thoughts from a freckle-faced pisces
Isn’t this a great little dresser? It’s next to The Big Daddy’s side of the bed. It’s much bigger than his last dresser and gives him more room to store his books and other reading material in all the drawers. It’s also where we store all our sex toys. I kid. I kid.
He likes having it on his side of the bed for many, many reasons.
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| Sheesh, this is where the fur handcuffs are supposed to go. |
Mallie Bee and I were at CVS, each buying some things. I was before her and when all my items were rung up, the cashier asked me if I would like to donate $1.00 to ALS. One dollar. I said no because it’s automatic to me when someone is trying to upsell me something at the register to turn them down. When I had ten seconds to think it over, I said of course, yes, add that on, what was I thinking.
Mallie Bee went next, paid for her items and we left. When we got in the car she said, “That lady never asked me if I would like to donate $1.00.” Would you have, I asked her. Yes, she said, I think that would be a terrible disease to have and I would want to do something for someone who has it.
It nearly made me cry to think in all of my fumbling and bumbling through parenthood, I raised a teenager who makes minimum wage handling other people’s dirty clothes and she doesn’t have to think long about parting with some of it to help another. It also nearly made me cry to think I was close to blowing it all by example.
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:
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.
