She ran to the payphone and called the police, who told her the "woman" was actually a serial killer they had been looking for for months! He often dressed as an old woman. They told her to get in her car immediately and lock the doors.

Adelaide checked the payphone's coin return slot before running to her car. She felt a sharp sting and realized someone had stuck a hypodermic needle in the coin return slot! "Ouch!" she said, stumbling back to her car, locking the doors and driving to work.

Once at work, Adelaide checked her e-mails. She forwarded a message from the GAP to 15 people so that a $100 gift certificate would appear on her screen. Then, she wrote back to a Nigerian princess who needed Adelaide's help in transferring her fortune to an American bank account. Adelaide sucked the needle prick on her hand and thanked her lucky stars that she would soon be three million dollars richer.

After work, she left her office and went to her car. She had a flat tire! Fortunately, a nice-looking man offered to help her fix the flat. After he had put the spare tire on her car, he asked if she could give him a ride to his car on the other side of the building. Adelaide was no fool. "I'm afraid not," she said flatly, before driving off. A few minutes later, she noticed the man had left his briefcase in her front seat. When she opened it, she found a knife, some duct tape, and a box of Fruity Pebbles! "Another cereal killer! What a day!" Adelaide muttered to herself.

Just then, a car drove by without its lights on and she flashed her headlights at the car to alert the driver. The car did a 180 on the road behind her and began following her! Frantically, she drove to her house, pulled in the driveway and laid on the horn until her husband came out.

"That man is following me!" she screamed as a man got out of the other car behind her.

The man waved his arms as he ran toward them. "When I turned my headlights on, I saw a man duck down in the backseat of her car!" he shouted. "I followed your wife to warn her of impending danger!"

The husband opened the back door. Crouched in the backseat was someone dressed as an old woman, who had been waiting for Adelaide to get home before attacking her!

Adelaide's husband grabbed the killer roughly and pulled him from the car. "Dangnabbit!" the killer cried. "You know I just had this hip replaced!"

"Grammy?" Adelaide yelped. "What are you doing in my backseat?!"

"Welp, you sayed you'd take me to the doctor today, so I been waitin' back there for hours," the crone confided. "When I seed you at gas station, I figgered you had come to give me that ride. I must've falled asleep back there after you kept me waitin' so long."

Ladies, I ask you, what if Adelaide's grammy had been armed with a butter knife? What if Adelaide had given the man in the parking lot a ride? What if the hypodermic needle was loaded with maple syrup? What if Adelaide was driving a motorcycle and her grammy had had to ride in the sidecar? Is that even appropriate for an elderly woman with a hip replacement?

I urge you to pass this along to all the ladies in your life. If you send it to 10 people within ten minutes, your dearest wish will come true. If you don't, a bird will fly over your head and poop on you.

BETTER SAFE THAN SORRY!!

Cool.

The Mother's Movement Online has devoted an entire issue to moms who blog. Does that rock or what? With articles by such Internet luminaries as Asha Dornfest (who writes about the mommy blogging "in-crowd") and Andi Buchanan (ahem. Literary Mama?), you will definitely want to check it out. Oh and hee. They stuck me in there too (Yeah, so I'm the coat check girl at this A-list party, but whatever). Here's the link. Now go. Go! Get! And then come back here and hang out some more.

Snow Day

"Look, Baby, it snowed!"

"Whoa."

"It's snow! Can you say 'snow?"

"Nose."

"No, snow."

"Nose."

"SSSSSnowwwww."

"NOOOOOOO!!!! Nose."

--------------------------------

What is it about three inches of snow on the ground that makes me want to stuff my face full of food all day? I haven't eaten this much since I was eight months pregnant.

----------------------------------

"15, why are you wearing six strands of pearls to go sledding?"

"All my snow clothes are black. I don't want people to think I'm Goth."

----------------------------------

Note to self: Do not let entire family go to supermarket on a snow day unless you don't mind setting a new record on grocery spending.

-----------------------------------

"Dad is taking forever to get the ice off the car! Why can't we park a car in the garage?"

"Um. We just can't."

"Why?"

"I don't know. Dad just says we can't."

"But there's totally plenty of room in there."

"Trust me, 15. We have had many, many, many conversations about this."

"Hey Dad! Why can't we park a car in the garage?!"

"Don't look at me, Hubs! She said it. I didn't!"

