MaryJanice Davidson's Blog, page 9
January 25, 2012
I Expose Another of Betsy's Gross Shortcomings
(And I don't mean 'a cat' like, "She's such a cat!" or "He's got the reflexes of a cat" or "I've got nine lives like a cat so it's weird that I'm dead now," but an actual cat, as in: "Why does it always want to shit in the shit-box when I'm making French toast?" So meditate on the horror. I sure did.)
Anyway, in keeping with the cat-centric theme of Rocco's book blog, I posted a sneak preview from the first pages of UNDEAD AND UNSTABLE. There are minor spoilers within, but if that doesn't scare you, head over and take a peek.
Oh...also, in UNSTABLE Betsy kills Sinclair, buys a Payless Shoes franchise, then burns down the mansion and moves to an apple orchard in Wisconsin after killing everyone she has ever loved.
Kidding. Heh.
http://catsbooksmorecats.blogspot.com...
January 5, 2012
My Readers Make Me Alternately Laugh And Cry
I'm seriously lucky to have the readers I do; I try to run 1 or 2 contests every month and am always thrilled see so much enthusiasm and so many entries. It's always great fun to read through the entries and it's always difficult to pick the winners. And I thought that *before* the Xmas contest.
This contest visited upon me wrath and laughs and tears from same. But after getting a small glimpse of what my readers have endured through the years, I've realized all over again how fortunate I am. My oddest gift was a Frankenstein that wiggled his hips and danced and dropped his pants. That was the friggin' Hope Diamond compared to what my readers went through.
Below, the "winners", if that's the right word. I'm not sure this is a contest anyone wants to win, frankly...I ended up going with several honorable mentions because it was impossible to narrow the winners down to three.
In all seriousness, thanks for sharing your wonderful entries!
* * *
The worst/strangest/weirdest Christmas gift I ever received was called the boyfriend pillow. It's a pillow shaped like a mans torso with an arm.... and a "personal massager" inside. There is a zipper on the side under the arm. What makes this gift the worst/strangest/weirdest Christmas gift I ever received is that I received it from my 83 year old great aunt. My great aunt did not like me very much and at the time I was going through a divorce that went against her beliefs, so to this day I have no idea if it was a sweet little mistake and she had no idea there was a vibrator inside the pillow or if this was her way of taking a jab at me (calling me a slut). I was so embarrassed, it was given to me in front of the entire family... children and all. There is no way I will ever know but I do believe she was taking a jab at me.
2.The worst gift I ever received was from my ex mother in law aka psycho mom.
She fancied herself an artist and she had a "bone table" where she would lay out bones to dry (after cooking a chicken or turkey, etc) to use in her art.
One Christmas she gave me a pair of horse tooth earrings (my husband at the time also received a turkey thigh bone bolo tie) because nothing says let's celebrate the birth of Christ like a pair if molars from a Clydesdale!
As you can see, she deserved her title.
3.When I was ten I wanted a pair of roller blades so my mom thought it would be funny to get a large box for mens roller blades and put a small leaf blower in there to help me with my chores. I cried.
Honorable Mention -
When I was 12 years old, I opened a gift from Santa that was panties and matching bras... I looked at my mom and asked her "how does Santa know my bra size?"
Honorable Mention -
Undoubtedly the weirdest gift I ever received is when my boyfried came back from working on his PhD fieldwork with...a dead marten for me! It's a relative of the weasel. It had been run over...not by him.
However, it's by far NOT the worst gift I ever got! I love martens, I worked with them on my Master's project. And he learned taxidermy to prepare the fur for me in time for Christmas. I loved it, I kept it for years until it looked ratty (as opposed to weaselly).
What can I say...the man knows me. So I married him. :)
Honorable Mention -
My strangest Christmas gift has a backstory-
It starts when I picked my Grandma up to bring her to my parents house to help wrap gifts. (My grandmother is amazing, but sadly she has Alzheimer's.) After wrapping all the gifts it was time to go. My grandma got her coat on and went to put on her shoes. Her shoes, however, could not be found. We looked everywhere. My mom even asked me. "Billy, did she have shoes on when you picked her up?"
I said yes, but to be honest. I wasn't certain. My mother was doubtful and told me that I have to be careful. She could catch pneumonia. Finally my mom lent her a pair of shoes and I took her home.
Flashforward to Christmas Day. My oddest gift was my Grandmother's shoes from that night; neatly wrapped and placed under the tree. No wonder we couldn't find them.
I opened the box, held the shoes up and exclaimed to my mother; "See! I told you she had shoes on when I picked her up!!!"
Honorable Mention -
Where to begin...these were all Christmas gifts from my husband in different years:
-- hummingbird made of barbed wire-- ceramic cactus with light up Christmas lights
-- weird elephant thing with bowl on top
-- stuffed dead kitten
After 35+ years you would think he would learn, but no. I now buy my own Christmas presents and address them from him to me. When I open them I say "Wow! Just what I wanted! How did you know?"
December 23, 2011
I Explan Betsy's Holiday Hatred Via UNDEAD AND UNSTABLE Sneak Peek
To sum up (spoilers but, again, only if you haven't finished UNDERMINED):
Betsy and the gang are having a meeting over shakes and smoothies to discuss what to do about
(spoiler spoiler)
Marc being dead. Antonia and Garrett are once again living in the mansion because in the new timeline, Garrett did NOT kill himself after Antonia was shot to death...instead, he tricked Betsy into getting Satan to give up Antonia (which, given Antonia's generally unpleasant personality, Satan didn't mind so much). Also in the new timeline, Jessica is pregnant, and Nick (who calls himself Dick in this timeline, which Betsy assumes he's done purely to annoy her) is really fond of Betsy.
CHAPTER SIX
It's funny...life can sneak up on you. Your own life can do that. Because when you're inside all the weird stressful awful things that are happening, you can't see the big picture.
But when you finally realize, when you get a chance, a glimpse, to really see the mess you've made...it's like it's happening all over again, only more terrible because you can see that, bad as you thought it was before, it's much, much worse when you see just how much wreckage is in the middle of your life.
Some of my friends were dead. Some of them didn't remember me (or remember a different me) because I accidentally changed the timeline. Some of them were well on their way to insanity and some of them never ever wavered in their love and loyalty to me, not for a second. Not for a blink.
