Annoying.
Also, she thought it would be fun if we got a kitten, and I went along. But somehow we couldn’t leave with only one kitten, so we got two. When we took them home, I learned that one plus one doesn’t equal two, when it comes to kittens. Looking at my house now, you would think I hired a kitten wrecking crew. Their names are Mimi and Vivi, and they’re conspiring as we speak. They shred toilet paper. They climb table lamps. They surf throw pillows. By the way, we already had four pets—three golden retrievers and a bossy Welsh corgi—and you can imagine their happiness at the new arrivals. The goldens think the kittens are delicious. The corgi thinks she gave birth.
My schedule is a mess, too. Francesca’s become a vegetarian, so we go food-shopping all the time. We’re in the market, squinting at labels and scanning for magic words like cruelty-free. What’s the alternative? Pro-cruelty? Obviously she’s right, but all of a sudden, I’m spending too much of my life around produce. Plus, I’m carb-free, which means that we agree only on celery.
I don’t recognize my own shopping cart. I buy Bocaburgers and tempeh like they’re going out of style. This is food you couldn’t pick out of a lineup. Bocaburgers look like coasters, and tempeh looks like fiberglass. I’ve eaten Bocaburgers, so I know they’re good with ketchup, because everything is good with ketchup. As for tempeh, I have no idea what it tastes like or how to prepare it. I’m thinking sautéed. With ketchup.
Worse yet, Francesca likes clean clothes, which I regard as picky. Living alone, I have gone months without doing laundry. I work at home, and the UPS man doesn’t care if I wear the same T-shirt and shorts all week. So does he.
But now dirty clothes make a high and aromatic pile on the floor. Francesca and I play Laundry Chicken, to see which one of us breaks down first and washes the clothes. I suspect that at the middle of the pile is a kitten. Two kittens.
Still, no matter what, I refuse to iron. Nor do I want her to iron. In fact, I don’t own an iron and will not buy one. Women shouldn’t iron, ever. It’s our wrinkles that make us interesting.
And there’s a drastic difference in Francesca’s and my hours. I keep Normal Hours, and she keeps Vampire Hours. I used to wait up for her and worry. Now I go to sleep and hope for the best. Even when she stays home, she’s up late watching TV or talking on the cell phone. Did you know that at any given hour of the night, three billion sleepless young people are updating their Facebook profile, friending each other, or announcing their newly single status? If only we could harness their energy, we’d be less dependent on foreign oil.
Our entertainment choices differ, too. I don’t go out much, but last weekend, I suggested that we go see a movie at seven thirty. She talked me into seeing the ten-thirty show. I fell asleep in the movie, twice, and she had the gall to wake me up. What does it mean if even Brad Pitt puts me to sleep?
Don’t answer.
Plus she bought a box of fresh Raisinets and a bag of popcorn, which reminded me that carbs practically demand to be eaten, so now I’ve fallen off the wagon.
You get the idea. My daughter has disturbed my empty nest and she’ll be home all summer.
And you know what?
I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Fashionista
I’m not sure when I officially stopped mattering, but I think it began at age 40. I know this because I’m a great reader of fashion magazines, and InStyle recently told me that I no longer mattered, if indeed I existed at all.
They didn’t even let me down easy. And I subscribe.
The article I was reading was called “Great At Any Age.” It was about beauty tips for women as they got older, and the article was broken down by age groups. The first page was addressed to women in their 20s and told them that “nothing topical gets rid of cellulite completely.”
Funny, I can remember my 20s, and it was the one decade of my life that I didn’t have cellulite. I had an orange Mazda, my first VISA card, and several thousand law school applications, but no cellulite.
Never mind. I turned the page
The second page was addressed to women in their 30s and informed them that their “skin was thinning.” That didn’t ring true to me, either. Every woman knows that as she gets older, her skin doesn’t get thinner. On the contrary, it gets thicker. Those of us who used to be thin-skinned simply stop caring about what people think of what we say, write, do, or wear. I always thought this was called perspective, but boy, was I wrong. InStyle told me so.