-----------------------------------

"So Baby, it's your first walk in the snow. Tell the camera what you think of it."

"Oooh it messy! Itsa mess!"

Schadenfreude

After four long years of waiting, the moment is almost upon us. Next week, the best female figure skaters in the world will compete for the gold medal. And I am about to pee my pants with excitement.

I've tuned in and out of the other Winter Olympics events. But women's figure skating... Well, I've already informed my husband that both the short and long programs are Must See TV.

"Yeah, okay," he said lightly. "Whatever."

I couldn't blame him. Although I talk the talk when it comes to television viewing, I rarely actually watch the shows I claim to love most. But this. This was different.

"Hubs, I'm serious," I said. "Nothing can make me miss women's figure skating. It's like... It's like a USC game."

Hubs' face sobered. For him, USC games are a near religious experience. Missing one would be almost as bad as missing your own wedding. "I understand," he said with a somber nod. "But why don't you watch figure skating the rest of the year? It's on all the time."

"Pfft," I said dismissively. "Child's play. I mean, I like the World Championships," I qualified, "But most of the other stuff is just exhibition skating. There has to be competition involved for me to watch. And..." I hesitated, embarrassed.

"And what?"

"And falling," I finished lamely.

"Ohhhhh," Hubs said. "Schadenfreude."

"The what?"

"Schadenfreude," he repeated. "It's German for secretly taking pleasure in others' misfortune."

I wanted to deny it, but there was some truth to his diagnosis. The excitement, the anxiety, the hot flashes I feel when I watch Sasha Cohen or especially that damned Irina Slutskaya skate are totally based on whether they will fall. In front of the judges. In front of the the audience. In front of the world.

Yep. Schadenfreude.

I'm not entirely heartless. When a beautiful skater ruins her makeup crying beside her coach afterward, I cry with her. I feel her pain. And when one of the girls skates beautifully and flawlessly, I cry too. Tears of sheer sentimentality. But oh man, I loves me some schadenfreude.

I should warn you that my schadenfreude doesn't cross genders. When a man falls while figure skating, he just gets pissy. I have never had any patience for a pissy man. No, only a woman can be depended on to give us a few choked sobs, a little bit o' fist-biting, and in my favorite schadenfreude episode ever, the famous Face-That-Has-Sucked-a-Thousand-Lemons.

I realize that Tonya Harding is probably a once-in-a-lifetime occurance. But I don't know.... Sasha Cohen has been giving that little upstart Emily Hughes some pretty bitchy looks lately. Whatever the case, next Tuesday and Thursday nights, you know where I'll be. In front of the television, Kleenexes handy, schadenfreuding my way to the Gold.

Knock Knock.

There's nothing that can reduce me to a quivering, heart-racing lump like the sound of my own doorbell.

You know what I mean? You're home alone, expecting no one, when the doorbell rings. If you're like me, you don't answer it. It's not safe for one thing and for another, you're wearing a Milwaukee Hurling Club t-shirt and your oldest pair of underwear. Or is that just me?

Anyway, since the stylish glass panels on either side of our front door give strangers and riff raff a full view of our entire first floor, I generally have to run to the laundry closet when the doorbell rings and hide, cringing, until the ringer gives up and goes away. But recently, Baby has been making things more difficult.

A few weeks ago, an unexpected doorbell ring sent me scurrying off to my hiding place, without giving me time to scoop Baby up from where she was playing a few feet away in the kitchen.

Ding dong.

Baby was just out of the sight line of the front door. I peered out at her from the closet. Stay there, Baby, I mouthed as she looked up at me curiously.

"Da doooooor!" She shouted. "Mama, da doooor!"

Ding dong.

"Stay there!"

Of course, Baby, being the obedient child that she is, immediately stood up and went to see what all the fuss was about.

"No!" I whispered sternly. "NO! You come back here right now!" Too late. She had rounded the corner and stopped short, staring shyly at whomever was looking in through the front door window. Unseen just a few inches away, I began softly pleading with her. "Come here, Baby. Come to mommy!"

Ding dong.

"Mama, doooor!" she said, looking over at me. She pointed at the mystery person. "Doooooor!"

Ding dong.

Okay. The ringer had clearly seen Baby and knew someone was home.

