The Funny Farm is Closed Today

All of the animals are ill today, and it’s got me upset.  Pablo the bodhisattva cat has a cold, and his sneezes are the most heartbreaking thing.  How is he supposed to save the world like this?  Tigger the gentleman kitty has been leaving very un-gentlemanly deposits in the litter box but still remains polite about it, announcing immediately that clean-up is needed in aisle 5.  It’s already too late by then to spare our noses, but we appreciate the effort.

Mischa the dog has it the worst of all.  His right ear hurts and is presenting in a sad droop that makes his otherwise perfectly symmetrical lion’s mane appear lopsided.  He is even ignoring his Teddy, which normally provides for hours of bearish fun.  I catch a view of this depressing scene each time I walk past the bedroom, where he has taken to moping since I informed him of our collective visit to the vet clinic later in the day.  Maybe he thinks his depression will change my mind about taking him in, and I have to admit that I am tempted.  Mischa has the uncanny ability to wear his heart on one furry little sleeve and could probably bring about peace between Palestine and Israel just by sitting there, looking worried.

Although every logical cell in my brain implores me not to, I am going to herd these three sickos into my car this afternoon and hope that World War III does not erupt while I’m driving.  None of them are particularly good drivers, so I am counting on them to remain strapped into their passenger seats, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times.  It has all the makings of a bad joke.  So an explosive cat, a bodhisattva and a Chow walk into a car… 

I’ll give you the punchline just as soon I find out what it is.

The 7 Deadly Cupcakes

The life of a writer brings with it some reasonable degree of danger - that of being pummeled to death by our subjects.  It isn’t as romantic as running from the CIA, but I do spend some time looking over my shoulder or peering through the blinds, where I half expect to see an angry mob of well-dressed wives descending upon my lawn. 

This mob is, of course, led by my mother-in-law.  She times their advance and, in groups of five or six, the women take turns trying to break down my door with the heels of their Manolo Blahniks.  Obviously this takes a while, so I pour a cup of tea and watch from the sofa as they each chip a nail and quit in favor of lunch.

I have become increasingly aware of my mother-in-law’s lack of appreciation for me.  It’s not easy being the wretch who is ruining her son’s life, and I’d like a little respect.  I spent years perfecting the art of wrestling sons from their mothers, after all.  While other 12-year-olds were listening to Bon Jovi I was studying mortuary science, and one day someone will excavate my parents’ lawn to find a heap of dismembered Ken parts.  As if it isn’t work to saw off all those limbs. 

Occasionally my mother-in-law forgets about these skills and challenges me to spar.  When she realizes that her Blinding Golden Earring stance is no match for me, she goes into another style of fighting altogether.  It’s called Food Warfare.  She introduced me to this art the night of my rehearsal dinner where she, well aware of my distinct dislike of lamb, served it and its disgusting green jelly counterpart to our guests.  I foolishly thought this choice odd, but benign.  Only months later did it occur to me that I’d been played for the first time.  The second time was Thanksgiving Dinner (read Vices and Spice Part Deux below), but by this point I began to get wise.  My husband and I began making reservations for the meals shared with his parents, where no yams could be laced with either distrust or heavy cream.  We even stepped up our offense, bringing wine to each dinner because when tipsy, his mother’s aim is far less true.

But I must concede to her this third, and final, victory.

My husband and I dined with the in-laws last night, and she brought along a batch of homemade cupcakes.  My mother-in-law fancies herself quite the baker; I maintain that she is a far better shopper and wish she would use those skills to purchase her baked goods rather than make them.  But this was a special occasion and so, in the spirit of kindness, we politely ooed and ahhed at the… what was that… icing? 

I generally avoid eating things that cannot be readily identified, especially if these things have a sequined skin that is usually reserved for lizards and various insects.  But as a show of good faith, I dug in.  Whatever it was left a greasy slick on my tongue that tasted vaguely of petroleum and lingered far into the evening, despite my attempts to douse it with an array of vodka and menthol lozenges. 

No, the cupcakes were not sitting right.  By the time my husband and I made it into bed, I had spent ample time in the bathroom and was beginning to feel nauseous.  I reiterate that there is something about my mother-in-law’s cooking that my body just does not like.  Perhaps it is the dash of resentment folded into each bite; or perhaps the amount of plastic surgery the woman has had somehow seeps through her fingers as she cooks, magically bestowing even the most whole, live foods with the shelf life of a twinkie.

