Month: July 2011

Mr. Handsome B.D. and I have been married 28 years today.  It was wicked hot on the day we got married and geez, it’s still hot.  Har, har, har.

Many years ago, we invited some old neighbors over for dinner.  For whatever reason, it felt awkward to me and hard to make conversation.  After about thirty minutes, Big Daddy blows in from work and sorry I’m late,  I’ve missed you guys in the hood, how’s the new place, everybody got something to drink, the cement business treating you well, da Bears are killing me this year………..

I  remember that night vividly for many reasons.  I knew I married a guy who loved the company of other people, who got the party started the second he walked in the door and was the perfect compliment to my often shy self.  Since that first blind date at Denny’s, to marriage, to three kids born in three different states, to ups and downs, he has always felt like home to me.

I’m kind of afraid of birds.  They creep me out.  The Big Daddy, he loves ’em.  Sometimes, I think we have absolutely nothing in common except gin.  When my brother, Tom, was younger he got attacked by a bird right outside the front door.  “Gull damn blue jays”, my mom said.  To this day, if she hears a bunch of birds squawking, she’ll say, “It’s those gull damn blue jays.”  I was about 40 before I knew that she was saying “goddamn” instead of naming a species of the blue jay.

The Big Daddy and I are headed out with the Chillens on a road trip to a family wedding.  From here to Iowa to Illinois, he will point out every hawk he sees along the way.  On wires, fence posts, along the road.  Hawk.  Hawk.  Kath, a Hawk.  This is what I do in the car on a road trip.  Read, nap, eat Skittles.  Sometimes I yell at The Big Daddy, “For chrissakes watch the road and not the hawks or you’re gonna get us killed.”  Then I go back to snacking on my Skittles because I’ve got low blood sugar.  Or maybe it’s high blood sugar.  I can’t remember which ailment I have, but it’s the one that needs sugar in order to stay alert in case the gull damn birds start attacking.

It was recently reported that men use “the sniff test” to determine their clothing choices and will sometimes wear their whitey tighties 2 -3 times before changing them.

Oh. My. God.

This is new information to me and I was raised with three brothers.  I know men are slobs.  I know they drink milk out of the carton, scratch their butts, pride themselves on making fart sounds with their armpits and don’t give much thought to their appearance most days.  I know I have to tell The Big Daddy that the hair on his ears needs to be shaved because he’s looking a little too Thriller.  The BD, on the other hand, doesn’t have to point out any chinnies I have because I maintain that area like a Master Gardener at the Arboretum.  I stay on top of my grossness.  That’s the way chicks roll.  With one exception.

I wear the same bra for several days before washing it.  How many days I don’t keep track of.  With this heat wave the number of times I can wear the same bra is limited, so I did the sniff test.

If I wore that thing one more day, I would qualify to be a guy.  Alarming?  I tried to scream but terror took the sound before I could make it.

I met Brenda a few years ago when I got a job at a clothing boutique in my neighborhood.  I loved the store, I loved my coworkers, I loved the owner, I loved our retail neighbors.  I loved that place.  That place employed many women and each of us would arrive for work in our fashionable attire, accessorized with a trendy tote of the baggage we all carry that comes with living.  Brenda’s bag contained a painful divorce after 30+ years of marriage, and many a time when business was slow, we’d talk over the jewelry counter about her troubles.   She was trying to adjust to a very different life than the one she’d known for so long and it ebbed and flowed daily.  She ended up leaving the store for full-time employment elsewhere, and when this recession started forming, the store that was so beloved by so many became one of its earliest casualties.

The friendships I made working with all of those people remains one of the loveliest surprises of my life.  Like the good mom of three kids, Brenda made sure we all stayed in contact and we’d get together occasionally to catch up.  Now, Brenda is leaving her life here to take a job managing a store in San Francisco.  After all those years of carrying that tote and all its baggage, she gets to start anew, rewrite her story and be in charge of the narration.

I can’t even think about her not being around to meet for a cup of coffee, a bottle of wine or sampling some of her cooking without it making me cry. She has been a dear friend to me and my family as well as many others, but her time to shine has arrived.  Like watching a bird who’s broken wing has been mended, our Brenda is about to fly.