I desperately wanted to reach out and grab her, but not at the expense of a stranger seeing my high school era Victoria's Secret finery. Frantically, I searched the cabinets for a lasso or a long cane, but all I came up with was a mesh laundry bag. I tried to throw it over her shoulders and pull her toward me, but it merely bounced off her arm and hit the floor.

Meanwhile, Baby continued staring for another long minute, until the ringer finally gave up and went away. I have no idea whom the person was- or why he didn't report our house to Child Protective Services for leaving a baby unattended and/or potentially abusing her with a laundry bag. I guess I was just lucky.

It was probably just another door-to-door salesman. We get a lot of those, despite the nice big sign at the front of our neighborhood that says "NO SOLICITING." Generally, they're young, impoverished-looking and selling something sketchy like magazine subscriptions. ("Oh yeah! I'd love a subscription to Get the Fuck Outta Here, do you have that one?")

But yesterday, a salesman rang our doorbell who wasn't like the others. Mercifully, Baby was taking her nap, so I said a silent prayer of gratitude from the closet. After a few moments, I carefully peered around the corner and saw through the window the sleeve of an expensive-looking pin-striped suit. Once he'd left, I opened the door and grabbed the pamphlet that dude had thoughtfully wedged in the doorjamb.

Edward Jones? Since when was Edward Jones sending employees door to door?

But wait. The name on the enclosed business card was familiar.

Then it hit me. Those of you who've been reading for a while will remember that on Halloween, my stepdaughters brought home the most freakish "treat" ever in their bags. Remember this?

You guessed it. The same man who brought us "Won't it Be Spooky If You Can't Afford To Send Your Kids to College?" is now perhaps the world's only Investment Planning Peddler.

And man, how I wish now that I had answered the door in my ancient underwear. Because I have a feeling it would have been a tacky vs. tacky battle the likes of which you've never seen.

Behold! The Miraculous Powers of the Fussy Shirt!

The rumor is that Mrs. Kennedy's t-shirts make your boobs look bigger. Ask anyone who owns one.

Yet despite the shirt's mystical powers, for months, I resisted buying one. "Writing well is the best revenge," the shirts say. While I appreciate the sentiment, I don't know if I actually agree with that statement. I always thought replacing hair conditioner with Nair was the best revenge. But that's just me.

As it turns out, Mrs. Kennedy somehow telepathically heard my doubts, because she created a new t-shirt that fits my personality to a, um, tee. It is red and it has only one word across it... "Fussy." And there's a matching one in pink for Baby.

I had to have them.

Today, my shirts came in the mail while Baby was taking her nap. Immediately, I put mine on. And weird things started to happen.

Unexplainable things.

Things that can only be attributed to my magic t-shirt.

First, my boobs definitely looked bigger. Way bigger. I mean heck. I have shadows.

Then, as I was admiring my new rack in the mirror, my husband called and said he was coming home for lunch. And when I say lunch, I mean, well. You know what I mean.

Once that was taken care of, I got online only to find that I had been published. Twice. Today, you can find me at The Whole Mom and at Parent Hacks.

And I owe it all to Mrs. Kennedy and her amazing Fussy shirt.

I can't wait to see what happens next...

Because I Love You

All right. I've heard your complaints. Your husband's out of town. You don't have a boyfriend. You have a sick baby (Wait. That's me).

For all you women out there hoping for a little action on this Valentine's Day, help is on the way. I pulled a few strings and found a group of men willing to act as escorts tonight if you are in need of a little lovin'.

Please choose only one, though. I want there to be enough to go around.

I've got dibs on the one in yellow.

Poor Baby

This morning, Baby woke up worse than ever. She slumped around for a while and refused to eat or drink anything.

"Baby, does your throat hurt?" I asked her.

"Yah," she said mournfully.

Strep throat! It must be strep throat!

"Do your ears hurt?"

"Yah, Mm hmm." She tugged at her ears.

Ear infection. Oh no. But wait a second.

"Um. Does your hair hurt?"

"Yah. Hair hut." She touched her ponytails gingerly.

"Do your knees hurt?"

"Knees hut. Knees hut. Mm hm."

So much for self-diagnosis.

Still. I could tell something was wrong. So we went to the doctor, who diagnosed Baby with a "raging ear infection." And then she diagnosed me with a raging case of writer's block. Apparently, I caught it from getting up every hour on the hour and singing my special good night song to baby for two nights now in a row.

Anyway, Baby got medicine and a "tow-wee" from Walgreen's and I'm going to try and get some sleep tonight and see if the words to anything but "Oh Where, Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone?" will come back into my head.