Whatever the great, bilious mystery, I applaud her efforts to debilitate me.  This is the most calculating she’s done since reducing a recipe by two-thirds.  I am sure she is clapping her hands with glee this morning.  Certain that I am well incapacitated behind the walls of my home, she phones her friends and rallies the mob into action, instructing them to circle the Mercedes around the block, stilletos in hand, waiting to pounce.

The water’s in the tea kettle, ladies.  I’ll be waiting.

Venusian Haze

Today the scientists discovered odd patterns of haze on the planet Venus.  They realize that the haze comes and goes; it alternately absorbs and reflects. 

Anyone who’s ever been in love could have pointed that one out.

And now, a haiku:

tiny scientist
blind in venus winter haze -
instead, a sandwich.

Back to the Burbs

There seems to be an unwritten law that states the older I get, the smaller my parents become.  The same applies to the house I grew up in, as well as all of the furniture inside.  I go back for Christmas and pick up a kitchen chair, twirl it between my fingers, and squint as I wonder aloud, “I sat in this?”

The Jersey suburb where I grew up is also shrinking with the latest wave of urbanization.  What once was open space is now home to sprawling condominium developments that sport clever names like Windemere Court and Packed Full Acres.  It’s upsetting to me that they are there, but what upsets me more is that somebody from our formerly little town actually sold their property to developers. 

Back home, Nature itself seems to be shrinking.  My first summer job was at Bob’s Fruit Stand, peddling apples, white peaches and sweet corn that were picked fresh across the street at, you guessed it, Bob’s Farm.  People drove by at sane speed on what was then a one-lane road, and occasionally stopped to buy Bob’s produce.  I passed the time punching the big circular numbers on the ancient cash register and picking raw corn out of my teeth with the ends of green beans.  From my rickety stool I could see across the road at the old pickup truck stuttering down the drive from Bob’s Farm, full with bounty, so I’d know when to throw open the side garage door to help unload a few dozen bushels of this or that.

But all that’s gone now, the farm and its yawning old house replaced by condos, clubhouses and community pools.  The farm stand itself held on for as long as it could.  Last time I was there, its skeleton was still standing, but the next time we drive by, I’ll only sense its ghost.

Anyway, we’ll make the most of it.  My husband and I go back this week for a visit, and he’s never been to my hometown.   So I’m making this Suburbs Week here at bewilderedhousewife, so that my husband can read it and be at least a little bit prepared for what he’s about to experience.

Muahahahahaha….

Family Tree

“Look at this!” they cried, the eight of them huddled around an old scrapbook whose leather covers were cracked and binding weary.  “Was that really grandmother?  Gosh, was she ever beautiful!  Look Sophie, you’ve got her cheekbones.  And Henry, I’ll be darned if you don’t have her eyes.  Did she really manage to collect 182 rubber duckies in her life?  Fascinating!”

Or at least that’s how I’d like it to go.  I’ve begun writing down my history, and my family’s history, in the hopes that one day my children will be interested.  I’d hate for it to be one of those memoirs that lands in a box in some unknown distant descendent’s attic.  Inevitably, Uncle Herbert’s picture escapes the fold and lands forlorn in a pile of dust.  Some months later, a person comes along to search for the extra vacuum bags and discovers the picture just sitting there.  Not knowing who the hell it was, she considers for a second before throwing the old photograph aside to deal with “sometime” – and Uncle Herb spends the rest of eternity alone.

No, not me!  I will make sure everything is tagged, checked, marked and sealed for the throngs of progeny that will come tumbling from my loins.  I’ll have recorded anecdotes and memories which will make it clear to little Benjamin why he’s a genius.  The mystery behind little Helena’s bodhisattva nature will finally be revealed, and she will clutch the book to her chest and quietly whisper thank you. 

I will instill a sense of duty and a hunger for knowledge, damn it.  I only hope I’m interesting by then.  And discerning.  Certainly there are things that any one of us would not want to know about our parents, or ever want to even think about – like how we were conceived.  Ew.  In writing our memoirs, my husband and I likewise will have to remind ourselves to leave out all of our gory parts, but I will include all the other important bits that I and my living family can possibly recall.  Such as, Great Grandmother Bebe died along with Asgar in a horse-and-buggy accident, but they said to tell you “hello”.  Unfortunately, I waited a bit too long to start asking questions of my own parents, which has left great holes in the story.  Just when you have gathered your thoughts, people go and die when you don’t expect them to, and they might be the only person who could have connected a few vital dots.  If we cannot draw in lines that we don’t know are missing, whole generations go silent.