I turned to the next page, which was addressed to women in their “40s+” and told them that “gentle exfoliation” would stimulate their circulation “for a smoothing effect.” I wasn’t worried that I wasn’t smooth, but nevertheless, I resolved instantly to start exfoliating and to be gentle about it.
I turned the page. But there were no more age groups in the “Great At Any Age” article.
The “Great At Any Age” article was over.
The top age limit to be Great At was 40s+.
Now, wait.
I had thought I was Great At Any Age, because that’s what they told me at the top of the page. But they really didn’t mean it. I was Great Only At The Ages of 20 Through 40. They were the only gals who got their own age categories, instead of being lumped in all together. What about the ages of 42, 47, 52, 65, 75, 79, 83, and older? At those ages, I wasn’t Great. I might actually Suck.
The article should have been called: “Sucking At Any Age Over 40.”
I flipped the page and tried not to take it too much to heart. After all, as I say, my skin is thicker now, and nothing bothers me anymore.
The next article was entitled, “How to Wear . . . a Sporty Jacket.” The ellipsis are theirs. Don’t ask me why. I’m 40s+ and can barely take care of myself in the bathroom. Ask a twenty-year-old with cellulite.
Anyway, I was excited when I saw the article about how to wear . . . a sporty jacket. I’d never thought about how to wear . . . a sporty jacket. I had always assumed that you . . . put your arms in the sleeves and slipped it . . . over your shoulders. But what do I know?
I was eager to learn about sporty jackets.
Only one problem. The sporty jacket article was addressed to age groups, too. Since when does a sporty jacket come with age limits? This is America. I always thought I could wear . . . a sporty jacket at any age.
Boy, was I wrong. Again!
Unbeknownst to me, sporty jackets had a shelf life. In fact, I had a shelf life. I’d thought if I was alive, I mattered, but InStyle set me straight.
Oddly, the age groups for sporty jackets were different than the age groups for cellulite creams. The first page of the article pictured a sporty jacket with a hoodie, for women in their “20s/30s.” The second page showed the same jacket with a white shirt for women, in their “30s/40s.” The third page showed the jacket with a set of plastic beads, for women in their “40s/50s.”
Whew. What a relief. A number with a 5 in front. I did exist, at least as far as sporty jackets were concerned.
But I was confused. I existed for sporty jacket purposes but not for cellulite cream purposes. Doesn’t this seem backwards? I don’t want to reveal too much, but my 40s+ self has more need for a cellulite cream than a sporty jacket. Unless the jacket is sporty enough to cover my tushie.
Plus, the article raised new questions. Am I too old for my handbag? Too young for my ballet flats? Are my clothes snickering at me behind my back?
Then I thought of something. InStyle didn’t ask me my age when they cashed my check for the subscription.
Ya think they’ll ask when I cancel?
Hollow Bunnies
I’m wary of writing about religion, and though I want to say a word about Easter and Passover here, you’ll see that the following has more to do with saturated fats than Christianity or Judaism.
I was raised in a family that qualified as the Worst Catholics in the World. We didn’t go to church because my mother was excommunicated, since she had been divorced before she married my
father. And if my mother wasn’t going to church, none of us was. As a child, I understood only that the Church didn’t like my mother, and since I loved her, I was on her side. So for me, Easter was about chocolate.
And plastic.
What I remember about Easter morning was that my brother Frank and I got a pink plastic basket full of green plastic grass. Nestled within were chocolate eggs from Woolworth’s, cream-filled, and a huge chocolate bunny, unfortunately hollow, because we were on the low-rent side.
I feel nostalgic for those multi-colored mornings, for neon-orange peanuts and chrome-yellow Peeps. For fat jellybeans, from before there were “gourmet” jellybeans that taste like popcorn or daiquiris, which is against nature. When I was little, all jellybeans tasted the same.
Like sugar, as God intended.