Stepping back, thinking about that...it's depressing, you know?
Which brings me to milkshake time.
"Smoothies aren't going to do it," I announced, heading for the freezer for my go-to staple: a half-gallon of Breyer's Vanilla Fudge Twirl. Pre-death my go-to had been Hershey bars with almonds, or my mom's risotto. I had been a simple, uncomplicated girl. Once.
Adding to my annoyance (which had never been difficult), I first had to haul out half a dozen bottles of Tina's weird weird vodka(s) before I could extract the Precious. Just reading the vodka labels was enough to make me shudder, but I also had to handle the things: hot pepper, three olives (like one olive wasn't vile enough), root beer (good God!), triple shot espresso (so you could take something that will make you sleepy and spazz you out at the same time), Absolute LA (which boasted acai and blueberry, and thus was good for you, except for the fact that it was alcohol which is poisonous), and plenty others too hideous to mention, all nestled together like some unholy frozen army of booze. No, wait...Three Olives was a brand, not a flavor. The flavor was tomato. Why, why had someone decided to invent flavored vodka? This changed nothing!
Finally, after a nice crop of frostbite was no doubt gonna show up any second, I found my go-to and re-stacked all the booze...upside down, so Tina would have to reach in and haul each one out to check the flavor. Ha! More proof that it doesn't pay to mess with the vampire queen. My wickedness and lust for cold-blooded vengeance was endless.
The door swung in, and there was Jessica. For a woman who claimed she couldn't hear me when I tried to explain why it was perfectly okay for a woman in her last trimester to wear high heels, she had no trouble hearing the fridge or freezer open from several rooms, or blocks, away. "Oh boy," she said, see the blender and ice cream. "Pretty serious, huh?"
"Yeah, so let me get to work and then we'll have a family meeting."
It was out before I realized I'd thought it, never mind said it. And it was fine. Better than fine: it was right. Family meeting. Well...yeah. If these guys weren't my family, what was any of it for? Jessica had always been more like a sister than a pal, and Nick loved me (I was pretty sure...he didn't hate and fear me now, at least) because Jessica did, and I knew Tina loved me, too.
Maybe even Garrett, the Fiend formerly known as George, and his girlfriend, the bitchy werewolf Antonia, did. (What? She was a werewolf. And she was also bitchy. Grumpiest person I had ever, ever met. Because in death, I was fated to be surrounded by weirdos.)
For sure they liked me. I didn't think that was my considerable vanity talking, either: they'd moved from their lives to our lives to Hell and then back to our lives. Of course, I did rescue Antonia from Hell, so maybe that's why they were hanging around, but like I said, that prob'ly meant they liked me. Or at least didn't loathe and fear me. (Hey, I'll take it. Believe me. And how sad is that?)
As for Sink Lair, his love had never been in question, though I was too bubble-brained and pissed to catch on right away, or realize I loved him back with everything. So, yep, my husband absolutely loved me.
(I wasn't quite sure about my sister Laura, the Anti-Christ.)
The coolest thing was how Jessica didn't blink, or pause. Just took a step back while holding the kitchen door and yelled, "Milkshakes, idiots!"
I had to take a few seconds and pretend to be busy dumping scoops of ice cream into the blender, so she couldn't see my face. I didn't leak tears anymore, but any girlfriend can tell at a glance when you're upset or touched or pissed.
After a few seconds I was able to turn my back when I went to the fridge, and no longer had to pretend. Because now I had a whole new problem: where were my candy bars? My precious delectable Hershey bars, always kept in the fridge (room temp chocolate = yuck) so I could chop them and dump them into a blender with the Precious and a generous splash of whole milk, were not in their appointed spot!
"This is not the right time for me to deal with this," I growled, pawing past gallons of milk, some sticks of butter, Jessica's vile ginger ale (with actual lumps of ginger in it, which did not belong in ginger ale!), a few boxes of leftover Chinese takeout (who was eating that, I had no idea), a bottle of blueberry vodka (what, the freezer wasn't enough, fer Chrissake?), a box of Godiva cookies (pretty decent chocolate, but useless for my needs), and a couple of tins of Giselle's cat food. Ouch. Another of my many character flaws: I was a little slow to do my share of the upkeep around here.
"All right, first off, remind me to clean out the fridge," I said into the fridge, still hunting. "This is just sad, and also gross. And second, if one of you amoral thieving shitheads filched my Hershey's, there will be blood on the streets, I swear it, blood on the st—oh, there they are." Why they were in the door slot for eggs I did not know and did not give one shit.
I heard the 'fwoomp' of the kitchen door swinging open, and looked up in time to see Antonia and Garrett walk in. Sinclair and Jessica were right behind them, and Nick/Dick was behind them.
"Oh, good," I said, grateful. Sometimes it could take over half an hour just to round everybody up.
"Uh-oh," Nick said, eyeing the Precious and grinning. It was weird that he didn't hate me in this timeline. The way I remembered it, he had made Jessica pick between him and me...and she picked me! (I couldn't believe it, either.) But that had never happened now. So...had it never happened? Even though I could remember? Because it was so awkward and awful? Ow, I'm hurting my brain. "Bringing out the big guns, vampire queen."
And that! What was that? He said it, but not in a mean way. In a happy way. Like me being a vampire was a good thing. Like it hadn't ruined his life.
I don't like being confused and angry!
"You keep shooting me these incredulous glances," he continued (happily!). "I take it in the old timeline we weren't close?"
"Uh, she wasn't pregnant, and you weren't living here." To put it mildly. Also, I accidentally tortured you and then my husband did, too. Oops! "But we've got weirder problems."
"Yeah. Like how she's not dead anymore." He pointed at Antonia, who'd gone to the booze freezer for a drink, and was now knocking back espresso vodka in a milk glass.
"Weirder than that, even."
Antonia chortled in mid-gulp. Her black rat's nest hair was its usual unkempt mess...on a good day, Antonia looked like a witch having a bad day. Not that she wasn't gorgeous—she was. Sickeningly so, what with the black masses of tumbled and tousled hair and the pale skin and the burning werewolf-ey eyes. But she was weird. All werewolves were.
"Not weirder than that," Jessica mock-gasped.
"What's weird about it? I left. Now I'm back. Don't throw me a party."
"Don't worry."
