You know, there's a point in life where one thinks one is ready for a rubber room. When I reach that point, I picture myself,alone, sitting under a tree on the lawn of some sort of sanitarium, wearing my clean Eileen West cotton lawn robe, the one with the little pink roses and the tiny pearl buttons on it, enjoying the shade and a small breeze, making a lanyard. When this image pleases me, I know my wick is about to sputter.
My sister-in-law occasionally tells me about her girl week-ends. Now, her kids are grown too, we had our kids pretty much at the same time. Here's the thing. She never had any qualms about leaving the kids and going away with some friends for, what is now popularly known as "me time." I was a good mother, stayed home, took the kids with us pretty much everywhere and find myself, now, fat and friendless. Oh, I pushed them out of the nest, don't get me wrong. And they grew up tall and proud...every parent should have a picture of themselves flanking their college graduate. I have mine on my desk. My SIL doesn't have one of those.
On the other hand, her girls aren't out on a work furlough and she has her sanity. Today I think maybe it's a fair trade.
The whole melt down started over the Independence Day week-end. It was hot, unbelievably sticky and my apartment is still decorated with the stuff I managed to salvage from my house. The furniture is all too big and it's all too brown and you can't really tell where the cat crap brown industrial carpet we're allowed stops and the table legs begin, it's all the SAME DAMN COLOR! BROWN!
It LOOKS hot. Oh LORD, what I could give for cream color carpet. The place would look bigger, brighter. It would go so nicely with the cat pee. Because the cat is no longer allowed out. He used to go in and out but, about two months ago, he started going out and not coming back for 36 hours. We discovered that management had finally fixed all the torn and missing screens that covered the cat size entrances to the crawl space under the building and so the cat had no where to hang out. I guess he decided to hang out in another neighborhood, I dunno. I just know that, after the second two day long foray into the wilds of the urban village, the hubster stopped letting him out.
The cat doesn't feel this is the appropriate solution. No stupid cat he, it seems that he has figured out that if he pees over everything he can find someone will kick his sorry ass outside. This hasn't happened. It has only served to enrich the people who make Resolve Carpet Cleaner and contribute to my general sense of "to HELL with this."
What I find interesting is that I am currently in a struggle with a human being who is doing the same thing. Crapping all over me in an attempt to make me to freaking mad I will kick her to the curb. Problem is, I can't. I would SO like to, but it's not my decision to make. There is something she has to do for me, one stinking hour, twice a month. This annoys her to no end. It annoyed her when she said "You know, I'm busy, I'm not going to do that anymore, I don't have time" and the guy in charge said, in essence "not my problem." Like the cat, she can't figure out that a campaign to antagonize the person on the bottom of the food chain accomplishes nothing except to antagonize the person on the bottom of the food chain. I'd LOVE to kick her sorry butt to the curb. I KNOW this is what she wants and, if it happens, her whiny ass wins and I don't care. I do NOT want her around.
Like that changes anything. But I digress...
Well, on the 4th of July we made a long awaited trip to the Hollywood Bowl for picnic, fireworks and Hall and Oates. It was hot and muggy. The hubster kept saying he was going to get parking and then kept forgetting so that was out. I had two trays of chicken I could ill afford and a HUGE round loaf of bread, all set for my "stuff the chicken in the bread bowl" feast. I made hummus and Chicago dip and potato salad with red, white and blue potatoes. At about 1:30pm I turned the oven on to pre-heat and got the chicken ready. I smelled gas.
The pilot light was out. Now, the landlord furnishes stoves. They are a model that isn't made anymore by a company that's out of business and they get them at a flea market and have them refurbished. Mine has been down to three burners for over two years now, I'm still waiting for that to be fixed. The pilot light for the oven requires a long match, a metal telescoping wand and a mirror. I kid you not. In short, it has to be done by the gas company. So the chicken is a wash. So's the bread bowl. The hubster has filled out the form on the unemployment wrong for the second time so, suffice it to say, we're sucking air.
I put my last two packs of brats in a pan with a bottle of .99 cent beer and an onion and simmered them. THREE freaking stores and I finally found something that would pass for hot dog buns, there wasn't one left in town on the 4th. I grilled the brats on top of the stove, because I no longer have an outdoor grill, and packed up what we had the we headed to the subway for the one stop trip to Hollywood and the free shuttle to the Bowl.
Sold out, packed to the last bench seat. Not unexpected and we had our tickets for two months now. We had our tickets right next to a large group of the most obnoxious, loud, ill mannered, rude teenagers I have ever encountered in my LIFE and I'm pushing SIXTY. They claimed to be part of a theater camp but what the hell kind of theater people think that talking loudly thought the entire first half of a 4th of July concert because it's all orchestra and you can't expect youngsters to tolerate an orchestra playing crap like "The Stars and Stripes Forever." Really? I've behaved better when I was STONED than these kids did.
