...a whirl of fantasy

My aunt’s question sounded innocent, “So, when are you going to write a book?

It was New Year’s Eve and she and I were standing body to body in a festive crush of family. This is the day that is officially recognized as National Delusion (Resolution) Day, so I’m not totally responsible for my flippant answer, “Oh, I have one started."

Heads swiveled as forks halted midway from plate to mouth, or mouth to plate, and all eyes looked center stage.

In the lull, I heard repeated, “…writing a book, she’s writing a book.” Suddenly there I was, caught with no way to back out and no way to blame the children or the husband. This was bigger than baby or wedding announcements! It was exciting. It was crazy!

And it would best be ignored.

The memories of our youth seeped back into my siblings’ brains and they remembered that it was me talking—me, the master storyteller—the drama diva, and their collective attention flowed back to the buffet table.

Shocked by the full weight of what my mouth had just blurted out, I stumbled backward and dropped into an overstuffed chair that squirmed with children—while I waited for the familiar surge of regret.

Food and family are always a deadly combination for me, but over the years I thought I had mastered the technique of speaking fluently around my speech impediment—one foot firmly inserted.

I mumbled a clarification, “I have some stuff written, already,” and then a half-hearted retraction, “I’ve just been too busy to put it together,” but it was too late. I had been replaced as the court jester by two-year old cousins who, perched together on a stool, were elbow deep in the dessert.

I have tried for years to assure the family that random blood testing is unnecessary—that my ebullient enthusiasm is not artificially induced. I only wish I could blame artificial stimulants for this last lapse of propriety and good sense.

I had the eerie feeling from the moment the words left my mouth that I had pitched headlong into a mid-life puddle of something that would be so much messier than a sportier car or a younger spouse. The light-hearted swirl of verbal recklessness hit the surface of the stagnant pond that was my life and demonstrated how loose lips can sink ships.

Back at the New Year’s party, my brain returned to my twirling body sitting askew amid tickling children. I feigned an outward calm, but another unhealthy personality trait surfaced and made me decide, “That’s it! I’ve said it and I’m doing it! I am writing a book!”

Reality Bite: Stubbornness is motivation. It should be a virtue.

...weird but wonderful

     The whole point of this book can be summed up in this one essay.  I am unique, just like everyone else and I have found that through forthright examination of my/our peculiarities, I/we can find unanimity in purpose and understanding---if for no other reason than to elicit laughs.  

Dear Me,
When I’m asked by a form-filler-outer to state my occupation, I say, “I’m an enigma.”  

“Oh,” they respond, “Could you spell that?”  It's Me, T. 

     I’ve never been comfortable with the title of soccer mom, domestic engineer or goddess, because all those titles suggest a perfectionist slant that I don't have time for and while some would insist I'm merely a homemaker, I would have to insist that that's a bald-face lie and stay-at-home-Mom really means hardly-ever-stays-at-home-Mom. The fact is that I defy description and more so now.  When I mutter the newest title, alternative schooler,  I expect someone to show up at the door to review my credentials and revoke me entirely.   

What it is that I do is cook, garden, repair, sew, mud walls, paint, make bread, craft, remodel, collect bugs and I delight in making my children do all of those things—which makes me an oddity. Forty years ago, the term would have been “hippy,” now I'm an unfocused pinterest junkie.  

Wallpaper in my Mom's kitchen growing up.  Must have molded me somehow.

I’m happy to settle for the word enigma.  I suspect that most people are enigmatic and deeply interesting, but we all just muddle along striving to fit in and to appear on the surface as if we live homogeneous lives just like everyone else.  

I'm outted.  I admit it, I'm an adventurer.  I beam with delight when I hear the words, “Why are you doing that?” or “I didn’t know people did that anymore,” because deep down in some part of me, I enjoy being inscrutable.[1]   I'm struggling to dump those remaining bits and pieces of the matching set of teen baggage—the pubescent paradox that seeks to be different while struggling desperately to fit in, and I have decided to get comfortable in my skin and become my authentic self.   

Just the other day, one of my neighbors made the "you're inscrutable[2]" reference when she said, “Why are you doing that?” when she dropped by and I was attempting to quilt.  I had material and padding stretched in between frames that were placed strategically over the couch and between the end tables and television, and I was crawling over and under the maze, tying it all up with yarn. She said, “People don’t do that anymore,” and I hoped she meant it in admiration, “…because they don’t know how,”  as I’d like to be an innovator rather than a relic. 

I’m from pioneer stock and that fact makes conformity difficult.  I'm constantly beating down my yearning for challenge and therefore I camp (begrudgingly), hike (accidentally), fish (badly), preserve food, and cook in Dutch ovens (in desperation, when all the other pots are dirty).  Although I sew, cook and grind my own flour, I’m too young to be an artifact so that makes me an enigma—which really means inscrutable[3] .  

