Dear Stepford Wife, Let Me Rephrase That.

Last weekend at my son Derek's baseball game, this British man/husband/father of one of the boys on the team, asked if Derek would like a playdate with their son Kyle. I graciously reciprocate the offer, but we decide on his house in the end. Several hours later, I go to pick up Derek. Here's how it went down:

Ding dong (...I wait..............................)

Door opens... wife is there.

ME: "Oh Hhhhiii!! How are you!!! (big Dawn smiles) I'm Derek's mom, Dawn? So nice to meet you!!!! " ( I solidly shake her hand )

ME: " I'm soooo sorry I'm 5 minutes late, i forgot I was picking him up here-because you're sweet husband usually always drops him off with me after the boys play, but i spaced there for a minute. " I giggle.

(no response)

(I enter the house.)

ME: "Woww!!! What a beautiful home. This is great!! So clean. My god!!! How do you keep it like this??!

Did you guys just move in?!!! It's so pretty! Wow this is great..." (I get the infamous female up and down scan...)

MOTHERS RESPONSE: "Ehm..no.. we've been here....'Derek! Your mother has arrived."

(I nervously giggle.)

ME: " Thank you so, so much for having him over this afternoon. He loves your son. Anytime you'd like your son Kyle to come by me, just call- he's welcome anytime. (pregnant pause)

MOTHER: 'Derek!.....your mother is here!" (I get the scan again.)

ME: " I'm so sorry hes taking so long...I think he likes it better here than at my house. haahahaaa. "

(awkward silence)

*throat clear*

ME: "...So what are you guys doing for the memorial day weekend? Just chillin out here? it's so beautiful out, it almost doesn't matter what you do right?" (I'm thinking, did i just say 'chillin'-this woman doesn't have a chill bone in her body. I'm 100% sure she thought I was there to mug her).

(I get no smile back.)

THE MOTHER: " Well I'm trying to have a rather big dinner party / get together tonight..."

ME: " OMG, I'm sooo sorry...I had no idea..Derek!!...come on hun, Mrs. Smith has some people coming over soon...we need to go, can you put some gas on it please?"

ME TO MOTHER: " Yeah I know how dinner parties are- so much work, I try and do it whenever I can...I love cooking for people...but it's not easy when the kids are home...giggle...I'm such a scatter brain that I actually have to write everything down that I'm doing- with the exact time I'm supposed to do everything, or forget it- the pastas overcooked, the chickens dried out, I forget something in the oven... if I don't write it down, I'll forget to even take a shower haha. ha. ha."

(stares at me)

(long stare)

MOTHER: "Yes. Derek's a wonderful child. Oh you have another child? "

(scan #13)

ME: "Yes. I have another KID. Justin. He's 13. Great kid. But was real challenging to deal with when he was Dereks age..." (Ooops, maybe too much information there. Because I'm getting the 'WE DON'T TALK ABOUT OUR PROBLEMS HERE' look.)

Derek rounds the corner in his baseball uniform I left him in after the game, but wearing his friend Andrews T-shirt instead of his own. ME: " Hi baby..wheres your baseball shirt honey? "

DEREK: " Oh they washed it for me and gave me this one to wear instead. "

She walks into the kitchen to grab Derek's T-shirt that she washed for him, that he initially came to their house wearing.

As I quietly follow behind her, I see the live-in housekeeper / nanny subserviently postured in the kitchen over a bowl that has about 15 nachos in it. I glance at the dinner table and see its set for 8.

Once again, I apologize for Derek being such a grassy mess in her house. She sort of musters a grin in my direction, and responds rather tersely and indecipherably as she escorts Derek and myself to the front door. I thank her again profusely for having Derek there, give a big toothy smile and wave goodbye to the housekeeper, wish her a wonderful weekend, and step outside with Derek and get in my car.

That's how it went down.

But here's how it REALLY went down, in my head:

DIIIIIING DOOOOONG.... ( Jesus Christ, what the hell was THAT.....guess I'm here to see The Wizard.)

(...waiting...) 

(.........judging......)

Door opens, "(Holy Fucking Never Got Laid) ... I mean, "Hi!!! ... I'm Derek's mom Dawn!...and yeah it'd be a super deal if you actually smiled back."

ME: "So not nice to meet you! " I firmly shake her hand and step inside.

ME: " Question...Does your hand actually have any muscles in it that contract, or have you been paralyzed by some unfortunate tragic accident. Wwwow....Sooooooooooo.....this is your lovely home... *snnnort* ... I'm guessing that either nobody lives here....or you're doing a commercial shoot for Pledge in 5 minutes. So I'll try and be quick then.

Hey, do you and your husband perform surgeries here in the living room, or is your home possibly always this devoid of love and life. I'm getting the distinct feeling that i should've been wheeled in here on a hospital gurney. My apologies for walking... I think my dirty flip flops may cause your Infra-red dirt detecting laser beams and alarm systems to simultaneously go off. Should I maybe start crawling on the floors to avoid the poison blow darts, or am I cool. If you'd like, I'll take my sandals off. Really. I will. It would give me great pleasure to see you wince at my calloused feet. So just say the word.

