A Speckled Trout

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.

For a couple of years, I worked at a lighting shop.  We were the go to place in town for many things, especially lighting parts.  You’d be surprised at the hundreds of pieces of hardware and glassware that go into lighting and we carried them all.  When a customer asked for a specific piece, we’d bring them back to look at the inventory because two people digging through all those little bins would usually result in a successful find.

One day, an older man came in with his son, Buddy.  Buddy was an adult, at least 6′ tall and mentally handicapped.  He had broke the glass cover on a ceiling fixture and his dad came in with some of the pieces to try and find a match.  We all stood in front of a shelving unit that was top to bottom glass covers.  The dad said we had to do this fast before Buddy lost control and caused some damage in the store so we searched while the dad said, “C’mon, Buddy, show me how you can clap.  That’s a good boy.  Keep going.  Buddy, you’re the best clapper ever.”  Every time Buddy would get distracted for a second his dad would remind him to keep clapping and show these nice ladies what a good clapper you are.  “There you go, Buddy, you keep doing it just like that because these ladies love clapping.” 

We found a close enough match and Buddy and his dad left the store with Buddy clapping all the way to the car parked in front.  The way that man loved his son made me cry, and I wondered what would happen to Buddy when his dad wasn’t around anymore to encourage him to clap his way through the glass.

Last year I took the dog into the vet for his annual shots.  Henry’s a big boy and it takes two to lift him up on the table for the exam.  The doctor looked him over and weighed him.  89#.  That’s too heavy, she said, how much do you feed him?   I told her and then said, you know, I’ve got three kids and they tend to give him a bone just for looking cute.  The vet’s assistant says, “Sounds to me like you have a discipline problem in your house.”  What did you just say?  “Maybe you should make sure bones aren’t being passed out all day.”    

Everyone kept going about their business like nothing happened and I hadn’t just been bitch slapped by somebody who smells like dog.  Hellooooo…..customer here.  Me and my fat dog can take our business elsewhere.  I came home and told everyone I knew that story and they went all Jerry Springer and said, Girl, She Did Not Say That.  Oh yes, she did.  She dissed my parenting.

This year I took Henry back to Cruella DeVille’s House of Dog and when they put him on the scale he weighed 80#.  A nine pound weight loss, thank you very much.  Wow, I say, that’s great and everybody goes about their business like I’m not the next Jenny Craig.  He needs his teeth cleaned and Pretend Vet says he may have an infected tooth and didn’t we talk about this last year?

Did we?  I can’t remember, but I’ve got a whole year to lift weights and inject testosterone, cuz next time me and My Fat Friend go in for shots, I’m taking her down.