You Take My Breath Away

It’s finally spring! Flowers bursting into color, sun shining, a toad in my sprinkler system, and…because the trees are budding, I can’t breathe. I’ve actually had to resort to my hate-able rescue inhaler, copped my Singulair from the doctor, and…as usual…I have a gig. And I’m in a panic, hoping I will be able to get my loopy little self through it with my voice intact. Neurotic that I am, I took my Mucinex, have used the neti and will again before I go. I’m sucking down the tea, will take a Singulair pre-gig and probably hit the inhaler once more if I’m feeling panicked. Tra, la, la, I usually go through this twice a year, once in the spring and once in the summer, and it runs about two weeks.

I grew up in New England, and despite my frequent yearnings for the warmth of the southland, I do admit I love to watch spring push and shove its way in. The bird songs change, the damp chill of mud season, crocuses and snowdrops pushing their way up, the grass greening, then forsythia and ornamental cherry trees, and suddenly it’s all lilacs and new green leaves. Everything is bright and clear, no haze yet…the stickiness of summer brings that.

Thus, every year, I am in a quandary: I get hit by El Spring Cleaning bug. The urge to make everything bright and shiny and throw away clutter and reorganize closets and buy new STUFF. But not everyone wants their STUFF to go away. And, of course, I find that breathing is a priority, and I don’t seem able to keep my seasonal allergies alone at bay without adding animal dander and dust mites, even with a cleaning mask. 

My son burst into tears when I gently suggested that we go through his toys and books and decide which ones were too young for him and needed to be enjoyed by other children. Ever since he saw the movie “Toys” he thinks they have feelings. So I guess I’ll have to weed through them when I am at school and feign ignorance of the missing stuffs whereabouts. And the husband has several nests throughout the house…piled clothing in the bedroom, one whole end of the dining table with paper and work stuff, the entire garage, the entire basement, and two offices. Ironically, he complains he can’t find anything, but I digress.

I come OFF as untidy, but with allergies and gigs at war with my naturally tidy (though well buried) nature, what’s a gal to do, aside from hiring a cleaning person, who would probably be horrified and run screaming…? Besides, there is a certain joy one takes in cleaning ones own house. I am also of the opinion that it’s not really satisfying to clean a house until it gets past a certain point.

Then, I get neurotic. Make a mess and you shall die slowly and painfully. Leave a dish out? I’ll kill you. Rinse it and not wipe the water spots? I’ll kill you. Dump toys all over the floor after I’ve carefully put all the parts together and segregated them into boxes? I’ll kill you. Even the dog gets into the act. I clean up the yard and he is in a full on panic to get right out and start pooping. I can hear him whining and barking while I scoop, and the minute I let him out he goes at least twice. Granted, the dog could give a hoot if the place was a complete sty but the other offenders in the house should have more than a nodding acquaintance with the garbage. The husband, when he sees me cleaning, will on occasion, join in, but only on what I am cleaning at that exact moment instead of cleaning the thousand other things that need cleaning, like his aforementioned nests. I’d give him a list, but having done this, I call it the “honey don’t do” list because anything on the list might as well be a witnessed and notarized testament as to what will not get done, ever. I did, however, use the wives trick of getting him to start up the sprinklers. Otherwise known as doing everything and leaving the final step for him to mess with…

Sigh. I’d like to start now, but I think I have to go make myself more tea and prepare for tonight. Maybe I’ll make my own “honey do” list. For myself. And maybe organize a seminar on where the garbage can is and what goes in it…right now I am just enjoying not feeling like an elephant is on my chest.

Separate Vacations

I find it easier to take a vacation with my 5 year old son than with my husband.

There. I’ve said it.

Even with the three of us, he’s more trouble than triplets. Especially if there is plane travel involved. The packing. The dealing with the nonsense of not being able to carry on all the things you used to be able to carry on…razors, creams, lotions and potions. He complains about waiting, the people, the seating, the price of drinks, the price of the tickets. If our son is antsy (as 5 year olds tend to be) I get to hear about THAT, too. And I’m supposed to handle all of this in exactly the way and in the amount of time he feels I should handle it.

We’ve taken separate vacations. I’ve gone down to visit my relatives in Florida and it was easy-breezy. Inexpensive. I’d crash with Eddie at my cousins’ place and have them drive me to and from the airport. Husband insists on top dollar hotels and renting a car so he doesn’t have to deal with taxis or, if we’re at Disney, Disney transport. Last time I went down, we stayed at a middle class resort and took over two rooms. We barbecued at the hotel, ate breakfast at a buffet and the kids played Wii, we saw a rodeo. It was fun, just hanging out. Husband, of course, was a poopyhead about being dissuaded from going. It was 96 degrees, Florida in August. Think humidity and love bugs. My family doesn’t really drink so we didn’t see the inside of a bar once, and didn’t wind up even going in a pool due to thunder and lightning. We cooked breakfast in an efficiency at one point. He’d grumbled that he expected me to “party without him” but the only drinking I did was on the plane down…everyone else leaving Islip on Southwest was Disney bound and I was going to see family so the steward gave me a second that I didn’t even want. As far as going wild, the wildest I got was a tattoo that I’d wanted to get for years and he felt he should be able to tell me what to do with my body and took it as a blow I hadn’t told him. He had a tantrum. I glowered, and asked if I was grounded.