Inscrutability does make for interesting and amusing conversation at company dinner parties. [4] 

Dear Me, 

Today the doctor wanted to know what "I did." 

"For a profession?" I asked, knowing full well she was trying to understand why I had attempted my own medical procedure before I went into her.

"Yes, what is it that you do?"  

I reply with the standard answer, "I am an enigma." 

I'm effecting a personal mystique because it only seems fair that if I haven’t yet clearly defined who I am or what I’m doing, then no one else should figure me out before I do! 

 Reality Bite: My children are just grateful that different, for me, doesn’t mean headbands, fringe, experimental drugs and psychedelic hose.

---

[1] I had to look it up too.  It means difficult to understand.  Use it twice more today.  I plan to. 

[2] Twice,
[3] Thrice,  Did it!

[4] More about intriguing conversations at dinner parties later. I’ve lost track of where and when.  

…a stealthy start

Life turns into a covert operation when you have a partner who is attuned to your every inclination.

When the urge to start something new creeps over me, I have to keep it top-secret—can’t even allow the idea to escape my brain or my husband will intercept and intercede. And that is where long-distance business travel has its benefits.

While he is gone, I plan, research and then I advance the new project to an irretrievable condition. And upon his return, I enlist him to rally the troops and put every able body to work repairing my extreme demolition.

To me,
…unfortunately, the innocuous dust in the windowsill led my eye right to a crack in the wall. Was it foundation problems? No. Water damage? No.

The most recent demolition is not begun by me but by termites! Yup, an infestation in the whole front wall. So we replace six studs, and the window header, but the whole process of rebuilding a wall means there will be some ceiling damage and if, while repairing a ceiling one discovers asbestos in the popcorn ceiling throughout the whole first floor... well?

While in the middle of that, one may as well install new can lights in the kitchen, which brings to light that fact that the cabinets are long overdue for a re-glazing, and while we're in the mess, we might as well finish the job and repaint the kitchen.

Finally, a year later, we're finished with the termite project but he's in New York on business today and I'm thinking that french doors to the back yard...

So I’m a starter and my husband, much to his chagrin, is the project finisher. I give him the credit because he completes the big things: The new addition, the front window, the wallboard, the molding, the bathroom faucets, and yes, all of the painting because all of those little details take more patience that I have patience for.

He doesn't know that I’m writing a book, but the scent of a new project is in the air. When the dust on the furniture reaches his armpits, he'll recognize the dawn of a brand new venture. Right up front, he’ll want to know about his part in this new endeavor and my response will be, “Just be there for me when the dust hits the fan, as usual.”

Reality Bite: He is the wind beneath my…

…just do it

Book notes:

I can use those three words, “Just Do It” and stay within the parameters of the intellectual domain laws of copyright, as long as I don’t revise the original intent, don’t use it in a contra-indicated manner or product and throw in a plug for Nike.[1] [2]

Writing a book can’t be that difficult. I’m up to the challenge. If you walk into my house on any given day, you may find a wall bashed out and a stack of home improvement books on the counter. Chalk it up to genetics. My great-grandmother did it. She bashed out a wall and the next day when her husband came home, she said, “I’m putting it back. We’re having company.”

I didn’t hear about Grandma Pearl until after I’d bashed out my first wall. My father told me her story as he tilted back on two legs of a kitchen chair, drummed his fingers on the tabletop and surveyed my handiwork. He then asked the big question, “So, was the wall load-bearing?”

“Load-bearing?” I ask, “What’s that?”

Dear Me,
I smashed out the back wall of my closet this morning. From the outside, it looked like the wall extended four feet and who doesn’t need more feet in their closet?
Wish me luck. T.

Thank goodness dumb animals are watched over, for I am the beneficiary often. The house didn’t fall down and the kitchen was remodeled! It was finished after waiting for eight years because I did it! I started! Where would the world be if someone didn’t start? Everybody would be running around saying, “Wow, if we could only…” and “When this happens, won’t it be great?”

Again, it's me,
It doesn’t…extend. That part of the wall is where the builders put all the utility wiring, the vent for the sewer and other important, yet immoveable objects. So this afternoon, I’m putting the wall back and installing a mirror instead.  Still working for the illusion of space…it’s all in the mind. And the husband agrees that I am out of mine. Whee, T,

Great things must begin somewhere and the world’s greatest starters are people willing to tear off wallpaper, break out walls, pull the plumbing, dig up the swimming pool or write a book.

