Turf Wars

I was nagged into gardening by my friend, and my first garden was a little plot next to the garage that The Big Daddy dug for me as a mother’s day present.

By most gardener’s standards it was miniscule, but it was where I practiced until we dug a bigger garden right outside the front door.  When I moved my garden into its new home, I started playing around with different flowers.  If something was a non-performer, too big or invasive, I yanked it.

The Big Daddy would stand over my shoulder and chastise me every time I pulled something up until one day I said, “You have to get your own garden.  You are driving me crazy.  You are no longer allowed to tell me what to do in my happy place.”

He took that advice to heart.

Over the last few years he has taken over the back yard with raised beds.  He could care less about the aesthetics and so it looks rather Bangladeshish to me.  I have showed him pictures of English gardens where fruits and vegetables are mixed with flowers or bordered by boxwoods.

“Ack”, he says waving me off.

Two years ago right before they were about to bloom, he dug up and transplanted the daffodils that were in the back and they have yet to bloom again.

Trauma, I tell him.  You’ve traumatized them.  

Now he has an idea for a little patch of lawn near the street where no grass grows.  The day lillys, he says, let’s put those there.  Get them out of the back yard.  They’ll do better out there anyways.”

Oh, why yes of course, I’ve heard that flowers thrive on car exhaust.

“Where you can see them and enjoy them”

Suddenly the smell of bullshit wafted through the fresh spring air.

Under the cover of darkness or when I’m at the mall, he will dig them up and finally be rid of anything flowering in the backyard, despite the fact that some of these plants have called that space home years before we bought this house in 1992.

With the absence of a single flower, his man card will be reinstated and not a moment too soon.

Real men grow vegetables to feed their families.  Lots and lots of vegetables in boxes lined up like North Korean soldiers, and if you were ever curious about how well Mr. McGregor is endowed you need to take a look at the size of his tomatoes.


                                            

Shaking At Shady Acres

Two years ago when we were home for Christmas, Mom put the squeeze on Mark and I to visit my Uncle Paul in the nursing home.  The wound he had from a recent surgery was not healing like it should, and since he lives alone it was suggested that he take advantage of his Medicare benefit of short-term nursing home care until his post-surgery problems got better.

It’s a little hard to get psyched for a visit like that, but The Queen Mum doesn’t let up on the nagging when it comes to things like visiting the sick.

He was in pretty good shape and we chatted for awhile in his room and then it was time for lunch.  Mom, Mark and I followed him to the cafeteria and met the group of friends that he regularly ate with.  None of them seemed especially infirmed or old and there was lively chatter around the table.

The lunch for the day was salisbury steak.

At the end of the table sat a man with all the signs of Parkinson’s.  His salisbury steak lunch had clearly been put through a blender.  He called an aide over and told her that his therapist said he could start eating solid food that day so could she please take this back and bring him a regular lunch.  She left and when she returned said that no order was put in for solid food so he’d have to eat what was in front of him.  They went back and forth discussing this oversight, each time him pushing the plate a little closet towards her.  She wouldn’t relent and he looked near tears.

I was seething and ready to jump into the fray for somebody I’d known for all of five minutes..   

How about you find his therapist and get the okay so he can have a frigging normal lunch like everyone else at this table?  Better yet, page her that way you don’t even have to leave the room.  Look at this.  Who in their right mind would willingly eat this shit?

Instead I sat there being pissed.  After lunch we said our goodbyes to my uncle and when we were walking out the door I said to Mom, “You are never going to be in a place like this.”

Part of Mark’s research work is on Parkinson’s, and although I don’t know anyone personally affected by that disease, I’ll always remember that man.  Wearily resigned to eat what he was given, he pushed the plate closer and slowly brought his trembling hand to his mouth with more dignity than I would ever be capable of mustering.

May I Take Your Order Please

The Big Daddy is a smart guy.  A real smart guy.  Sometimes when he talks to me about protein folding, I wonder how his brain can hold so much information while my claim to fame is solving puzzles on Wheel of Fortune and figuring out percent off in my head.