Antonia glanced around. "Where's Tina?"
See, see? Nothing about Marc being dead. Nothing about Hell. Just "time for booze and then I think I'll bang my man for a while, don't wait up and ha ha, I scored more free vodka off Tina and oh by the way, where is she?".
"Everything's better now," Garrett said with a sweet smile. But I expected his reaction, too. Garrett was a little...off. He'd been a Fiend (a vampire deliberately starved until it went feral and bitchy) for decades, and had been dead going on a hundred years. That had shattered any vibrancy of personality he'd ever had in life. He'd been a shell of a vamp, until Antonia swooped into his pants. I mean, his life.
Garrett looked at the world with envious simplicity: life without Antonia wasn't worth living. Antonia was back. Knit one, purl two. All was well.
"Yeah, but with this particular problem," I said, "it's time to get moving. I've been sitting around long enough."
"Does this have anything to do with how much you hate Thanksgiving?" Nick/Dick asked.
"Don't speak to me about That Holiday."
"Does this mean you're not going to make a cornucopia for the dining room?"
"I'd rather gargle gasoline and then light up a cigarette."
Sinclair laughed. "What an...interesting mental image that makes."
"And I'll save plenty of gas for you, too," I threatened. My parents had gotten divorced in November. Jessica's parents were killed in November. The Ant was born in November! April was not the cruelest month. "So you'd better stay on your toes, pal."
"This," my husband commented, sounding not at all perturbed at the thought of being burned alive, "will be the third time this week I have fallen in love with the queen all over again."
"And it's only Saturday," Jessica pointed out.
"Is it really?" I was amazed. It felt like eight years had gone by. Too much happening and not much time to soak it up. "Oh, crap. So Thanksgiving is next week already?" No wonder my teeth were on edge. "God, that sounds ominous. It's a whole damn holiday lurking in next week's calendar. Just waiting to pounce."
"It's turkey and football," Nick/Dick said, exasperated.
"With a side helping of genocide," Antonia snickered. She had by now drained her glass. "You think it's bad here? Try New England this time of year. It's all Thanksgiving and pilgrims all the time out there."
"Gross," I said, appalled. Ye gods, I'd never thought of it, but she was right: Thanksgiving must be pure heck if you hated it and yet were surrounded by it. "Remind me to count my blessings and also, stay the heck out of New England in November."
"Why?" She was rolling sky blue yarn so fast her fingers were a blur. "You never do."
"Can we get back to the matter of hand if it's not too much trouble? Like I said, weird stuff is going on and it's time to fix it. We're gonna fix it so hard...."
"What are we fixing?" Garrett asked. For him, that was practically a speech. A Gettysburg Address, even.
"Not Marc being dead," Jessica said, an expression of reproach on her face. "You're not talking about that."
"Oh yes I am." I must have been wearing one of those incredulous expression Nick talked about. "What else do you think would be on my mind? The new Manolos? The fact that, incomprehensibly, Christian Louboutin doesn't exist in this timeline?"
"Well..."
Nick wasn't looking at me. Neither was Sinclair. Antonia tossed the now-round ball of yarn into Garrett's bag and began rolling a new ball of yarn. Garrett was carefully crocheting...uh...something red and blue and big (too big to be a potholder, too small to be a blanket...maybe a grill cover?). His lap was full of yarn; his entire attention appeared to be on the whatever-it-was he was making.
Only Jessica, who'd put up with my bushwah for almost two decades, had the courage to look me in the face and say, "Yeah, kinda. Why wouldn't you be worrying about shoes and their designers?"
"Well, you're totally wrong because...okay, that's a good point about Christian, but I can't fix that." Probably I couldn't fix it. I'd look into it, sure, but one nightmare at a time. "Marc, now, Marc maybe I can fix. I'm gonna try, at least."
"Why?"
"Hello! Queen of the vampires? Power over all the dead, or however the saying goes? Ring-a-ding-dinging a bell?"
"Not 'why', why you. 'Why', why would you do that?"
"Why wouldn't I do that?" Was Jessica's unborn baby eating her brain? She was normally quicker on the uptake.
"Have you thought you might respect his choice?" Nick asked quietly.
"Behold, a braver man than I," Sinclair said, rolling his big dark eyes heavenward.
"Ah, shaddup already from you. Listen, Nick—"
"Dick."
"Stop it. Detective Berry, Marc killed himself because he was scared, I get that."
"Do you?"
"Don't talk—" I paused as Jessica judiciously hit the blender, which hummed and brayed and whirred for a good thirty seconds, an endless time in which my friends and I glared at each other. This hadn't taken long to get nasty. For me to turn it nasty, I guess it'd be fair to say. I continued as she poured milkshakes, as everyone took hasty slurps. "—like I'm stupid."
"No, we wouldn't want to do that." Like that! See? There was the Nick/Dick I knew, not the Mr. Happy Cop I'd been dealing with.
"Sure he was scared. He was scared of being the Marc Thing," I said, assuming the baby had also been dining on Nick's teeny brain cells as well. "Not scared to keep living. He loved it here."
"Betsy, you met him when he was about to jump off a building!"
"Well, yeah." Anything sounded bad when you said it like that. "But then he was better."
"Oh, so you cured his chronic depression? Is that one of your superpowers now?"
Hmm, no. But wouldn't it be cool? "Anything sounds bad when you say it—"
"He was a borderline alcoholic who couldn't stay sober. He was a gay man who never dated, a man who had no relationship with his father, his only family."
"We're his family."
He wasn't listening. He was leaning so far forward his suit jacket was open and I could see the gun clipped to his belt. "This was an unhappy man. For God's sake—sorry, Sinclair—I mean, for crying out loud, just let him rest in peace."
"Stop talking about him in the past tense!" Somehow I was on my feet and Nick/Dick was on his, and had backed up. Sinclair had moved across the table and was standing at my side, almost ready to block me. Like I was going to hurt Dickie/Nickie. And Antonia was now standing in front of me, like Dickie/Nickie was going to hurt me. I think it'd be safe to say we were all temporarily freaked.
"It seems I have not arrived in the nick of time," Tina said, standing in the kitchen doorway, holding it open with tented fingers and totally stealing that line from Practical Magic.
December 13, 2011
I Prove There Really IS A Thanksgiving Curse
* * *
The Thanksgiving that I will never forget happened when I was 12 (in 1987).
