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

When In Peloponnesia...

I just started reading what I think is going to be an odd little book. THE UNCOUPLING, by Meg Wolitzer, so far, appears to be a story about a town where the women all lose their desire to have sex as a result of attending the local high school's production of LYSISTRATA. I could be all wrong, of course; the book could turn out to be about, I don't know, Matt Damon buying a zoo, or shoes, but I don't think so.

Now it seems completely plausible to me that seeing a play about women withholding sex could influence the females in the audience to give the idea a whirl. I mean, since time immemorial, I have used sex as currency in my relationships. Sexual favors once got me a tune-up on my Chevy Nova. And a ride from Santa Cruz to Berkeley in a VW bug that had two untethered  lawn chairs as its back seat. Which, at the time, seemed to me to be a major score but as I recount the tale tonight, I wonder if I might have set my sights higher. Like, for a real back seat.

Although, granted, the older and fatter I get, it would probably carry more cache if I'd promise to not have sex with a person from whom I wanted a favor these days.

Judge: Madam, you have stolen from the poor and mistreated baby animals. I sentence you to ten years in prison.

Me: How about if I sleep with you?

Judge: Oh. Well, then, following your ten year sentence, you will be hanged. And then, shot.

I am trying to remember the last time I withheld sex from Robin to get something I wanted. Well, there was that one time, from 1986 to 1995, but that was really mostly because I was just so damn tired and pissy from raising kids. I was a sex camel in those days - one night of humping and I was good for a year or two. Our sexual hiatus was also due to Robin and I being stuck in a birth control method standoff that only ended with the onset of my menopause a few years ago. Which did take care of the pesky little problem of fertility but brought with it the new ones of sprouting walrus whiskers on my chin and growing into a silhouette that implies I am pregnant with a hydrocephalic bison or two.

I don't know of anyone else who is reading THE UNCOUPLING. I hate it when my friends don't read the same book I am reading because then I have no idea if I like the book or not. I count on my friends to keep me sounding smart and erudite, and how can I pull that off if I can't parrot their opinions?

I especially hate it when my super smart and erudite friends all LOVE a book that I didn't love. Or worse, a book that I could barely get through without falling into various distracting and prurient reveries which might feature myself in a foursome with Stanley Tucci, Oliver Platt and Tony Shalhoub. Sometimes my reveries are so vivid that they mix with the book's plot and I wind up saying shit to people like, "I was totally into the part where Dorothea and Celia were sitting naked on the potter's wheel and Mr. Monk was the wet clay."  That's usually when I have to feign a stroke or crash into something to cover up my blunder.

And even then, I know people are whispering about me as I limp away.

 

 

The Other Bucket List

Mom broke her pelvis in October. Yeah, I guess there wasn't enough shit flying around our family this year so the universe pushed her down while she was gardening and broke her. Which means that now they have to buy her.

A friend with a mother my mom's age assured me, however, that strong people in their 80's can do just fine despite these kinds of injuries. She said, "last year, my mom broke her arm in two places and she could still work at her loom for hours and hours."  So that's encouraging, right? I guess it means that even with a broken pelvis, my mom will be able to....oh, wait. I do not want to even think about what my mom does with her pelvis, much less for hours and hours.

It's too weird to think about your parents and sex and stuff. In fact, just writing the word "pelvis" makes me feel a little woozy.

Plus, it's not a very audially pleasing word is it?  Pelvis. It sounds so...dry and creaky. Like what's left after a windstorm or something. The storm left in its wake a pelvis of rubble. Or it could be Eastern European currency. In world news, the pelvis dropped sixteen points today; a new low. And post menopausal women everywhere would shake their heads in knowing commiseration.

Pelvis. It has no business being the term for the area of...er...business.

The derivation of the word is "empty basin or bucket", for fuck's sake. That image does not put a person in a sexy mood. "I feel a tingling in my empty bucket when I see your penis". I'll try that on Robin tonight, see where it takes us.

