The tenting

The house was fumigated this week. This type of thing is usually an excuse to check into a hotel and eat a lot of Chinese food, but it becomes harder with 4 hamcats to smuggle past the office. How did I end up with 4 cats? They are like tribbles. I was only joking about becoming a cat lady and replacing Mike with a man cobbled out of cats. This is why I hate the Secret. The author and its followers completely forget the original secret; "be careful what you wish for."

So because we are terrible at making phone calls and everyone we know suddenly became allergic to cats, we were at the mercy of the landlord - who booked us a room at the cheapest inn and said "Oh, and no pets allowed. Good luck with that." My solution was to go to work and pretend none of this was happening. Mike was left to bag up all our belongings and herd cats. He got them into pet carriers, went over to a friend's house, and propped them under an umbrella. Like coyote bait.



When you get booked into an inn next to the beach on Maui, it suddenly feels like PARTY TIME - even when that inn is just across the street from your own house. It was not party time, however, because all the booze was bagged up with packing tape and trapped in a house filled with poisonous gas, covered in a giant purple tent.

The man and boy went off in the evening to visit the cats and let them destroy the friend's bathroom, so the baby and I were ditched by ourselves. The threadbare aloha-print bedspreads and painting of Jesus blowing a conch shell were kind of creepy, so we ran off on foot to find something to do.

The bay was deserted because of an outbreak of jellyfish. We ran through the surf anyway. Going out at nightfall with no wallet and no phone to run down a deserted beach sounds like a nice setup for a horror novel, so despite the fact that we were armed with sticks and dead jellyfish, I hoisted the child up onto my back and trudged back up the hill to the tin-roofed inn to watch Shawn the Sheep on the laptop until the boys came home. We waved goodnight to our shrouded house across the street, and slept like groaning, uncomfortable sleeping things.

The ranch restaurant does not sell breakfast. In a town that has an economy based around the spending of hungry tourists, this makes no sense. We bought pop tarts and milk at the store, I drank about a quart of coffee, the kids went to school, and we arrived at the friend's house to discover that one of the cats had torn out the top of her carrier and made a bid for freedom. Hey, one less ham to feed. Mike was a bit touchy about it, because it was his face-eating hellbeast of a cat that was on the run. I said nice things to my passive meatloaf kitties, set them loose in the friend's yurt, and ditched the man for the relative comforts of the library. The runaway cat was discovered under a bush. By one of the other cats, who also escaped. How we have gone this long without losing either of the kids, I don't know.

And MAGIC! The house was untented and the kitchen unbagged when I got home at the end of the day. That is the story I was given, anyway. Since I have not actually seen any of the bags, I have been holding up every item of food before tasting it. "YES, IT WAS BAGGED. IT WAS ALL BAGGED. IF IT IS FOOD, YOU CAN EAT IT, BECAUSE IT WAS BAGGED."

Men are so hysterical.

Found in donation bin

People dump old books and magazines off at the library. I was cruising past a box of mouldering donations and a magazine on the top of the pile caught my attention.

"Conscious Dancer"

Which immediately begs the question, do dancers have a problem remaining conscious?

Answer: evidently so.

New title suggestion: Semi-conscious Dancer.

hearts and their breakings

This week I walked in on the man again. And it wasn't a large thing, but my heart has been worrying me lately - in a meat and blood sort of way - as I've started having weakness and pain and palpitations in the days after these sorts of events. I was musing on it earlier this year when my long-missing father touched bases and mentioned his heart surgeries. That's the problem with wayward genetic histories. I suppose I need to go see a doctor about it instead of laying on the couch flexing my fingers and wondering what a minor heart attack might feel like. At the very least, I have decided that I can't keep walking in on things. Next time, I pack a bag. Next time. I know how that sounds. People say things like, "You're too sweet" and "You're a good woman", which I think are code words for "doormat" and "dumbass". It is better to mess up your life through action than inaction, I know this. But when do a string of small things amount to one big thing? When I go urk and fall over dead, I guess. Not the sort of romance I am looking for. I'll take tawdry or steamy - or even lost - over tragic.

Next time.

New York pt 2

Day 4? 5? I don't even know anymore - We went to Trader Joes and bought absolutely fucking everything. I went all nostalgic over frozen enchiladas I ate as a sad single person in Bakersfield, as if that was a high point in my life or something. Bought another .99 grocery bag, since the one I have been using as a book tote for work every day for 4 years finally crapped out. I am classy. The boy won after chanting "Red Lobster Red Lobster Red Lobster" for a week straight, and we ended up in a booth with 7 children at lunch time. The waitress actually trembled. Gavin realized partway through his lobster tail that he actually preferred my crab legs, which was both annoying and a relief to my future vacation budget.

 Day... Wednesday - we went to Target, because suddenly it was cold and blustery instead of hot and sweltering, and the kids had no proper clothes. Seasons are freaky and unnatural. I convinced my tiny sister-in-law to take us to Cornwall to visit the yarn store. Mike's sister's husband ran off with his mistress and took all his belongings with him (the dark haired lover!!). Mike's brother made a pie and screwed it up, so the caramel was all heaped in a mess on the top of the crust. He declared it unfit for human consumption and went home, so we ate it with a fork while telling their sister we'd be happy to put a brick through her husband's windshield.

THE WEDDING DAY FINALLY: We ditched the kids with Mike's brother and his tiny wife. Their large dog was doing backflips of excitement, flailing claws at my precious panty hose as we stepped inside, so Rob grabbed her by the collar and hauled her up off her feet to toss her out the back door. We gawked after him. "He won't do that to the kids, right?" Mike made an ambiguous Scottish noise.