The Big Daddy is a farmer in his off hours and very proud of his bounty.  He’s grown lettuce, tomatoes, raspberries, rhubarb, onions, beans, zucchini and eggplant.  On harvest days, he carefully carries in his veggies like they’re little newborn babies.

The baby lettuce he birthed had a slight problem.  At times it tended to taste bitter and once (and only once) I made the mistake of crack-a-lackin on his kid.  The other day I made a salad with blackened chicken and picked some of the lettuce.  We ate it and everybody loved the chicken, but on the down low, Mallie Bee said to me, “The lettuce is bitter.”  I whispered back, “I know but eat it anyway or you-know-who will get mad at us.”  We grimaced our way through it and never let on to The Big Daddy Farmer in the Dell that we weren’t a fan of the produce part of the meal.  He chomped away like it was the best thing he’s ever tasted, the “b” word was never spoken out loud and never could I have guessed that the seemingly harmless lettuce leaf would be the elephant in the room.

The Big Daddy started biking ten years ago in order to get in better shape.  He rode back and forth to work, which was ten miles round-trip.  When a few years had gone by, he got asked to join a bike team forming at our church that would ultimately ride the MS150 every September.  When this happened, the biking got serious.  Through these last many years, I have lived with this passion of his and picked up some of the terminology and what it means.  For those of you not familiar with it, I will decipher it for you:

• I have a training ride.  I will be gone the entire day and won’t be worth squat when I get back.

• We had a man go down.  Somebody fell off their bike and went wee, wee, wee all the way home.

• Pete’s got this thing on his bike……….  I want Pete’s bike.

• I’m doing a charity ride this Saturday.  I’m paying more than retail for a cool new jersey and by the way, I won’t be worth squat when I get home.

• Joe’s got this new bike…………  I want Joe’s bike.

• I got dropped.  The cool kids took off without me.

• Gary got a new bike that has…………..  I want Gary’s bike.

• He’s bailed for tomorrow.  His wife started chasing him with a butcher knife when he told her he was going out biking with the boys again so he reconsidered the idea.

• These bikes now have electronic shifters.  I want a new bike.

•  Touched base with my BSG.  Bike store guy, like a BFF, only better.

• Riding a century tomorrow.  I’m spending all day riding 100 miles and will not be worth squat upon return.     

•  The guy bonked.  He saw dead people.

• I was in this peloton and we were cooking.  A bunch of bikers rode real close and real fast and it was glory days, baby, glory days.

• You should see the bike John just got.  Oh please, oh please, oh please.

There’s plenty more, but in an effort to neither bore nor overwhelm, I’ll save it for another time.  And believe me, there is always another time.

• Ya have to admit, I don’t ride that much compared to other guys.  I’m full of crap, tightly contained in this handsome Spandex.

A few years ago, I was at Ikea (just a moment here while I bow my head in a moment of silence to show my respect) and found a laundry sorter.  It was THE BOMB.  A single hamper where you could sort your clothes into dark, medium or whites and when you’re ready to wash, BOOM A LACKA BOOM, you’re good to go.  I showed it to the kids and the Pre-Teacher Girl said, “Ya mean we can’t just throw it down the stairs anymore.”  Well, no because this makes it so easy to SORT and then I’ll just have to throw the loads in.   “But we like throwing it down the stairs.  This means we’ll have to go down the stairs and sort it ourselves.  Yes, that is the point.   It turned out I was the only one that actually used this and within a few months it was donated to The Land Where Lazy Children Do Not Live.

The other day, I was cleaning the fridge.  The godawful fridge that makes me crazy.  I got the brilliant idea to sort things on the door by category – condiments, salad dressing, wines for slushies……  Lookie here, kids, you just put it away by its category and then we’ll always know where it is when we’re looking for it.  Two days later, there was Italian dressing next to the Pinot Grigio and one of these things is not like the other, unless you know of a way to get a buzz from Wishbone Italian.

I let out a big irritated sigh and The Big Daddy did what he always does when my plans for an ordered home get thwarted.  He put his arm around me and said, “How ’bout you go wipe your ass and you’ll feel much better.  In fact, all of us would feel better if you did that.”   It’s like he’s a mind reader.