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

We Gotta Get Out Of This Place

Road trip tomorrow.

Here's what I've packed:

Five books, two magazines, tweezers, a journal,  a hundred little envelopes of EmergenC, Tylenol, Say YES To Carrots 15 Minute Hair Mask, two books on CD, Trader Joe's peanut butter pretzels, non-mushy Braeburn apples, and a bathing suit that I am afraid to try on because there is no way it is going to fit.

Here's what Robin has packed:

The little vial of Kama Sutra edible oil that I bought him as a joke in 2004.

Uh-oh.

His vision: front seat blow jobs on I-5, hotel sex, shade.

My vision: back seat naps on I-5, hotel maid service, sun.

Why do couples even travel together? When I rule the world, men will go on safe-sex/adventure junkets and women will stay at beachfront resort spas. When we return from our respective vacations, we will meet at, say, Denny's, for a Grand Slam breakfast and then catch a romantic comedy matinee before going home together to snuggle and nap. And then, maybe when we wake up, we will have sex. IF the house is clean. 

I am not a travel junkie. I used to be a bit of one, but now when I leave home it's just so everyone will get off my ass about it. I fantasize about being put on house arrest. I was so jealous of Martha Stewart when she was incarcerated at her 150-acre farm in upstate New York. If I thought I could get a sweet deal like that, I'd get me a crooked broker today.

I especially hate staying in other people's houses when I travel. Yuck. And yes, I realize that my friends' bedspreads contain way less stranger semen than can be found at your Interstate Red Lion Inn, but still. I really should just travel in a Hefty trash bag with two eyeholes cut out.

Here's what I LOVE about traveling, however:

Takeout cups with lids and straws.  I love refilling my cup with ice and soda and climbing back into the car. Or having the flight attendant refill my glass.

I also love food in single serving packages. And that paper strip on a hotel toilet. And maps. Maps soothe me; they reassure me that I am somewhere between where I've been and where I am going to be.

I love putting my dirty laundry in the plastic bag the hotel provides. I enjoy watching as the ratio of clean clothes in the suitcase to dirty clothes in the plastic bag moves from heavy on the clean, to 50/50, to heavy on the dirty, because I know I am nearing home. Or that I get to go shopping for more clothes.

I love making a miniature home out of my plane or car seat, setting up my shit where I can reach it, taking pleasure in the orderliness of it all.

As fucked up as I am, I am pretty easy to please. And at this point, with ten months of rain under my belt, I will totally just set up a beach chair on the fucking Interstate wherever the the clouds disappear, crack open a book and call it a vacation destination.

Honk if you see me. And, while you're up, wouldja mind refilling my ice?

Say NO To Saying YES

Did you see the cover of O Magazine last month? Check it out.

"Say YES! to life!" it screams in life-affirming electric blue letters against an energetic neon lime green background.

I might get a subscription to that rag just so I can fucking cancel it.

"Dear O," my letter will read, "get off my ass, okay? I say YES! to life plenty."

Not that I owe O any explanation, but:

I say YES! to all social invitations before deeply regretting it and lying to get out of them.

I say YES! to the March of Dimes lady on the phone when she asks me to be the neighborhood canvasser and donations collector. And I say YES to Robin when he accuses me of sending the March of Dimes two hundred dollars of our own money just so I don't have to canvass my neighborhood. Well, first I say NO to Robin in a highly indignant manner, but then I confess and say YES.

I say YES! to the pharmacist when she asks me if I'd like to save money by getting two month's worth of my Prozac by mail order.

I always say YES! when a saleslady asks, "do you need a larger size?"

I say YES! to guilt. To fear. To regret. To poisonous envy. To unabashed coveting. I do not need O to give me shit about it served with an exclamation mark at the end.

And you know what? The exclamation mark is starting to piss me off.

The exclamation mark is the motherfucking pep squad leader of grammar; big-toothed grinning, baton-twirling, motivational-speaking bursts of positive energy, as welcome a surprise at the end of a sentence as a family intervention. ExMark is the manic, coked up asshole who follows you around at a party, tapping your shoulder and saying,  "this is a FREAKING AWESOME party, right? Right? RIGHT????"

You know who I wanna hang with at a party? The parenthesis. I imagine the parenthesis would speak in understated, snarky asides all evening. I'd so dig that, leaning in close to hear his mean-spirited bon mots all night long. Everyone else would say, "what? Sorry I missed that" but Parenthesis and I would shrug and murmur, "oh it wasn't important."

Yeah, if people could hang with grammar, I would totally be a parenthesis hag.

Mission Accomplished!

I wouldn't know half the shit I know if it wasn't for my getting sick a lot.

I am going to get right to the point. I saw something HUGE on TV this week.

The new Depends undergarments for adults now comes in colors and prints.

I know, right? Blows your mind.

I'm just thinking out loud here, but isn't the whole selling point of Depends that they are inconspicuous? Do I really want to be calling extra attention to my adult diaper area with colors and prints?

When my adult diaper time comes and you find me wandering the streets of Portland wearing my  colorful Depends on the outside of my cargo pants (or on my head) I hope you will suggest I look to something other than my underpants for a bold fashion statement.