My older brother (age 15) and I were sitting at the table with our parents. My dad says, "I know it's not a tradition that we normally do, but let's just go around the table and say what we're thankful for this year." And, after much grumbling on my part and after my brother's 30-second sigh, we started to go around the table and give our thanks.
My father started us off with "I'm so thankful for my wonderful children and all the ways that they make me proud." My brother was thankful for his Diamondback dirt bike, I was thankful for all of the elephants in the world. And then, when it was my mother's turn, she said: "I am thankful that your father and I have decided to get a divorce."
[followed by 2 minutes of heavy silence]
And then our dad said, "This is not how we were going to tell them!"
And my mom said "Well, it is what I'm most thankful for."
My brother and I just moved our heads back & forth following their conversation for a few minutes until we could eventually respond with our trademarked "default" reactions: my brother ran up to his room, slammed the door, and blasted his loud heavy metal music while I immediately put myself into the mix and yelled at my parents. I remember asking them why they were being so inconsiderate to us. And then I promptly accused them both of being selfish for putting their own happiness above ours.
[Although, in hindsight, I am quite happy to report that after everything was said and done, I was pleased to discover that I like the divorced version of my parents far more than the married ones!]
But it was such a surreal experience - having to find out that way - that I will never forget that fateful Thanksgiving.
*****************************************************
Many, many years ago when I was 16 years old, my family was gathering to celebrate Thanksgiving at my house. Mother and I had spent most of the day cooking and cleaning - the standard prep when company is coming to visit. So everything was perfect and my Aunt Cheryl arrived - then shortly after that my MeeMaw (grandmother) and Pop (grandfather) arrived. We were in the dining room visiting and waiting for the rest of the family to get to the house, when I had gone into my bedroom to get something. To explain a little...my house was an older Victorian home that had been slowly remodeled through the years and in my room there was a dropped ceiling. Going into my room on that lovely day I could hear something scratching in the corner of the dropped ceiling. Slowly a hole was being formed from above by some unknown creature. Scratch, scratch, scratch. Being a girl, I totally screamed and my mother and Aunt Cheryl came in to see what was going on. During the brief period of time it took me to explain the hole and the scratching noise, the small hole was now large enough for the squirrel to stick out his head. And apparently, his body, as he then dropped to the floor and ran under my bed. My mother rushed the door and slummed it shut, hoping to save the Thanksgiving meal but essentially trapping it in my very own sanctuary (aka: room). Being trapped seriously ticked off the squirrel and he proceeded to run around the room and up the walls... throwing all my girley stuff to the floor, ripping two intricate shadow boxes off the wall, and knocking over lamps. My mother thought that maybe our cats would like the hunt, so she escaped and then returned with Queenie and Tootsie. Well, the cats didn't want anything to do with the squirrel so they were clawing at the door and screaming to be let out. During this my Aunt Cheryl was trying to get a window open, but since it's an older home, she wasn't having any luck. Hearing all of the commotion my Meemaw opened the door and the cats almost tripped her trying to escape the psychotic squirrel -who had ramped up his madness to climbing on the curtains and flying through the air trying to free himself from our scary house. At this time the adults regrouped and decided that they'd have to attack the window from the outside and see if they could get it open. My mother went out and managed to break the screen at the very top of a very tall window. We just now had to get the squirrel to go out the window which was at least six feet up. We had hoped that the squirrel would just go for it, but we had to come up with a plan. My mother and Aunt Cheryl both had brooms and were going to herd him to the window... mother had lost sight of him and asked me to see if the squirrel was under the bed. I slightly bent over to check as I was unarmed...when the squirrel rushed me, ran up my body, sat on my head, and then jumped out the window. My mother and Aunt were laughing at my expression while I was crying from the whole experience - looking at my destroyed room and hating squirrels at that moment. We opened the bedroom door and went into the dining room where my Pop was just calmly reading the paper. Even during the screams and all the commotion and the cursing he never came to check on us. He was just enjoying his relaxing Thanksgiving... and wasn't going to let anything take him from it. He was the smartest of all of us. Luckily the rest of the Thanksgiving holiday was great (once I cleaned my room thoroughly) and it's always a running joke about how I dislike squirrels. In fact to this very day, if I see a squirrel up way too close I do get a little twitchy. :) Happy Thanksgiving!
*********************************************
The weirdest thanksgiving EVER in my family. I am the oldest in a family with four kids. Me, my brother Jason, then the twins, Jill and Mark. The twins and my brother were in high school, which made me college age. However, even though we were all teenagers, we were the only grandchildren on my mother's side and forced to sit at the dreaded kids table. Which really wasn't so bad because it was a card table in the living room, right in front of the TV. We had a cool uncle (OK, our only uncle on my mom's side) who brought his VCR and some tapes for us to watch. (Because my grandma lived in the boonies and didn't even have cable or a VCR - boring!) Guess what we picked to watch during our wonderful family meal - HELLRAISER! Do not ask me why my mother or my grandmother allowed this. I am not sure if we picked this movie because we thought it would be cool, or if we did it to gross out the adults. Regardless, the meal went OK until a particularly gross part, and my brother started choking on turkey. I freaked out and ran into the back bedroom because I don't do good with puke. I can handle a blood movie about a guy who has pins in his face while eating dinner, but can't handle a normal bodily function. But then I thought "maybe I should call 911", so I ran back into the living room, because Grandma only had one phone. Which would have been a great idea HAD SHE NOT LIVED IN THE BOONIES WHERE THERE IS NO 911 SERVICE. Fortunately, calmer heads prevailed......my mother did the Heimlich on my brother, the turkey came flying out of my brother's throat and landed on the carpet. Which my father picks up and says "Turkey!". Like we needed a forensic analysis of what was causing the blockage. And dinner continued as usual for the entire family, except me, who was practically rocking in the corner from the drama. If you fast forward my life about 20 years, there is a similar story, however, it happened at a Chili's restaurant. My husband was eating nachos. All of a sudden, he has his hands over his mouth, like he is trying to hold back a torrent of vomit. As you know my aversion to barf, much less barf in a public place, I yell "Go to the bathroom if you are going to throw up!" But he wasn't barfing, he was choking...and I just sent him to the bathroom BY HIMSELF. After about a minute I send my son, who was 11, into the bathroom to check on his dad because I was too chicken. Zach (my son) opened the bathroom door and yelled "DAD!" and we heard my husband yell "GET OUT! I AM FINE!" My husband comes back to the table, eyes watery and blood shot. Apparently he WAS choking. He managed to get into a stall and was trying to cough the chip out. However, he passed out from lack of oxygen. As he was falling, he falls into the wall in the bathroom on the way to the floor, which dislodged the the chip so he could breathe again. Therefore, bracing himself before hitting the cold hard floor. And the saddest part of the story, I was certified in First Aid/CPR the week before for Girl Scouts. So what have you learned from this story? Don't trust me in a medical emergency, because I will send you to the bathroom to die.