Reality Bite: Just strip it to the studs and begin.[3]

[1] Legalize aside—because I want to use these three words in my book, I have to include the aforementioned dull and boring paragraph. If you ever use these words, you must do it too, so memorize it!

[2] Note to self: Investigate product endorsement.

[3] Dad again, the bona fide contractor.

…suspicious beginnings

To Me,
The book is coming along great. The working title is, "Trust Me, I’m not as Psychotic as I Sound." Hugs, Me, Myself and I

I'm starting! I'm writing a book!  I bundle the children and head to the library. In the children's section I drop the youngest at story time, stack the second with comics and arm the oldest on guard with fantasy. The clock is ticking and before the librarian’s patience grenade explodes, I must make some important strides on the path to book writing.

First things first, I proceed to reference section 808 and denude it of every worthy book on writing. I stagger with my burden to the teen section. If I can ignore the clack of computers and vacuous stares, this area of the library always provides ample reading space and really soft chairs.  And so it begins.

Each book about writing books is, by virtue of itself, tangible evidence that its concepts were successful—at least once anyway. I read each book front to back, or rather front and back.  And from the fly leaf and teasers, I discovered an element of writing that was so daunting that I slammed the books shut with the discovery!

There is a book conspiracy [1] intended to weed out the weak-hearted right at the onset! I read: “Only the most persistent writer, willing to hurdle this first obstacle can ever hope to develop the tenacity necessary to surmount the inherent challenges of writing. The initial, yet vital task that must be undertaken preparatory to…”

My mind wanders, imagining the possibility of being bored unto death and I struggle to rouse my faculties and get right back to… what was that obstacle?

Reality Bite: Librarians frown on snoring.

[1] Created  by publishers who are buried under stacks of bad book submissions?

…disorder in the fort

Hi, It’s me again,

A sedentary opportunity is a terrible thing to waste. So here, hidden in the bathroom I relax; just wait, it won't be but two minutes and something or someone will intrude and re-motivate me. T

In life there are those busy moments when all parts of life begin to slip dangerously out of control, and that’s when my PPP-MO, passion for perfect placement—meticulous organization, can sway dangerously close to unhealthy obsession.  

It is in those moments of supreme chaos that the sight of an organized underwear drawer comforts and affirms to my conflicted soul that someone, somewhere is in charge of something and all is right with the world.

As the drawer slides open and the nice, polite rolls of order come into view, I am assured that indeed, I am the bureau chief… and I wonder if those in Washington feel as empowered by this power as I?

I know it’s risky to connect self-affirmation to the state of one’s underwear, but mothers have been doing it for centuries. They've credited all kinds of mythical powers to clean underwear and in this moment, that is my delusion de jour.[3]

It is in this moment of calm reassurance that sanity rears it's ugly head and I remind myself that the warning sign of a truly futile existence is a sorted plastic wrap drawer.[1] Any person who spends an inordinate amount of time on the fruitless enterprise of organization must be one tree short of an orchard and a half-bubble off plumb...[2]

Hey me,

I sorted Legos[4] today. I retreated to the bedroom and sat hunched over, dividing Legos by color and size. It’s been another of those nasty weeks. Nothing specifically happened that drove me to the Lego pile. Yet for supreme serenity, there are very few absolutions that beat the calming power of Legos…

I have felt the draw of the drawer—that small, superficial satisfaction that can be found in organization. I must admit that there are times when I enjoy a house of order, but the urge to purge can become dangerously addictive, like the last time I raked and fumigated the son’s bedroom. Wielding that much power is heady stuff, not brought on by the smell alone!

Reality Bite: May the force be with me.

[1] Mangled from a quote by Kate Capshaw.

[2] Still related to fruit, right?

[3] means of the day…or maybe with ice cream, either works.

[4] More free advertising… will somebody pay me, please?

Book style notes to self:  footnotes will be numbered however.  

...it's all me--T.

So, this is what writing looks like.  Here I am.  Sitting in front of the computer, organizing the desk, sharpening the pencils, checking the internet.

1. What time is it? 12:45 p.m. or a.m. It doesn’t matter, I’m always hungry.

2. Name as it appears on your birth certificate: Terina Deedelbaum Atkinson Darcey (11 syllables? Picture introducing yourself at a cocktail party. See why the nickname?!)

3. Nickname: Nina Dee. It’s because people can't get either name right, so we’ll simplify the issue.

4. Piercing: Two (one in each ear) and a myriad of oozing holes elsewhere, compliments of the Oklahoma insect world.

5. Eye color: green hazel today, but most times they are mere slits, too small and suspicious to tell.

6. Place of birth: This planet, despite accusations to the contrary.

My serenity pose after seven days on a beach.  2014

7. Ever been to Africa: NO, but I do have my own little nature reserve right here with examples of all types of animal behavior.