You can imagine what it would have been like if I’d taken him…he would have been bored, sulked when we didn’t do what he wanted to do when he wanted to, and I would have had to pack for him. He would have criticized me relaxing and being myself when I was with my cousins, picked at my parenting and well…not had a good time and in doing so, ruined mine. I once got yelled at because he called me in Florida and I was giggling about something with my cousin, and he was…jealous? Oy. One trip down Ed had a cold and was fussy and I gave him those melt on your tongue strips of Triaminic to soothe him and he was fussy with that, too, until the meds kicked in and gave his poor sinuses a break. Jon would have been in an absolute panic. He is a vacation panic looking for a place to happen.

It’s not like I want to go down and cut loose and flirt and meet other men. I just don’t want to have this high maintenance person to entertain and succor when I am trying to relax. Ed goes with the flow. Jon does NOT. If I go to Disney, I want to hit all the rides, gear Ed up with juice and goodies and relax, blow off steam. Not hear about how hot it is, how tired Jon is, how he wants to go back to the hotel, etc. I don’t want to hear about how many things I have to pack in little baggies to get through security, or how it used to be different, or he doesn’t want to leave the hotel room. I want to hang, to cut loose, be on vacation.

Ironically, he always asks if I’m feeling relaxed. What could be LESS relaxing than constantly being asked that question?

I had to twist his arm to have him go on his own vacation…I did make his plane reservations, the friend he was to meet made all the plans down in the Keys. It was like twisting his arm but he was off on his own sojourn. Of course, he had to have a fit that I was having my nephew and ex sister in law over while he was away. Odd. I wouldn’t have minded if the situation were reversed. And he was going off, with the wifely blessing, to see one of his oldest and best friends. He should kiss the ground he has it so good. I used to be much more succoring…leaving him meals to heat up, etc. He had his assistant from work clean the house and do the laundry when I was away for almost a month for my cousin’s wedding, and gloated about how clean the house was when he was solo, nobody to mess it up. But I got over it. Anyone would be more than happy with just being allowed to go away solo sans  a hard time.

HOWEVER…

I wasn’t nannying him. And I guess this was the problem.

I’m yearning to go visit friends, introduce them to my son. But Solo. Vacationing as a family is just too much damned work.

Come and Get Your Love

I have never liked sex scenes in my fiction. I’ve always been a “the fire flickered and died” kind of gal. We ALL know what happens once the fire is flickering and dying (except for one of my voice teachers, to whom I had to explain that there was a reason Jove’s “thunder” was now lying useless). I loved films like “Lawrence of Arabia”, with no female characters. All plot, no throwing in “the woman” who would usually be one dimensional and just a plot device to show some other aspect of the male lead character.

I am, as a result, terrrrrrrible at WRITING sex scenes.

My most memorable scenes are probably still moldering in a box in the basement. I did write a very innocent little romance novelette when I was about 12…it would probably still sell, though even reading it would prove embarrassing (Kristen-remember Carrie Eveningstar??). Worse still was the one I attempted to write a year later…3 sisters with a horrible mother, one became a rock star (I believe her name was Ursula), another a film star, and another a model, but I never got past the rock star one. I remember showing the sex scenes to a friend when I was in college and we both HOWLED. My mom, though embarrassed, would have then had solid proof I had no clue what goes on in the bedroom at that age. Apparently the male lead with whom the female character was having her little tete a tetecame “again and again” and there was lots of teeth gnashing (I suspect I was in my Scruples stage).  It sounded more like he was having some sort of epileptic fit than sex. That’s probably still moldering in the box right along with Carrie Eveningstar. Someday my son will be going through my belongings and find it and wonder if his mother had hit the dementia stage long before owning a computer.

I stuck to non sex stuff after that. Writing 101. Stick to what you know.

However, when I got into a fiction writing class in college and actually finished a good sized novel, it seemed agreed by my teacher and allll my friends if this was going to sell, I had to throw in some sex.