He often gives lectures to students and to colleagues at professional meetings.  Based on the amazing toast he gave at Maggie and Nate’s wedding, and the lovely toast he makes every year for our Easter dinner, I am also in awe of his naturalness when speaking in front of a lot of people.

I do not have that gift.

So it seems to me that he should be able to easily order food at a drive-up, but that is not the case.  He either can’t hear or can’t understand what they’re saying, is phklempt when he tries to place the order, is confused by ordering multiple menu items, has no idea what some of these things even are, can’t understand why we can’t get a burger with everything on it and pick off what we don’t like, and most importantly, why we can’t haul our lazy asses out of the car and go get our own food.

Yesterday we drove through a local place to get Mal a burger.  She wanted The Single with mustard, ketchup and pickle and a cherry limeade.

You want what?

Say that again.

Mustard, ketchup, onion and pickle?

Well, that’s what it comes with.

You don’t want the onion?

Just pick it off.

A cherry limeade?

What size?

Just when it seemed that he might be able to place this basic, small order by talking into a menu board, I had to foul things up by saying, “Make that two cherry limeades.”

He ordered the burger, a cherry limeade and a lime limeade.

That’s when Mal and I lost it. 

A limeade is lime.  Nobody orders a lime limeade because there’s no such thing.

And we started laughing so hard that by the time we made it to the pick-up window we were crying because this poor guy is so out of his element in a drive-thru lane.

What happened to you that makes you so bad at this?

The Big Daddy’s earliest experience with a drive-thru goes way back.  Back to high school and this guy in the wee hours…………….

………….which could explain the flashbacks he has every time he has to drive up and place an order.
                                                   

Huddled Masses

I went to the post office Friday which has to be my least favorite thing to do, but remarkably the line wasn’t out the door.  There was only one couple at the counter. a Muslim couple, and they were having a communication failure with the postal clerk.  She couldn’t understand where they wanted to send their package and their English wasn’t the best, so she started yelling louder as if they were deaf instead of confused.  I thought I heard them say Saudi Arabia, but she didn’t acknowledge any such thing because listening wasn’t her strong suit.  She gave them a piece of paper to write down the information and when it was indeed Saudi Arabia, she told them to step out of line to fill the necessary forms out.  A glimpse of her nice side finally started emerging which seemed to take much longer than necessary.

While I watched all of this unfold in front of me, I wondered if the shoe were on the other foot how in the hell I would mail a package from Saudi Arabia to Kansas.

That night I was watching the local news and there was a story of a 24 year old medical student who went out for a jog and hadn’t come back.  He was not carrying his cell phone or wallet and due to his age he wasn’t likely kidnapped, but he’d been missing for a whole day and his parents were distraught with worry.  He lived at home in an upscale neighborhood with no obvious problems.  The family was of middle-eastern descent and his mother sobbed when she talked of him.  I couldn’t imagine where her mind was going in this confusion of a missing son.

Buried in today’s paper was a very short story of this missing jogger found dead.  Off the trail, no obvious signs of trauma but an autopsy is pending.  Page six?   Two nights earlier his family sat on the couch in front of a news camera and begged for help to find him.  The outcome of the biggest crisis in their life ends on page six? 

Would the story of this kid be more breaking, more urgent, more front page if he were white?  I’d like to think not, but we daily separate who is worthy and who is not, who deserves courtesy or immediate help and who gets yelled at or dismissed for not understanding…………as if God has personally assigned Americans his chosen people and therefore immune from doing unto others.

Be it mailing a package or going for a run, it must require nerves of steel and a daily dose of bravery when you decide to make a life in the land of the free.
                                                           

Busy

When my kids were young, I didn’t buy into the let’s-keep-the-kids-real-busy camp.  We tried soccer with Maggie and she was so painfully shy when she was young that she cried and cried at the thought of getting out on a field in front of all those people.  Will didn’t fare much better.  We didn’t even attempt it with Mallory until she was in 4th grade and she loved it.