8. Ever been toilet papering? If it involves toilet paper, I've done it, but I don't think that means what you think it means.

9. Loved someone so much it made you cry? Yes, and scream, and yell, and curse etc...

12. Been in a car accident?   Life is one big accident, just waiting for me to happen.

13. What do you do most often when you are bored?  Write, write, write, try to make sense of life.

8. Favorite ice cream: Ice cream is inherently gross. It’s too sweet and it makes your tongue slippery and your teeth all glossy. What is it creating inside you, a seven peaks slip and slide?

14. Favorite day of the week: I'd have to say one where all the family is home... so  I can chore-out all the mundan-ities.

15. Favorite restaurants: Restaurants! Haven't I already warned you? Hepetitis, if you continue to frequent those places!!! Okay, okay, fast food?    I guess that would be whatever is rolling around the floorboards. Snag it!

21. What color is your bedroom carpet: Who looks at the carpet and how? I sleep looking at the ceiling! I'll run up to check. Who can see their bedroom carpet? You people need to get more clothes!

22.  Cat or dog? CAT, which just exemplifies the insanity of me willing to take on another unfeeling soul that just takes and takes and takes.

23  If the numbering bothers you, see a professional about your OCD.

24  Favorite TV Shows:  There is nothing good on.  The cable telephone sales guy won't even carry on a reasonable conversation after he finally pries out of you that you have no TV.

36. How many tattoos do you have?  None--sticky or otherwise. My dream one would be a notation on my back just above my pant line that said, This is a butt crack. If you are viewing it, insert a coin because I'm dead. Seek out a good carpenter or plumber.

37.  How many times did you fail your driver's test: Is this significant? Perhaps to tell whether I am a lackadaisical individual, or that I resist conformity? Perhaps I should have failed it and I never did? That is what is wrong! I have to go back and retake my drivers license and fail so I can set all to rights in my universe! I'm on it!

23. Before this one, from whom did you get your last text? I've slept since then! Who remembers this stuff and where do you look it up?

37. Which came first. Chicken or egg? What does this reveal? Come on, I wanna know! In the big picture, does this question matter? Maybe each of you could spend a few moments brainstorming the big life questions that I have? Where do the odd socks go? What psychosis is it that forces me to house their neglected mates forever? AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, HOW DOES ONE WORK THE SCANNER?

38 Who will respond to this challenge the quickest? No one. I hope everyone else has something else that is much more important. My friends seem to always have something else to do and can't even be bothered to check on me, to busy for a simple call, or to even click like.

29. Who are you most curious about their responses to this questionnaire?  I don’t care. I really want to know what else everyone else is doing right now? What are the plans for the rest of the day? What are you wearing or planning for dinner tonight and does it include a recipe for leftovers?

30.  Time it took to take this test:  15 minutes.   (fifteen minutes gone- gone and never retrieved again! Remind me to copy this and keep it on hand for just such an occasion in the future!

30.  How many people are you tagging with this? I'm tagging everyone who cares, one-maybe. My daughter who pretends to care because I have her number and I can make her life really miserable.

Reality Bite:  I'm writing.  Look out.  Arms and legs in and have a nice ride,

…vacation sick leave

Up Haleakelah 2007

The phrase “relaxing vacation” is anathema for the husband! If I enjoy myself too much, I won’t want to go home, so he makes it his goal to assure that our vacations are fun-filled and action-packed—the quintessential adventure. In other words, (mine) "they’re perfectly wretched."

To me,
The trip was torture, not because of accidents, lost tickets, misplaced luggage, or poorly planned accommodations—Oh no, that could never happen because he is a vacation professional. Each detail, every moment is meticulously planned.           Nuts, T.

My idea of relaxing, Hawaii 2014

The husband tries to mitigate my mutterings, and suggests we take turns planning the vacations.

But if it were up to me, I’d show up at the airport, wait on stand-by for the first flight to any beach, and hit a clothes shop and a bookstore on the way.

He researches for months, makes detailed plans, and then collects the travel guides (our record-breaking travel guide collection is on the list of national landmarks, right below the biggest gopher mound in Arkansas). He evaluates climate and pours over the atlas—the silent holder of every vacation secret—all while surfing the net to get the best deal. For him, anticipation is the best part of the trip. Our vacations are purposeful and deliberate—yes, orchestrated miseries.

His idea of relaxation, rapelling waterfalls
Maui, HI 2014

To me
This is the last time I talk him into a beach vacation. I try to bask, and we para-sail. I want to beach-comb, he wants to sand-sprint, I want to meander through shops, while he bargains, deals, and brainstorms, then I’m exhausted and ready for a vacation! T.

