Dr. Strangemom (or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the blog)

Speaking in Tongues

I've been thinking about rejection.

Nothing specific has happened to make me think about it. I just felt it was time to rotate the shit I obsess over, and "rejection" came up next on the wheel. I've spent a lot of time recently obsessing about  my imminent death, and on what the hell am I going to do with these ridiculous 55 year-old boobs of mine, and on the menu for my Passover seder next week. I'm ready to move on to a new issue.

Focusing on rejection dredges up some cringe-worthy memories. Not the most embarrassing by a long shot, but one that comes easily to mind is when I I tried to add a little tongue to a chaste kiss a very cute boy once gave me and he politely returned it to my mouth. I even tried again, hoping against hope that perhaps his tongue-return was merely an involuntary reflex or the result of a small facial stroke or something, but no such luck. Returned to sender. Ouch.

I learned then that I am not a big fan of getting my tongue returned to me, and my stringent avoidance of rejection was borne. Also borne, my decision to stop tongue-kissing people who are clearly not attracted to me. And, with the exception of the summer of 1970 - when a French kiss was nothing more than a salutation - I've pretty much stuck to the policy. This all goes out the window, you understand, should I ever meet Theodore Bikel, because he rocks and he is totally getting tongue. Even though he may not be attracted to me. Even though I am happily married. Even though he may already be dead.

Claudia recently mentioned that every important thing she ever got, she got by begging. That comment intrigued me. This, of course, sparked a lively conversation about the definition of begging, our ability to market ourselves and, ultimately gay sex, the latter topic having been introduced by Doug, who has decided he is part of our Facebook salon; one of us, but the one of us who is young, single and gay. And the one of us who tires quickly when the conversation turns to, well, when it turns to topics not Doug. Which is how a thread about rejection morphed into a discussion about colonoscopy and Doug schooling us on how best to endure one. Until we pointed out that we don't need his helpful hints about that since a person is under total anesthesia for a colonoscopy, which, after having one, I am really thinking may be the best way to have gay sex, as well. I'm just saying. I think it would be a revelatory "note to self" moment for every gay man undergoing a colonoscopy. In fact, I am considering putting myself under anesthesia for hetero sex from now on.

I so admire the Claudia's of the world, knowing their worth, asking/begging for what they want, getting their due. They balance the me's of the world who've marched into the boss' office with both barrels blazing, demanding the world, and left empty-handed, asking at least that my parking be validated. And not even getting that.

Rejection is a mean bitch. But I am ready to get into the ring with her. I am older, wiser, I've got these ridiculous boobs that I have no idea what to do with anymore, and I've been carb-loading since....well, since my first pregnancy in 1982. Smart money is on Dr. Strangemom.

I just need to decide where to begin, where I will mount my first battle against rejection.

Yoo hoo. Oh, Mr. Bikel.......

Typing Up The Loose Ends

I am back to pretending I am asleep when Robin climbs into bed.

I haven't done that for a very long time. It used to be the way I'd avoid sex, although we all know that at a certain point in every marriage the wife being fast asleep, snoring and drooling, is not necessarily a deal-breaker for sex. 

But that's not why I am feigning sleep these days. The reason this time is that Robin and I take turns doing Molly duty during the night. Our old dog isn't sleeping well, needing to go out, and then in, and then out again, and then up the stairs and then down the stairs. Some nights it's every half hour. 

When it was our young kids keeping us up all night, Robin and I were not quite as charitable towards each other than we are now. We had a major competition going back then, each of us competing to be The One Who Most Needs Sleep. Robin put up a good fight, I'll give him that; his best arguments centered around his being an electrician who (in his most serious voice, would remind me),"works in life and death situations. One wrong wire and I could die!"  Oh waah waah, fucking waah.

"Oh please," I'd parry, "I drive your children on the mean streets of LA. I need to be rested and alert." And then I'd remind him of the time I drove the carpool home with the back of my Volvo station wagon wide open and all the kids' notebooks and papers and violins and shit flew out onto the San Diego freeway. This was my trump card story, especially when I added at the end, "I just thank God that the children were buckled in."