So I did. It was weird, kinky, drug induced sex, but it sort of fit in. No love, It was almost like rape. My mother got a peek and was horrified, claiming I’d written porn. Ha. She should only know! And this from a woman whose home is crammed with dirty books about women having sex with demons, vampires, and dragons in human form. My family all love those dirty romance novels (except for Phyllis, in case she is reading this). I’ve just always been “eh” about that whole aspect of fiction. I remember reading or hearing about writing sex scenes and one woman said “too many breasts and thighs and it sounds like a meat market”. And how many expressive terms are there for genitalia before things just start moving into “tuna taco” territory? Yikes. I remember reading “The Lovely Bones” and it was great until…wait, how can you have a sex scene involving the main character…when she is DEAD IN THE BEGINNING OF THE BOOK??? I picture poor Alice Sebold with her editor or agent saying “Alice, it’s a great piece, but you’ve got to sex it up a bit. That whole child rape and earth thing is too much of a downer.” After a while it starts to sound like a list: Throbbing member? Check. Moans of desire? Check. Bodice ripped? Like something she’s never before experienced? Bodies fitting perfectly together? Yup I think that’s everything.

Ever notice once the main female character gets some she suddenly becomes weaker and less interesting? I have. Even in “Wicked” the book draaaaaaags once Elphaba finally has sex with her doomed lover. In soaps the couple finally has sex and gets together to live happily ever after and the plotline becomes dead. I know there is a place for sex in fiction, especially if it is one of those novels that carries on for generations…obviously no sex, no generations, unless it’s Shaker novel and even then SOMEBODY has to be getting some, somewhere.

Sigh. Back to the novel. I’ll probably finish and put the sex in later. Which, I guess…is sexual. In it’s way. And by that I mean insertion is involved, whether it fills a hole or not…

Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice

I have now officially become an old guinea woman.

I wake up in the morning and kid myself that the sensation I feel is hunger, and that coffee will pacify it. One cup of coffee. Two Tums. I used to have several cups of coffee, but now…it hurts. I can feel it in the back of my throat. I try to eat the way I used to and now…I can’t. Urgh.

New list of nonos: Tomatoes. Coffee. Carbonated beverages. Onions. Citrus. Chocolate. Frank’s Red Hot. Bacon and other preserved meats. Booze.

I LIVE for Frank’s. Probably the biggest part of my problem. Bland is unthinkable!!! I tried to throw in tea with ginger and it still bothered me. So far, so good with the generic acid reducer but I’m wary. I might be headed to purple pill territory but I am NOT going without a fight! Pizza tonight but if I may have any it might not be such a good thing for my sleep. Granted, there is a small part of me that says “I might actually lose weight!” but how is Frank’s even high cal? What will I be stuck with…oatmeal, rice, toast with nothing. Can’t eat too much dairy or high fat stuff because it will also kick my stomach acid into high gear.

Visions of Cadbury mini eggs, gone forever. And it’s Easter. I know, I know, moderate, but so far, denial is not working and I will have to go cold turkey. If not to preserve my stomach, my one and only precious voice. Already I have hit the seasonal nose spray, neti pot and Mucinex. One more acid pill and I will rattle. My horse vitamin is enough to have me feel it in the pit of my stomach as it sloooooowly digests. I’ve felt like I am not digesting, but would you think all this extra acid would help instead of hinder??? VERY frustrating. And yet I haven’t felt this icky since I was pregnant. I have postnasal drip, too, which makes for a very pretty picture.

Easter should be fun. Water please, with a side of pablum.

Me Time

I am really good at self distraction.

I generally  have some basics I have to get done to move the day forward…dishes rinsed and in the dishwasher, clean ones out. Beds made, general tidy, Ed fed and dressed, at school with lunch if required. Vocal warmups (every day), work out if I can. Larder refilled. Dinner made. These are the bare bones of my life. If I can throw in a shower at a point post workout, I do.

Then comes the other list, if I can get to it. Things needing cleaning and organized, holiday lists., etc. My bigger list? I try and write every day and I am trying to teach myself piano. But it’s just so hard to find the TIME.

For instance, I’ve been diddling with a fiction piece. I wanted to write some every day but has it happened? NO. Why? Because in spite of the  fact that in theory I have LOTS of time I have no time. Janet Evanovich suggests write early before everyone is up. Well, if I get up, then everyone gets up and my attention is demanded. Up late? Then I get complaints that I’m keeping everyone up. I could sit and type away connected to nothing (we are not yet wireless) and still the other in my home would accuse me of internet dating. Or the snarky little “well, I certainly hope that makes a million dollars and if you were as dedicated to making money in my business as you were to your own personal cr*p…” etc.

I could blame the lack of support, or time, but generally, a lot of it is my own fault.

I  get rare time alone, and usually…I diddle. I could clean, I could organize things. God knows my band notebook needs to be replaced and all my work put in little vinyl sheets. I’m not even talking about cleaning out the fridge (which I try to keep that way in spite of the fact that everyone thinks that shoving things around in the fridge instead of taking them out and putting them back in their proper place is just hunky dory) or repotting the plants (which I will do soon, I promise!). I’m talking about I deprive myself of doing the creative, me stuff.  I watch TV. I call people. I google myself. All this time could be better used. I have yet to finish all but one of my fiction forays. Instead I take stupid Facebook  tests telling me what I was in a past life (Marilyn Monroe) and what my kid will grow up to be (a disgruntled computer programmer). I make myself things to eat (it’s amazing how quick and easy it is to eat terribly and how time consuming it is to even PREPARE to eat healthy things). I got to Target and Michaels to buy things like underwear and picture frames. It’s like I’m self-distracting from self distracting.

