This post is possessed. It published itself twice before I was ready and now I'm just annoyed

Something completely unexpected and not all premeditated happened yesterday. I was in the kitchen churning butter when Chuck (aka the Butt Patient) walked in.

“Oh, good, you’re finally up and walking,” I said. “Maybe you’d like to wash some dishes. Or vacuum. Or do some laundry. Mop the floor. Sweep. Take out the trash. Fold socks. Bleach towels. Shovel. Rake. Bake. Grocery shop. Iron my tunic. Comb my hair. Bathe Junior. Feed the cats. Weed. Dust. Unload the dishwasher. File my bunions. Do anything other than clench your behind and wail “oooooh, my ass’.”

Chuck cheerfully said, “No thanks,” and then, “I think I need to go lie down again.”

What happened next is clear as day. I grabbed the churner handle mabob and whacked Chuck over the head.

So now I’m single.

That’s right, my peaches, Mrs. Mullet is back on the market.

Since it’s been awhile since I’ve advertised my treats, I’m a little rusty. But thank God I kept this from eighth grade.



Look at all the hunks I’ll be able to land (hey, I’m a Cougar now so those strapping young lads are super dreamy!)



This man-catching bible is chocked full of answers to girls’ most important questions, like whether or not boys want you to have a great body. (The answer is no—mmmhhmmm—“but if you’re overweight and unhappy, dieting is the answer [and] if you feel you’re too skinny, obviously you’re not eating enough.”)

So that’s why I’m only 55 pounds! I keep wearing the baby back ribs instead of putting them in my mouth.

The Get Him System (TGHS) covers everything, from the importance of good hygiene to the fact that guys who only have one thing on their minds are called “users” (weird, I always knew them as just plain old guys.)

It’s my lucky day that the TGHS talks about intimacy issues, because I’ve been a one-man woman for almost a decade. So I jumped right to the kissing chapter, specifically “Should I wait until a guy kisses me or can I kiss him first?”

This is crucial knowledge here; I always see men I’d like to kiss and until now I’ve restrained myself. But did you know that if you want to kiss someone, not only can you kiss him first, you should take advantage of “kissing freebees” like Christmas and New Years Eve? Yup, even birthday parties are a great time for proactive kissing! As long as after you French kiss everyone you explain that “today is a kissing freebee.”

Gold. Pure gold.

Speaking of swapping spit, I was dying to know if making out is a big part of going out, since the last time I actually made out with someone was in 1989, and even then it may have been with a stuffed animal. Well, according to TGHS, if making out is a big part of going out to you “then that’s all that counts.”

Eureka! If this isn’t the green light to set up shop on a street corner and be the biggest slutbag there is, I don’t know what is. Color me Chlamydia!

Aren’t you jealous you don’t have a book like this?

I was just about to wash my hair (guys like clean, fresh-smelling hair), eat something, put some emotion in my eyes (girls’ eyes are more attractive when they’re expressive) and stop flaunting my killer gams (guys don’t like girls who strut) when Chuck came to.

He was so relieved to be alive that he sorted the whites and now we’re in love again (I guess the book is right when it says that patience, forgiveness, compromise and shared household duties—I mean, respect—keep the romance alive.) I even took advantage of the fact that today is Easter and therefore a kissing freebee and manhandled him a little.

Thank you, TGHS! Thank you for saving my marriage.

As a parting note, I’ll leave you with what is perhaps the most important—and grossly reiterated—pearl of wisdom from the TGHS bible: “Looks don’t really matter to guys. All that really matters is whether or not you’re happy with yourself.”

Ah, shit, that’s funny.

My friend and I bought the TGHS in eighth grade from the back of Seventeen Magazine. Tune in next time for great advice from its paperback companion, Secrets of Great Kissers.

And yes, I did match Junior for this occasion

I have today off (from work and the blogosphere) and I'm dragging Junior to get his picture taken with a large fur-covered man who has bulging black eyes, antennae-like ears and sweaty felt gloves.

Can't imagine why children scream so...

If you want a piece of me, I guest posted over at A Reservation for Six. If not, pppppssssfffflt!

Now go dye those eggs!

The obvious solution: a nudist colony

After I wrote my woeful “I’m having issues with the hippie chick and we haven’t even become friends yet” post, I got an email from my friend, Amy—no, not that Amye—who formerly lived in Mulletville. She wrote:

I read your post tonight and wanted to remind you that even if I don't have a child I still want to be your friend, and I wear yuppie sweaters because I too would like to wear funkier clothing items but am too uptight as well I know this is a very large run on sentence but I have had a lot of shiraz.