We were told, upon complaining the next day, that their behavior was all OUR fault as my husband put a cooler on his head and scared the youngsters. Really? My grey haired, balding, almost 60 year old husband put a cooler on his head? Let's not even get into the 40 ill mannered louts who are, apparently, really nice kids unless they see a beer cooler. Which, btw, we weren't carrying. Although I understand the kids a little better, someone is making the big bucks to run a camp for the over privileged to get them out of mom and dads hair for a week during the summer and is telling them that they don't have to bother with that boring old orchestra stuff and it's all OUR fault for complaining. And putting a beer cooler on our head. Frankly, I'm too damn old to balance a cooler on my head anymore and the hubster is so damn stuffy and getting stuffier as the days go by I'm surprised he even carries a cooler anymore. Oh wait, he doesn't, he hands it off to the boys. We were also told that the charmers were instructed to treat the performers on stage in the same manner they would wish to be treated when they are on stage. I SO want to attend one of their performances, I'd sell one of my kids to get the price of that ticket.
A long, hot sticky walk down into Hollywood to the subway, which we had just missed. Exhausted and miserable, we all sat on the tile floor of the subway station and waited the 20 minutes for the next train. Finally home, to a hot, brown apartment with a hungry cat and about 5 feet of laundry awaiting me. And piles of newspapers all over the floor. And I think the hubster is taking in other people's mail and leaving it all over the dining room table. I crawled over the piles of laundry and magazines and DVDs and CDs on the bedroom floor, went to bed and cried.
It hasn't gotten any better. Although I went back to the Bowl on Saturday, they ran the re-mastered "West Side Story," digitally dropped out all the music and the Los Angeles Philharmonic PLAYED IT. DAMN! It brought me to tears. We were enthralled, from start to finish, as the Jets and Sharks picked up Richard Beymer's cold, dead corpse you could have heard a pin drop. As the last credit came up the audience, about 15 thousand of us, rose as one and exploded in cheers and applause. I was charmed by the little girl, sitting behind us with her family, who I overheard asking "Did they kill him?" Not irritated, enchanted. Made me feel better, I was beginning to think I was turning crotchety after the experience on the 4th.
Funny, that. Personally, I think "West Side Story" is flawed, the film even more than the show. From what I gather, Leonard Bernstein was an ass and Jerome Robbins even worse. The older I get, the more I like Sondheim though. Put a live orchestra on stage with it though, it was nirvana. I don't know if it was because we were in the really, really cheap seats or what, but it was simply beautiful and restored my faith in audiences in general. I'd say there was a better class of people there, but then I would sound like my mother and that will never do. I think though, that when you're with a bunch of people who are there because they WANT to be, instead of because they're stuck sitting through the first half of a program only to get to the second half, well, the good experience spreads like a virus, and all for the better.
Tonight, we go to hear Lang Lang play Prokofiev. May the Lord protect me from field trips and tour buses.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Monday, July 4, 2011
Redux
I know. I haven't been here much lately. This may be a good thing, hard to tell. But it's the 4th of July, my favorite holiday and I'm right now boiling red, white and blue potatoes (okay, the blue potatoes are actually those little purple ones) for the potato salad I will put in the picnic I'm fixing today, the picnic I will put together and haul to the Hollywood Bowl so I can sit outside and listen to Hall and Oates and watch fireworks and swear I'm never going to do this again because I will have done the entire thing myself while the hubster sits on the love seat in front of the television all day and finds the movie with the most murders to watch and the kids sit in their own room because I have boys and even THEY can't take this recent marathon of agony and evisceration the hubster calls "good films".
I'm going to the store in a minute to try and find affordable chicken for said picnic. BTW...brown your chicken then stuff it in a hollowed out round loaf of bread coated with herb butter, wrap it in foil and shove in a 325 oven for oh, two hours or so then wrap it in newspaper and put it in a tote bag. Best picnic chicken you'll ever eat. Not to mention the freaking BREAD bowl. YUM.
I'm going to spend my last 5 bucks on chicken and be home in time for "1776," which starts in an hour and I will end up watching alone, as always. Eh. The hubster has never quite seen the pleasure that the gift of sharing something that gives another person pleasure brings. Although, I'm guessing that suffering through a movie he doesn't pick gives him NO pleasure, and never will, as he has a mindset going into it and will now be swayed. I suppose that a bunch of guys dressed in plus fours and powdered wigs singing their way through the declaration of war against England seems, in the telling, like a major waste of time but trust me, it's one HELL of a show and at least make sure you see "The Egg."
Because I'm off, I'm leaving the both of you with the following. It's probably the best thing I've ever done, she said modestly. Anyway, Happy 4th. Stay safe, be well and never, never forget what went down in that war over 200 years ago to bring us here.
