In Hiding

Mallie Bee came home this weekend with a lowdown of recent events in her dorm.  Her floor is coed.  Boys on one side – girls on the other.  The boys happened to come upon a cat hanging around the dorm.  Since it is an urban campus in the middle of an established neighborhood, this isn’t all that unusual.  She was a friendly cat and used to people, but the boys decided she needed some protection and so they brought her inside and hid her in their wing of the dorm.

That is how she came to be called Anne Frank.

As eighteen year old boys go, they quickly grew tired of feeding Anne Frank and keeping her under wraps and so she was passed off to the girls.  Specifically, Anne was being hidden in the room of one Mallie Bee Fisher and her roommate.

Mallie Bee has grown up with cats and fashioned a litter box, shared her to-go lunches from the cafeteria and true to her nature, took very good care of Anne Frank.

It didn’t take long for the authorities to come knocking and Mal was called into her RA’s office.  “What do you know about Anne Frank,” they inquired.  Anne?  Anne who?  You know who they said.

The gig was up.  Anne Frank was being deported.

Anne Frank The Kitten’s story has a happier ending than the real Anne Frank.  She was saved from the shelter (at least temporarily) and has a new home with a friend’s boyfriend.

And Anne Frank is really Frank Frank.

Two Of These Things Are Not Like The Other

Yesterday at the store we had a customer come in who I knew from the lighting shop I used to work at a few years ago.  At that job I often helped decorators and designers who were shopping for their clients and Dottie used us often.  I asked her how business was going and she said, “I’m 83 years old.  It goes as fast or slow as I want it to.”  Then I asked her how she got into doing that.  “Well, it would take me two hours to tell you my story.”

It was a slow day.  I egged her on.

She is a recovering alcoholic.  Forty years sober.  She was a nanny to her grandkids then they moved to Hong Kong.  She always liked to decorate.  Her birth sister told her she needed to make a job of it.  The sister she found in adulthood after living in an orphanage.  She moved from one side of the state line to the other to be in a neighborhood with young families that needed help with their houses.  She made flyers and passed them around.  She thinks you should use what you have to decorate before you run out to Pottery Barn.  Her son started a company that went public and the shares weren’t worth much until a few years ago.  All these years of scraping by and now life is easier.  That’s why she can come in once in awhile and buy herself something nice.

The writer in me urged Dottie to get this story written down for her grandkids.  She laughed, said skip the bag I’m trying to conserve and her and her dog left.

Today I waited on somebody who bought several things – one being a heavy winter coat.  Too heavy to carry to the parking garage and so we said we’d hold onto her things and wait for her to pull up in front of the store.  I waited and waited and waited.   Finally, I left everything in front and finished something else up at the register.

That’s when I heard the honking.

Is that woman honking for her clothes?

Yes she was.

She popped the trunk of her car but I was already putting her bags in the back seat.  As revenge goes it wasn’t much……….unlike the disgruntled employee who put rat poison in the salsa at a local Mexican restaurant………..but at least I made her get off her behind to shut her trunk.

She should write that down.

The Good, The Bad & The Birth

Will was born three weeks after my dad died.  Maggie and I had spent the early part of the summer at Mom and Dad’s house and returned to Maryland in July.  By the end of that month, Dad decided to stop his treatments.

We were insured by Kaiser Permanente and the protocol when you were expecting was to alternate seeing a nurse one appointment, an OB/GYN the next.  I was seven months pregnant before I ever saw a doctor.

Things at home were going downhill quickly and Mom said we should think about coming home to see Dad one more time, but a woman as pregnant as I was couldn’t get on a plane without a note from their doctor.  I was going every other week for checkups and every time I asked the answer was “no.”  No you can’t go, no it’s too stressful, no we won’t write you a note.  No.  No.  No.

On an appointment when I saw an actual doctor and explained the situation again, he said of course you have to go and I’ll write the note right now.  He handed it to me and on his way out the door said, “But don’t deliver that baby in Illinois because Kaiser won’t pay for it.”

Mark, Maggie and I flew home with the intent of staying over Labor Day weekend.  Mom was under enormous stress trying to take care of Dad and since Mark had plenty of vacation time we ended up staying nearly two weeks to help out.

After Dad died and the funeral plans had been set, we booked our flight back to Maryland with US Air.  We went to the church, the cemetery and the luncheon afterwards then packed our stuff and headed to the airport so this baby would be born where we were insured.