Hmmm. I see no cats or dogs either...maybe that's what you're eating for dinner. Well, I guess everything warm blooded and living is off limits here. So I'll make my visit quick. " Ooooh look...the diminutive housekeeper. Let me guess, you're here to whisk something off the floor in case it so happens to God forbid fall there. But yay. At least a person of color. Maybe you, Mrs. Buckingham, are an open minded, 'people person' after all. Or do you perhaps have a cotton grove in the backyard, behind the labyrinth. And you too could smile a little Miss Bodyguard of the nachos.. Unlike your master, I wont beat you if you should decide.

Let me see..what the fucks hiding in this bowl.... 15 chips?...for an 8 person get together? That's 1.195 chips per person. Lady, Auschwitz death camps gave more food. You call this a get together??? I call this a Get The Hell Outta Here As Fast As You Can, Together. And I smell a big fat nothing cooking. Not one braised or sauteed anything. All I smell is disinfectant combined with Febreze, and some odorless gas I call frigidity. So toots, a party huh? So wheres the wine? Where's the frivolity? Where's the laughter? And where the hell's a smidgen of dirt? Oh wait, THERE he is! Its my son Derek! The other pigmented person. But this one comes fully equipped with a big ass smile, and chunks of grass and soil and some decapitated slugs pressed into his knee caps.

ME : " Hi sweetheart! I'm so glad I got here before they performed surgery on you in their boiled living room and extracted your heart. Phew. Just in time." " So honey...how the fuck did you play in all this ....lack of fun. And where's your shirt Derek.....you know.... the one that I left you in this morning after the game that resembled 'The Shroud Of Turin'? "

DEREK: "Oh, they washed it for me and gave me this one to wear instead. "

ME : "Oh they gave you one of their sons to wear while they washed yours? Awww so delightfully germiphobic of them. "

ME: "...So....wheres that pompous British husband of yours that incessantly flirts with me at your sons games that you're too detached to come to.???... You know, that guy that's always bragging about his dumb ass sailboat to me? Oh right, you have him on another Decontamination Run. Got it. Then again, I understand why hes not here... if this mausoleum is what your house feels like, i can only imagine what the sex feels like. You know...sex? a man, a woman? passion?? ...eh never mind." "OK, well bye bye miss housekeeper... I'll pray for you, and I'm growing rather concerned about your lack of ability to smile by the way. And I've convinced myself that its due to embarrassment because you most definitely have a mouth full of broken teeth as a result of these hi-resin, ice skating rinks you call 'floors' (...and so you know, the key to your shackles are under the Soul Vaporizer machine in the vestibule, I peeked). "

ME: " Well, Gotta run Mrs. Buckingham, have a wonderful time starving your friends. And by the way, your little 'chip off the ole ice block' son is never allowed in my house- since i never did care for statues. And I'm sure you wouldn't approve anyway, because I, on the other hand, have 3 dogs, and cats and plants, and framed family pictures, and some dog nose smudges on my doors, and prefer a slight degree of chaos, rumpled pillows and litter pan aromas in my house to remind myself that i have blood coursing through my veins...unlike yourself, who I'm convinced, like a scallop, would not bleed if I cut you. But i wont stab you with a steak knife to find out, seeing that this is only our first meeting.

...and please...don't forget to tell your arrogant, bumptious husband that I'll see him next week at the game, where I'll continue to pretend I'm listening to him as he's waxing eloquently about his haughty, pontifical nautical adventures while I fart in the wind. " "Well, I gotta get the fuck outta here before my face cracks off from all this fake smiling. It was an absolute nightmare to meet you. Goodbye, and...goddamn. And I hope to never see you again."

Ta-Ta. For now.

;)

Just A Normal Story

“Ooh Look guys! There’s an enormous alien squid that must’ve dove head first into the ground, died upon impact and has been rotting there for days, leaving his many legs, sticking out of the ground, all dried up and shriveled.”

“Mom. That’s just a big tree with no leaves on it.”

Poor kids. Their dreams of having a normal soccer mom have long been squelched and replaced with visions of alien squids invading the yard and frequent pleas to “here, take a bite of the dog cookie and tell me what it tastes like.”

Normal moms pack their little kids lunch bags with Kraft Lunchables, a Diet Coke, and a comic book. Not with organic rice krispie treats made from dehydrated carrots, a Do-It-Yourself home condensation kit for water, and the Time Magazine issue titled: The Dangers of PVC’s in Bottled Water; The New Way Kids Are Dying. 

I think it’d be an eye-opening experience to be normal. To look at a tree, and see, just a tree. To Tivo Glee and watch it later as you eat your microwaved Ramen noodles. Invigorating. But for some reason, I wasn’t granted this opportunity. I often wonder if it’s because when my mom fell down the stairs when she was pregnant with me, she ruptured my Normality Sac. But whatever the reason, I missed that elevator, and got the next one.