Nobody outguilts me. I have seven thousand years of my people's skill in my pocket. Don't fuck with a Jewish mother.

In the end, however, none of us ever won the sleep fight. For most of those years we were both exhausted. And Robin was horny, to boot. And I was pissed off. And we had no air conditioning. And it was, like, 200 degrees in the summer. And once, on my 35th birthday, the toilet backed up into the bathtub and I took a nice, warm shitshower. And Robin was out of work a lot.

You know,  I kinda miss the old days.

When things got really bad I would fantasize that I was a single mom, living with my boys in a perfectly clean little apartment with perfect plumbing and top notch air conditioning. The part of the fantasy that always threw me, however, was how I came to be single. I mean, I didn't want to fantasize that Robin had left me for another woman, because that would highlight my shortcomings ("well, of course he left her for the babysitter. I mean, look at Ann! She's a mess. Big as a Buick. And just as mean...."). And I was afraid to fantasize that Robin had died because there is that tiny little matter of karma.

So when I allowed myself to go there, I made sure he hadn't just died - I made sure he was killed, accidentally and unjustly so he'd be a hero. And I made sure he was killed by a loathsome, megawealthy corporation with deep pockets whom I could sue for trillions of dollars. Someone like Donald Rumsfeld or Rush Limbaugh. I would totally bring them to financial ruin. I had to be able to provide for my sons, after all. Mervyn's Cheetah tee shirts don't come cheap.

But because I am Jewish and guilt-ridden, and because my parents raised me right to care about others, in my fantasy I give away half of my trillions from Robin's wrongful death suit to the California farmworkers and migrant workers all over the country. I think Robin would have wanted it that way. And Rumsfeld and Limbaugh would totally shit when they heard. Win-win.

Ultimately, my solution to the single mom fantasy was simple: 

Robin would leave me for another man. 

Eureka! He was gay. He loved me and he was devoted to me, of course, but he woke up one morning, raised the rainbow flag up the pole (so to speak) and that was that. And if the new love of his life happened to be fabulously wealthy - and grateful to me for being such a swell sport about it all - well, what can you do other than graciously accept the consolation gold Amex card and commence shopping?

But that was a long time ago. These days, I am pretty happy Robin and I have made it this far.

After almost thirty years together, I'd kinda miss his crap if he was gone.

And, frankly, he is the one who gets up with Molly most of the time.

Winners Need Not Apply

There is a place in this town where the sight of my car pulling up is always cause for celebration. I am immediately surrounded by shouts of excitement, intimate greetings and- truth be told - a little bit of incontinent piddling.

Yes, well, of course you have figured out that I am talking about the dog park. Although the piddling is becoming more pervasive everywhere lately. My friends and I are getting old. After a good laugh at the movies, my friend Susie North used to say, "I bet there isn't a dry seat in the house."

You'd think that the arrival of a dog, at the dog park - would be old news over there, but day after day Molly and I are met with amazement and elation, as if Bo Obama himself had shown up to talk about health care and hand out liver treats.

Molly basks in the attention like the Queen Mum in a formal cortege, smiling benignly and nodding patiently while her butt is sniffed by the throng of townsfolk. For me, it's not so much the greatest time of my life. It's so hard to decide where to hang in the dog park. We are absolutely not going over to where the jocks congregate. You know those insufferable energetic, high-jumping, frisbee-catching, ball-chasing, victim-saving, river-paddling jock dogs who are so full of themselves, so full of joie de vivre. God, I hate them. Where are the moody, cerebral, Sylvia Plath-reading, theater major dogs?

Yeah, I know. Not at the park on a beautiful sunny day. They are at the library. Or a poetry slam. Or dead by their own paws.

So, Molly and I go off by ourselves, sniffing the air, discussing her anal gland situation (which is really a one-sided conversation; she never asks me about mine) and feigning oblivion that after the overly friendly, pumped up hello's, the other dogs quickly sized us up as losers and trotted off, high-fiving each other and whispering shit about us.