In the meantime, thank God for Mommybloggers. I'm part of their Valentine's Day Rumble O' Love, which means I have a brand new post over there. Thankfully, it was written before I contracted this dread writer's block. You can find it here. It's all about my first love. And it's guaranteed to make the Hubs very, very jealous.

In Which Our Heroine Loses Her Shit (Again)

A single tear rolled down Lucinda's alabaster cheek as she sank despondently into the down velvet pillows of her window seat and morosely stared at the formal gardens outside.

"Oh Muse, Muse!" she muttered weakly. "Why have you forsaken me?"

Crumpled bits of paper littered the Aubusson rug at her tiny feet. Lucinda rested her ringleted head against her arm and closed her eyes, dropping the quill she held in one slender hand and heaving a delicate sigh.

"I've a wee tot with a case of the crud, a husband working far from home at the week's end, two stepdaughters teetering precariously on the very brink of adulthood. Surely the words should flow from my pen like the waters of the Avon," she breathed to herself.

Suddenly, she grabbed her rumpled silk skirts, knelt and fetched her quill and writing pad from the floor.

What the fuck is wrong with my baby? she wrote. Nay, that wouldn't do. She crossed out the offending words and tried again.

Here's a hoo ha story for you. She paused. Hadn't she already penned that ditty? Once more she put her reed to the parchment.

Nor'easter. That's a funny word.

And again.

Did you hear the one about Cheney and the shotgun?

And again.

Why did my stepdaughter get so angry when I said her chocolate pound cake gave new meaning to the term 'pinched a loaf?' Teenagers!

Damnation! Stifling a sob, Lucinda broke her quill in half and bit her delicate knuckle.

She had nothing. Nothing whatsoever.

"Whatever will I dooooooo!" she moaned, running from the room.

~To be continued. Hopefully.~

3-6 Inches Never Looked So Good

I imagine that if I am a very, very bad girl, I will die and meet my eternal doom inside a Kroger supermarket, where the clock is forever set to exactly three hours before a blizzard is scheduled to hit.

Like a suburban Scrooge, I was given a sneak preview of what my special hell would look like when I found myself out of milk at 3:00 yesterday, just as the first snowflakes started to fall. I knew Kroger would be busy. I knew Kroger would be chaotic. I was not prepared for a demon-infested inferno full of Krogerers Krogering.

When I arrived, the parking lot was full. Completely full. Drivers circled like sharks, hungrily looking for empty spaces. And this wasn't the haggard but hopeful day-before-Thanksgiving crowd. Oh no. Through the car windows, I read panic in these Krogerers' faces, incestuously coupled with sheer, googly-eyed insanity.

Immediately, I drove to the outermost edges of the lot. I didn't care where I parked; I just wanted to get inside as quickly as possible. But even in the boonies I was nearly broadsided by an elderly zombie in a pickup truck, who actually tried to cut me off in an attempt to get the absolute worst parking spot available.

After giving him my patented middle-finger-glare (So sue me, I can't give the finger. The best I can do is brake my car in front of the offending driver and stare into his or her eyes for a long, lingering, highly accusatory moment), I parked, raced inside and headed straight for the milk.

There, two dozen or so suburban matrons and working stiffs jostled and pushed in front of the refrigerators. Miraculously, I managed to elbow my way to the front of the crowd and grab three gallons of milk. Yes, three. Although I only needed one gallon, the general hysteria had temporarily convinced me that the impending Blizzard of '06, with its promised 3-6 inches of snow, could leave us stranded for weeks without access to a supermarket. Bulldozing my way back to my cart, I dropped my armful of milk inside, triumphantly pushed off from the madding crowd and headed for the frozen foods.

That aisle was blissfully empty, save for one big-haired woman standing forlornly by the TGI Fridays twice-baked potatoes. As I walked briskly past her, the woman literally gasped, stumbled a bit and clutched her chest in my wake. You would have thought I had hit her in the back with my cart while pushing it at a dead run. Irritated by her dramatics, I glanced back at her. She was giving me my own trademarked middle-finger-glare! How dare she! "Excuse me," I said in my best fuck you voice, before continuing on down the aisle.

After picking up a few more absolute snow survival kit necessities (Doritos, beer, sodas, beer, lip liner and beer), I made my way to the cash registers. Carts were backed up seven deep in each lane. Sighing, I parked my cart in the shortest line I could find.