I could be just as happy sitting at home with a good book while he took the children on vacation! I want to relax!

Reality Bite: My idea of a vacation includes healthful sanatoriums and several months at Bath, or in the bath.  After vacationing with him, people take sick leave.    Ah, but that's another story.  

DIY Medical Procedures

  

Being healthy is a terrible way to get sick.  

#1  BE HEALTHY –SIGN UP FOR INSURANCE

I'm fairly healthy 
(physically anyway) 
and we have great (adequate) insurance, 
a (relatively) low monthly premium of about $300 
with a $5,000 annual deductible. 
(Ouch, but we won't need it right?)  

Picture me, the peach of Obama's pit, 
the sweet-spot of Affordable Health Care.  
He needs me--
the gal who doesn’t go to the doctor
--who is young (again, relatively) 
and healthy (comparatively,) 
to make the program viable for others who need and use it. 

#2  AND INSURANCE  PREMIUMS  INCREASE WITH USE   

So like most healthy Americans, who don’t go to the doctor for everything, 
I neglect well-checks due to the animus of the expense (the annual deductible) 
(Baby needs a new designer purse... or five or ten,) 
which acts as a monetary incentive 
(don't use it, or there will be no fund for those who really need it) 
to remain well—

or use my other health care option... to self treat. 

 

#3  IN THE EVENT OF EMERGENCIES

So when you find you do require the urgent services of a medical professional, 
and you haven’t kept one on retainer with regular sickness visits, 
and your standard care giver (it's been six years... who are you?)
and three different physician receptionists (What do you need?  How do you know?)
have declined to treat you,
(We require a mammogram before we will even see you,)
and urgent care prefers that you take that particular problem to a specialist, 
(What is it you have?  Again, how do you know?)
then you are forced to either resort to the expense of the emergency room…
(Sit here, in this really expensive seat and we'll get to you... tomorrow,) 

or again, self-treat.

PINNACLE
So you perform the procedure yourself to ameliorate some of the worst pain
while you wait for that fourth physician’s 
(the real specialist whose receptionist recognizes the word ultrasound and aspiration)
first available appointment.

FACE THE MUSIC

Three weeks later,  (at the first available appointment,) 
somehow instead of awe and admiration at the inventive audacity, 
you have engendered the derision of the physician 
who can’t begin to understand  
why anyone 
(in America) 
would have to resort to 
visiting an animal feed co-op to obtain a needle 
to emergency aspirate one’s one cysts 
(I clip my own toenails too,)
—when one could just wait in agony 
for the first available appointment 
(no we don't maintain a cancellation list,)

three weeks later!

FINAL SLAP IN THE FACE

The fee for a half-hour in-office doctor visit, 
for the use of a simple medical procedure (I did the first one myself,)
with ultrasound equipment, a non-emergency cyst aspiration is 

$1010.00.  

If I were uninsured, the doctor would be willing to accept half that much, 
but the procedure amount is set high 
so that when the deal the billing department has made 
with the insurance carrier kicks in, somehow
it will actually sound affordable.

EBAY

Used ultrasound machine, $11,000.00.  
Avoid eleven more affordable visits 
and just imagine all the other, more varied uses, 
because you’re aging…hmmm.

What’s really wrong with Affordable Health Care 
is that it isn't--
neither affordable nor accessible
and it’s not all Obama’s fault.

Many people who read this 
will agree with the doctor 
that somehow,  by being healthy for ten years... 
and by taking responsibility for my own health care, 
somehow I deserve to play this sick game.  

…conspiring

This year will be different!

Instead of yawning as usual through January, I promise myself that I will change up the seasons! I’m going to snap the ennui,[1] sling the old habits and aim for a goal. I’ll be an achiever, one of the people who reach the end of January more fit, healthier, and perfectly organized!

I’ll hit the ground running with a list of goals and resolutions that will fling me confidently into the coming year with a work-in-progress already in progress.

Dear Me,
In past years, I’ve stretched myself beyond the snapping point during the holidays, and then slacked back throughout January, and I’ve comforted myself with the thought that if one doesn’t feel bad about doing nothing, then it can’t be called depression, can it? T.

Reality Bite: Nothing ventured, nothing gained.[2] Just beware of life's splat factor.

[1] Boredom, the only word I recall from Mr. Jewkes' high school vocabulary class.
[2] American proverb – author unknown.

…lost in translation

I have begun the writing process! Research, compile, outline and then a very strong rewrite! The first three phases are complicated, but I will get it in order—when everything else in my life is in order!

Dear Me,

I will sort and chuck the paper chaos, so that when I die the children can chuck without sorting.