At some point, Maggie started dancing and then played basketball.  In high school she was in track.  Will was in Scouts and cross country.  Mal did dance.  On Mondays, they all went to religion class and in the summer they took swimming lessons.

Besides the expense of extracurricular activities, I hated the driving.  Dropping off for an hour practice and coming back and waiting for them while hoping my dinner wasn’t burning at home made me pissy.  We were fortunate to live on a street that had more than thirty kids, and so they preferred to run the hood with their friends after school playing kick the can, ghost, hide-and-seek or tag.

This felt like my childhood and that’s what I wanted for them.  Outside making things up.  Laying in the grass looking at the clouds.  Running like gazelles when they heard the ice cream truck coming.

I often felt like an outsider in these thoughts, but over-scheduling my kids over-scheduled me and that didn’t work.  I might have mentioned a time or fifty to Mark that how-busy-your-kids-are must be the new status symbol.

He gets it.  The house could fall down around him and he can sit forever on the back porch with a glass of wine looking at the birds.  He knows them all by name, makes sure their feeders are always full and they sing to him their gratitude.

That makes me crazy – for as much as I never wanted my kids to be busy, when it comes to this house I can think of a hundred things that should be done on the weekend before you sit down with a glass of wine and do nothing.

I’m working on that especially hard this year.  Maybe if I ignore the peeling paint, grab a book and a glass of wine the birds will sing to me.

                                      

Tattoo Girls

A month after Maggie and Nate got married, my nephew Patrick married Sabrina and so we headed to Indiana for the nuptials.

Since none of us were in the wedding and needn’t be at the rehearsal dinner the night before, my sister Ann and her husband had us over for beer and pizza along with my sister Jean and her husband.

It was a perfect summer night and while the guys sat outside on the patio, the girls gathered at the kitchen table.  My niece and I started telling retail stories, and as is the case in my family, stories must be embellished and acted out which leads to, “Wait, wait.  I’ve got a better one.”   Maggie launched into school stories and before long she and my niece started doing some very suggestive dance moves while Brig (and probably Mom) watched wide-eyed.

My nephew and his soon-to-be-bride love tattoos and so Ann and Caitlin hitched a plan to have a photo of Mom and Patrick made into a tattoo that she could wear to the wedding.  I have no idea how she convinced Mom to do this except that she’s the youngest.  The tattoo would be covered up while she had her jacket on but when the party started she could get down with the best of them.

You could only order them by the dozen so her granddaughters got tats as well.  When Ann was putting it on her that night, Mom kept asking, “Now you’re positive this is going to come off, right?”  Ann kept telling her of course it would come off with a wink, wink to the rest of us.

Before it was time to dance the night away all the girls got out there and showed off their ink.  Such wholesome bad asses they should be in a Crest commercial.

Cavernous

Mallie Bee is home for spring break and there has been a lot of car trips back and forth to dance.  The other day the subject of the Duggar family came up.

Sheesh, hear we go again.  Must be a new season starting. 

The Beester said that they are thinking about adopting.  I guess if Jim Bob can’t get Michelle preggers with #20 right quick their show might be in danger of getting cancelled.  Well, shoot, if that happens we’ll never find out if Mom’s uterus ends up in her underpants every time she has a coughing fit.

I told her about a family in our school that had 13 kids.  The mom at one point lost her vision and then died a couple of years later.  This rocked The Queen Mum’s world and I remember her telling me, “You can’t have that many kids and not have all kinds of things start going wrong.”

I didn’t know nothin’ about birthin’ no babies and Mom wasn’t one to talk much about that, but I took note of her warning that if you didn’t stop while the stopping was good you’d end up making an early departure.

I was friends with Rita and went to the wake with my parents.  There was an agreement amongst the family that there would be no crying because their mom wouldn’t want that, so there in the funeral parlor they were eagle eying each other and if somebody started to break down the siblings would swoop in like the Secret Service and put an end to that business.

I felt like crying and she wasn’t even my mom so I pitied the kids in this family that were sad and motherless and needed to cry and cry but weren’t allowed to.