What is WRONG with me??

Back in elementary school, I was great at leaving things for the last minute, working late and producing prizewinning posters and projects. Being an events person for the Moms Club, I have set up entire months in a DAY (granted, this was when my grandmother died and I was on heavy meds for my illness of the week). I guess sometimes I need a deadline. Weight loss as well. I need to lose x pounds by…say, Thanksgiving. I guess as far as my creative goals go, a little deadline would be in order…?

Maybe I’ll think about it after I make myself a little more coffee….

Kardashian Habit

I would say I am not addictive by nature. I would also say that motherhood has completely shredded my attention span to the point where I can’t sit still during an entire program. I watch Dancing With the Stars on my DVR when I can, and then I can get up and dance with my son during the competitions and pause and fast forward and all those things that both give me stuff to do during the program AND justify the $9.95 monthly fee for the record feature.

So over Christmas week, Eddie was playing with his new Santa toys, Jon was off doing something and I, exhausted, actually got a shot at the TV window. OOO. I’d hung out by the instafire and watched the Real Housewives of Orange County with Anny, at a point, and been appalled. Reality TV seemed trashy, an excuse for us to watch train wrecks and for shows not to hire writers. As it happened, a Keeping Up With the Kardashians marathon was on.

Now, I am hooked.

I’m not even sure why I’m hooked. Kris looks great after 6 kids and a lot of surgery, Bruce looks like a befuddled grandpa, and they all wander around looking coiffed and made up and emotional. They text. They give each other dirty looks. One goes to jail for ditching cocktail college. At this point I’ve seen four of them modeling with fans and windblown hair, three of them au naturel. Ryan Seacrest must have seen something there, but other than rich people wandering around being rich with rich peoples lives, I don’t know what inspired him. Other reality shows haven’t held my interest. As a singer, Idol makes me shudder. I tried watching Rock of Love Bus, but I don’t know what turned my stomach more…the trashy groupie types or flaccid faced Brett Michaels in his perpetual do-rag. My stepdaughter Amanda told me they offered her a shot at being one of said groupies and she was repulsed, and I didn’t blame her. I watched the show once…to punish myself, I  guess. And the Real Housewives of Orange County just made me sad. These women were losing touch with their kids and their (second or third) husbands and most seemed to fear the loss of youth and dread settling into age because they clearly did not love themselves, in spite of money and surgery and seemingly tenuous friendships and affiliations with charitable organizations.

I looked up Kris’ ethnicity online, as obviously her ex, Robert, was Armenian. She was something like German Irish, and as I was a newcomer to the show (it debuted 10/14/07), I discovered that she and Nicole Brown had been best friends at the time she was killed, and that Robert had been on OJ’s team. As we had no cable during the whole OJ thing, I was mercifully spared most of the trial, but I got the jist. And yes, I would have been…infuriated? Hurt? Maddened? by my husbands involvement therein. You’d think-as pictures existed of the Kardashians and the Simpsons together-there would be a conflict of interest thing, having him involved in the case of either side. But apparently not. I know, it’s money. He probably wanted to believe OJ didn’t do it and that there really was another killer out there to find. But even with any other problems that may have existed between Kris and Robert, it was apparently a strain their marriage couldn’t take. And then he was diagnosed with cancer and died in 2003, the same year that my dad died. On one of the episodes…the Khloe goes to jail for 30 seconds due to overcrowding one, I think…Kris sobs her way back and forth between Khloe’s predicament and the fact that she still loved Robert and maybe their divorce was a mistake. She visits his grave, leaves flowers.

I’d be willing to think that if he was still alive, the divorce would not have been in question at all. But I digress.

The daughters are an interesting mix. Khloe is 5′9″ and an Amazon, clearly taking after the German Irish gene pool, and in spite of her little DWI oops probably the smartest. Kim and Kourt are teeny, voluptuous and very Armenian looking, Kourt being a feminized version of Robert (in appearance only). They have a son who was moving in with a Cheetah girl and has some sort of neatness obsession, and Kris two with Bruce, who I’ve seen off and on but the latest stories have been about the older girls. One of the younger (Jenner) girls (I wonder how Bruce feels about himself and two of his kids being lumped in as Kardashians? He always struck me as a bit of a pussy anyway) wanted to earn money for something or another, but enlisted the neighbor’s gardener / handyman to do things for her as a portion of her pay, which frankly I thought of as a little spoiled, but very smart.