December 5, 2011
I Blow Up the Grocery Store
Anyway. I was doing the weekly grocery shopping, and badly...I made the classic mistake of shopping when I skipped breakfast. It's hilarious to me that when I buy food while my stomach's growling, even the weirdest yuckiest nastiest food looks delicious.
Oooh, quince paste! I'd better get a couple of those. And a loaf of rye, even though I absolutely detest rye and would sooner stick a fork in my ear then use it (the bread, not the fork) for a sandwich. (Maybe two loaves!) Pink Himalayan sea salt? Sure, I've got about nine salt shakers in the house (we tend to misplace the salt a lot, for some reason) but none of them have Pink Himalayan salt in them. How could I have gotten so far in life without buying Pink Himalayan salt? Into the cart you go, salt. I am your new Mommy. What's this? Liverwurst is on sale? What a relief: I love buying lunch meat made from the organ that makes bile and breaks down all the really gross stuff in blood. And speaking of blood, how lucky am I that they're having a buy one pound of blood sausage, get five pounds free? Yummmmm! And coffee is on sale! My husband and I don't drink coffee, we don't even have a coffee maker, but I'd better buy at least five pounds of the vile beans. Oh, and I should probably get milk and eggs, and something for supper...eh, there's plenty of time for that once I select the perfect lychee. Whatever the hell that is.
My shopping finished, I trotted over to the checkout lane with a cart groaning beneath the weight of nine organically grown spaghetti squash. I'd gotten milk, too, and a few things I actually liked eating. Plus, several cans of whipped cream. I'd never dare show my face at home without whipped cream.
See, we're big fans of hot drinks at my house...my family loved tea long before it became the new pomegranate/acai/goji in terms of trendiness, as well as hot chocolate and cider. And my kids like to go all Starbucks-ey on their hot chocolate, which means gobs of whipped cream and sprinkles (we call it Flanders Cocoa, after the awesome hot chocolate Ned Flanders made for the Simpson kids). My walking to school uphill in the snow during a blizzard story is, "When I was a kid, we used water and powder to make cocoa. And the powder had...fake marshmallows. That's right. Powder! Fake! Water! I can't believe I lived through it, frankly..."
Which is why I had three big cans of whipped cream in my cart. And things would have turned out just fine if I hadn't been invested in being an antisocial asshat. I bring a book everywhere, which was buried in my purse which was buried beneath cans of whipped cream and quince paste. I could have left my purse where it was until the clerk had unearthed it, and risked having to actually talk to the gal ringing up my groceries, or I could have hauled it out of the cart, grabbed my book, and read until all my stuff was rung up. Guess which one I picked?
So: I yanked. My purse swung free. Two or three yogurts hit the floor, followed by a can of whipped cream, which blew up. There was a 'floomph!' and the world went white; for a few seconds, the checkout aisle was my own personal Vietnam. You know how in those action movies, the desperate hero will dive toward the bomb in slo-mo, shouting, "Nooooooo!" Yeah. Like that. Except with chilled dairy products instead of C-4.
And let me tell you: the whipped cream bomb had incredible range. I was drenched from my shins to my feet. The clerk in the aisle to my right got her back splattered. The entire battery rack behind me was also splattered: a four-foot display of batteries, liberally splashed top to bottom with whipped cream! All over the carpet, of course, and all over the case to my left which held cold pop and water bottles. It was EVERYWHERE.
To say I was mortified would be half-assing it. I wished I'd ONLY been mortified. I was so startled, and embarrassed, and freaked, that all I could do was stand in whipped cream and stammer. I looked like I'd been hiking through snow (yummy fattening snow with just the right amount of sugar mixed in) instead of the produce section. Dozens of people were staring. And--this is a rare and weird thing in my life--I had no idea what to say or do. At all. Standing frozen and horror-struck was the only thing I could think of, so I stuck with it.
To my great relief, the clerks thought it was hilarious. And not in a "jeez, did your mom have any kids that lived?" way, but in a "wow, that was so cool and weird!" way. It helped that they were all in their late teens/early twenties and thought a can of compressed dairy product spraying its load across not one, not two, but three aisles was pretty much the coolest thing to happen all morning...possibly all week. They even figured out what happened: the bottom of the can is thin, with an even thinner metal circle in the middle, and if it hits the floor just right, the metal dents and fffooommph! Wall to wall whipped cream, with a horrified (sticky) NYT best-selling author in the middle of the dairy tsunami.
Two of them started trying to blot the carpet (it was like being at a crime scene, frankly...I couldn't bear to watch their tentative dabbing with paper towels...oh, the humanity!), while another one sprinted to the dairy section and brought me a brand-new can of Redi-Whip. I was still pretty rattled, which explains my panicked response: "No, what are you doing? Don't point that thing at me, dammit! All of you: TAKE COVER! Get it away, get it AWAY." The supervisor came over, took one look, and started cracking up himself. I apologized about eight times in four seconds, only to be assured it was no big deal. In fact, they were more worried about me having cream all over my boots and pants than having it all over their display cases.
"Gee, d'you want me to...I mean, I could get you a bunch of wet paper towels..." She made a tentative swabbing motion toward my dripping boots.
"God, no. I'm putting all of you through enough. I deserve to walk around the rest of the day with whipped cream drying to a crack glaze from my toes to my shins. What? Oh. Paper, please."
