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

From the OCCUPY Files

I miss the Occupy movement. Yeah, I know it's still going on. But I don't think about it much.

I think the movement is a victim of bad timing, what with the holiday season and cold weather and all. When the autumn leaves turn to gold and the promise of 75% off during Black Friday at Nordstrom is in the air, I just don't feel like fighting The Man. I feel, instead, like cuddling up to The Man. And making us soup. And giving him a hand job so The Man will buy me some nice shit for Hanukkah.

But I feel bad about abandoning the cause. I really feel bad. Which, as you know, is the important thing. So long as one feels bad, one can rest assured that one is, indeed, good. Only bad people feel good all the time. Well, bad people and people who have recently lost weight. Who are, in my book, one and the same.

You know who I hate the most of all the weight-losers? The ones who recently had babies and claim that breastfeeding just took the weight right off. Fuck that shit. I do not need to hear one more example of how life isn't fair to me.

Anyone who claims their good fortune is due to something they did right, is plain wrong. That is patently ridiculous. Good fortune is due to having been born attractive. Or having been nice to a very wealthy person. Everything else is self-congratulatory bullshit.

When I met Robin in 1976, he was the richest guy I knew in Santa Cruz, making ten dollars an hour as an electrician. He was the 1% and I wanted my share. So I faked five orgasms the first night we slept together. To topple the balance of power. You know, like how we ended the Viet Nam war. God, men are so easy. Even when Robin tried to tear gas me out of his bed the next morning, I stayed put. I simply covered my face with a wet bandanna, called for the ACLU and then went limp. He thought it was another orgasm. We were married within the year.

And THAT, ladies, is how you Occupy The Man.

Maybe I should go back and join the Occupiers. I have a lot to teach the young crop of activist protesters. Also, I have a long list of grievances.

For one thing, I breastfed both my kids for a year and I can barely Occupy my maternity pants thirty years later.

 

 

 

(Astro)Gliding Towards Thanksgiving

So Robin and I pull into the parking lot at the grocery store yesterday afternoon. I was in a good mood. No axes to grind. No big issues with the world at large. I wasn't choking on buried, seething resentments or anything. For a change. I periodically like to take a break from my poisonous coveting. You know, so I can see what's new in the Pottery Barn catalogue. From which I can afford NOTHING. Because, you know, fuck my life.

But anyway...

Robin parked the car and noted that the car in the space in front of us was really hanging over the rear  line. As he was still saying this, the car's back-up lights came on and it started inching backwards towards our front bumper.

Robin hit the horn hard for, like, 6 seconds. The car sped up and backed into us.

This didn't harsh my mellow. We were at our local obscenely overpriced upscale faux rustic grocery store, and obscenely overpriced faux rustic grocery stores are like crack to me. I roll up my sleeve and shoot $14.99 lb purple artisan broccolini directly into my veins.  In an obscenely overpriced faux rustic grocery store I must have hand-picked, shade grown saffron threads, $89.00 price tag be dammed. I become enthusiastic about organic rosemary smoked salmon pate to the point of near frenzy. I think I had an orgasm once while fingering a warm ciabatta.

So this little fender-bender was but a mere momentary delay for me. I had shopping to do. And anyway, it was just a tap to our bumper. No big whoop.

The driver looked out her side mirror and I saw that she was about a million years old. Her passenger, who looked to be a few weeks older than she, unbuckled her seat belt. Okay, I thought to myself, they're old. Just let them be.

I like to adopt that attitude when other drivers fuck up. I figure I am racking up good karma points for the times I have surely and unwittingly caused accidents and left a trail of misery and detritus in my wake as I drive merrily on, one hand in my purse searching for lip gloss, the other hand adjusting my bra strap and unwrapping a Luna bar.

So Robin and I get out of our car and go into the store. A few mintues later, Methuselah and her friend, who - by the looks of her - had been freshly exhumed just to go shopping that day, come walking in. I stalled at the asparagas display, wondering whether I should say something to them or not. I mean, I really wanted to let her off the hook for being such a shitty driver. She looked embarrased and seemed to be avoiding me.

I walked over to them. Please, please, don't call me a hero. I just go where love takes me.

I gently touch the lady's shoulder and say sweetly, "Hi. I just want you to know that you might want to be more careful in the future. You did hit us but it didn't do any damage. I hope you are okay." Did I hear angels singing in my ear? I was high on my own goodness.