My husband prefers to do this online, through Ancestry.com.  We watched a commercial last night and he promptly made for his office to begin our own virtual family tree.  I stood over his shoulder and watched as he created two little squares next to each other, one for each of us.  He remembered my birthday by heart, and wrote it out like he meant it.  It was one of those moments where gravity hit and all of life’s armor fell to the floor.  I looked at my husband and felt a surge of utter love, and I leaned forward and held him close, peppering his soft brown hair with kisses… this is my dear… my family… my future… my other square floating atop a blank page, waiting to be written.

One for the team

YEAH

GIANTS!!!!!!!!!!!!

And that’s all I’m going to say about that.

Hello, My Name Is…

I am noticing a distressing theme to this blog.  This is my third post, and also the third time I am talking about my mother-in-law.  Damn it,  she really is everywhere.

But she likes it that way.  I’m sure she does it on purpose, to inject just enough under-handed slight into a situation as to first, leave one speechless and then to second, cause one to awaken at 3am whispering venomous, imaginary comebacks that one rarely has the gall to utter in the daytime.  I’m sure I can sense her smiling in bed, pleased that her nefarious plan has worked.

Take last night, for instance.  I spent the usually sedate hours between 2 and 5am tossing and turning, plagued by a resentment I hadn’t realized mattered so much.  My mother-in-law never had a daughter and so spent the first two months of my engagement to her youngest son finally living out her fantasy.  She began buying me clothes and taking me to luncheons.  In my naivety, I miscalculated.  What I thought was a genuine interest in me was, in fact, a predator’s gaze.  I was in dangerous territory.

I got a taste of how dysfunctional things could get when she began talking about ”her” bridal shower.  While my guest list consisted of my mother, sisters, a few best friends and myself, I was instructed to purchase six (count em, SIX) hostess gifts.  I was puzzled.  Why on earth it took 6 women to organize a shower was beyond me.  Would there be giraffe rides?

In the end, it became clear why so many troops were required.  Any one of those women alone would have been crushed beneath the weight of the nametags.  Yes, nametags.  I’m going to let you sit with that for a moment. 

Right.  I’ve never met another woman who had to wear a sticker to her own shower identifying her as the betrothed.  Hello, my name is The Bride.  Won’t you admire this cute little flower drawn in red felt marker next to my name?  By the way, who the hell are you people?

And so, I spent a lovely afternoon getting drunk with sixty women I had never met before.  Sixty women from The Valley; sixty wives with diamonds; sixty sets of face-lifts in various states of disrepair.  The more champagne I had, the harder it was to tell between the pulled faces and suspiciously perky breasts.  It was like being in a room of identical, animatronic dolls, only worse because they actually talked.  In the end I suppose that the nametags were useful, though only to me.  (Note to Darwin:  It seems that once women achieve aesthetic uniformity, they are able to identify each other by scent.  This is a skill I have not yet honed.)

Months later, after The Wedding (another blog post… better pack a lunch for that one), I am thankful for the gifts and the graciousness of these strange women, none of whom I could pick out of a lineup.  I remember how my mother-in-law was lavished with the most attention that day; how she glowed and basked; how her friends strutted proudly around the garden tables, satisfied to have given her the best bridal shower a mother-in-law could ask for.

But I will have my revenge.  I planned it out last night somewhere around 4am.  My husband and I are trying for baby and I am waiting patiently, positively stalking the moment when we offer the news – that there will be NO baby shower, the nursery will be painted yellow, the baby will be sleeping next to me, and the pregnancy will NOT be televised.  I am anticipating what might pass as shock across her paralyzed brow.  And I will laugh.

Oh, I will laugh.

Vices and Spices Deux

Is that how you spell “deux?”

 Today is Day Three of the Ultimate Cleanse.  My husband and I decided we needed a good scrub for our innards, but he abandoned the product last night.  Tummy is just too sensitive.  I, on the other hand, am continuing en force and I’m glad I’ve stuck it out thus far.  My intestines are slowly – slowly – giving up the ghost.  Actually, it’s more like a gaggle of spooky spectors, but you get the idea.

I’ve been hearing about this product for years but had always been reluctant to pass an alien mass from my bum.  These past few weeks – nay, these past two MONTHS – have been brutal to an already sensitive system.  In fact, it started with Thanksgiving dinner at my mother in law’s house.  I took one look at the dinner table and knew that the entire holiday was not going to be pretty.  Yam souffle – as in, yams whipped with what, cream and sugar?  Creamed corn?  Sausage stuffing?  Gravy made with starch and flour?  Sure, I’ll have seconds!

