Lesson Five: Nice is a waste of time.
But here’s something I never understood. Why do Betty and Veronica want Archie so much? He’s not attractive. His hair is orange, parted in the middle, and he has cross-hatches for sideburns. His nose looks like a jellybean.
Lesson Six: Any boyfriend is better than no boyfriend at all.
Archie doesn’t even have a good personality. He’s not smart, and that’s fine with him. The website doesn’t apologize for the fact that he “brings home average grades from school.” On the contrary, in all respects, Archie is a “typical small town boy.”
Lesson Seven: Mediocrity rocks!
But Archie does have a “good, solid family background.”
Lesson Eight: Learn to settle.
So, growing up, who did I want to be—Betty or Veronica? I’ll tell the truth. I knew I was supposed to want to be Betty, but I secretly wanted to be Veronica.
Lesson Nine: It’s okay to be superficial.
It didn’t matter what Betty or Veronica wanted to be when they grew up. In the comics I remembered, they didn’t want to be anything but with Archie. However, the website has more recently assigned them career aspirations, because women have the vote now.
Lesson Ten: History can always be revised. If you remember it otherwise, you’re wrong.
So, what are the career goals of these two? The site says, “Veronica would someday like to run Lodge Enterprises.” Presumably that’s her father’s business, or a Mafia front. Knowing Veronica as I do, I wouldn’t put it past her. Veronica could be an excellent crime lord if she’d stay out of Neiman Marcus.
Lesson Eleven: Nepotism is a fancy word for born winner.
Finally, what’s Betty’s career plan? “Betty’s goal is to become a famous writer.”
Lesson Twelve: Follow your dream, in case you’re a Betty.
Ode to Parents of College-Age Kids
My baby bird, daughter Francesca, is home from college for the summer, and I thought it would be fun for you to hear from her. I hope the following will help my fellow parental units to see how our college-age kids (sorry, adults) see us. So, below is from Francesca:
Now that I’m older, I imagined that living at home with my mother would be different. Not that it needed to change; we’ve always had the best relationship. I can honestly say that my mom is my best friend. But now that I’m twenty-one, I figured our dynamic would be more mature.
Not exactly.
My childhood nickname was Kiki, and my mom always had hundreds of nonsensical pet-names for me. The days of BooBoo, Baby Bumpy, and Mocha JaMocha are over. Or so I thought.
We were in the shoe department, trying to be cool (we both inexplicably get dressed up to go to the mall) when my mom looked up from the sandals and said, “Hey, Bumpy! Look at these!” I resorted to the oh-so-teenage, “Mo-om.” We totally blew our grown-up cover.
Back home, one change in our interaction wasn’t due to my age, it was due to hers. She’d read that she should drink red wine for her heart, so one night, she poured herself a glass and offered me one, too.
This alone was a big step. My mother doesn’t drink, and when I was younger, she decried the perils of alcohol with Prohibition-era ferocity. So, as she poured me a glass of wine, I felt as if we had turned a corner in our new, mature relationship.
I made sure to not drink more than one glass, but I wasn’t the one who had to be worried. After just a few sips, she started up: “Oh I feel it. I can feel it already. Can you feel it?” she asked, excitedly. And before my mom had even finished the glass, she was declaring, “I’m drunk!” like a triumphant frat boy. My mom’s night of boozing (still only one glass) quickly turned sour. She complained the whole night: “Ugh, I have a headache from that wine. I’m sleepy from that wine. I can’t sleep from that wine.” She required more post-party care than my freshman-year roommate.
Jeez, Mom, grow up.
But then, I’m not exactly the sophisticate I thought I’d be when it comes to our mother-daughter time. I’m embarrassed to admit that there are still moments when I’m embarrassed to be out with Mom. This is crazy, because she’s great, and I love spending time with her. But even as a grown (or nearly) woman, the shadow of an insecure thirteen-year-old follows me around. Like last week, I persuaded my mom to see a movie at ten-thirty, because secretly I knew the theater would be less crowded then, and it would be less likely that someone I knew would catch me on date-night with Mom. As it happened, I did run into an old friend from high school who was there on an actual date. Busted.