I am excavating all my ancient writings buried in the depths of every computer I’ve owned since the dawn of the techno age. Or I will as soon as I answer the age-old question of how to translate the hieroglyphics from ancient computer language into recognizable English. The process is taking more computer know-how than I know how.

Dear Me,

Only a few more visits from the geeks bearing gifts and soon all of the letters and e-mails that I have written over the years will be readable—a copious font of uselessness. But, on the bright side, I’ll be more tech-savvy, T

I now have a new plan for my life, a higher purpose. I will organize my journals, write a memoir and salvage my pride, all in the guise of writing a book! In addition, I can mark one item off my newly-revised Top Ten To-Do’s-Before-I-Drop-Dead list—#6 “Organize My Personal History.”

After I accomplish this, the next bold project is turning the vintage Apple Mac, Commodore, and PC Jr. into planters!

Reality Bite: Put that on next year’s TD before I DD List.

[1] Homer, sort of. My editor (teen daughter) advises me that a good writer should not underestimate their reader. “Duh, Mom.”

…enchanted plastic

I’m finally lounging alone, all by myself, in front of a roaring fire—an environmentally correct, natural gas fire, (not very warm, nor very roaring) and I’m munching popcorn with my feet up, wrapped in Gram’s afghan. I heave a deep sigh of relief at having bested another day, while I try not to choke on old maids.

My life is perfect except for a slight armpit prickling that interrupts my coziness. I reach up and delve beneath the double layer of shirts and deep in the sleeve next to my skin, I discover my daughter’s library card!

How did it get there? My last memory of it was when it performed the ordinary function, earlier that day at the library.

Although I’m surprised, I’m not amazed. It’s rather small to be so enchanted, but my daughter has been reading fantasy books, so it must be bewitched and I’m bewildered![1]

I have been aware of the magic of plastic cards for some time, but I’m surprised to find that library cards are included. Until now, I had thought that such transformations were only performed by credit cards.

It’s magic how credit cards work. They’re captivating, just flip them out and buy anything. You can get some pretty great things with a flip of the card and a signature.

To me,
The little one is impressed that we can pay with only a toss of a card. For him, credit is incredible! I too, am aghast at the statement at end of the month. It grows magically after I whip it out only once or twice. Poorer, T.

Reality Bite: Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain. A. Weasley

[1] A song title I am unaware of, but the editor insists that credit is due.

…credit casual

I’m casual with credit cards. My financial manager (husband) prefers that I use other people’s money all month, and then he only has to pay one bill and spend one day in gastric disturbance. But I use them so much that I become cavalier.

Credit cards don’t like to be taken for granted. In a vain effort to make me more appreciative, the cards disappear in a myriad of different ways. Their favorite method is evaporation. A credit card can just disappear while traveling from one store to another. Calling after it, like the concerned parent after a wayward child, the store tragically confirms that they do not have it. I then spend the day canceling it. Days later, it’s wonderful to be forgiven and have it reappear in the store’s cash register and hear a clerk’s reassuring, “Don’t stress out! We have your card.”
But it’s too late; the stress is out! The husband has been gone on business, unable to charge until a new card is Discovered.[1]

The husband complains about my card’s perfidy, but if he used his card as often as I use mine, his card would take a break! I know, because his card has done it to me before!

Reality Bite: Tripping in Tahiti, I tell you!

[1] It’s all in the vainglorious name and don’t you forget it!

…credit connoisseur

I shouldn’t worry; as a financial whiz, the husband is a connoisseur of credit and has a plethora of magical cards, most of them with pretty pictures and some with funky holographic designs. Each card functions uniquely and at different levels of interest.[1]

Oh, the magic is not just in credit cards, there are debit cards that remove money automatically from checking. As someone who was once a bookkeeper in the distant past, I’m not even sure how that works. It’s magic!

To me,
Cards tire when they are overused and disappear or they go on strike. We try to use them and are refused. “Your card is declined,” is credit code for “Your card has reclined, on a beach chair in Bora, Bora. Stop using me so much and I’ll again grace you with my power when I return.” Watch and see, T.

When a card is gone I call diligently, every day for the balance, so that I’ll know if the card’s gone on vacation, charging on itself in Tahiti.

And suddenly, it’s back—after a week’s absence, without a note or even a postcard. Quite mysteriously, like the library card, it reappears in a pocket in my purse which I have searched three or four times.


Reality Bite: I am suitably chastened

[1] Don’t even risk an interest in interest!

…credit perception

Dear me,
While delving my inner depths, I’m unearthing all kinds of noxious gas. To release it might be healthy but the cracks and fissures are deep and one never knows what might split off and go flying. It’s not my fault. Just so you know. Whatever comes of this, it is truth, as I see it.
Still tormented T.