Not really terribly interesting, I guess. At least not as I read it over. Two clothing stores are owned, Kris manages Kim and now Kourtney. Khloe peeled for PETA in spite of misgivings and obnoxious hate mail on the site that she is big and fat (which she clearly is NOT). Of course, even Kim has been criticized for her cellulite. Oh NO. Cellulite. How DARE she. How dumb IS that??? I want to see the bodies of her critics. I know, people in the media should all be beautiful, right? That’s the kind of mentality that well, pushes us over the fat edge int he FIRST place. Kim stood up for herself, and I support that. I was going to end by saying maybe my fascinations stems from the fact that the Kardashians are SO different from me, from my life. But dude, you want cellulite? Take a gander at MY thighs. And pasty white cellulite never looks as good as tanned cellulite.

Sigh. Next episode airs at 10PM Sunday, too late for weary old me. Excuse me as I go set my DVR…

Robbing the Cradle

Not a term you hear too much anymore. I don’t know whether it’s fallen out of fashion or it’s become so de rigeur that people don’t even use it anymore.

Saw it on AOL: Danny Bonaduce, 50, proposes to 26 year old girlfriend.

I wanted to get her home phone number, so we could have a heart to heart.

Does she READ???? I mean, he’s not only arrested, with the whole skull and crossbones engagement ring thing, but he has BEEN arrested. I mean, I’m all for giving people another chance, but hello? Maybe she wasn’t yet born the last time he was in jail…?

OK, that sounds snarky.

I met my husband when I was 22 and he was 37. There was not only a chasm,chronologically speaking, but he’d already been through two wives and had three kids, one of whom was almost my age. What did we talk about? Well, I always liked older guys, it’s true. And he took me out to the Hamptons, expensive dinners, bought me baubles, stuff you’d expect from an older guy. Talk? We liked a lot of the same music. He’d seen the Who live, and my first album purchase was “Tommy”. Granted, I was 7 at the time, but I had advanced tastes. We talked books, I introduced him to Updike and Bushmills. He and I came from very different backgrounds…I’d been educated through college and past, and he’d had to make a way for himself pretty much from 17 on.

Flash forward: We’re standing in line getting tickets for a production of “Beauty and the Beast” with our son. The woman looks at us and asks,”one adult, one student and one senior?”

Ouch. OK, snarky again.

Child fiancee says, in the snippet of article, she wants to have 12 close friends and family at the yet-undated wedding. Is it that she has few friends, little contact with family? Is he isolating her from them for fear of their disapproval? DO they disapprove? I look at their photo on the US magazine page and wonder…does she have a job? Does she have a life of her own or does she just try and do things for him, be with his friends, eat the food he likes, go where he wants to go. Has he smacked her? Pushed her? Groused when she wants to talk to or go out with her friends solo? Made negative commentary on her 26 year old dreams and wishes? If she were after his dinero she sure as hell should have picked out that rock instead of the foolish skull ring.

Looking at his rap sheet. Assault. Battery. Drinking. Drug use. Attempted suicide. How about knocking that guy’s teeth out at some Fox awards show? In an article about him divorcing his last wife, add infidelity, rage, jealousy. Breaking Bonaduce was on TV, if she wasn’t much of a reader. But although these words may not have completely formed in her head, there’s definitely some “it will be different with me. He’s changed.”

BS.

Add to that, he has kids. He might not want more. Maybe you agree with that now, missy but let me tell you…at 22 I wanted no marriage, no kids (I’d just ended my first marriage) and there is a saying that when a man and a woman marry, she hopes he’ll change and he hopes she never will and the reverse always happens, or something. How the heck do you know what you will want for the rest of your life in your twenties? And Danny…what are you thinking? I sort of know. She can represent another shot at youth but in truth she’ll make you feel old and you’ll always fear her leaving you behind. Unfaithful? You have apparent jealousy issues to begin with and you have been unfaithful yourself. Will you trust her? Maybe you’ll get it into your head to cheat on her because you’ll have some cockamamie reason she’s cheating on YOU. Perhaps you and Sir Paul should chitchat.

I know we should be perfectly content to watch train wrecks in the media, but frankly, do we need this? We already have Chris Brown and Rihanna.

I know. there is a chance things should be different. You might say I’m not much of a romantic. But I am. It’s one of my great faults. In the off chance that this works, it will be a rarity.

Fat Kids

I must have watched the movie “Stand By Me” at least 20 times as a teenager. Coming of age movie, Stephen King, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, Jerry O’ Connell as the “fat kid” (now grown up and married to a Victoria’s Secret model). It came on TV the other day…the leech part. I watched, and wondered…

Jerry O’Connell was the fat kid?

A little chubby, big boned, perhaps, the kind of baby fat kids that age tend toward before they shoot up. Sensitive. Eager to please. Hungry all the time to fill some indefinable hole. And the main character? As if to focus on the fact that Stephen himself was probably a portly youth, that short story where the fat kid has the last laugh at the pie eating competition by making the whole town throw up.

I get that. I remember my mother being disgusted with my brother and I that none of our clothes fit. Said “My kids are Porky and Petunia Pig!” I remember us bursting into laughter at the absurdity of what she was saying but it scarred him. Of course, everything scarred him.