Behind me, a trench-coated man with an executive haircut made impatient clucking noises before walking up to the conveyor belt and giving the checkout girl the evil eye. I exhaled loudly. He was representative of one of my biggest pet peeves- the men who show up on "special occasion" days to do the grocery shopping. Around Christmas time, they turn the baking aisle into an obstacle course as they squint at their wives' shopping lists and scratch their heads in front of the spice racks. On this bad weather day, they waited eagle-eyed in the lines, scouring the crowds for a housewife so deep into her copy of Star Magazine that she wouldn't notice as they wedeged their cart ahead of hers. The buggers. I scowled and pushed my cart to less than half an inch from the woman in front of me.

It took me thirty damn minutes to get through that line. I made it home and swore my family would starve before I'd hit Kroger three hours before a blizzard again. And fucking hell, it turned out I'd forgotten the fat free french vanilla creamer. This was going to be one shitty snow-in.

Still, I couldn't help but be a little excited as I went to bed. Three to six inches. That would cover everything. I would wake up to the ethereal morning light that is an overnight snow's calling card. And there would be sledding. Sledding! I was still considered to be a dangerous kamikaze on our cheap plastic coasters. I had knocked more than one eight-year-old stranger completely off his feet in years past. And laughed. And kept going. Backward.

But when morning finally came, I knew something was wrong. The light outside wasn't pristine. It was grayish. Quickly, I went to the window and opened the curtains. "The hell?" I said aloud.

There was a minute dusting of snow on the ground. Enough to sprinkle on a gigantic beignet, maybe. If our yard was a beignet. But anyway.

The blizzard of '06 was a bust. And I was Kroger's bitch.

And suddenly, a cold day in hell didn't seem quite so farfetched.

This Just In...

Noted Scientists Discover Center of the Universe in Tennessee

PASADENA, Calif.-- In a stunning reversal of theories widely accepted by the world's top astronomical experts, planetary scientists at the California Institute of Technology now say they have pinpointed the exact location of the center of the universe to the brain of an unidentified 15-year-old girl in Tennessee. Scientists used the Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory to make their discovery, Caltech researcher Mike Lee announced today.

"The universe's center will be visible by high-powered telescope over the next three years, at which time it will almost certainly move to the girl's younger sister," says Lee, who made the discovery with colleagues Steven Trujillo, of the Gemini Observatory, and David Markowitz, of Yale University, on February 7.

The teen's stepmother, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the discovery didn't surprise her. "She's been making a lot of demands lately," the stepmother admitted. "Take me here, buy me this, I know everything, yadda, yadda, yadda. I'm just glad these scientists found an explanation for her behavior."

Lee and Trujillo first photographed their discovery with the 48-inch Samuel Oschin Telescope on November 31, 2005. However, the teenager's iPod interfered with the satellite technology used to determine her exact location. Her positioning was not detected until researchers reanalyzed the data in February of this year. In the last two months, the scientists have been studying the teen to better estimate the impact her hormonal mood swings could have on the universe as a whole.

The teen is said to be healthy, although researchers worry about the potential effect her voracious appetite for ice cream and Doritos could have on the planets' orbital paths. They have suggested a precautionary diet rich in calcium and spinach, to which the teen allegedly replied, "Whatever, dudes."

What I'm Reading

By now, you’ve come to trust that Suburban Turmoil just might satisfy your rabid hunger for warped humor, particularly if you’ve already eaten your last Zagnut. Well, my friends, I’m proud to announce that we’re expanding our humble site to include…. Da da da duuuuuum! Book reviews!

This decision came after hours of deliberating. Okay, so that’s not exactly true. It came after Andi Buchanan sent me a book called Literary Mama and said I could be part of her blogging book tour. In return, I sent her a copy of my now-legendary Anti-Meme. Still waiting on her to fill that one out… Any day now, Andi!


Back to the book. Literary Mama contains some of the best writing from the Literary Mama online magazine. I started the book hoping it would be a decent read. But calling this book “decent” would be inaccurate. It is, to be honest, fucking amazing.

The book contains poetry, creative nonfiction and fiction written by intelligent and visionary mothers for intelligent and visionary mothers. It is raw. It is heartfelt. It is sometimes funny, other times heartrending… just like motherhood.