I’ve decided that rogue credit cards are also responsible for messing up your credit rating. If they have the ability to get out of your wallet, they must be able to get inside your credit bureau, and what a time they are having there!

On any vagarious whim, the credit card company dials the roulette wheel and calls your balance due and payable. They can increase your interest rate at random for no other reason than you hit the lottery and decided to pay off the running balance of another card. Go figure?

It seems that the credit card companies know more about me than my closest girlfriend and certainly more than I think is safe even for the husband to know. I'm just sure that this is related to the alien plan to invade the world, and Mexico’s plan to wreak our economy.

What I know for certain, is that it does go far to advance my insanity, if they only knew. Oops, now they do.

I’m going to pretend that credit card companies really are a service industry with my best interests at heart, and that ignorance is blissful and not necessarily a bad thing.

Reality Bite: The real worry starts when I begin to believe myself.

Redolent[1]

I’ve emerged into the light. Nearing the end of a book (writing or sometimes reading one) is like surfacing after a wicked and bitter winter to the pleasantness of spring.

I’m giddy with the potential of new life and I’m discovering a writing voice that echoes my capricious nature and follows every wisp and whimsy. The words just can’t keep up.

My new voice dodges life’s blows and rolls with the punches. The words are a little less bruised and banged up and are a lot less vindictive. I am discovering a new way to relate in a positive and uplifting manner.

To me:
The husband and the father disagree with me, but they do agree with each other that my writing voice echoes with confusion and mirrors my take on reality. T.
I don’t know what is coming next in life—or in this book—and that adds a sort of dodgy uncertainty that could be exciting. I’m playing a sports match and I duck and block the shots from nowhere that would K.O. my plans for each day. Heretofore these blows could have put me down for the count, but now, I’m up for it.

To me,
This book fulfills my narcissistic need to explain how beleaguered souls live in the real world. The husband thinks it may only serve the urge I have to rewind the video and relive the knock-out blow. But for whatever its purpose, the book achieves it.

My hope is that in the end, you will know as well as I do what it is that I’m doing. Hopeless, T.

Reality Bite: Duck at all warning whistles.

[1] Rife with fragrance, aromatic or malodorous.

Pungence

To myself,
As I sort through the writing pile of life’s offal,[1] I’ve discovered a profound truth. From rotting peels, stinky leaves, and other reeking decay, aromatic flowers emerge.  This grants me a cautious new hope for my writing.

From our diapered beginning, to our composted endings, we beings on the earth must coexist with smells, many of them of the reeking variety. Bad scents warn me to change the diaper, excavate the teen cave, stir the combustible compost, or eat out tonight.  It’s rare that scents ever warn of anything that requires serious attention.[2] Most of the offenses are fleeting moments of foul air, akin to the threat by the husband to clean the garage and if I withstand a mite longer, the awful stench abates, the scourge subsides and life can be even more pleasant because of it.

My lifelong goal is to convince my children that many worthwhile things in this life have at one time or another reeked: Math, piano and grammar lessons, braces, baths, sports practices of each and every kind and car insurance.  I dart about sprinkling verbal potpourri on this offensive's and endeavoring to defuse the pungent preconceptions. Many of these stinkers will be truly beneficial—later. I like to think that I manage to minimize the initial stink and disguise the nastiest stench.

Dear diary
Writing stinks. It’s so much harder than I ever envisioned. The husband wants to know, “Why then, do you do it? If it’s so bad and it’s so hard, and you are frustrated all the time. Why?” Pshaw, he will never understand. T.

I explain to the teen-age son that mowing the lawn and raking leaves are muscle builders ergo chick magnets.  And to the daughter, I suggest that braces are precursors to an appealing smile and a confident bite.[3] The youngest son believes that vaccinations are an appetizer to ice-cream and the husband is convinced that he is still married to an attractive twenty-something-or-other.

I'm a minimizer of muck and it’s been my experience that prolonged exposure to noxious smells cause our noses and our lives to adjust. While the offender may never become entirely innocuous, I seek to persuade the child that it’s worth sticking it out to reveal the hidden benefit—the veiled life lesson, or just to see if the disgusting odor lessens later on.

Reality Bite: Subtle manipulation is not always evil.

[1] Trust me it’s awful!

[2] Unless it’s the scent of gas – any variety – then exit the premise immediately!

[3] Quoting directly from the ortho literature—should you ever need to confidently bite anyone.

…foul or fair

To me,
But, when the scent is identified as intentionally foul, purposely pungent, then the debate is whether the odor should be ignored and allowed to leach away unaided or whether it will require considerable airing to excavate the stench. What say you? T.