Ok, do we love Amy? Yes.

Two things struck me about her email. First, you don’t need to have children to be my friend—that’s madness. There’s an application form, yes, but you don’t need to have birthed anything to fill it out.

Second, Amy hit the nail on the head with the whole “too uptight” thing. I mean, that’s it. That’s why I’m not a mellow hippie chick. It’s not so much that I’m a yuppie; it’s that I’m too uptight, especially about my clothing.

And I know exactly whose fault it is.

My damn mother's.

When I was a little girl, my mother, Linda, loved to dress me in color coordinating outfits. A typical outfit was:

a) yellow and green striped shirt
b) yellow pants
c) yellow and green striped socks
d) yellow and green striped barrette
e) it’s none of your business about my underwear (but they were probably green with a yellow ladybug)
f) green shoes

I probably also only ate yellow and green food that day.

Up until the age of five I was a good little brainwashed minion, until one morning Lori Dixon announced at the bus stop that she had chosen her own ensemble. She was unkempt and her Mickey Mouse shirt was stained, but she was everything I wanted to be.

So the next morning, instead of wearing the clothes my mother had laid out for me, I selected my very own outfit. Because I was such a considerate child, I incorporated some minor matching elements to appease her hunger for matchy matchness.

My mother didn’t talk to me that day.

We’ve recovered from that incident, obviously, but as you can guess, Junior’s miniature frame has reignited Linda’s passion for dressing little people like freak dolls. Seriously. When she used to babysit Junior regularly, I’d come home to find Junior dressed in something entirely different—something matchier—than the perfectly fine outfit in which I’d dressed him that morning.

Understandably, it pissed off Chuck. So on the days she came, we intentionally dressed Junior in unflattering color combinations just to see her expression and to see how long it would take her to change him.

Some days I wasn’t even out the door.

But then Chuck got laid off. Linda stopped coming up, and Junior stopped wondering why he was getting dressed twice a day—once by cackling parents and the other by a zealous matchnut.

But then Chuck had his operation and became a bedridden sack and Linda started babysitting again. Just the other day, she took Junior back to her lair so I could have a night to myself. Sensing that she was hungry to clothe him, I let her pack his overnight bag. This is what she packed:



For one night.

The woman has issues.

So now you understand why every time I stand before my closet I long to pair that polka-dotted shirt with the plaid pants just because I can, but I can’t. The stripes run too deep.

Sigh.

P.S. I hope Amy isn't mad that I used her tipsy email. It was so cute I couldn't help it!

I met someone. And I have a lot of questions

Let’s take a break from Chuck’s hiney, shall we? I know I could use a break.

Let’s talk instead about how when Mother Nature blesses New England with a nice day like yesterday you freak the hell out because you don’t know what to do to maximize every possible second of niceness.

From the moment you awake, you drive your immobile husband crazy with questions. Should you take Junior hiking? Biking? Walking? Window shopping? Strolling? Sprinkler jumping?

The real bitch is that every second spent deliberating about what to do with the one nice day is a second of time you could have been outdoors gone. So you start speeding up your questions to your immobile husband, who at that point knows exactly where he’d like to tell you to go, but he knows that you’ve been waiting on him for more than a week and that if he ever wants to eat or show someone his battle wounds again he better grin and bear it.

I decided on the beach.

As I was leaving, I turned wistfully to Chuck and said, “I need a friend in Mulletville. Like, now.”

Do you know what? As Junior and I slid down the cliff that is our front lawn, a woman who was walking down the sidewalk with her baby stopped and called hello. And she was cute! She was wearing straight-legged jeans with a patch on the butt; she had a ponytail with bangs. She kept smiling at me—Mrs. Yuppy Sweater (I’ve always secretly aspired to be a cool hippie chick, but a) I own too many blouses and b) I’m not mellow enough to pull off mellow clothes.)

We shot the shit for a few minutes. When we were done, she asked if I ever wanted to go walking on the weekends, and we exchanged numbers.

She picked me up, and it happened fast.

But, um, now I don’t know what to do. There’s the whole awkward burgeoning friendship stage to muck through—while we’re winded no less (she had skinny legs so I’m guessing she’s going to speedwalk). And I’m a nervous blurter. And she seems so much cooler than I am. Not that I’m a dweeb, but I don’t do well around calm people I don’t know. I tend to want to verbally jab. It’s how Chuck and I met. I assaulted him with my diction. I still do.

I know. I’m looking the gift hippie chick in the mouth (she has all her teeth, by the way). But I can’t help it. I’m used to being hit on by copier repairmen.