Well, fuck 'em. This is all too painfully reminiscent of the early days of raising my kids.

My oldest son did not walk until he was almost two years old. If you do not have children, let me explain to you that this is extremely late, tantamount to realizing your baby is basically going to evolve to nothing higher than a walrus. Oh, intellectually I knew he was probably going to be fine but in real life, I secretly blamed myself - the diet sodas I had in the first trimester, the unenlightened thoughts I entertained while pretending to meditate in my Pregnancy Yoga class, faking my orgasm when I conceived. Now it was all coming back to bite me in the ass: my baby was a walrus.

Being with other parents, parents of non-walrus babies, was a miserable experience. There I was; an evolved, informed, accepting, damn parenting instructor, for fuck's sake, making up all sorts of excuses for my walrus baby.

"Oh, he walks. Of course he walks!" I'd say, with a touch too much hilarity in my voice, "He's just....tired today." Or, "He would totally run right now but he has a fever of 112 so he's taking it easy."

Or, "hey, shut up, bitch."

It has been so exhausting.  I used to hang with high achiever babies, and then I hung with their high achiever moms, and now I am stuck with the fucking  high achiever dogs. I don't have the energy to keep up the charade anymore.

Life is short. Therefore, I am no longer going to be friends with:

* people who have young children who sleep through the night, or who currently have dogs that can hold their urine (their own urine; not their owner's urine) between the hours of midnight and 6AM. Both of these situations result in a well-rested person, which really pisses off the rest of us who drag our asses around all day, relying on hits of energy from napping at red lights and licking the coffee grounds from the compost.

* people over the age of 21 who can touch their toes without bending their knees or who can get up from a soft chair without making little "oy" grunting sounds. Those who inadvertently fart while getting up from chairs or touching their toes are immediately my BFF's.

* people who throw out leftover prescribed painkillers just because their pain is gone. Worse yet, those who get a legal prescription for painkillers and don't even fill it because the pain isn't that bad. WTF.

* people who still have Halloween candy in the house. The good shit, I mean. We've all still got Smarties.

* people who make the most of each day. No one can make the most of each day.  That's just something Oprah says to keep us in our places.

* people who do not constantly think about their own death.

* people who constantly think about my death. 

Wait, what was this post about? Now all I can think about is my death. And Halloween candy. The good shit.

Me, Unplugged

The setting for my dreams is always outer space now. I float, free-falling in the vast darkness, surfing uneasily on undulating gusts of wind. Sometimes I am dressed in a space suit, but a dorky, homemade  space suit - the kind we used to make at summer camp during "Astronaut Week": A helmet made from half a Clorox jug covered in aluminum foil, a mask of swimming goggles and a tissue paper-covered Slinky for an air hose.

Note to self: it's your dream. Why must you scrimp, always going with the schmatte bargain wardrobe in it? Spend a little on the damn spacesuit; you're worth it. Get Edith Head to design something fabulous. But nothing tucked in. I am an "apple" shape and - dream, shmeam, subconscious, shmubconscious -Mama don't do tuck in.

I haven't had an Earthly dream all week. I close my eyes at night and slowly hover above the ground, surfing away from my spaceship, drifting into the nothingness. I am lost, untethered, in both my waking and sleeping lives.  This morning, I stood in front of my bedroom window and wrote please help me in the frost. The "p" in "help" started to melt and ran down the glass to the sill in little frost tear drops.

I have been cut off from Facebook.

On Monday morning I received a notice that due to being phished, FB has disabled me. If you think that term, disabled, sounds a tad violent, let me just tell you that it pretty much describes the situation perfectly. I feel as violated, as pulled apart and subsequently, as marginalized as if Facebook thugs had come directly to my home in the middle of night, yanked me out of bed, wiped the Regenerist Night Repair serum right off my face, broke my bite guard in half, poked holes in my Breathe Right strip and left the toilet seat up. And then, oh cruel coda, came back to force me to tuck my pajama top into my pajama bottoms.