Here are just a few examples of what you’ll find:

Eclipse, by Marguerite Guzman Bouvard, perfectly describes in a few short words the agonies of a mother (or, I’m fantasizing here, stepmother?) dealing with female adolescence. And to think of all the blog entries on this topic I could’ve spared you if I possessed this woman’s talent. Damnation!

In Not So Perfect, mother Jennifer Lauck battles with perfectionism and childhood ghosts, two issues many of us struggle with on a daily basis.

Other pieces, like Megeen R. Mulholland’s Miscarriage of an English Teacher,” are almost too painful to read. Yet I found myself unable to stop reading even the most heartbreaking essays and poems, hoping that by reading personal accounts of loss, I will be a better friend to the moms I encounter who’ve experienced the same grief.

Although Literary Mama covers so many facets of motherhood, from birth to staying at home with small children to empty nesting, at its core it appeals to creative mothers who get their kicks from the written word. I finished the book and immediately wanted to give it to a mom friend who is, or wants to be, a writer. And then I thought of all of you out there who are raising children and valiantly trying to write and create during the scraps of time you get to yourself. Consider Literary Mama proof that if you keep plugging away, your efforts just might be richly rewarded.

Whooooo Are You? Who? Who? Who? Who?

I was at the grocery a few weeks ago when I noticed that one woman kept smiling broadly at me every time our paths crossed. Hesitantly, I finally smiled back. Who the hell was she?

"Hi," she said as I passed her in the frozen foods. "How's that sweet baby?"

Instinctively, I put my hand to my neck. How did she know about my baby?

"She's fine," I croaked, before wheeling my cart around and hightailing it out of there.

It wasn't until I got into my car that I realized that the woman was my two-doors-down neighbor. Who brings me cookies at Christmas time. And talks to me when we run into each other out on the street. And made me dinner after I had Baby. I hadn't even recognized her.

It is one thing to not be able to put a name with a face. Often I can't put a face with anything. It's all one big mental block in my mind.

I try to cover up my memory failure by smiling and waving at everyone who even looks at me. Or sometimes, I'll just squint at people, like I really need glasses. But I imagine that acquaintances can still read the panic in my eyes and hear the quaver in my voice when I try to say hello even though I don't recognize them. In fact, I know they can. Just ask Joe.

I ran into Joe last summer at a neighborhood picnic. He said hi, I said hi. We stood idly chatting for about 30 seconds before I realized he was a photographer I'd worked with a few times about two years ago. After talking for a few minutes, I said goodbye and went back to my family.

Two weeks later, Joe worked with a friend of mine.

"I saw Lucinda a few weeks ago," he said. "She was so cold to me. I couldn't believe it. She barely even looked at me."

Now that obviously wasn't true, but I do think his tall tale stemmed from the fact that he could tell I didn't recognize him and it bruised his ego. It made me wonder how many others I've pissed off over the years without realizing it.

The worst part is that there's really not much I can do about it. I can't think of any easy solution, although I can think of one man who thought he'd come up with something.

When I worked in television news in South Carolina, my podunk station got a new news director. We weren't expecting Dilbert to come in the front door, but that's what we got. He had short blonde hair that stuck straight up in the air, horn rimmed glasses and he lovvvved gadgets. He wasn't much of a people person either, which became clear the moment he arrived.

"Hi, I'm Scott." Our eager chief photographer wanted to be the first to shake the ND's hand.

"Hold it right there," the ND said, holding up his wrist in front of Scott's face. "There. Now where's my office?"

All day long, this scenario played out over and over. Everyone who tried to introduce themselves got the old wrist-in-the-face response. And not much else. We wondered among ourselves what this dude was up to. Was he afraid of shaking hands? Was he displaying some sort of Trekkie greeting? We couldn't figure it out.

A few days later, I was sitting in his office when I mentioned Scott's name.

"Scott?" he said in confusion. "Who's Scott again?"

"He's our chief photographer," I said patiently.

"Wait a second." The News Director looked down at his watch and pressed a few buttons. "Nope. No. No. Huh. Is it this guy?" He turned his wrist toward me. There on the dial was a picture of Scott's surprised face.

"Your watch takes pictures?" I asked.

"Yep," he said proudly, scrolling through a series of angry and embarrassed-looking photos of my co-workers.

I would not advise any of you to try this particular memory method. Particularly if you're not planning to let people know what you're up to as you snap away.

