Middle Aged Woman Called Me A Dolt**

This didn't happen at the grocery store which is a good thing: I am mean with the egg plant. And my half-frozen pork tenderloin right hook, all swift and thwack!? "You called me a what?" It's on: brawl in Aisle 4.

But this didn't happen in Aisle 4, or anywhere "real." And it didn't even happen to me exactly, but I felt like it did. Middle aged woman* (*not her real name) (maybe) made a comment on a blog (rhymes with wack jockey pleaseus) soapboxing that people who self-publish books are talentless dolts. Dart meet heart.

Maybe this middle aged woman didn't mean to imply that ALL self publishers (or independent filmmakers or musicians) are talentless, effortless dolts. Maybe she was just pointing out that in this one particular instance at Blogher, she wished to hear from "real authors" who have written queries and proposals. Which would be valuable information, absolutely.

But writing is a practice in precision; even if it's blurry, it's meant to be blurry -- a precise knife's edge scrawled in crayon and rubbed out just.so. So I gotta figure, since middle aged woman is a writer (*not her real profession), she must have precisely meant what she precisely wrote that "any dolt can do that. It's getting an agent and a publisher that requires some talent and great effort."

Oh dear. 

Am I taking this personally? Maybe (she says, grabbing eggplant, reaching for tenderloin...), but I get it. 

I suppose if I had what middle aged woman thinks is a better work ethic and more talent and more authenticity, I might have spent the last six months finding an agent and writing a book proposal. And who knows? Maybe that's what I'll spend the next six months doing. It's a noble and ridiculously difficult pursuit (hats off and god speed, Anna Lefler).   

But me and my co-authoress spent OUR six months in side-splitting hysterics on an adventure of headaches and highlights and what the hell, let's do it because it was...fun and funny. The fact that we actually saw our idea through to completion and  omigod! the horror!  self-published our epic tome with five kids and their laundry between us makes for a ridiculously sweet sense of accomplishment.

Because after a decade's worth of parenting and housewifery, completing something separate from my kids' good grades or my clean house is completely un-dolty, you silly, silly middle aged dolt.

**I think I could re-title this: "No One Puts Picket in the Corner. No One. Because Corners Make Her Pissed."

Alone in House Haikus

When clean and silent

Becomes lonely and pressure

Work is a burden 

Thought I might like it

more than I do; that was dumb

My heart pounds bigger

She smokes alone now

She knows her days are short now

Someday? Kids kills butts

Quiet is a word

Noisy is a word we hate:

All words are iffy

I miss them sort of

I sleep late all by myself

I wake: all alone

Haiku is easy

When at a loss for words yo:

I write anyway

Loneliness sucks balls

Happiness is a full house:

I knew that always

Kids loud and away

Echo here this quiet night:

I hear like always

Like always, I speak

a poem here, a word there:

sweet tart words: come home.

Can You See Me Now?

Kids at a pool: it's the epitome of fantastic wretchedness.

They swim and dunk and dive and flop unattended and fully entertained and working up to an excellent exhaustion. The sunscreen melts off the minute it's applied, but their bodies are submerged, so: only shoulders get burnt, maybe noses. They paddle and flop and hunt quarters at depths taller than they are. They coordinate games named "Baby Dolphins." They get drenched and pickled and giddy all at once.

But the goggles are too tight or too loose or worse than her brother's. The towel is too soggy but worthy of a battle, a whippingatyou, smackingatyou battle. The sister's belly flop is half-assed and "mine will be better and hurt more than hers" and WATCH ME WATCH ME WATCH ME will echo across the chlorine, over the deck chairs, past my magazine, and straight into my face. Straight into my face over and over and over: WATCH MEEEEEEE!

I explain that I have but two eyes and even if one goes one way and the other another, I still cannot see Three Short Drunk People do Amazing Short Drunk People Tricks in the pool. So I say -- "you first" and "your turn now" and "hold on! hold up! do it again: I am watching." 