But it’s not just at the movies. Last week she gave me a ride to my doctor’s appointment. I had a wart on my toe removed and also got the HPV vaccine, Gardasil. As we were checking out, my mom was being her usual friendly self, updating the receptionist on my life. It used to bother teenage-me when she shared the details of my life, but now I see it’s just love. And anyway, what could she really say?
“Today she got that Gardasil shot and got rid of those nasty warts!” Mom chirped. I cringed.
My mother has a way with words.
But truly, I’m lucky that I feel so close to my mom. We can talk about anything—even sex. In fact, it was her idea for me to get the HPV vaccine.
We’ve come a long way. When my mom was moving me out of my freshman year dorm, I was mortified that she found condoms in my nightstand. If that happened this year, it wouldn’t matter. I’m old enough to know what’s in a woman’s nightstand is her business.
That’s why I’m never, ever, looking in hers.
I’m not old enough.
Right, kid, now go empty the dishwasher.
What Francesca doesn’t realize is that she’ll always be my baby, no matter what age. But I have to admit, she’s grown into an incredible young woman who is everything I hoped she would be: smart, strong, funny, and loving. As you can see, she does tell the truth.
And now, she’s grounded.
Family Fun
Mother Mary and Brother Frank are here to visit, spending a week at my house, and I learned a few things you might be able to use when your own family comes to visit. By the way, let’s all stipulate at the outset that I love my family, even if it doesn’t sound like I do, below. But I like to keep it real, so what follows is the light side of the dark side of family visits, if you follow.
That said, here are my Top Ten Tips to Family Fun:
1. You can’t chloroform your mother. What happened was that I wanted to take my mother to see the new movie about Edith Piaf. My mother loves Edith Piaf and is, in fact, the only person I ever met who knows who Edith Piaf is. When I heard that there was a movie about Edith Piaf, I thought it would be perfect for her. Only problem was, the movie theater was In Town, and my mother wouldn’t go In Town to see a movie, even one about Edith Piaf. We fought about it, and I considered chloroforming her and taking her there, but my brother said I couldn’t. So don’t do it. If your brother’s around.
2. Watching eggs cook makes them cook faster. One morning, I was making fried eggs for breakfast, and my brother thought I should turn up the heat. I disagreed. We fought about it, after which he sat in stony silence and watched the eggs fry. You know what? They fried superfast. In fact, I think he fried them with his eyes. Grab your brother and try this at home. Fight first.
3. Too many cooks spoil the tomato sauce. My mother and I tried to make one dinner together in my nice big kitchen, which was when I learned that no kitchen is big enough for two women to make dinner in, especially if they are blood relatives. And especially if they are mother and daughter. Take it from me, fighting will follow. And if a granddaughter joins them, something will explode. All that will remain is a small pile of dried oregano.
4. Getting four people into a car to drive to a restaurant takes as long as a full-scale expedition to Nepal, including sherpas. After our cooking fiasco, I thought reservations would be the answer, but I simply couldn’t get four people to move to the car and get inside. I kept saying “are you ready y
et” or “let’s go” or “time to rock” or “everybody outta the pool.” We were late for our reservation and had to wait for another table, which was when I learned that encouragement won’t make your family go faster, but slower. This is like the frying eggs, only the opposite, if you follow.
5. Family math is different from normal math. There is a mathematical relationship between the number of people in the house and the number of times you run the dishwasher, but that relationship is exponential. By this I mean, if you have two (2) new people in the house, for a total of four (4) people, you would guess that you’d have to run the dishwasher an extra time a day. Maybe two (2) times, at the most. But if you guess that, you’d be wrong. I learned you’ll have to run the dishwasher 362.5 times a day. (!) The .5 is what puts it over the top.