But what's a girl to do? I'm pretty much resigned to getting the "antisocial bitch" label from people who don't know me very well. Maybe it's better than the "zero-recall moron" label they'd give me if they knew the truth.

Love, Marriage and Outdoor Parking

As most of you know, I have a husband. A husband who thinks he's always right.

This leads to periodic bickering, in which he tells me why he's right and I'm wrong and then I tell him why he's wrong and I'm right. Loudly.

Almost all of our arguments fall into the category of "dumb stuff," like this one (and don't tell me you haven't heard this one before):

"Are you mad?"

"No, I'm not mad."

"You sounded mad just now."

"I'm not mad!"

"Listen to you. You're mad."

"No, I'm irritated that you keep saying I'm mad when I'm not mad."

"Sounds more like mad to me."

"Okay. Now I'm mad."

Then there are the times where I really am wrong, but rather than admit to it, I go to extraordinary lengths to come up with all the things he's done wrong. In his life. I figure it neutralizes my one meager mistake.

"I can't believe you told the girls that I peed into a water bottle and then threw it out the window while we were in Oregon last year!" Hubs will say incredulously.

"Well, it's true. It happened."

"You shouldn't have told them that."

"Me! Ha! You shouldn't have broken my favorite coffee cup!"

"What? That was three years ago! I bought you another one!"

"It's not the same! And!" I pause and take a deep breath. "You should let me park in the garage!"

His face darkens. I've gone too far and I know it. The garage is what keeps us forever one step away from marital bliss.

You might have a garage. It keeps you and your car safe and clean and dry. It acts as a nice buffer between you and the nosy neighbors when you arrive home and don't want to chat. It places you a comfortable rung above the carport riffraff. At least, that's what most garages do. Our garage is different.

Hubs has mandated that no cars are to be parked inside of it. Instead, our two cars jockey for position on a miniscule driveway. Why? I don't know.

Inside our garage, you'll find the typical lawnmower, umbrella stroller, storage shelves... Our bicycles are there, along with a couple of file cabinets, a folded-up ping pong table against the wall and a galvanized tub full of soccer balls. With a little housekeeping, there's still plenty of room for at least one car. But no. Hubs won't hear of it.

He has some vague and outdated reasoning that people might want to play darts or ping pong in there, two activities that haven't happened in over a year.

Still. Hubs holds out hope. He paces. He waits. He keeps the space open as if it's a standing reservation for P. Diddy at a chi chi restaurant in the Hamptons.

Meanwhile, I park in the driveway. With one arm full of grocery bags and another full of squirming toddler, I trip on the slippery front steps. In the driving rain, I strap Baby into her carseat while ruining my outfit and hairdo in the process.

Do you feel sorry for me yet? I do.

But Hubs won't give in. He needs his space, dammit! Why won't I give him his space? So what if it happens to be in the garage?

Personally, I think he has another motive. As long as he keeps me from parking in the garage, there will always be something for us to argue about.

And as long as there's something to argue about, there's always the possibility of make-up sex. Which is usually why I think he's arguing with me in the first place.

Welcome to the Dollhouse

It was another dreary morning at Suburban Turmoil, Inc. Lucinda sighed as she put her 1,247,504th load of laundry into the washing machine. Was this what her life would amount to? The ability to make a paste from Spray n' Wash and Oxyclean that would eliminate even the toughest stains? She knew she should be grateful for her stainlifting talent, but somehow, it didn't seem like enough.

Soon, Hubs came into the bedroom, dressed for work. Lucinda could tell he was in a bad mood.

"You should let the baby go anywhere she wants with the donut I gave her," he said. "By insisting that she eat in her high chair, you are impeding my relationship with her."

"And another thing," he added, waving one arm in the air like a demented fuhrer. "I want the beagle to be allowed to run around the house and pee everywhere. And now that the playroom carpet is stained beyond recognition, I think everyone should be allowed to eat on the den carpet. As a family."

Lucinda sighed. It was that kind of morning.

Once Hubs had regained his sanity, apologized and left for work, Lucinda sat down at the computer. The way things were going, it probably wasn't a good idea to see if the Best of Blogs winners had been posted. Oh well. At least she could go over to Annie's and bitch if she lost...

But wait. Was that? Did that say... No. It couldn't. Lucinda rubbed her eyes. Yes. It did.