I once entertained the idea that I didn’t know of anyone who was maliciously mean and that if I just jaunt through life, expecting the best of all the people that I meet, that people would rise to my own expectations and I’ll get along fine. I skipped through my days with this happy-go-lucky attitude and SPLAT! It seems I was wrong.

The TV says there are people who are just plain mean and today’s television program offered recommendations to cope with those mean people, including the solution of poisoning a perpetually purloined sack lunch with laxative, so that the evil transgressor would get sick.

Who Does This?  The attitude of the TV correspondent was that we must stand up to malevolence and let the mean person get their just desserts from your stolen dessert. I'm trying to wrap my head around this.

So if, despite your best efforts, something intervenes (like state law or good sense) and your premeditated consequence does not take place, you will, at the very least, have preserved your own dignity and truth to self?  Is That The Plan?

Mystified me,
Whatever happened to taking the moral high road, being civil and seeking resolution that might not maim or injure? Seems I’m the freak for even considering that. T.

I admit that in the past, cockeyed views have slanted my opinion, so to gain a more level outlook, I ran this problem by the neighborhood running group. It works like this:  I broach problems as they dash by and by the time they make it once round, these fleet thinkers usually have their opinion poned.[1] I caught up with them at the corner and they agreed that the idea of retribution was truly skewed, as I dropped dead--out of breath in my driveway.

In the weeks that followed, I was offered many firsthand and prescient[2] opportunities to reconsider and refine my slant on the original expect-the-best theory.[3]

Reality Bite: Beware the world and all its inhabitants!

[1] Expect it to be added to Webster’s any day now. It’s teen for honed and owned.
[2]Freaky, physic or psychotic?
[3] Isn’t God’s method of teaching perfect?

…spheres

To me,
When one’s sphere of influence is miniscule, one’s tendency is to maximize it. Watch out, T

Just for your information, it's a felony in many cities to park in the street in front of a residential mailbox. The mailman told me this as he rolled his eyes, shook his head and shuddered in disgust at my effrontery as he stepped around my minivan to open the mailbox and shove in a weeks worth of flyers de'jour.

I was parked in front of a friend’s house, where we were next door, helping her neighbor who is dealing with cancer. We were struggling to chop a week's layer of ice off her front drive-way and I’m guessing the mail carrier thought it was my driveway and that I had watched and waited four days until I was certain he was going to drive by and then at zero hour, I slipped my van out of its warm secure haven, and parked it in front of the mailbox to block his access.

I quelled the urge to retort, "I wasn't expecting a mail truck, as I haven't seen my own mail for four days." After all, that would have been petty and scurrilous.

Dear me!
The remark could have followed the mean theme for the week, yet I chose to shock the children more by quelling my tongue, rather than exchanging in a wit of words with the mailman—as he would lose, and a tail-tucked postal carrier is not a pretty sight.
Hugs, T

Instead, I let it go and chose to muse and mutter and use the ice-chopping opportunity to imagine the mail carrier underneath that sheet of ice. Then I imagined me, the postal provocateur standing in line with rapists and murders, in front of the judge answering a felony count of parking in front of a mailbox.

Reality bite: Mean people bite.

…vitriol

When left unchecked, my acerbic mind races unchecked and carries on the diatribe deep within. “Could that law be a little overkill?”

“Would the extra ten seconds and five feet of walking push that carrier irrevocably beyond his job description?”

“Walking should be part of said description, I should think ... along with sleet, hail, rain, and all else in the quote, chiseled on the mail carriers hall of fame building somewhere.”
“If you don't like walking, perhaps mail delivery should not be your career of choice?”

Perhaps it was not his career choice. It does pay well, and that fact in and of itself does tend to draw persons into jobs for which they are otherwise unsuited. And if one is particularly uncomfortable with that aspect of mail delivery—I am referring to walking—one would tend to wonder if one is worthy of the salary for such a highly skilled, though slightly mundane profession.

The musing becomes more spiteful as the ice remained unyielding. I wondered, “…who passes such an absurd law? It's right up there with the whale-hunting in Oklahoma. I can see how such indiscriminate placement of vehicles could be annoying, but everyone has annoyances. After all, it wasn't a lust for joy and happiness that put me outside chipping ice off someone else's drive.

It's work—a task that I have chosen.”

And then I summed it up self-righteously with “And it seems that postal workers are particularly disgruntled and vituperative, which just goes to reinforce the earlier ‘sphere of influence’ quote.”

To me,
My friend, who doesn't have to write things out to feel better commented, "That's the grumpy one, you should meet our other carrier. She's downright mean."

Reality Bite: Maybe it’s in the job description?