Turns out the clerk doing most of the clean-up was...are you ready? Yeah: lactose intolerant. Which made her laugh even harder. I was all, jeez, maybe you shouldn't touch all that stuff with lactose in it...is it an eating thing, or a skin contact thing? Luckily, it was the former. But kind of hilarious that the one who pulled the short straw for "Clean-up on Aisle 8!" was someone with no experience of any kind with dairy products. "I didn't know whipped cream could do this," she marveled. "That's because you're prejudiced against all things dairy." "I am not! I'm intolerant. Big diff."
While all this was going on, they were courteously bagging my groceries, gently teasing me and each other, offering once more to help me clean my boots, asking if I needed anything else...the Byerly's Eagan store was wall-to-wall courtesy. And whipped cream.
And to think: I had told myself just that morning that there wasn't a thing to blog about. Well played, belated Thanksgiving curse. Well played. Oh, and Byerly's? You guys were just plain magnificent.
December 1, 2011
I Explain the Link between Christmas Carols and Sociopaths
Seriously. It's scary, gang. It's like a prelude to date rape set to music. And I figured I can't be the only one who found the duet (the verses alternately sung by a couple) to be heavily creepy. So I put my own spin on it by writing how the MMY heroines would sing it.
For those of you who haven't read the BOFFO (Bureau Of False Flag Ops, where the main characters protect, serve, and annoy) books, the heroine, Cadence, is a multiple: two other personalities live in her head. Cadence is the sweetest, almost too sweet...if you spend too much time around her you'll need an insulin shot. Shiro is about as sweet as a bowl of vinegar and about as social, with a murderously quick trigger finger. Adrienne's the wild card: a complete weirdo and borderline psychotic, who emerges when one of the other personalities gets upset or angry. She's the FBI's version of the Tasmanian Devil.
BABY IT'S COLD OUTSIDE, actual lyrics (It's true! I'm not making it up! Prepare to be horrified.)
I really can't stay (Baby it's cold outside)
I've got to go away (Baby it's cold outside)
This evening has been (Been hoping that you'd drop in)So very nice (I'll hold your hands they're just like ice)My mother will start to worry (Beautiful, what's your hurry)
My father will be pacing the floor (Listen to the fireplace roar)
So really I'd better scurry (Beautiful, please don't hurry)
Well maybe just a half a drink more (Put some music on while I pour)The neighbors might think (Baby, it's bad out there)
Say, what's in this drink (No cabs to be had out there)
* * *
BABY IT'S COLD OUTSIDE: A duet sung by three people who live in the same body. Because nothing says "God bless us, every one!" like a severe psychiatric disorder.
"Okay, here we go: I'll sing the first part, and...well, I'll sing the first part. I really can't stay...um, Shiro, you missed your cue. I really can't stay...I really can't stay...oh, come on! Are we having trouble with this already? We're not even one whole verse into it! I really can't stay!"
"Ridiculous."
"I really can't stay."
"You should hear yourself."
"I really can't say!"
"Baby. It's cold outside."
"I've got to go away."
"Baby. It's really quite cold outside."
"This evening has been..."
"Been hoping that you would eventually drop in."
"So very nice."
"I'll hold your hands, as they are precisely like ice."
"My mother will start to worry."
"I would imagine, as her daughter is clearly in the clutches of a sociopath."
"My mother will start to worry!"
"Shrill is not a good look for you, Cadence. Calm down before you burst a blood vessel. Very well, here it is: Beautiful. What's your hurry. Ugh."
"My father will be pacing the floor."
"Hopefully while cradling a loaded shotgun. What is my line? Ah...to the fireplace roar. So he's apprehensive for his daughter and lurking near large pits of open flame? This song makes no sense."
"So really, I'd better scurry."
"She should just tell him she wants to leave, and if he doesn't stop with the date rape, she'll shoot him in the forehead with wad cutters."
"So really I'd better scurry."
"Beautiful, please don't hurry. Am I truly the only one comprehending these lyrics?"
"Well, maybe just a half a drink more."
"Put some music on while I pour—oh, wonderful. He's going to slip her some E. He's going to drug her so he can have his way with her. No. I'm done. This song is stupid and reads like a how-to manual for the neighborhood stalker."
"The neighbors might think..."
"What? Think what? That they should perhaps consider dialing 911? Because that is what I think."
"The neighbors might think..."
"I am leaving. But only after I say my next line, just so you can feel like an idiot: Baby, it is very very very very very bad out there. Uh-huh, sure it is. Oh, now look at this idiocy from the next verse: 'Say, what's in this drink.' See? She can taste the roofie! And then my horrid line is, 'No cabs to be had out there', meaning she's trapped like a cornered rat. No more! No more Christmas and no more singing, and that is my final word on—"
"The carols on the bus go round and round, round and round, the Shiro on the bus goes bye-bye now, allll the ressssst of the niiiiight."
"Perfect. The other horseman is here. Good night, both of you. And don't you dare gobble up all that hard sauce, Adrienne. Remember the rule: for every forbidden teaspoon full of sweet hard sauce, you have to eat a slice of fruitcake. I insist you obey: you get the pleasure of eating like a decadent wart hog, and all I get is a stomachache."
"You guys! Quit it and get back to singing! Shiro, don't you dare leave and Adrienne, don't you dare stay. STOP RUINING MY CHRISTMAS!"
"A Christmas without a nervous breakdown is a Christmas without sunshine."
"Deck the geese with beaks of holly, fa-la-la-la-la—because the wheels on the sleigh go round and round, round and round, reindeer round. The hooves and the deer go round and round, allll until they craaaaaash! Rudolph's nose is spread all over a cornfield! Then all the reindeer hated him! Serves you right, sqashed reindeer! Next time let me play your reindeer games! Round and round!"
"I am living in a road runner cartoon. Where did it all go wrong? Goodbye, Cadence. Goodbye, Adrienne.
"The feet! Of the geese! Are webbed with the wheels on the bus. Good night! Good night! Good night! Good night! God squash us, every one!"
"All I wanted was a nice evening singing Christmas carols with my sisters. But what I got was attitude from Shiro and psychosis from Adrienne. Worst Christmas ever, and it's only the first day of December!"
"Once more: shrill is not a good look for you."
"Good night! Good bye! Santa was too round and round; silly dumb glowy reindeer couldn't take the weight! Round and round, round and round...bye-bye, all the toys for girls and boys.