Suburban Turmoil- Winner.

Heh heh. Looked like it was going to be a good morning after all.

Lucinda went out to her balcony to address the cheering crowds that waited below. "Thank you!" she shouted, not caring that a few neighbors came out to stare at as she boldly orated to an empty sidewalk.

"Thank you, judges and thank you, readers for putting up with my unexpectedly rabid competitive streak and thank you, voters for following my barked orders to 'Keep trying to vote for me again, damn you!' And thank you, other nominees, who are so cool that I knew I didn't really stand a chance. And thank you, Minerva and Momcat for nominating me! And thank you to everyone who thinks I'm stupid and contests are stupid, for keeping me humble! Thank you, thank you, thank you!"

The End.

The Merkin

Starting a new job requires all kinds of training. You might receive a 500-page employee handbook that you'll never read. You may be assigned to shadow a bitchy fellow worker for a few days who will set you back weeks with her false information. And you will likely find yourself tete-a-tete with the stringy haired on-site computer tech as you figure out how to log in and check your e-mail, at which time he will send you a love poem written in html and you will never speak with him again.

Yet far more difficult than determining how to use your key card or apply for overtime is learning the complicated social habits and terminology of your co-workers.

I learned this at 27, after changing careers and entering an office place filled with hippish, youngish television writers, producers and associated staff. During my first few days among them, I lurked at the outskirts of their conversations, trying my best to translate. Within a few days, I pretty much had it down.

"So the t-r-t (total running time!) is an hour and all we have left is to run it through the henry (online editing!)," Celeste was dishing some admittedly dull gossip to Jen at the copy machine, while I pretended to pour coffee nearby and mentally checked off the new terms in my head. "But when vis-acq (the Visual Acquistions department!) hears about some of the s-o-t (sound on tape!), they're gonna freak out."

"Why?" Jen snickered. "Did someone say 'merkin?'

An alarm went off in my head. 'Merkin?' What the hell was a 'merkin?' Never one for subtlety, I craned my head over the divider between kitchen and copy room.

"What the hell is a merkin?"

"You don't know what a merkin is?" Celeste mock-sneered.

"No."

"It's okay," Jen smiled. "It's our little joke. A merkin is..." She lowered her voice dramatically. "A merkin is a pubic hair wig."

"A what?!" I whispered.

"No, it's true!" Celeste insisted. "Ron told us. And now we always joke about it."

I giggled. Around the office, Ron was the purveyor of trivial gen-x type knowledge. A merkin, huh? I could handle that.

At the time, I didn't ask more about merkins and why anyone would want one. But recently, I grew tired of my stay-at-home-mom routine of bon bons and soap operas and decided to look for more merkin information on the Internet.

As it turns out, in the olden days pubic hair was often shaved to eliminate the possibility of lice. Merkins became fairly fashionable for the upper crust in their quest for pubic beauty. Prostitutes also used merkins to cover up treatment for syphillis, which left them bare floor at a time when it wasn't at all desirable to anyone.

Today, strippers sometimes use merkins in cities where going bottomless is prohibited. And new employees sometimes use merkins in a desperate quest to inject humor and/or chaos into a very dull work environment.

Case in point: a few days later, inspiration struck as I brushed my hair in my office. I pulled all the hair out of the brush, then took it to Celeste.

"I'm going to put this on Ron's chair," I said. Ron was off on an interview. "Do you think he'll know what it is?"

"I think he'll definitely know what it is!" Celeste said, grinning.

Later that afternoon, Ron returned, his face stony from hours of interviews with C-list celebrities. Dully, he pulled his chair from his desk. The rest of us waited around the corner.

"BWAAAAHHHHH!" Ron screamed. "IT'S A MERKIN!"

Laughter erupted from all corners of the office.

Our "merkin" made the workplace rounds for the next six weeks, showing up in chairs, on desks and eventually, strategically placed on a life-sized cardboard cut-out of a puppet (don't ask).

And then I was sued and eventually fired for sexual harrassment.

Just kidding. It wasn't that kind of workplace. Everyone was really, really ugly.

Just kidding. Not. No, I'm kidding. Not.

But anyway, since that time, I've used the experience as a rule of thumb when I'm considering taking on a new job. As I tour the facilities and speak with employees, I tell myself over and over... This place ain't worth workin' if I can't talk merkin.

You knew there had to be a merkin photo somewhere.