I gave my note to the flight attendant and we boarded a very empty plane.  After the flight had taken off and I was using the bathroom, Mark told her of the circumstances of the past few weeks.  When I came back to my seat she said to me, “Honey, why don’t you rest and I’ll let you know when we’re about to land.”  Then she led me to an empty row of seats that she’d put pillows and blankets on so I could nap.

I was cried out by then but I remember how compassionate she was to a fragile pregnant woman who was on a flight into the unknown, and that the crappy doctor’s office I’d been dealing with all year could learn something from her.

Will-Da-Beast

Today The Boy Child has completed another spin around the sun and turns twenty two.

How did that happen?

He was the child that wore me out.  He climbed on the back of the recliner, stood on the very top of its back and tried to rock back and forth.  He would climb onto the kitchen table and swing the chandelier back and forth.  He would pull a chair up to the electric stove and turn all the knobs on until one day he burnt every one of his fingertips.  He’d wake us up in the morning by standing in his crib and banging it back and forth against the wall.  He helped himself into a neighbor’s house while they were playing outside, all the while we were frantically looking for him.  If a storm produced enough water in the gutters he’d be out all afternoon with a boat.  His kindergarten teacher was sure he had ADD.  Reading was a complete mystery to him and so we’d spend most nights working on homework and flashcards.

Then he calmed down.

Don’t ask me how.  He just did.

Last year, he and I were talking about an acquaintance who was rolling her eyes at the career path her kid was choosing.  Mark my words, the mom said, she’s going to hate it. 

“You know what, Mom,” Will said later.  “There was never anything I ever said I wanted to be that you didn’t think I would be good at.”

Well……….despite your best efforts to break me, I always believed you were born with an imagination destined to take you wherever you wanted to go.  

Happy birthday my wild child.

Two Things

While I was at work today, my friend, Carla, left a message.  I miss you.  I’ve been thinking about you.  Give me a call.

Sigh.

Carla was the first mom friend I made when we moved to Maryland.  She and Jim were fellow transplanted Midwesterners who lived a few doors down from us.  While we were moving in her mom kept an eye on the activity and later that day met Mark at the dumpster.  Do you have a baby, she asked.  Yes, six weeks old, he said.  My daughter lives there.  Her baby is three weeks old and tomorrow her and your wife need to meet each other.

The Big Daddy went along with Betty’s plan and that is how a twenty five year friendship began.

Since those years we have never lived near each other and long stretches of time go by when we don’t talk, but when we do it is just like the old days when we’d meet each other on the sidewalk with crying babies.

She had seen the photos from Maggie and Nate’s wedding and wanted to know the deets.  I filled her in about that lovely day and then we talked about everything from yoga to kids to us both turning into retail girls.

Whenever anyone asks me about the wedding and if I was emotional, I tell them about two things.  One was when everyone had come up the aisle and we were waiting for the bride.  I stuck my head out of the pew and looked at the back of the church and saw Mark and Maggie.

Oh Lordy, will you look at those two?   She’s so happy.  He’s so proud.

The other time I wanted to cry was when my hairdresser came to the house.  Nearly ten years of her taming my wild curls, hearing about my decorating projects, my dog, the garden, the kitchen I want to gut, my husband………..my husband!  There she was with all of her magic, and I still can’t talk about how much it meant to me to have her here that day without getting choked up.

With all that Carla and I talked about I never got around to that part but I didn’t need to.  If anybody would know about a full heart spilling over it would be the friend who was there from the start.

Hangry

The other day I was helping a woman buy a skirt.  “This,” she said pointing to her stomach, “this is making me crazy.”  I hear ya oh menopausal sister.  It’s that.  It’s the chin.  The flag waving upper arms.  The butt.

It’s. Everything.

Today in the mail I got a catalog called Blair.  I believe it was supposed to be sent to my mother.  It had comfy shoes, pumpkin sweaters and there were plenty of models that looked like this………….

I also got Anthropologie.

The same model was on every page looking like this………………..

The Anthro model looks hangry………..as if she’d rip the head off the photographer who asked her to turn her chin one more time. 

The Blair models are rocking their mom jeans and they know that if they go out for lunch they have no worries for you do not put Spanx on under a mom jean.

You put on seconds.

The Queen Mum Goes To The Eye Doctor

The Queen Mum has some eye issues of late.  My sister, who is the Go To Girl For All Things Mom (and who everyone in the family will owe until eternity) took mom to the eye doctor.