Where is Victim's Assistance when you need it? God, I should have voted for the Republican Sheriff  and Attorney General when I had the chance. What good are the bleeding heart, soft on crime Democratic  candidates to me now? I want revenge.

I got no Facebook wall to write on. No Facebook fan page. No daily Facebook salon with my girls. (Do you even remember me???) I got no Facebook Pathwords game at which - with a score of 1620; 1620! - I was number 2 of all my friends. No Facebook Scrabble at which I regularly get my ass kicked by my LA cousins and various online friends. Has someone started a "bring dr. strangemom back to Facebook" Facebook fan page? Did anyone even join????  How will I know what is going on in the world without my friends' status updates? Is Barbara taking her dog for a walk today? Did Susan get my private message about Gary? Is Erika having salmon for dinner??? I will never know. I mean, you can't count on Newsweek to report the essential shit.

If my blog had a soundtrack, right now it would be playing, "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town". I don't know why.

It is so fucking weird, being cut off from Facebook until they determine if I can be invited back. I imagine that before I am released of my persona non grata status I will have to take some sort of Karen Silkwood cyber shower, you know, scrub me down to my private password, put all my belongings in a plastic gray bucket, take off my shoes and my earrings and pass through the scam detector. With my luck, Facebook probably has one of the new "I-can-see-you-naked" machines which will surely set off alarms as they notice that full frontal me, nekked, bears absolutely no resemblance to the from-the-neck-up photos of my profile pictures, taken, oh, a million years ago. That'll put the nail on my coffin.

For now, I am stuck here; waiting, as it were, in the hallway outside the Facebook Principal's office, not knowing if this is a suspension or an expulsion. And I didn't even do anything wrong, although my son suspects I missed a few early signs that I was being phished. It's all so unfair. The last time I was in this situation was high school, when I was a part of a group that took over the Administration Building in order to end the war in Viet Nam. (Are you snickering at our hubris? Really? Well, did the war end or not? I'm just asking.) We were one scary, badass militant gang back there at Ulysses S. Grant High School. Stormed the Administration building, yes we did. Locked the motherfucker administrators out. I joined arms with Nina and Katherine and Davia and Rina and Allan and we sang "We Shall Not Be Moved". Or maybe we sang "Sweet Baby James" because, let's face it, that is a totally better song. We sang and chanted "get your asses out of classes" and we roared our terrible roars and gnashed our terrible teeth and we laughed our scary badass laughter when we got the word they were calling the pigs on us. Well, actually, we opened the doors and quickly filed outta there when we got the word they were calling the police, but that's not the point.

The point is, I am bereft without Facebook.

And never mind the upside, which is that I suddenly have found, like, a gajillion more hours in the day to get shit done. In the time it used to take me to come up a pithy status such as, "Ann is.....going to get shit done today", I can actually clean out the droppings of petrified lettuce and cabbage from the refrigerator crisper, wash all of Molly's forty thousand dog beds which are scattered throughout our two thousand square foot house, add my name to the MoveOn.org and Humane Society petitions filling up my email Inbox, schedule a mammogram, cancel a colonoscopy,  and run out to get a bowl of Pho from that hidden joint in Southeast. Not that I did any of those things. I've mostly just been sitting here at the computer, robotically typing in my old username and password over and over again, and despairing at the "you have been disabled" notice I get every time. It's like pushing the "replay" button on those old answering machines just to keep hearing, "you have no new messages".

Thank God it's Girl Scout cookie delivery week; otherwise, there'd be absolutely no reason to go on living.

If you are on Facebook, tell the others I have a new post out. Speak of me kindly.

I'll be out by the spaceship, catching the waves. Cowabunga dudes.

Gone Phishing?

It seems as though my Facebook, email and other accounts have been compromised. So just a heads up, that if you read anything here or - more to the point - on the Facebook dr. strangemom fan page that seems unlike me (no smartass, snarky comments), it probably isn't me. If you are asked to send money, that is totally me. (Hah. Just kidding. No, she's not.  Yes, I am. No, she's NOT.  Help, the cybercriminals are fighting me!)

We should have a code word or something so you know it's really me.

I shall return.