We drove to the city and ended up getting stationed at the top of the hill guarding the flower arrangements for a few hours. We chased squirrels, heckled old ladies eating sandwiches, and I demonstrated my plans for the open bar by posing for a photo in my nice dress and pretending to throw up into a trash can.

 Mike meandered off and disappeared, so I finally abandoned the flowers and ran down the hill, right into the mess of photographers and posing groomsmen.

Salvo was kicked out of the pictures for wearing a bow tie, so he and I stood to the side and talked smack about the photographer's mustache. I kept an eye out for Noah, the jerk from Binghamton who told me the book I was reading sucked back in 1999. "I am going to tip him down some stairs," I promised. [I ended up kissing the guy on the mouth and eating a cream-filled donut with his girlfriend. Close enough.]

The ceremony was beautiful. Salvo officiated in his fantastic bow tie. Lorenz wrote his vows a few minutes beforehand and read them off his iphone.

It was perfect anyway, and he had to stop for a full minute to cry. The audience did, too. After all the weeping and kissing and ring exchanging, we broke out mini maracas and everyone - including a few optimistic hobos - danced down to the reception, where we were greeted with Elderflower cocktails and TINY TACOS. In all-caps, because that is how I said it every time the servers came by with them.

The Korean ceremony that followed was very fun, with tossing of dates and chestnuts and a piggy-back-ride exit for the bride. Mike took a lot of pictures of Lorenz's mom, because her boobs looked fantastic.

There was a photo booth, and fancy miniature food, and dancing, and endless cocktails, and then all the kissing of hapless men, and I broke a potted plant.


My embarrassing advice to the groom: "You will meet other people. Several of them. And you could fall in love and marry them and be happy. When you meet these people, recognize them for who they are, and then never speak to them again." I may have shaken him a bit.

Because I asked about 6 different times and made absolutely no mental effort to retain the information, Sal finally wrote the cocktail recipe down for me:

Here it is:
1. St.-Germain (elderflower liqueur)
2. Earl Grey infused gin
3. Lemon juice
4. Simple syrup
xoxo

For the fancy bartender-invented Earl Grey infused stuff, I'm pretty sure a warm tea bag in a bottle of gin will do the trick. There will be some experimenting with this in coming weeks.

At about 1am, Mike tipped me into the car, spent a few minutes getting lost in the city after a detour that led to nowhere, and we got home to find the kids safely asleep on the couch-bed in tv-watching position. Giant win, all around.

Friday: oh god, elderflower cocktails. Why does grandma only have pre-formed meat products in her freezer? Let us lay around watching the F Word on BBC, and then lay in the grass by the lake, and nobody will speak to me of gin.

Mike's brother came over with another pie, and I ended up cooking chicken francais for 16 people. I waited until the aforementioned brother was carrying two of his sons, then hugged him from behind so he couldn't escape. It's been 14 years. I will force my affection on him until he learns to like me. I told him so, and he said, "Oh, huh."

Saturday: flew everywhere. Pressed face to plane window and watched gridwork of farmland turn to crumples of desert mountains turn to endless carpet of LA rooftops. Got home at midnight - exactly 24 hours after heading out from New Windsor - to find that the cats had completely hosed the house down with pee and shredded the memory foam mattress like raccoons. Considered using their pelts to mop up with.

Home again. Skin rehydrating and lungs re-inflating. Kissed my coffee pot and stood under the cascading shower head and talked to my mom on the computer. A big chunk of my love lives on the East Coast, but I'm happy to be in my own bed again. I hope it won't be too many years before we return.

New York pt 1

Day 1: sprinted through a maze of temporary construction walls in LAX while personel popped out of panels and yelled, "Run! Run!" and flapped their hands like characters in a really crap video game. Made it to Cincinnati, which surprised us by being as hot as balls, and finally arrived in Newark to collapse onto grandma and aunt Sue. Saw a squirrel while driving home, which I found more exciting than the missing bridges and flooded fields.

Day 2: Mike left for the bachelor weekend at Lake George. Leif discovered motorized kiddie-ATVs. Gavin got onto the internet with porn-curious pre-teen cousins. I had a series of small strokes.

Day 3: Head attempted to invert itself, dragging along bits of my lungs. Crawled into couch to die, slugging bottles of Robitussin and Benedryl without regard to drug interaction or dosage. Leif ran up to wipe his nose on me periodically. There was wii bowling, and family wrestling. I was drugged enough to roll around with the mess of cousins and in-laws with uncharacteristic enthusiasm.

Night 3: Leif stopped breathing at 3am, barking out "help" and "medicine" while turning colors and going limp. Grandma called 911. We got to ride in an ambulance for the first time. I took pictures, since I would be paying for the novelty. The ER staff all stopped to sympathetically exclaim, "Oh! He's so beautiful!" as we rolled by (loved this, despite distress). He drank his steroids without complaining and we were chucked out by 7:30am. Went home and slept until noon.

Day 4: disoriented and couch-bound. Gavin did homework, Leif played with Legos, the family left to do errands. By evening we were going stircrazy, and walked across the street to the lake. There were worms and further ATV terrors and meatloaf for dinner. I had scotch.

Day 5: Went to Target, got very giddy. Went to Super Walmart, stared too much at comically appalling cross-section of humanity. Saw more squirrels. Mike got himself stranded in Suffern after the rehearsal dinner. Nobody was surprised.

This is all sort of un-vacationy for a vacation, but I have spent much less time staring moodily up the road and retracing old footsteps in the driveway this time. Also, there is family drama, which has turned into an unexpected opportunity for sisters-in-law to finally have something in common to bitch about. I am pushing for a car egging or run-by kick in the shins. (Next update from police station.)