My family was all about food. My mom has been thin most of her life, my dad grew up a poor orphan. Mom manipulated us with food, basically. I remember being out in the street (in clogs and a wrap skirt) beating the tar out of poor abused Robert Amaio who was twice my size and my mother dragging me inside and trying to bribe me with a milkshake.

A milkshake??? I was WINNING. I don’t even remember why we fought. It was just sort of my thing, beat up Robert Amaio. I geared up all darned DAY for that battle and she thinks a MILKSHAKE is going to replace the taste of victory? I wasn’t fat, then. A little heavy, but we’d been to Bermuda that summer and apparently all my parents wanted to do was EAT. And if you don’t clean your plate…no dessert! And generally dessert is everything to a kid. Mom laughs telling people I didn’t WANT to order off the childrens menu; I wanted the rack of lamb! And we went to restaurants, not high end ones, but no health food there. I consistently ordered the prime rib at the one place and it was always cold and I’d always send it back, and mom would snap “if you have to send it back every time, you should either eat it or stop ordering it.” But I wanted the prime rib. I know, picture this little fatty sitting there, demanding, but I still think, having been a waitress, better to send it back than just say nothing and never return. I even asked to see the manager at HoJos because such and such wasn’t on the menu though advertised. I was 10. It was what my mom had wanted to order, not me. She seemed humiliated but after the fact she laughs every time the story is told. The story she doesn’t like was meeting up with dad and Mike there after my dance class (Mike had been at hockey practice) and dad and I racing them home, leaving mom to deal with Mike, who had chugged 3 huge lemonades down and unbeknownst to us was puking his guts out all over the parking lot. Poor Mike, Poor mom. But I digress.

Where I may have been chubby (mom would buy me these knit outfits and tell me that I looked like a stuffed sausage when I wore them…apparently she’d bought them in a state of denial, right along with many pairs of plaid pants), my brother actually got FAT. It happens. Dad (with affection) referred to him as “the Little Butterball”. I never got to hear about any harassment he received at school, but it must have been there. Kids can be very mean. But again, mom would bribe him with goodies and he’d just do whatever she’d say. Sodas. Trips to 7-11 for candy. We used to have Pequot sodas delivered to our door, all flavors, nothing diet. It wasn’t like we weren’t active…hockey, baseball, dance, horseback riding (which he did for a while though terrified of horses), karate. We had a swimming pool that we were in from the moment we woke up til we went to bed at night, reeking of chlorine. We just ATE. Heck, if you didn’t like what was for dinner, fill up on bread. Oh, and we ate our feelings, too. Complain? Boo hoo? You’re a wimp, my problems are worse. Eat a Twinkie. Oh, and don’t waste food. Dad had been poor, and would come from the supermarket with everything under the sun because it was on sale (often neglecting to bring home the article he’d meant to buy in the first place) and cram it in the pantry. I still have nightmares about that pantry. Cereal full of ants, pasta full of those little mealy bugs or God forbid moths. Mom would hide food under her bed as a kid and not know why, chalked it up to famine in a past incarnation.

But I’d go for the Twinkie box (in the equally icky and overstuffed bread drawer). There’d be none. Mike would have eaten the last and left the box, not wanting to call attention to himself.

I’d diet, being female. But mom would try to get Mike to eat healthy and feed him oh, MY LUNCH, leaving me nothing. Once it was a fruit salad of blueberries and strawberries. He ate the whole thing. And went ot the emergency room because he was allergic to strawberries.

We were both convinced that the “husky” tag on the backs of our beige pants referred to the color…

Nowadays, we’d be some of the slimmer end of the group. I went onto the city with friends to see a rock concert and was absolutely amazed that the kids were so BIG. I mean, as if they’d been big since birth and their whole structure had adapted to the extra weight. Huge skulls, huge bones. HUGE. Like they were a different race. They made Samoans look run of the mill. Poor Jerry O’Connell would have been put on malteds if he had to keep up. If you’re a chubby chaser these days, watch out or you will get crushed. Oddly enough, now that we’re more aware of the weight thing, people are bigger. It’s an old joke that people were thinner when we drank real soda and ate cheeseburgers. I myself got thin eating nothing but Cool Ranch Doritos. Now you have obese 3 year olds and five year olds wanting to slim down to look good in their Miley getups. And yet…video games, DVD players, no kids on the block to run and play with for fear of predators, no playground equipment because of insurance, busy parents leaving the kid in front of TV to amuse him or herself instead of out in the back playing ball…TV commericals, fast food because you’re in a hurry, starchy food because healthy food is expensive…I always say thank God I have a daughter, not a son, because of all the pressure on them nowadays but I still remember my brother puking every morning trying to make weight for wrestling…