6. In a related tip, two extra people will produce 481 extra bags of garbage. I saw this with my own eyes. And the number of people agreeing to take out the trash will always equal zero. (0).
7. Crossword puzzles are crack cocaine for mothers. Every morning of her visit, my mother does crossword and moves on to jumbles, cryptoquotes, and word searches. She doesn’t look up until she’s finished. I supply her with coffee, but all I see is the top of her little gray head. My brother tells me this means she is happy. So, when your family visits and your mother is acting up and you can’t chloroform her, now you know what to do.
8. There is an inverse relationship between dieting and eating. This is another one of those funky family math things. By this I mean, the more people in your house on a diet, the more often they will eat. So, in our case, we’re all on a diet, yet we eat all day long. However, we talk about our diet incessantly. That’s how you lose the weight. Keep talking.
9. Rain is your enemy. You know what I mean. If it’s sunny, everybody can go to neutral corners, i.e., go outside or walk the dogs. But if it rains, you’re all inside together in the family room, fighting over what to watch on TV, having fought over which movie to rent and deciding to let the whole thing go. In the end, you will end up in front of a continuous loop of Everybody Loves Raymond, and you will welcome it, because at least it’s not Matlock.
10. In between the family fighting, there will be brief periods of harmony and even love, however unexpected. For example, my mother and daughter bonded over their shared dislike of Jennifer Anniston. This came as a major surprise, at least from my mother, because Jennifer Aniston is Telly Savalas’s goddaughter and my mother loves Telly Savalas.
Even so, she wouldn’t go In Town for him.
Corgi, Interrupted
It’s come to this: my dog is on Prozac. Yes, you read that right. Ruby, my Pembroke Welsh corgi, is on Prozac. Laugh away. Tell me I must be crazy to put a dog on meds. My only defense is that talk therapy didn’t work.
Let me explain.
You may remember that I have four dogs: three golden retrievers and Ruby The Corgi. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of dogs would know that between three goldens and a corgi, it would be the corgi who would end up on a controlled substance.
My pets are like that Sesame Street song, “One of These Things Is Not Like The Others.” Here is what the goldens are like: fun, easy, friendly, happy, and loving, on a continuous loop. You could have three goldens in the room and not know it. They love to sleep. They love everything. Honestly, I kept adding goldens because I forgot they were there. You could be sitting in a roomful of goldens and think to yourself, You know, we need a dog.
The corgi is Not Like The Others. Here is what the corgi is like: sensitive, alert, watchful, picky, and feisty. If she’s in the room, you know it. In fact, you’re probably obeying her. Corgis are low to the ground, dwarf dogs bred to herd cattle, and Ruby has been known to herd the goldens, me, my daughter, and also, on occasion, the UPS guy. How Ruby knows what she was bred to do, way back in Wales three thousand years ago, is beyond me. I got her at Christmas, after daughter Francesca had gone off to college. Ruby was intended to replace Francesca, which is not working out exactly as planned. How many parents can say that their dog is on drugs, but their kid isn’t?
To get back to the story, Ruby used to be a wonderful and funny dog, but she recently morphed into The Terrifying Biting Attacking Dwarf. In the summer of the movie Transformers, Ruby got transformed. She’s like Saw, with paws. For some reason, she began to start fights with the oldest golden, Lucy, whenever that sweet old dog ambled into the kitchen, took a nap, or committed an otherwise unpardonable offense.
I admit to you, I didn’t handle this well. I’m the mother of only one child, so I have no idea what to do when my kids fight. I don’t know how people with more than one child handle this problem. I thought back to what my mother used to say, when she had to break up a fight between brother Frank and me, so I tried screaming, “Separate, you two!” But it didn’t work.
Also, “Stop or I’ll turn this car around.” But it didn’t apply.
Then I remembered that when we were really bad, my mother would take off her shoe and throw it at us. But I’m beyond that. Also, I missed.