She said it was like being in the middle of an AARP meeting.

Mom had just come from one of her concerts and was looking pretty sharp.  Of all the empty seats in the waiting room, some guy came and sat right next to Mom and started chatting shmoozing her up.   Ann kept on eye on him as he seemed very interested in our Queen Mum.  After a few minutes his phone rang and he said to Mom, “Excuse me.  I’ve got to get this.  You know when you’re a sex kitten like me……..”

A sex kitten?

Mom got called in to see the doctor in the nick of time.  A few more minutes in that waiting room and the grandkids might have ended up calling Mr. Kitten……………Boompa.

Rocking a fake tattoo for my nephew’s wedding.

Here Fishy Fishy

When the kids were little, The Big Daddy would take them fishing.  There were mishaps.  Oh, were there mishaps.  Like when he was putting yet another minnow on a hook and his glasses fell off his head and he had to fish them out before they settled into the murkiness of the lake.

I can’t say they learned to love to fish, but they did learn to love the tale.

The Fashion Train

I was on the job for all of a few weeks when who should come in one morning but this guy……………

There was no mistaking him.  I knew from clear across the store that we had a celebrity in Da Howse.  While my coworker was enabling helping another customer, I greeted him.  He said he’d been in a year ago and loved our mix of clothes and antiques.  Me too, Carson, me too.   He was polite and pleasant but not as outgoing as the guy you see on t.v.   I left him alone and when he wandered my way again I asked him what he was in town for, had he sampled some barbeque, could he spend a couple grand so that it looked like my stellar selling skills were back.  I made that last part up.

He was impeccably (and I do mean impeccably) dressed.  Dark straight jeans, shirt and tie, plaid jacket.  A  fashion standout in the shopping district of Cowtown.

And what did the woman who sells clothing wear that day?  Was I wearing the J. Crew black dress that I feel like a million bucks in?  I got it for $6.00 at a garage sale…that’s why I feel rich in it.  Or the blue silk dress with the chunky exposed zipper?  Or the jeans and heels that make me look ten pounds lighter?

No. No. And no.

I wore my grey linen pants that stretch and grow by the second, a white shirt that was acting up like the pants and my eight hour grandma shoes.

Oh Carson help me pleeeeeeeez.   The fashion train don’t go through Wichita…………

…………..lessen you’re a cattle or a hog.

Don’t Make This

Awhile ago, a friend was having a party and I asked what I could bring.  Well, she asked, what’s your signature dish?

My what?

Your specialty?  The thing your family loves for you to make?   

Prison Food……….my homemade concoction of Hamburger Helper.  They go crazy for it but I don’t mind stopping at the liquor store for a bottle of wine if you think that might steal the thunder from your entree.

Maggie and Nathan had a party this weekend to show off the cute little house they’re renting and to gather friends to watch some college football.

I decided to make these because they’re so easy so good.

Except they’re not.

The gist of the recipe is to toss the pretzels in oil, sugar and cinnamon.  Heat in the microwave for two minutes.  Put more sugar and cinnamon on top and when they have cooled off drizzle melted white chocolate on top.

A monkey could make that.

I melted the chocolate in the microwave until I had what you’d call caulk.  Spackle.  Grout.  Something along those lines.

Plan B.  I put my caulk in a bowl atop a pot of boiling water on the stove and waited.  The caulk didn’t budge.  I pitched it and started over with the microwave method.  This time I lowered the heat, checked every thirty seconds and ended up with a fudge blob.  Undrizzable fudge.

Plan C.  I remembered back in the day that I set my chocolate bunny next to the stove when The Queen Mum was cooking an Easter ham and ended up with a chocolate block in a box, so I put the blob in a dish on the stove while our chicken dinner was cooking and waited.  When that didn’t work I shoved the whole mess in the oven with the chicken.

Hmmmm……….that looks like nuclear waste and smells like chicken.

In the meantime, I watched a youtube video on how to melt chocolate.  The white stuff?  It’s really hard to melt.  Ghiradelli white chocolate chips?  Fagettaboutit.

Plan D.  I ended up making pumpkin bars after dinner.  This time I had a beer during the prep.  While looking for the powdered sugar we didn’t have, I knocked the brown sugar off the shelf which knocked my beer over and it guzzled onto the kitchen floor.

Jeezus take me now.

The Big Daddy saved the day and went to the store for powdered sugar that I spilled on my pants when I opened the bag.

Wine.  It’s what I bring to a party.