The only jellybeans I really wanted were the cherry ones that washed your teeth in a scary red juice, or the licorice ones that blackened your tongue like a chow’s.
We also got dressed up on Easter morning, and there are plenty of pictures of me looking stiff in a crinoline dress and brother Frank in a little gray suit, a red bowtie, and short pants with knee socks, topped off with a round cap that had a chin strap. Much later, we would learn that Frank was gay, and I still maintain we should have been tipped off by that Easter get-up.
I can get nostalgic about every Easter memory but the spray-painted chick. Spray-painted chicks were a big thing in my old neighborhood. I still can’t imagine what anybody was thinking, to do something so cruel as to take a live baby chick and dye it an “Easter” color. But my parents fell for this every year and they’d buy us a red, green, or purple chick. The novelty would wear off in an hour, not coincidentally with the sugar crash, and then nobody seemed to know what to do with the poor chick.
Our red chick and our green chick died in short order, but the purple chick, against all odds, didn’t die after the first week. Or even the second. Of course, we had no idea how to raise him. We fed him Cheerios and meatballs. We covered the floor of our bedroom with newspaper and kept him there. In time, he lost his purple feathers and grew to be a chubby brown chicken, whom we named Herman. He had a friendly personality, hanging out with us and walking through our legs like a house cat. He lived a full year, and when he died, we cried so hard that it made Easter the anniversary of his death, rather than the resurrection of anything else.
When I got older, we moved to a neighborhood that was predominantly Jewish. I got invited to bar and bat mitzvahs, and I learned that Jews celebrated Passover. My best friend Rachel kept the traditional fast on the first day. I didn’t understand Judaism much better than I understood Catholicism, but her family invited me to their seder, where I had a great time and got to ask a question, which I didn’t understand either.
But what I did understand about Passover was that Rachel’s family was together around a full and lovely table—two wonderful parents, three fun-loving brothers, and my best friend in the world—all joking around with each other, laughing, and inviting me into their family. And to this day, I still am in their family, as they are in mine.
To me, that’s what every holiday is all about.
That’s even what every religion is about.
Love.
Empowerment
Nowadays, superpowers are everywhere. At the movies, Spider-Man has superpowers, and so do Iron Man, Sandman, Venom, and whatever the other bad guy is. On TV, all the people in Heroes have superpowers, and Medium is a soccer mom with superpowers. In books, Harry Potter is a boy with superpowers, and Tolkien’s The Children of Hurin has hobbits with superpowers, which may be redundant.
Something is happening in pop culture. I’m no detective, but I think it’s that people want superpowers.
Not me, though. I don’t want superpowers. I don’t want to turn people into sand; I like them the way they are, at least the ones I didn’t divorce.
And I don’t want to spin webs out of my fingertips. I’d settle for ten really nice fingernails, all at the same time.
Come to think of it, instead of superpowers, I’d want normal powers. You may know that I’m picky about really important things, like Splenda and croutons. But I’m flexible on powers. I’d settle for everyday powers. Things that normal people can do, but I can’t.
Right off the top of my head, I can make a wish list of ten normal powers that would change my life:
1. The power to match a lid to its travel mug. They say every pot has a lid, but every travel mug clearly does not. I have three hundred black plastic lids in my cabinet and none of them fit any of my travel mugs. I can’t find the right lid, ever. And I never, ever will. This is not a metaphor for my social life.
2. The power to remember the directions that somebody tells me after I pull over to ask for them. Every time, as soon as I drive away, I forget. This phenomenon is impossible to explain, especially considering that I remember the words to every high school cheer. Push ’em back, shove ’em back, waaay back! See?
3. The power to eat anything I want and not gain weight. If I had this power, I’d fly around in my cape and protect us all from Kirstie Alley.
4. The power to stop my hair from frizzing. I know it’s wrong to base your self-esteem on your hair, but let’s get real. Good hair helps. I went on a vacation to Paris, and my hair looked terrific. France has no humidity. A good hair country!
5. The power to find my keys and cell phone at will. In fact, if my cell phone could call my car keys, that would work, too.