Watching what? Nothing really. A kid holding her breath for as long as little lungs can, a wobbly hand-stand where points are counted for pointed toes, a boy and his butt-crack attempting a cannon ball. Watch me! they shout. 

What they mean to say is: See me! SEE. ME.

I struggle to get through a page of the New York Post, which is pathetically impossible. I am commanded to WATCH ME every four to seven seconds but I realize something as I do as told, as I bear witness to nothing and everything: little changes with age. That impulse to be seen? It clings to the body like salt water or chemicals. It holds on past childhood.

New jeans, fresh paint, shiny car, a sleek tattoo: we dive in, we jack-knife, we swim the fastest, we make waves, we sink to the bottom, we do a dead mans float, we make up games and break the rules, we hunt for money at some depth deeper than we should, we float and drift to the stairs.

See Me! we say. We say it sometimes without speaking. We say it to people we love and to strangers and to passers-by. We are all sometimes just kids at a pool, fantastically wretched and soaked and half-naked. 

Watch me. 

Dear Mother Nature

Listen. I know you are anothah mutha, so props for that, but dude: what is up?

Can we not make one plan that will get all my children out of my face for three to five hours (say) without you effing everything up? You shine the sun one minute, blow crazy wind the next. Sweaty heat, then need a fleece. Thunder, microfuckingbursts, raining slugs. Ummm? Not to be rude, but...

GET BACK ON THE MEDS, GIRL. Stat. 

I've been packing the beach bags/unpacking the beach bags for a better part of the last two months. Making plans, changing plans, canceling plans and then oh! look at you: you just made the frickin sun come out! At the cocktail hour dinner time no less, when everyone is so ridiculously thirsty crabby that we can't.go.anywhere lest we get strange looks and I have to yell very very loudly.

I have mushrooms growing between the boards on my deck. The weeds in my garden are winning.  And my hair? Oh dear god woman: have you no pity at all?

I recognize you have some issues, but dude, I am recycling every single one of my beer cans and you know my kids never ever flush the toilet (even when there's poop in there) so c'mon. A few inches of the radar map, that's all I ask. Just a few inches give/take 300 miles in every direction that are not splattered with green masses and red spots and ALERT ALERTs -- yeah, that'd be awesome. 

My children will thank you, my husband will thank you, our boat will keep its carbon low for you: and I will plant things or clean things or um, you know,  just sit on the couch by myself and make daisy chains and sing folk songs. WHATEVER YOU WANT, I will do it...

I swear I will not rag on you about the current condition of my thighs (my fault) and I guess the skin above my knees and below my belly button is (sigh) just the nature of things, so I will go with you on that and my grey hair too. Because girl, I do love those hydrangea. A lot.

But please, for all that is good and right and that tethers together the last shred of my sanity, please think of the children. Get it together. I need some quiet around here.

Sincerely,

Ms Picket

Bad Mother Thankful For Decent Kids

Ex. 1:

Rory packs her backpack for sports camp. She does this by herself because I know she can, because she should, and also because I am on the phone with my sister who is telling me about my other sister who is sick and in the hospital. Do it yourself, I say, and not nicely, and kinda rudely.

Rory packs sunscreen, a bathing cap, a water bottle, a towel, spare undies, and breath mints. Breath mints? Girl is wikkid prepared. If she were not 8 and headed to sports camp, I might think she was prepping for a hook-up.

She lays out her t-shirt and soccer shorts for her wake-up call. She hates mornings as much as I do.

Ex. 2:

Bridget lobbies to stay up thirty minutes later than the other two because she's 20 months older (yo) and almost ten (dude!) and I make the deal with her.  I do because she can handle it, but also because my sister calls again to explain my other sister's illness, and this makes me too tired/wired to wrestle three into bed at once. 