"YOU hit ME!" She said.

Certainly I didn't hear her correctly.

"You crashed into my car," she said icily. Her friend nodded in a way that reminded me of something Robin likes to say when my sister and I get together: one lies and the other swears to it.

"You crashed right into me because you wanted my parking space." What?

Unbefuckinglievable.

"Yeah, I don't think so," I say with a soft chuckle, "we were parked. Stopped. You backed into us."

"I wasn't moving," she said, and then pauses dramatically to reveal Her Big Defense. "I was parking."

My head started to buzz. "Yes, I know you were parking," I smiled, but this time not so beautific as before and with a little bit of say WHAT, bitch? in my eyes. "You were going backwards, trying to park and you HIT OUR CAR. Which was stopped."

"No, you are wrong. You hit me," she repeated. Her friend giggled. Or fell down dead. I have no idea. My head was going to explode. I walked away.

Robin - who had been bravely hiding in the spice aisle, listening in - suddenly sprinted over to the ladies.

I really hoped he wasn't going to go all Tai Chi on their asses. Robin does not abide injustice. This time I bravely hid in the spice aisle and waited.

He came back about five mintues later. He looked stunned. He spoke slowly, as if in a dream. He said:

"I asked her, 'did you hear me honking my horn?'  And she said she did.  So I asked, 'how often do people honk their horns BEFORE THEY CRASH INTO YOU? Why do you think I was honking at you?'

"And you know what she said? She said, 'well, you didn't honk very loudly.' And then she huffed away. Like she proved her point."

I must admit that I gotta give that old broad her props. A random, irrational answer like that is checkmate. We were bested. By a lead-footed apple doll. There was nothing left to do but pay for our groceries and drive home.

Nothing to do but that. And to put four tubes of obscenely overpriced KY Jelly in her shopping cart when she wasn't looking.

Occupy™ Yurtopia™

Don't panic, but I have dire news: We've been made.

The Neiman Marcus Christmas catalogue is offering a YURT this year.  Made out of Sunbrella™, whatever the hell that is, but it sounds like something a top-notch commune would want their yurts to be made out of. (Also, it gives me the opportunity to use the ™ sign, which is my new favorite thing to do in the world.)

My first reaction to hearing about this $75,000.00 yurt was: I have a mole in my blogosphere. A mole who works for Neiman Marcus. And steals my big ideas. And then actually does something about them.

Oh wait. I mean, My Big Ideas.™  There. Now they're all mine.

Trying to stake claim on an idea is pretty hard, at least legally. I offer as an example that my sister insists she came up with term, "No way, Jose." She is tenacious on this issue - do not try to cite any facts that question it. Although, and I am just thinking of this now, "No way, Jose" might not be an expression a progressive liberal wants attached to her. I mean, it might carry a modicum of bigotry.  Does it presume that if a person's name is Jose, he will likely do something that he shouldn't do? That the Joses of the world cannot be left alone to their own good judgement? Karen, I think you should let this one go.

But the yurt? The yurt is MINE. Mine. Mine™.

Oh, don't talk to me about the Mongols of the Steppes of Asia inventing the yurt. Don't even. Read your Bible - the yurt is part of Intelligent Design™. Intelligent home design. The Mongols just moved their shit in and got a page in The World Book. No one took the yurt idea and ran with it the way I have, blogging about the commune I am going to start in Sea Ranch, California. Where carbs have no calories. And Casual Sex Fridays means we get to just lay there on the bottom. And everyone works naked in our award-winning fields of heirloom tomatoes and medical marijuana. Yeah, I have big dreams, too. A bong in every pot.

Still, I have to concede that Neiman Marcus' yurts come fully furnished, which is more than I can offer our commune. I can only offer a couple of Macy's 20% off coupons that expire next month and some old Ikea dining room chairs I have stored in the garage. You're gonna have to bring most of your own shit.

So I think I am going to do something radical. Because when NM occupies yurts, it's time for me to put down the bong and run the freak flag back up the pole .

Therefore, yurts are out. Ptooey. Let the Neiman Marcus rich fuck commune have them. We are going to choose a new, super radical way to live. Treehouses, maybe. Or wickiups. No, wait, I've got it: treehouse wickiups! But on the ground. Because I don't want to have to do stairs. And not circular, because I have some nice art I'd like to hang on walls. And air conditioned because, frankly, I am prone to heat rashes. In areas that are decidedly not communal.

Except on Fridays.