Although, it does add some interest to the term, "kick the bucket."

I rarely talk about my own pelvis and I like it that way just fine.  But since the accident, I have to say the word "pelvis" all the fucking time. And it always accompanies the words "my mom's".

My mom's pelvis.  

My mom's pelvis. My mom's pelvis. My mom's pelvis. Say it three times to summon the devil.  And then the rivers flow backwards and your spleen catches fire.

Thankfully, Mom is healing quickly so her pelvis won't have to be on my mind for much longer.

But she also broke her clavicle. Which sounds a little nasty, too.

 

 

 

 

 

I Am Not A Control Freak - Exhibit A

I just don't know if I am ready to get a dog again.

For one thing, I am finally okay with the way my house smells. Most times. Not after Robin has just come home from a long day on the boat, of course, but I suppose I can't fault the man for digesting his meals. What I can fault him for, however, is that after all these years of my training him, he still does everything wrong, post poop speaking. Everyone knows the proper order is:

1. Poop

2. Flush

3. Wash hands

4. OPEN the bathroom window

5. Light the candle

6. Spray the spray

7. Uncork the aromatic oils

8. Bleach everything

9. Buy all new towels, shower curtain, window shades, toothbrushes and light bulbs

10. Move to a new house.

Robin, however, likes to kick it bachelor style:

1. Announce the impending arrival of a poop while kissing me hello

2. Take off his pants in the hallway

3. Not notice that we have dinner guests in the living room

4. Go into the bathroom and not shut the door completely while doing his business, so he can tell me about his day

5. Flush (optional)

6. Wash and dry hands

7. Shut the bathroom window

8. Open the bathroom door

9. Sit down at the dinner table.

We don't get a lot of dinner guests anymore.

Then there's the fight:

Me: God. It stinks in here. Close the fucking door.

Him: My poop does not stink.

Me: You don't get to decide if it stinks. Other people get to decide if it stinks. And it stinks.

Him: Why are you in a bad mood?

Me: I'm not in a bad mood. Well, now I am because it stinks and you didn't close the fucking bathroom door.

Him: I remembered to close the window. But do I even get credit for that?

Me: You are supposed to OPEN the window. And CLOSE the door. God.

Him: Are you getting your period? Because you are really uptight.

Me: I went through menopause nine years ago.

Him: What's for dinner? It smells really good in here.

And then my head explodes and I die.

 

 

 

 

Doin' This And That

Did you hear the story on NPR the other morning about men and women and multi-tasking? No? Well, then, stop whatever you are doing so you can focus on this.

Evidently, according to the research, when women multi-task we feel put-upon and angry. Whereas, when men multi-task they feel happy. It has to do with....well, I don't really know what it has to do with because I was listening to the story in the car on my way to work and I was also thinking about where I might have left my phone. Also, I was wondering what ever happened to Surya Bonaly and I had to remind myself to get a flu shot that afternoon. Oh, and my underpants were too tight, so there was that, too. A lot on my mind for a nine-minute drive to work.

According to the story, women multi-task about ten times more often than men, and when we do, it almost always involves unexciting, even unpleasant, chores. You know, like, cleaning out the kitty litter box while stirring the peanut butter while determining if the booger on your shirt is repulsive enough to warrant actually changing your clothes before you go into public. And then, while changing your shirt, you remember that you have a dissertation due for your Ph.D in, I don't know, structural engineering. And also, you have to remember to do your daily 25 Kegels. You know, so you can open that fucking jar of peanut butter without the surprise of exertion incontinence all over the kitchen floor.

Whereas to a man, multi-tasking means watching football on TV while masturbating.

The older I get, the less I am able to multi-task. So MORE magazine helpfully told me to do my Kegels each time I stop at a red light. I would try that, but my time is pretty tightly scheduled during red lights, what with spilling coffee down my blouse, hiding my phone from the cops and looking in my rear view mirror to try out smiles that don't make my recessed eyes completely disappear and me look like a low-thyroid Sharpei puppy. 