While I get the download on my sisters sad stomach, the extra thirty minutes passes. I wave Bridget over to me, phone still cradled between chin and ear, hug her as best I can and kiss her face. I mouth "good night" and "sorry" and she hugs me and mouths "I love you." Like a big girl, she takes her book and puts her own self to bed. 

Later, at last, I hang up the phone, relieved but feeling far away from a hospital in New Jersey. I sigh and stand up from my desk to assess the damage I have ignored for two hours.

Bridget has cleaned the three games that were laid out on the rug: plastic playing parts and cards and dice all now neatly tucked away. She has loaded the sink with milky cups and dusted cracker bits off the couch. She has fluffed the pillows. Fluffed them.

Ex. 3:

The GFYO does not wake me at 1am for a chit chat and snuggle. He does not wake me at 3am with a question about ants or volcanos. Instead, he runs to me in the morning with arms out and topless, boxers hip-slung and covered in pick-up trucks. My bedhead is so far out of control it's like art and he runs to me still, even before I've made coffee, before I've even spoken. 

He says, Mama! I missed you.

Result:

Tonight, while my sister is on the mend, the worst averted, I tell them they can walk to the ice cream store ALL BY THEMSELVES. Hoots and hollers ensue because they've been begging to do this. I am the Good Mom, the best mom, the most awesome.

'Cept I don't have enough cash. Bridget gets money from her tooth fairy fund and I write her an I.O.U. 

I owe you, I really do.

As Seen on TeeVee

(Okay, okay: there wasn't a group waxing session at Blogher either.  There was a lot of booze, a lot of funny smart women and men, some useful information, and a lot of, well, a lot of booze. JenW brought a rolling cooler and even left us a spare. And Carolyn and I were interviewed on camera which was kind of like a freak show hilarious but can only mean one thing: next stop: Oprah! But that's over now... let's move on.)

The Kid is a hot piece, a professorial looking dude with a little dash of Allman Brother hippy. He coulda shoulda woulda been a professional hockey player, if not for a strange twist of fate. Instead he is a thinker and an ad writer and a decent guitar player and also (shall I send you a resume?), in need of a little -- cough cough -- tune-up. For three months, he's been obsessing over P90x. Don't know it? Stay up late and wait for the infomercial. It's like the Shamwow but for your abs.

Once I bought some cleaning product off the teevee that promised to make my crappy apartment into something shiny and new and smelling great too but instead it was pretty much an ice cream tub of solidified pink Palmolive. It did nothing to the tiles. It did nothing to the stove. My hands? Totally extra moisturized (and smelling great too!) but I learned my lesson. Which was mostly to avoid using a credit card after midnight.

Even knowing this, having lived through it, his P90x jones would not die, and the Kid, he broke down. Five days later it arrived: a set of DVDs, a giant jug of something powdery, some vitamins that seem like your basic Centrum, a pull-up bar that fits none of our doorways, and some stretchy things with handles that have since been flung/chucked/whipped/strewn all over my house.  I'm not sure who was more excited: him, or the Short Drunk People.

The Kid thinks I'm not supportive when I say that sitting on the couch with the remote and his feet up watching people exercise will not in fact build muscles; he says he's learning the moves. The Kid thinks I am a non-believer, so he buys 8 protein bars. When I won't try the "shake" he's made with blueberries and bananas and who knows what that powdery stuff is, he says I'm a wimp (which I am: gross). When the GFYO is found kick boxing and Sumo squatting in the playroom with the P90x DVDs blaring, I go out for an ice coffee and The Kid calls after me (from his laptop), "Muscle confusion -- IT BEGINS TODAY!" 

I nod my head, give him the thumbs up and drive off, visions of congealed pink Palmolive that lingered too long in my basement, thoughts of that relationship gone bad with the Columbia House Record Club. I am a skeptic at heart (except when it comes to psychics and ghosts). I've been burned two too many times.

Yesterday: he began. Rory wanted me to feel the sweat on his water bottle. Today: he completed Day Two. He wanted me to marvel at his soaking self. He is.actually.doing.it.