 …and thirds and fourths and fifths, only those were coming out the other end.  My mother in law’s cooking is just the gift that keeps on giving.

Since then I just haven’t been the same.  It was like a sonic boom of processed food that sent my system spiraling in another direction that I am only now, with the aid of copious amounts of vita-pills, beginning to stabilize from.  Add christmas baking, sour cream dips (oh god) and thoroughly hydrogenated chips to the mix, and you might just stop me on the street and ask me what my due date is.

 Because that’s how my belly looks: impregnated circa oh, say, October or so.  Only, it’s not.  It would be charming if it was, because that’s exactly what my husband and I are trying to achieve.  Only, we haven’t yet and I am still thinking about buying some maternity tops to hide this basketball I seem to be carrying around above the button of my skinny jeans.

What I like about the Ultimate Cleanse is that you don’t have to fast or follow a severely restricted diet.  Probably it would be best if one did, but it seems to do the trick on its own.  I’ve been pretty conscious and have been sticking to mainly vegetables, fish and chicken in the hopes of helping the process along.  I definitely do not have as much of an appetite, except for the times when my odd brain tries to talk me into pizza or a burger under the flawed premise that it’s all going to be flushed out anyway.  I call bullshit and go back to my salad.

I’ll post updates on my progress with the Ultimate Cleanse, but I will NOT post any manner of disgusting photographs.  Hopefully the effects will be great and long-lasting, so that the next time my belly looks this way, it will be a happy occasion.

Vices and Spices

In the last year, I have realized that the location of The Kitchen is very far away from Mali, Kenya, Darfur, Guatemala, Peru and… well, pretty much everywhere but The Kitchen. Standing over the sink is certainly not the same thing as organizing an HIV prevention outreach event, and in no way does dicing a garlic clove resemble saving the world. While “sautee the onions over low heat until transparent” is not code for “meet the caravan of refugees at three o’clock”, I can – and often do – find a little morsel of meaning here and there.

 Funny that lately, it’s been in the form of food.  Cooking dinner is one of my greatest joys, and I put an obsessive and inappropriate amount of time into deciding a menu for just my husband and me.  I close my eyes and envision a tender pink salmon filet poached with fennel and champagne.  I watch it nestle happily into place beside the darling snap peas beaded with sweat.  Sigh.

Ok, that was weird.  Moving on.

Another food-based passion is my volunteer work at the Food Bank.  Each week we stuff 150 backpacks full of easy to prepare or ready-to-eat food, plus fresh fruit.  These are distributed to local elementary school kids who, for one reason or another, don’t have a stable food source.  I found a call for volunteers online (VolunteerMatch.com is great) and this nearly broke my heart.

I happily began my time at the Food Bank two weeks ago and reported this to my mother-in-law, who has an itchy need to know what the hell I do with my time since I’m not calling or seeing her every ten minutes.  In addition to catering hand and foot to *gasp* her spoiled rotton yet wonderful son, I informed her of the food program for kids.  And then she said something that made me realize yet again that for all of her incredible resources, her Gucci, her Hermes and her Botox, she will never be anything more than typical:

“You’re sure it’s going to the right place?” she asked.

This is the odd thing about charity.  My husband’s parents have given literally millions to (already fancy) hospitals, foundations, country clubs, you name it.  This is the woman who told everyone she was going to volunteer in the newborn nursery, and then quit after one day.  Her veiled explanation translated to one of being that there weren’t enough “white” babies to hold.  Yes, this is the woman who asks me if FOOD is going to the right place.

It took me longer than usual to respond, as I was suddenly taken by the mental picture of a man in an Armani suit filling his pockets with cheese.  He has a wicked grin on his face and is salivating.  He has a thought bubble over his head as his hands manickly swipe every plastic fork in sight: Today, pretzels; Tomorrow, the CARIBBEAN!  I mean, fuck.  A person has to try REALLY HARD to embezzle applesauce.

At any rate, it’s funny to see people’s reactions toward public aid agencies.  Everyone has a political chip on their shoulder, bitching about how their tax dollars are feeding, god forbid, the hungry.  Then they get in their Benz SUVs and drive home to their estate to boss around the nanny.

Please god, you there, past the telephone wires and up in the stars and airplane lights, don’t ever let me be so ignorant.