Have you ever been picked up by another woman on the street? If you have, did you become friends? Or were you the picker-upper? And why, if the universe was handing out plates of What You Asked For, didn't I say to Chuck, "I need a shopping spree. Like, now"?

You say influenza, I say holiday

It’s been almost 12 years, and I still have trouble being frank with Chuck’s mom. Joyce has a habit of announcing her plans instead of asking if they’re ok, and when she calls I feel like I’m under some kind of sissy mindmeld. Maybe it’s because she only calls once every three months; I need more practice. Or maybe I need the book “Standing Up for Yourself When You’re Trying to Talk Your Mother-in-law Out of Visiting for Dummies.”

It sure would have come in handy last night.

Chuck started running a fever, and while I was pouring Tylenol down his throat I made the unfortunate mistake of picking up the phone. It was you know who.

When Joyce heard how frazzled I was she cried, “I’m coming right up!”

The thought of Chuck’s mom visiting at 10 p.m. turned me into a crazed chicken. You should have seen me whirling around the kitchen: Balk balk baaaaaaaalk! Balk balk balk bagaaaaaaaalk! She’d get Junior out of bed to play and she’d make me leave the house so she could have him all to herself. I’d be walking the streets of Mulletville all so she could bogart Junior. I’d probably get Mullet-jumped and end up lying in some alleyway.

I tried everything from “no thank you” to “that’s really not necessary” to “how nice, but maybe another time.” Nothing. I pulled out the big guns: “I have a contagious case of flesh-eating bacteria.”

The woman would not take no for an answer. So I chucked the phone at Chuck, who winced and slurred out a pain-bloated “nooooooooooooooo” (in response to her visiting, not me beating him again).

Did I mention Joyce is a nurse? (She actually had one of my relatives as a patient—on her psych ward—but that’s another post.) She prides herself in her medical know-how. She is Florence Nightingale.

When she realized she wasn’t, um, needed, she got all nursy on me.

“Chuck could have a fever from gangreneassitus. He could lose his sphincter if you don’t soak his left gluteus maximus in a prep bath of iodine and ¾ Crystal Light. Or if the fever is from peridontusbuttpox, you really should be monitoring the tubal ligation of his rear bowel. Sigh. If I were there…”

Chuck, drugged and writhing in pain: “Noooooooooooooooo.”

Turns out Chuck has the flu. The fucking flu. The sad part is, I’ve been licking his cups and using his toothbrush so I can get it. There’s a Project Runway marathon I’ve been dying to watch—even if I have to view it through the foggy haze of fever and vomiting.

Even.If.

The Dunkin Donuts man is my soulmate

Tonight, because I am a blogging foo-foo-fooool I'm trying something new. I'm trying Mama Kat's workshop, and I chose this prompt:

Why did you do it?

There are many, many reasons why I did it. I did it because I was bitter about the hospital gown with the warm air hose. Because even though I'd pointed out the similarities between Chuck's spinal anesthesia and my 27 epidurals to the nurses and doctors at the hospital, no one took the bait and let me tell my southern pain stories. Because tonight, after I'd done the dishes, churned the butter and knit four sweaters, Chuck said he only wanted one grilled cheese; after he ate it he said, "I sure could use another..." even though I'd offered to make two in the first place.

And mostly because life feels like this right now (without the thrilling sense of purpose that swoops in at the end):



So, like my father did with my cat when I was 11—the one who had an affinity for peeing on the couch—I took Chuck for a drive to a neighboring town and let him out at the corner. If Chuck somehow makes his way back, like poor Courage* did, I'll set out a plate of grilled cheeses for him.

* The cat was named Courage by my dad's at-the-time girlfriend, who volunteered at the animal shelter in town. She dubbed him that because she found him living at the town dump and when she called, "Here, kitty, kitty" he leaped across three oil drums, or something Evel Knievel-ish like that. The cat did find its way back to our neighborhood after the goodbye drive, but he decided he liked our neighbor, Gail, better. To this day, Gail still talks about her precious kitty. So you see, good things can happen to animals and/or people who are dropped off on random street corners. Trust me.

It's fanny-ily over

When I brought Chuck to the hospital today, the nurses fussed and tittered around him. All five of them. They dressed him in a hospital gown that had two holes in it. A hose attached to the holes and blew warm, calming air all over his body. The nurses handed him the TV remote and asked if he would like a fresh pair of socks or his pillow fluffed.

He said yes.

Then they started the painkiller drip.

He lay back in bed and smiled.

That's when I raised my hand and said, "Excuse me, I'd like to check my butt in, too."

Sigh.