When you’re normal, you think normal thoughts, do normal things. Enjoy a hot dog, go skiing, you trust doctors, eat Goldfish crackers, one day buy a Black Lab, and have 2.4 kids. I'm clearly abnormal because I just had 2 kids. Couldn't deal with the heartache of raising a forth of a child. 

When you're normal, you get a normal job, file your taxes before the 15th, you cut your grass on the weekends, and you don’t obsess over looking for bugs in your brocolli. You sip egg nog during Christmas,and you never, EVER, get out of your car to yell at police officer because they gave you a ticket. Though I do admit, that was necessary and cathartic.

When normal people, say, want a waffle, they just make a waffle, and eat it. Normal people aren’t thinking of how if they quadrupled the batter recipe, they could make one giant waffle, that E’ggo could use as an employee shoe cubby down at the waffle factory. That would be probably be considered the precursor for psychiatric evaluation or the result of a staph infection that rooted in the brain somewhere behind your eye socket. But I still think the waffle shoe cubby could make millions. And lighten up corporate America.

Normal people love to fly in airplanes, the whole time thinking of arriving at their destination refreshed and already decompressed. They laugh, and sleep, and eat bags of peanuts while casually planning their business lunches. I fly planes eating bags of Xanax while manically planning my funeral as I'm mopping up my armpit sweat. I also generally demand the window seat so I can stare at the engine looking for sparks. Excuse me, but there’s zero reason to feel normal that you’re in the air unless you’re either a canary or a virus.

On a normal weeknight, normal people watch American Idol, Lost, and laugh and share stories and opinions about the characters and plots. While I’d rather sit on my couch and write a poem about how my dad never showed me he loved me, and hid the Twinkies on me when I was 7. And for the record, if friends are what you’re looking for, discussing your emotionally damaging childhood is bad bar conversation. Usually noting that my immediate people periphery ends up 9 feet away from me, appearing that I confessed to them I was diagnosed with Small Pox. The poem however, is actually coming out good. It’s called 

“My Stinky Dad and His Stinky Fucking Twinkies.” No anger there of course, but I've digressed.

I am however, very happy to discover that there are a few miscellaneous entries to my daily life that haven’t yet deviated from the completely normal zone.

Clipping my toenails, for example, has fortunately still remained a rather normal experience. I set out to clip 10 toenails, and when I’m done, miraculously what I have is, 10 gross, clipped toenails. I’d be lying if I said at times I wasn’t tempted to make something out of them, like maybe something reminiscent of a popsicle stick house, and then give it to my dad for Fathers Day. But I usually shake it off and opt for a more straight forward thought…like the thought of accidentally clipping and severing a main artery from a hangnail, and uncontrollably bleeding out in the shower without ever having the opportunity to custom design and order my headstone in the shape of a large cement toe. But for the most part, the act of clipping toenails, pretty much mentally stays on point.

No easy task though. Instead of letting my mind run free like a death row inmate that spotted an open door, I just intently focus on my toenails, say the words “ clip toenails” over and over again, and try and think normal thoughts. But often what comes out are all the different words you can make with the letters:

 “n-o-r-m-a-l t-h-o-u-g-h-t-s.”

“Hormonal thugs”, being one of my favorites.

I’m not sure this is too normal either; Sometimes I attempt to swallow a few vitamins at the same time, and somewhere between the vitamins reaching the back of my throat, and the glass of water meeting my lips, my throat snaps closed like a submerging whales blow hole. It immediately goes into a frozen state of instant paralysis thinking of  the irony of choking to death while doing something healthy. So shut, it remains. I’ll stand there for what seems like days stranded on a desert island, with a mouth full of water and vitamins that are slowly disintegrating in the back of my throat, until I mentally trick myself into believing it’s something I'd have no problem swallowing. Like a wedge of strawberry shortcake the size of my foot. And then finally, the spastic vitamin ordeal is over and I swallow them. And miraculously survive. Normal people swallow their vitamins in one gulp and march off to work without already going through a dry run of the steps necessary to successfully employ The Heimlich Maneuver. 

Thinking normal thoughts. Gee, life would certainly be much easier. Words would remain the words they were intended to be. A donut would simply remain “a delicious donut”, and not some government funded, masterminded plan to get me fat and permanently reliant on diabetes pharmaceuticals. Don't argue with me on that one.

A kiss would remain just a kiss, instead of some twisted subplot to steal my uvula and sell it on the black market.

The funny thing is, although I rarely feel like I’m the quintessential, normal, female, I know somewhere deep inside of me, I’m as normal as it gets. Really deep inside though. Like get on your head lamp. We’re going coal mining.

So how do I really know then? Well because I love way too many normal things. Like long walks, being with meaningful people, eating fresh strawberries, a great meal, the smell of clean sheets and freshly cut grass, a warm shower, a long kiss, hearing “I missed you”. But then again, I also love the smell of fresh horse crap. And Bam, there it is. Bye-bye normal, out the window you go. Nice to have briefly met. Now go play outside with the dried out alien squids on my lawn.

;)~