Plus, what kinds of prints are they using to market to me, the late fifty-something woman, the undergarment-wearing woman who is - fashionwise - midway between a thong and a shroud? We are the Woodstock generation so maybe a colorful tie-dye? That plays, say, Janis Joplin singing "Me 'N Bobby McGee" when the first trickle of pee escapes? That could be comforting. Janis would be a very understanding person in an adult incontinent situation, don't you think? Bet she had that situation herself a time or two.

Will my kids try to entice me to wear Depends by promising to buy me the ones with, I don't know, George Clooney on them, the way young parents promise their kids Buzz Lightyear Pullups? Because - and hear me well, Proctor and Gamble, I don't need Clooney's face watching me pee my pants. A person could wind up with a bladder infection that way from holding it in too long.

On the other hand, I would totally poop in my Rush Limbaugh Depends. 

Or my Rachael Ray Depends. She's done nothing wrong - she's no evil motherfucker like Limbaugh - I know that, but the girl just bugs me. And I'd like to poop on her.

In the meantime, I am going to stick to doing my Kegels every day and hope for the best.  And maybe I will take to wearing large, colorful brooches, or perhaps a live parrot on my shoulder to distract the eye from whatever the hell will be going on in my pants.

On the other hand.....George W Bush "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" Depends! Just make you wanna eat a bran muffin, doesn't it?

Gore No More

Wait, what?  Tipper and Al are calling it quits? I give up.

Tipper and Al can't make a go of it. We are all fucked.

And after forty years. I don't get it. If you've made it forty years, why the hell just not finish the ride?

Robin and I will celebrate our 30th anniversary this summer. And by "celebrate", I mean, we will make all sorts of fabulous plans, cancel them, agree to use the money for some necessary home repair instead, never actually do the repair, absorb the money back into the ether and never understand what happened to it, settle on going out for sushi, be too tired to go out that night, decide that snuggling together in bed while we eat leftovers and watch "Deadliest Catch" is really the best way to mark our anniversary, go to our separate bathrooms to shower, Robin will fall asleep downstairs on the couch and will be unable to be roused, might be dead, but I decide to find that out in the morning because discovering him dead on our anniversary would totally be a buzzkill for the rest of my life and frankly, I have enough shit to discuss in therapy and adding Robin's death on our anniversary to the agenda will totally put the topic of my unwillingness to embrace life on the back burner for a long time and I think we were finally getting somewhere with that issue because last week, for the first time, I answered the phone even though Caller ID didn't show although, truth be told, that turned out to be a bad idea because it was the March of Dimes lady asking me to be the neighborhood canvasser again and I hate when they ask me because I feel compelled to say yes due to my unshakable belief that any cause I refuse to support will ultimately strike me with a vengeance and I offer as Exhibit A, the time I made a smart alecky remark during a television PSA on being nice to deaf people and ever since then I have suffered from swimmer's ear even though I do not swim, even though I have not packed myself into a bathing suit since the Carter Administration.

My point is, if Robin and I can make it to 30 years, Al and Tippy can just buck up, walk it off, rub some dirt on it and keep going to the end. I mean, Robin complained that he was hungry and could he just run next door to get a burrito during my 23rd hour of nonstop labor with our first kid. When we first met, he used to go out with his first choice girl early in the evening, and if she didn't put out, he'd ask to be dropped off at my house (I only recently found out about this). He takes a dump and then shuts the window and the bathroom door even though I have told him a million times to OPEN the window after taking a dump. A person could die walking into that bathroom.

If I can forgive that, the Gores can get past whatever they've got going.

Oh, Al could probably lighten up at home with the global warming doom. I'm sure he's slightly insufferable; he probably goes around turning off the hot water when Tipper's in the middle of shampooing, and I can just imagine how he drones on and on about carbon footprints until Tipper pretends she is asleep. She probably has to wait until he leaves town on a book tour before she can whip out the leaf blower. Maybe she leaves all the lights on in the house the entire week he's gone, just to spite him.

And turnabout is fair play, since Al probably kisses her goodbye, and before he's got the second half of his butt into his Prius, he's blasting the most obscene music lyrics he can find, laughing maniacally and beating himself off, whispering, "I've got your warning label right here, Tipper." I imagine he never really got behind all that crap she spewed in the 80's about the dangers of rock and roll and shit, and believe me, those kinds of things can fester.

But hey, every marriage has its warts.

We are all dealing with more than enough shit right now, what with oil spewing into our waters, salmonella in the Fresh Express salad mixes again, homophobia and racism everywhere we look, Brett Michaels scaring the shit outta us, and seventy eight straight days of rain in the fucking Pacific Northwest. Well, not seventy eight days, but a lot.

It's too much to have to deal with Tipper and Al's problem on top of all of this.

I don't know what you are going to do about it, but I am going to write them an email. A stern email. An  "oh, get over yourselves" email that reminds them we are all dealing with our own disappointments and frustrations and what if we all just upped and divorced, what then?

On the other hand, Sandra Bullock is newly single. She and Al would make a cute couple. And she seems like the type who takes short showers.