Deep breath. Trying to think where I’m going with this…

These poor kids. I don’t know whether to feel sorrier for the fat kids whose parents are just as heavy as they are and continue to gorge themselves or the ones whose parents are on them to lose weight. I’ve seen and been both. Mom was so big at my second wedding she looked like Grimace in her purple velvet muumuu. Then when my dad died, everything hung off her from her clothes to her skin. My aunt has been big and not, big and not her whole life, wardrobes from thin to huge. When I’m upset, I alternately eat and starve myself. God knows what my brother looks like. Walking in the mall with my then thin male cousin, he remarked, “the skinny ones DRINK.” Heh. Stopped drinking after that. In our family it seems to come down to anorexic or obese. I’m wavering between both. “What’s an anorexic doing trapped in this body?” Kristen and I used to joke in high school. I got what my friends and family thought was much too thin after I had Eddie, but I still think I looked too heavy. Nutty, right? I look at TV actresses now and from say, Dallas, and think most of them would never be able to get work nowadays.

Fat kid. Damn. Out of Samoas. Those crazy girl scouts…

3:30 AM. Or So.

Up again. I squint and basically have to deform my myopic eyeballs to see the red numbers on the clock. 3:38 AM. I don’t know whether the clock is still off by a few minutes or not, but again, it’s way too early to be up.

I’m hot. I take off my socks. There’s a peculiar feeling in the middle of my back, so lying on my back isn’t working. I don’t know whether that’s from doing pushups more recently or from not having done them for a few days. On occasion, it’s where I get this creepy, crawly sensation like I did when I got restless legs syndrome.

I listen.

I’m solo, so the silence is bliss. No breathing, snoring, clicking. Not even any house noises, as upstairs is carpeted. The silence is the best part of night waking, though I do run through my mental list as an anxiety check, to see if that’s why I am awake. I’m good at denial, though, as evidenced by the fact that I don’t immediately attribute the waking period to my four cup of coffee a day, several bottles of flavored B-12 a day habit. Oh, and did I mention that the water also contains ginseng? I know, drink regular water, but ever since I did those detox foot pads and mine actually came out darker than my lifetime smoker, box o wine drinker mom, I’d had a bee in my bonnet about heavy metals in the H2O. Of course, the yummy flavored water also contains Splenda (sorry Diane), which isn’t the greatest. My favorite flavor is pomegranate.

Let’s see. I overate. I did the go to the store hungry again thing…which, glancing at my calendar and slightly more voluptuous parts of my anatomy, jibes with the whole “PMS has arrived” thing. Look in my basket, and in it are Oreos(which I kid myself I will share with my son), salt and vinegar potato chips (Wise, the ones that contain the least potato and no vinegar), granola (which I love but really should know better by now). The girl scouts were out front (Thin Mints in the freezer for my mom when she comes next weekend…ha ha. I hid my Samosas in the car). I managed to bypass the Cadbury mini eggs, as I know myself too well to think I will NOT down the whole bag (I figure I can rid myself of them and start anew the next day, but I don’t want to waste the money). At least I have my own personal junk food, which will keep me out of everyone elses junk food. But I cleaned the stove top (a real hardcore task, which required much scraping and soaking and a heavy application of WD-40 and wound up taking half the day), so I needed to reward myself. And Ed, who came along. Him I got a jump rope (he’d asked for one for Christmas but Santa forgot) and inexpensive kite (we have a huge one, but if he and I fly it together it would carry us off) and Beverly Hills Chihuahua (silly, but he liked it). Food therapy AND retail therapy! And as for dinner (comfort food city), turkey breast, stuffing, baby artichokes (no, I haven’t yet gotten over the fact that I missed Turkey Day in its entirety). And the two glasses of wine didn’t help.

So it might be food based, this insomnia. Yuk. But I search further.

My “to do” list always enters the fray. Forgot to buy dog food. Forgot to mention the toy drive in the Mothers Club weekly e-mail yet again. Oh, and if I don’t work out, I don’t sleep well, and I haven’t had a decent workout since Wednesday and it is now Sunday, so there’s that. I have to get the music for my Monday AM voice lesson. Jon says we’re running out of money and he’s not sure whether we should renew the lease or downsize and yet he wants to go on ANOTHER vacation. We just WENT on a vacation. He and I have verrrrrrrrrydifferent ideas of vacation. I want to bop around, be a tourist, meet up with friends, not necessarily spend a whole lot of money. He likes to be trapped in an expensive hotel room and eat at 5 star restaurants. He told me en route to one vacation how bohemian he was. I countered with “Bohemian? Your idea of bohemian is to stay in a four star hotel rather than a five star hotel!”. In addition, with upcoming band gigs, I’ll be lucky to have a weekend a month free to see my mom, let alone go off on some vacation we can’t afford. Sheesh. At least when I’m gigging I’m making money.

Could be aging. I keep meaning to try the melatonin thing but, like my multivitamin, I forget. Perimenopause. But not much I can do about that. And I’m not so awake I’ll get up and read. Besides, I need new reading stuff, just finished my latest.