6. The power to walk in slingbacks without the strap falling down in back. This is an often-overlooked normal power. Anybody can walk in heels. Only experts can walk in slingbacks. I don’t qualify. Yet.
7. The power to watch Grey’s Anatomy without being totally annoyed by Ellen Pompeo’s lips. Lip actresses drive me nuts. I was barely over Calista Flockhart in Ally McBeal, and now this. Renée Zellweger, watch out. I’m taking you down, girl.
8. The power to stay awake until the end of The Colbert Report. This is no reflection on Stephen Colbert, who knows that I love him because I tell him every night, telepathically. (Okay, borderline creepy.) Yet I barely make it through The Word. I can’t stay awake as late as I used to. Again, no reflection on my social life, real or imagined. (With you, Stephen, only you.)
9. The power to apply liquid eyeliner without it coming out like a sales chart. I feel sure that my life would change if I could put on liquid liner. Best friend Franca can do it and she looks great. Daughter Francesca can do it, too. Even Paris Hilton can do it. I’ve been trying and failing to accomplish this for the past twenty years. Now it’s probably too late, because my eyelids have fallen like the final curtain.
10. Finally, there’s an array of normal powers that I’m squeezing in here, while I’m making my wish list. I’d love the power to get the Christmas lights working on the first try, find my dry cleaning receipt when I need it, remember where I parked my car, return the DVD rental before the late charges reach $37, and locate a working pen while I’m on the phone—and a working flashlight when the power goes out.
Is it so much to ask?
I don’t want to be Superwoman. Just Normalwoman!
Ka-POW!
Betty and Veronica
I realized the other day that I don’t care about superpowers because I didn’t read those comics as a kid. To me, Superman and Batman were for boys. Girls had Betty Cooper and Veronica Lodge, the blonde and brunette bombshells of the Archie comics. I loved those comics and still remember their many valuable lessons.
What were they?
Here’s Betty and Veronica’s Lessons For Girls.
Before we begin, let me remind you that Betty and Veronica were best friends who went to Riverdale High School. They were both gorgeous, impossibly curvy, and permanently seventeen.
But their personalities were very different:
Betty was poor, but nice and natural. She wore her canary-yellow hair in a bouncy ponytail and dressed like a tomboy. In fact, Betty has
her own webpage these days, which reveals that she sews her own clothes. The website sums her up as “your average small town girl,” and her blog (of course, she has a blog) contains salsa recipes.
In contrast, Veronica had money, and was mean and spoiled. The website says that she’s “gorgeous, sophisticated, sexy and very RICH.” (The capitals are theirs; I save my capitals for better things.) Veronica is also “ambitious” and “confident.” Veronica writes in her blog: “only three weeks of school left—must buy summer clothes!”
By the way, neither girl is described as smart. Anywhere.
What have we learned, so far?
Lesson One: Poor people are better than rich people. Blond people are better than brunette people. Black people don’t exist.
Unlike Betty, who lives with her normal family, Veronica lives with her father, a family situation which is borderline creepy. Mr. Lodge is most often found sitting in a club chair, reading the newspaper and waiting for his daughter to ask him for things. She calls him Daddykins. He always says yes.
Lesson Two: Single parents produce messed-up kids.
Betty and Veronica form the distaff base of a love triangle that peaks in Archie Andrews. The storyline of every comic is the same—Betty and Veronica, theoretically best friends, scheme, plot, and deceive each other in order to win Archie.
Lesson Three: Even your best friend can, and should, be ditched for a guy.
Which girl do you think Archie chooses more often—sweet, uncomplicated Betty or neurotic but sexy Veronica? You guessed it.
Lesson Four: Men dig crazy.
The website admits that: “Betty is extremely devoted to Archie, but sadly is most often playing second fiddle to her best friend Veronica for his affections. Through every crazy loving scheme to win Archie’s love, Betty always remains completely unaffected, loyal and sweet.” Of course she does. How Betty of her.