Can you believe that, Mal?  That they couldn’t cry?

Mal let that story percolate a few minutes but she had other things on her mind.  She waved her hand below her waist and said, “It seems to me that if you have that many kids that this area here would get cavernous.”

And then there’s that.

…………..Another One Opens

At the end of January I was cruising one of my favorite job search sites and found a posting for a finance associate for the modern art museum here in Kansas City.  I read through the qualifications and said to myself, “Guuuuurl………….you could do this.”

I did some updates on my resume and sent it off.  Then I completely forgot about it. 

Three weeks later, I got a call on my cell phone from the HR department asking me to come in for an interview.

What?  Me? 

The interview got cancelled twice due to weather and whatever mojo I thought had took a nosedive.  Lo and behold, oh me of little faith when it comes to interviews, when the day came things went really well since they didn’t start with my personal favorite interview question, “Tell us about yourself.”

What does that even mean in respect to a job interview?  Do you want a rehash of my job qualifications or do you want to know that I never miss The Good Wife on Sunday nights?  That question confuses me, but it quite possibly is because I overthink it.   And everything else. 
Anyhow, we talked about the job, what I’ve done and how it relates to what they need, and I liked them.  Very much.

Another three weeks went by and then I got a call to come in for a 2nd interview.

On Friday I was in the basement at work on my lunch break when the HR officer called to offer me the job which I accepted.  I called The Big Daddy and we high-fived and giggled over the phone.  I texted everyone I knew and then went back upstairs to work. 

I’m going to be working in an art museum of all things.

An art museum.

In this roller coaster job hunt of the last several years it seems that I may have finally stuck the landing.

When One Door Closes…………………

The store officially closed on Sunday and things have ramped up around there lately.  After the post-Christmas lull, a good closing sale kept the customers coming in, the registers humming and the employees hustling.

Especially in the last week I think we’ve cleaned out dressing rooms and hung up the same clothes a few thousand times.

The perks of being a shopgirl.

For those of us leaving it has been a bittersweet week, although, the same could probably be said for those who are staying.  Because of yet another Kansas City snowstorm I could have taken Sunday off, but I wanted to be with my work peeps one more time in that beautiful old building.

Lest you think that being a shopgirl is for the simple minded you should know that besides being incredibly stylish my coworkers love music, food, coffee, books, tango, yoga and gardening.  They are educated, kind, hard-working, opinionated and fun.  Outside of this work they are a retired principal, a current principal, a librarian, an artist, a mentor to education majors for the local college, in training to be a docent for the art museum, a former long-time resident of New York City, a shopgirl in an independent bookstore, a real estate agent, a dancer and a writer.  They are older than me and younger than me, but age never seemed to be a barrier to bonding with all of them.

Even when I was worn out and had little in my reserve tank for another day on my feet, I always looked forward to seeing these woman.  Like the antique dealer upstairs and the people who work the carryout counter of the barbeque restaurant next door, they welcomed me into their family every day and………….

……..I will miss them.  Dearly.

Unfinished Business

When I started this blog, I thought I might make it a decorating thing.  Paint choices, pillows that I’ve sewn, crafts for every holiday.

My neighbor is always telling me I could hit the jackpot if I pursued that, and I’ve kicked the idea around over and over, but………………….

I’m not that good at those sorts of things lately.

I have gotten busy and the things that are undone around here keep growing and growing.

I’ve got ten feet of quarter-round that’s been missing for at least twenty years.  The railing upstairs was done ten years ago and I still can’t decide if I should paint it or stain it.  There is not one single drawer in the kitchen that closes right.  The slipcovers have been washed so many times that I wore a hole in them so I bought a blanket to throw over the arm of the sofa.

And the basement?  Oh geez, the basement.

These are The Turd Brothers looking through the blinds at the birds…………..

They want them some birdies real bad.  So bad that they attack the blinds…………..

Oh dear, look, they’ve broken the blinds, but they are tired and need to nap…………

……………….and so they slumber knowing that the view they expanded for bird-watching will be around for a very long time.