I think about checking the clock and decide not to bother.

Vacation. There are several places I’d like to go…in my dreams. Would be nice to go up to the Cape and see Kris. Supposed to hook up with Jen and Max in RI and stay there. Might be fun to visit family in TN, on a long shot see Anny and Candice in CA and in my wildest dreams see Kim in Hawaii. All of which I could wheedle a place to stay, not too much money. Still want to go to Florida for my 40th but I don’t know if I can wait that long. I’d take a quick run down in the interim but for two things: One, Ed and I are completely activitied out (something that we’ll have to economize) and it would be cheaper if just Ed and I went and didn’t take Jon. Somehow I don’t think he’d go with the whole camp out on the couch way of things, and did I mention that he said we’re running out of money…?

Oy. A lot to think about. No wonder I’m awake. I do the bad dreams check and find none.

I’m not worried. I’ll eventually drop off. I’ve been here before and I’ll be here again.

See you in the morning!

LOUD

OK, so I am a singer in a band. Drums (a mic in each) behind me, a bassist who plays harder as the night goes on, a guitarist who needs a 12-step program to stop turning up during the evening and a keyboard player who is competitive with all of them. One would think I could take loud.

Not. It’s very hard. And my family has no concept of this.

Growing up, I remember listening to the house sounds when I was waiting to get out of bed for school. Dad coughing, rattling around, showering, going downstairs to shave, and then banging on my door, saying “let’s GO.” My mom would arise afterward, cough, cough, cough. I joke I could pick her cough out of a crowd of thousands. But generally, growing up, we weren’t loud people. There was some shouting, some raucous laughter, but aside from that, we tried to keep it down.

In college, my first night in the dorms, there was a beer party in the hallway. Not too bad; generally mixed noises of conversation too blurred to hear were soothing. But if I can understand what people are saying, there’s always that temptation to join in. My new roommate, however, wanted to sleep with music on. Air Supply.

“No way,” I said.” Not gonna happen.” Lucky for her I found a boyfriend down the hall about 2 months later and camped out there.

Senior year? There was a party in the house a bunch of us had gotten together, and I was trying to sleep. My ex sister in law still remembers me in a green towel yelling down from the balcony for everyone to keep quiet. Repeatedly. That was me, the fun sucker! But not really.

So, now I have a 5 year old who scream everything, either joyfully or angrily. We have a huge living room and sounds echo. He yells, his dad yells, the dog barks…one big headache. I will not yell, but it freaks me out. I shush all of them, but the dog doesn’t understand, Eddie just gets too excited to listen and Jon…well, he’s probably half deaf, as he’s always told me he’s seen the Who and Jimi Hendrix live. He’s probably one of the worst. He gets up and I would swear he was loud on purpose just to make me crazy. He breathes loud. Is breathing supposed to be audible? Is an iron lung not far in the future? He falls asleep and he snoooooores. Or he makes this sucking sound which erupts into a snore. He gets up and walks around the house, cough, cough, cough, clears his throat, batters things around. He yawns and it rattles the rafters. He sneezes like a native American call to war. He’s heavy on the stairs. If he is up, unless you are deaf…and I sleep with earplugs…you know he is awake. Neighbors probably know, too. And the both of them have this annoying habit of talking to me at the same time, nonstop, very aggressively, as if each has my undivided attention and yet each tries to speak louder than the other instead of say, stopping, saying excuse me. Sometimes I just want to clap my hands over my ears and, um, run screaming. It Ed picks up his dad’s habit of talking through EVERY SINGLE MOVIE or TV show instead of watching it, I think I’m going to freak out.

Of course, Jon complains about my stepdaughter, Amanda, being loud.

Amanda, ever since she was a child (OK, and she has gotten better, so if you are reading this, Amanda, I have noticed!) I used to joke that if she was Anne Frank, there would BE no diary. You’d think she weighed 300 pounds, her step was so heavy. Every overheard phone conversation seemed like a shouting match. I’d ask who she was fighting with, and she’s say, “I wasn’t fighting, we were just talking.” She’d try and make herself something to eat int he middle of the night and you’d think the house was caving in, she’d make such a ruckus getting out the pan, the ingredients, slamming the fridge. In contrast, her younger sister seems to make as little noise as possible, probably merely TO contrast. I don’t think she likes noise much, either. But now she lives outside of LA and probably has to deal with it more than she otherwise might.

Silence. It is my favorite part of having the house to myself, which I rarely do. There’s always some noise, some talking, barking, rattling. I wish I could teach my son to lower his voice, for one thing, but even the teacher has to tell him to no avail.

And yet, when he got laryngitis at a point last fall, I missed his little chattering voice. I was actually saddened by it.

Unfortunately, though, God has a wry sense of humor. Jon has never in his life had laryngitis. But I’m sure if he ever did, he’d make up for it.