"Both of you can get lost now. Just take off so I don't have to talk to you for a while. Just head out. Leave and don't look back, because I've had enough. Okay? Okay? Okay. Um...Adrienne? Shiro? Nuts. C'mon back...it's too quiet in my head when you're not there. Hello? Anyone?
"Well, shoot. God bless us, every one. Or at least some of us."
November 23, 2011
I Refuse To Cook For Thanksgiving, So Bite Me, Birds
Well, this year the Curse is the Old Yarmouth Inn's problem, suckahs! All I need to worry about is figuring out if I'm eating turkey or turkey, or turkey (I'm a traditionalist, I s'pose). And sometime tomorrow night I'll get absurdly hungry and insist my husband take me to a D'Angelos for a turkey sandwich. And I'll sign some stock at the Hyannis B&N. And find and devour another sandwich. Because that's what the holidays are all about: me stuffing myself until all I can do is flop on the floor and moan, "No...more...turkey."
Mmm...turkey...by which I mean Happy Thanksgiving!
(Is it weird that after blogging this I really want some turkey?)
October 31, 2011
I'm Ancient But Educational
Back to FAME: My little boy is his father's son, and rarely asks easy questions. So I embraced the terror when he asked: "Is God a Police Chief?
Hmm, good one. I figured an old stand-by was best, and went for it: "Everyone believes different, hon, so it's up to you."
"What do you feel?"
Good question. I wasn't ready for the whole murky religion thing with my kid, but I mused aloud what I'd like to see: "God is a cop. An old one and very, very street smart. Like Sean Connery in THE UNTOUCHABLES, without the bigotry. He'd kick your ass if you said something mean to his wife, then apologize. He wouldn't put up with any bullying...not from kids, not from abusive asshats, not from weird dogs or cats. He'd be tough but also super nice. You'd feel safe if you were lost and saw him, you'd feel safe going up to him and asking for help. He'd know if you were telling a lie. He'd know when you were sleeping and he'd know when you're awa--wait, that's Santa."
Fortunately my son shares my attention span: "Why do they say in the song that she'll live forever, but also be in heaven?"
Woo-hoo, we were off religion and back to pop music! "Okay, for example, you know who Marilyn Monroe is, right?"
"No."
Nuts. Luckily, my daughter came to my rescue. "See?" she said, showing him my iPod. She then began a twenty-minute play list of MM. "Marilyn Monroe's the tall skinny guy with the big giant blue eyeball, the guy who did The Beautiful People, and Tainted Love and the cover for Personal Jesus...you know."
I groaned. "That's not Marilyn Monroe!" After reminding myself not to drive off a cliff in sheer stupefied rage, I elaborated: Marilyn Monroe was the most sought after actress on the planet in her time. Girls wanted to be her, guys wanted to bang her, politicians thought she was catnip. But if you took her measurements today, Hollywood would decree her fat and only let her do plus-size modeling (at the most), because Hollywood is run by stupid asshats.
At least part of my rant got through to my son, who was surprised to find someone so beautiful (I'd shown him a picture once we'd reached our destination) could be considered fat and/or unattractive. Then I showed him a pic of Christina Hendricks, also considered by the Hollywood Elite (I can almost type that without spitting) to be obese. "Yeah," he agreed, goggling. "Total asshats."
So, officially, what with dropping pop culture references my kids have never heard of, I'm a fuddy-duddy. I knew about the duddy, but the fuddy was a cruel surprise. On the other hand, how often do I get to explain about Hollywood asshatery to my kids and think about God being a cool small-town sheriff?
Right: we'll call it a draw.
October 26, 2011
I Am Thanked by the Pontiac Price/Place VFD
Also, many of you have asked for the address for the VFD, wanting to get in on my dad pretending that I didn't donate shit out of kindness...that instead, he had a deep dark secret about me he would ruthlessly reveal unless I coughed up two hundred...no, five hundred...no, a thousand bucks! Now!
So I did. And here it is:
Pontiac Price-Place VFDP.O. Box 1Pontiac, MO 65729
Hey, man, I'll do whatever...just keep your goons away from me! Also: Happy Halloween.
October 11, 2011
My Parents Suck More At Retiring
But enough of my pipe dreams. Last week my dad, whom some of you know as King Al (my Alaskan Royals series), calls me and starts the conversation with, "How are you doing this month, financially?"
"Why, what'd you do? I've told you before, Dad: if you're old enough to commit felony assault, you're old enough to bail your own damn self out." (Okay, not really. But wouldn't it be cool if he did, and I had?)
Then he asks me if I know what an AED is. "Of course, duh. Who doesn't? I, um, I was just thinking the other day that it's been a while since we had an AED around here, because I absolutely know what an AED is. In fact, I should probably ask you if YOU know what it means, so I can make sure you're not sliding into Alzheimer's. Yeah, that's the way to go: you tell me what you think it means, and I'll tell you if you're..."
A defibrillator, he says. (It was a good thing he cut me off when he did; I could have gone on about the thing I didn't know about for an hour at least.) Oh! That kind of AED. Well, sure. Uh...why are you asking me this? Is it a quiz? Is it a game? Oooh, is it? What's the prize, what am I playing for? Give me another one. Go on, ask something else. Is the prize a big jar of Smarties? I love Smarties.
By now doubtless bitterly regretting his impulse to call, Dad tells me the fire department's AED is getting on in years. He also tells me that a rep for the defib warned them that they should replace it, as eventually it could be just as likely to electrocute a patient as revive them.
Cue my gasp of horror. Great: my beloved parents, blissfully enjoying their weird retirement, are running around the countryside with a machine that produces enough electricity TO BRING THE DEAD BACK TO LIFE, which they may or may not accidentally kill someone with, and if God forbid they should need an ambulance, may or may not accidentally kill themselves with.
Of course. Because this is a common issue for retirees. You gotta wrangle with the Social Security drones, you gotta fight with your health care provider, you've gotta plan a budget around a fixed income, you've got to watch you don't electrocute someone who had the nutty idea that calling 911 was a good thing...typical retirement stuff.
Not wanting my parents to pull time for negligent homicide ("The good news is, we made this run in under four minutes. The bad news is, we killed him. But we made great time!"), I asked what they wanted to do. Perhaps they could consider...maybe they could...quit and actually...I dunno...RETIRE?