So Francesca and I took Ruby to the vet, who suggested that maybe the fighting was happening because Ruby realizes that Lucy is getting older and therefore losing her position as leader of the pack. Evidently, Ruby wants to be the new boss, and will bite and chew her way to the top. She’s Donald Trump on four legs.
The sad part is that good old Lucy doesn’t care who’s leader of the pack. No golden does, at least none of mine. They say: You wanna lead the pack? Knock yourself out. I’m going back to sleep. You won’t even know I’m here.
So we tried to manage the problem, with lots of no’s, daily walks, and some calm assertiveness learned from TV’s Cesar Milan, The Dog Whisperer. I used to watch his show for fun; now I watch it like homework. I read his book. I bought the special Illusion collar, which I can’t figure out how to put on.
But in the end, I turned to drugs. Ruby is now on ten milligrams of Prozac, twice day.
Soon, she’ll be in Ruhab.
Nature Girl
I’m a big fan of nature. I enjoy walking through the grass with my dogs, or riding little Buddy through the woods. Also I like to look through the window at a cloudless blue sky, pretty as a Microsoft screensaver. In other words, I like nature just fine, as long as it stays outside.
But lately at my house, nature has been overstepping her bounds.
It began at the first dip in the temperature, and to me, it’s no coincidence that it happened at football season. For some reason, around this time of year, every time I open my front door, spiders try to run inside my house. I’m not kidding. It’s as if the spiders have been huddling out front, and the sound of the doorknob is their hut-hut-hut signal. I open the door and, instantly, spiders charge over the threshold at me, in a flying spider wedge formation. I’m not talking only one or two spiders; I’m talking about six or seven spiders, and they’re huge, like spider linebackers in a Super Bowl team of arachnids.
I have no defense.
I can’t bring myself to kill them, because I couldn’t take the guilt. I learned somewhere along the line that spiders are good for us and blah blah blah. Even if I were less of a goody-goody, it would be impossible to kill them all. It would be like playing whack-a-mole, and four or five of them would run through my legs, which they consider mere goal posts to scoring a spider touchdown. Sometimes they have to settle for a spider field goal, which is when they reach the floor vents and disappear inside. By October, my heating ducts will be full of webs, the perfect decoration for their big Halloween party.
Back in the summer, or preseason, when only one or two spiders played for the team, I was able to defend my end of the field by turning a glass tumbler over them, then slipping a magazine underneath the tumbler and taking them back outside, where they belong. Another defense that worked was cursing and stamping my feet, because they seemed to react to hysteria and/or profanity. They would simply turn around, run outside, and regroup for the next play. But my tumble
r defense won’t work anymore; I don’t have the coordination, or the glassware.
The current score is Spiders 52, Scottoline 0. They even improved their record from last season and while they claim they made some excellent trades, I smell steroids.
Either way, I know when I’m licked, and my only solution was to stop using my front door. Now I go out the back door all the time, which is completely inconvenient, not to mention embarrassing. I save face only by telling myself that I have outsmarted the spiders, at least until they resort to battering rams of praying mantises.
But it gets worse.
The other day, I came home and in the kitchen was my adorable gray-and-white kitten, Vivi, resting like a baby Sphinx—in front of a long green snake, which lay motionless on the floor. I went into my hysteria-and-profanity routine, but, to my horror, it awakened both kitten and snake. The snake slithered at warp speed over the Karastan and through the kitchen chairs. Vivi took off after the snake, and I took off after Vivi.
There ensued chasing (Vivi) and wriggling (snake) and screaming (me). Somehow I scooped Vivi up and threw her into the bathroom, then I screamed some more while the snake undulated around the kitchen, its green head raised like a suburban cobra.
By the way, no other pets came to my aid. The other kitten scooted off, her black tail a question mark, and my three golden retrievers lolled sleepily on the kitchen floor, though I could tell they were rooting for me, inside. Ruby The Corgi pointed and laughed, which means that I’m cutting her Prozac.