Frankly, it's hard enough to  remember to do Kegels even as a single task unto itself. I mean, a person can remember to, say, brush their teeth because when your teeth get funky, you can see it. And feel it. And smell it. But when your pelvic floor gets funky, the only time you are aware of it is when someone else smells it. And then, I have to say, it's probably too late. I know my pelvic floor is getting funky  when a person tells me a hilarious joke about a bear and a hunter and, well, I can insist that I just spilled lemonade on my crotch while laughing hysterically, but I'm not fooling anyone. Although, technically, it was lemonade. At least, when it was going in. 

I am, however, multi-tasking right now, as a matter of fact. I am writing this post while ignoring that Robin is waiting for me in bed.

Which is probably for the best. I haven't been doing my Kegels and I just had a big glass of lemonade.

 

 

 

 

Food For Thought

It was a Very Dry Thanksgiving. The turkey had no moisture at all -it actually crumbled in my hands, like freeze dried; I tore a cuticle on the stuffing and my apple pie was so dry that my sister thought it was more stuffing. It is a holiday miracle that none of us choked and died.

I shouldn't be surprised, however. I have made the most disgusting food lately.

I don't set out to make it disgusting, of course; I start off pretty well and then, inevitably, I fuck it up. So after our Very Dry Thanksgiving, followed by A Very Dry Leftover Thanksgiving, followed by A Very Dry Poop, I decided to really give this some thought.

And, happily, I have a theory.

My theory is that my cooking is not about cooking. It is about avoiding getting any writing done.

Exhibit A: In the past four days, I have put four trays of disgusting homemade turkey enchiladas in the freezer, three containers of disgusting homemade Pho broth in the freezer and a shitload of homemade  inedible breads and cakes all neatly wrapped in foil and labeled. Chili - homemade. And disgusting - is simmering on the stove as I sit here.

Exhibit B: Um, this half-written blog post. And no new pages for the novel. And this large, purring, squishy cat on my lap that turns out to be my stomach.  All to avoid writing. What's wrong with me?

Well, I know the answer. I have an alarming dearth of ambition. If you took all the ambition I don't have and put it in a big jar, you could...well, I have no idea. Because I don't care. I like watching TV.

The fact is this:

There is nothing - no job, no opportunity, no event - that I would pursue over staying at home in my pajamas. Nothing.

So I pretend I have cooking to do, you know, to justify not getting things done. Honestly, I don't even really like cooking all that much. Especially when the shit I make is not worth the time or calories put into it. I just like the activity of cooking. Because then, you know, then I don't have to go do something  productive.

How proud my parents must be to read this. All the piano lessons, the museums, trip. College.

My ideal day:

Invite people over for dinner. Spend the entire day grocery shopping and cooking. Take a shower.

Get an email that says my guests are canceling.

And then:

Throw out the dinner I made. Order in Thai. Get in my pajamas. I have the warm fuzzies just imagining it. All the credit for inviting people over. None of the hassle of actual human interaction. And Pad Se Ewe.

When my oldest child left for college, I decided that after 19 years, I was through making dinner. And despite the cries of my younger son ("What do you mean, 'empty nest'? Look at me - I STILL LIVE AT HOME!"  and "Where is my bed? Why is there a bidet in my room?"), I threw in the kitchen towel. I decided that if I had to make one more chicken, I was going to oil and salt my own head and stick it into the oven. Dinner from then on was take out. Or leftover take out. Or my avocado and papaya facial masque. I was done.

But after a few months, I realized that without the late afternoon tether of chopping and sauteing, I really had no excuse for not writing. So I brought dinner back. With a vengeance. I cook dinner every night. I cook the fuck outta dinner every night.

You're welcome to join us. Only please cancel at the last minute.