Ha! Nothing so simple or sane. Dad tells me the department can get a good used one for around eight hundred bucks. And I was all, used? Used? My God, man, get a new one! Do you think I want all those accidental murders and your or my mother's possible accidental suicides on my conscience? What's a new one go for?
He told me, and okay, definitely a "cha-ching!", but not to a horrifying degree. So I said great...I'll write a check right--
No, he says. They had a meeting with the finance committee coming up, and he was hoping I'd be able to kick in $500 toward a used one. Again: my God, man! Enough with the suicide threats, and you can tell your wife the same thing! I'll cut you a check for a new one. Please, please let me cut a check for a new one.
I immediately wanted to push for that because, like many fictional kings of kingdoms that do not exist in our universe, King Al dislikes asking people for money. So I knew he would not have called if it hadn't been...well...life or death. The real thing, I mean. Not life or death like my life: "Whoever gobbled the last Milky Way, they are DEAD! Their families, DEAD! Their house burned to the GROUND!" "Okay, Mom, first of all, stop Netflixing The Untouchables. Second, you're in our family, too. And if you burn down our house, you're burning down your house." Hmm. I knew there was a flaw in my logic. I just couldn't put my finger on it because I'm suffering the agonies of low blood sugar because ONE OF THE BUMS I GAVE BIRTH TO ATE THE LAST MILKY WAY.
That's life or death in my house (for which I'm beyond grateful). But going on a run and finding a neighbor has been flat lining for half an hour...that's life or death for the retirees (not to mention the poor neighbor). So King Al would never have gone near a phone unless it was pretty damned vital. So in a very short time I went from being morbidly curious ("Are you calling me from yet another holding cell? Is it that close to Halloween already?") to real dread that he wouldn't let me pay for it ("No problem, I've just gotta find my checkbook...it's not in my pants and it's not in the crisper drawer...did I leave it in the bathroom?").
They weren't looking for one big check, Dad explained. He went on to say the burden shouldn't be on someone who lives over a thousand miles away and is unlikely to ever need to be jazzed back to life by a fire department employee in Missouri. But it was more than that. It was about pulling together as a community. "It's our town, our neighborhood, and people want to pitch in to help. Which is...you know, it's supposed to be like that." (It absolutely is, I thought but did not say, but lots of times it's not like that at all. Not one bit.) "So it's better if we all do it together," he finished.
Sensing I was smack up against both the rock and the hard place, I suggested we split the diff: I'd cut a check for $1,000 (FOR A NEW ONE) and they could raise the rest in town. FOR A NEW ONE.
"Are you sure?" he asks. "Because, hey, we'd be really happy with $500. We don't want to jam you up, here."
"Dad, it's totally fine. It's no trouble." Our book royalties pay out twice a year, in the spring and the fall, so we were having a good month. And if we hadn't been having a good month, I would have found the money somehow. I have a conscience (buried deep deep deep in the center of my reptilian brain), so how could I enjoy the solitary splendor of my couch-cave if I hadn't helped? "I'll pop it in the mail tomorrow."
"Are you sure? Because we would have been more than happy with--"
"I'm looking for stamps now," I said, cutting him off. "I'm getting my checkbook. Okay, looking for my...hey, there it is! Always the last place you look. Which in this case was the garage next to a gallon of windshield washer fluid. Okay, so, I'll mail it first thing in the tomorrow. FOR A NEW ONE. FOR A NEW ONE."
"I was hoping I'd be able to come in with five hundred," he mused, "so they'll be happy with twice that. Listen, it's a tax break. I'll have the secretary send you a letter on firehouse letterhead so you can show the IRS."
"Great, but tell the department secretary there's no rush, I know she'll take care of it when she can."
"The secretary's your mom."
"Oh. Tell the secretary I said hi and miss her lasagna, and that her grandchildren are driving me to an early couch-fort. And tell the guys at the meeting that I wasn't gonna cough up a red cent for weirdos who are bad at retiring, and then say that I laughed mockingly to your face (via your cell), but you had something on me and blackmailed me into coughing up a thousand, which I bitterly paid while choking on my own savage defeat."
"Hey, that's a great idea!" he said cheerfully. (We both love fiction.) "Blackmail! Excellent." Off he went to chat up the committee and spread lurid rumors about the fake thing he had on me, and off I went to my checkbook. FOR A NEW ONE. FOR A NEW ONE.
Now. Tell me: does going on ambulance runs while being an ever-more valuable asset to the community due to keeping certification current while also keeping an eye toward equipment upgrade to save still more lives...does that sound like retirement to you?
Me, neither.
* * *
An addendum: when my assistant,Tracy, came in the next morning, I told her the whole story. Her verbatim response was: "Oh, you gotta blog about this! Everybody loves King Al stories." (Translation: Tracy loves King Al stories, and occasionally projects, but what the heck. She's entitled...she's got the most annoying boss ever.)
Fast forward to a couple of days later, there's a voicemail from Long Live The King. I'd gotten an e-mail over the weekend from my mom...whoops, from The Department Secretary, saying the check had arrived. But the king is old school: he was the one who called to ask for a donation, so he was damn sure gonna call again when it came, to thank me.
"Yeah, we got it and I gave it to the treasurer. And I understand Tracy thinks you should blog about it..."
I wasn't going to, of course; Dad didn't have to worry. I try to keep my personal life and my writing life separate. And I'm terrible at it, but I make a half-hearted effort now and then. Anyway, Dad was like me. We like to keep a low profile. We hate being the center of attention. Most of the time in a crowded room, people don't even know we're there. For my dad and me, it's enough to know we're doing good things. We don't need anything beyond that, which is why we're more comfortable under the radar.
"...and I agree. Definitely blog about it." What? "Then you can put in a plug for the fire department, and put in our address, and all your fans can send the department five thousand each. That would be good."
Wait, WHAT? Listen, pal, if my fans have five grand to spare, they should be FedExing it to moi, P.O. Box 193, Hastings, MN.
"Or a dollar each, we don't care," he continued cheerfully, no doubt picturing my annoyed reaction to his voicemail. "But seriously, your gift...at some point it will save someone's life. And we do appreciate it, so thank you very much." Hmm, that was something. I hardly ever hear that I will inadvertently save lives. Mostly I hear that I inadvertently (or very very vertently) ruined them.
But see? See what I put up with? Worst retirees ever. I rest my case.