Somewhere, Billy Mays smiles at the Kid. Somewhere, Billy Mays knows what he began. Somewhere, my tub of crap cleaning product fills a landfill. But maybe, maybe this time, it will all work out.

First, There Was the Panty Raid

At noon, the annual and beloved Blogher Pillow Fight started. It ended 26 minutes later because someone lost a contact.
At 12:28, all 6576 members of the Blogging Community searched on hands and knees for the missing orb.
At 12:35, SomeonesMama (or was it SomeonesMom?) found it and was awarded a decade's worth of Swiffer dry mop sheets.
At 1:00, we broke for Nabisco cookies and talked and talked about boys and stuff and shoes and Swiffer. And Walmart.

None of that happened. 

What did happen? I sat in airports and/or on an airplane for a grand total of 27 flipping hours. Let me repeat that: I sat in airports and/or on an airplane for 27 fucking hours.

Three of those 27 hours were at JFK. I did not go the bar, but the group of firefighters en route to Chicago for a bachelor party did. Those guys can drink! Hats off fellas! Too bad they couldn't predict the future because they would have seen that once we were allowed to board the plane, we would sit there for another three hours because um, NO ONE COULD FIND THE PILOT.  (Hello Jet Blue? Send money to Ms Picket.) (Also: if that guy's not dead somewhere, I'm gonna fucking kill him.) (Joking.) (But, we are SO not gonna be friends.)

Let's just say that I could go shot for shot with NY's Bravest and make way less of scene. 

I would not be yelling "when thuh friggin pilot gets here, let's ask him how he long he usually wacks it" and I would not be yelling, "where's the friggin pilot yo, where's the friggin douchebag yo" and I would not say, "listen beyotches, i have strippuhs waitin for me in one friggin owah! get the friggin pilot yo!"

This might have been funnier if I wasn't sitting next to a lovely 97 year old woman who was watching the Family Guy without a headset but who kept asking me to adjust the volume for her. Dearie. This might have been funnier if the cute toddler (so well behaved, honestly) wasn't chanting, "friggin mama friggin yo."  And I'm all for strippers, but the visual was making me a little queasy.

When the cops or the air marshalls or whatever they were boarded to, um, kindly escort NY's Bravest off the stranded plane, I actually thought the whole thing was an elaborate joke. It wasn't.

I made it to Chicago in time for the Group Hair Removal Session -- 6576 women with wax strips. Which SomeonesMama was live-blogging. So that was good.

It All Amounts To Something

She said something like "I would love to hang out with you and drink a couple of beers at the park with you but then my girls might misbehave and then I would have to leave."

I said something like "Game on" or "Dude" or "Yo" or god knows what I said, but I'm sure it was funny. What I meant to say was, I know you.

I know you. 

I know you.

I know you.

On a whim, I emailed her, Carolyn...Online. On a whim, she emailed back. 

There are no parks in the interwebs so when our kids misbehaved, we could just tell that they did and keep talking. There were no interruptions, no weirdness, no geography, no nothing to stop what became a constant, daily, back and forth of notes, of letters, of stories and truths.

(There is no plan for that, no guide for how it goes.)

It just went. And went.

Until someone got a big idea to make a book (which was me) and the other said "um ok" (that was her) and many months passed and things happened and lives changed but the Book, the idea of it, that stayed. It stayed. 

The Book became the big adventure we could hold onto. 

And so we worked and worked and edited and fretted and never once talked on the phone.

 "TO: A True Story In Letters" is where, at least for now, we ended up.

TO: is THE BOOK me and Carolyn..Online made. Compiled. Wrote. Finished.

TO: is a mix tape for your eyeballs.

TO: is everything true about being a broad, a mom, a wife, a friend.

TO: is a collection of emails and essays.

TO: is a modern relationship made in an old-fashioned way.

TO: is maybe you.

TO: is a book you should read.

(Want to? See the link at the side.)

OH GOD AND GULP.