My father built a cannon.
I must have been about 10. We had just moved to the city I live in today. My father, a precision machinist by trade and a Confederate General wannabe the rest of the time, got it into his gun loving head that he could build a cannon and damned if he didn't. Oh, it was a scale model, it's brass barrel finely spun on one of "The Shop's" machines. It sat on a handmade wooden caisson, beautifully constructed with large wooden spoke wheels. The entire thing was probably about 15 inches in length and for 364 days of the year (365 if it was a leap year) it sat on the side of the hearth in the living room. It made a nice tableau in there, the large, carved wood screaming war eagle clutching a brace of arrows in it's claw proudly gracing the wall over the mantel, my mother's kerosene lamps flanking my grandfather's clock and a red lava light ON the mantel and the little cannon sitting proudly on the red brick hearth.
On the morning of July 4th, however, my dad would wheel the little cannon out to the porch. He would put out the flag and then go to work. First, into the muzzle of the cannon went a small measure of black powder. Then something else I don't remember now. And finally, the "wad", a small disc of pliable yet firm material, about a half an inch thick and the exact diameter of the inside of the barrel. This was then tamped down with a wooden stick he had fashioned to look like something he had seen in a Revolutionary War movie, "Johnny Tremaine" if I remember right. And finally, a pinch of gunpowder was put into the little hole that had been drilled into the barrel from the top, towards the back.
A long, fireplace match was struck and touched to the little pile of gunpowder and everyone retreated a safe distance from the little cannon, about 12 inches would do it. The powder flared and went out. And about 5 seconds later, "BOOM!" came the shot, smoke puffed from the mouth of the cannon and, largely due to the echo set off by the set up of the gun on the roofed front porch a MOST satisfying noise was generated.
This shot usually occurred at about 7:15am. On a national holiday. When everyone was home. Sleeping in on a day off was highly overrated in my father's mind. My father actually felt national holidays in general were overrated and only let his employees have the day off because the government forced him to, an attitude he hasn't changed, btw. Earlier this year, on President's Day, my phone rang and the caller I.D. indicated it was my father. I cheerfully answered and was treated to a good five minutes on why the hell was I home, what the hell was President's Day and when did we start celebrating THAT? He doesn't believe in taking vacation time either, I am continually lectured on why I should NOT be taking vacation days. I took a day off to attend my uncle's FUNERAL and he's still bitching about how I shouldn't have done that. I told him not to worry, when it's time for his funeral I'll go to work instead if that would make him feel better about it, but I digress...
So, about 7:15, the first shot was fired on Burbank. At approximately 7:20 my best friend's father would appear at our front door, having been rudely awakened on a day off. He would have been there earlier but he usually paused to put on a pair of pants, light a cigarette and open a beer before he headed across the street and volunteered to tamp the next load, cannon and all, up my father's ass.
The cannon then was relegated to every hour on the hour. My mother refused to go near the thing but my father and I could load and light in our sleep.
This was interspersed with periodic firings of the cat food cans. But only if someone had been "back home" (which meant someone in my father's family had been back to Mississippi even though they all actually grew up in Oklahoma, which they all claimed wasn't any part of the Midwest at all but really belonged to the Confederacy) and brought firecrackers back with them. Firecrackers were absolutely illegal in the Los Angeles area, even way back then and were always a treat. My best friend Marilyn, my dad, her dad (now on his second six pack of the day and having forgotten the early morning wake up war cry from the Dean's house) and I would place empty cat food or tuna cans upside down on a firecracker in the middle of the street, with the wick sticking out the side. Someone would light the fuse and then we ran like hell for the curb, where we waited breathlessly for the eventual explosion and oohed and ahhed over the height achieved by said can.
One afternoon we had just lit the fuse and straightened up to observe a black and white, quietly making his way down the block, searching for 4th of July miscreants with sparklers (which were also illegal in my town, in fact, EVERY kind of firework was illegal here, we're at the base of some notoriously dry foothills and the fire hazard does make it understandable, not to mention the idiots that set their garages on fire and blow off the occasional finger. If you can't light your barbecue without ending up in the E.R. you really shouldn't be allowed to play with gunpowder). Well, the fuse had been lit, the can was over the firecracker, the cop car was about 10 feet away and the four of us were pretty much shit out of luck.
The fuse smoldered forever. The car slowly passed directly over the can. We stood at the curb, the four of us looking as if we had just turned around to view at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and were now giant salt licks. The firecracker had the longest fuse known to man. The car slowly, silently rolled over the can and continued on it's agonizing way. His rear bumper cleared the focus of our attention and then, about five yards later, the thing went off like a roman candle. The cop car jerked to a stop. We stood, frozen. It was a shame now that I think of it, that can must have gone up a good 25 feet. We waited and waited and finely, mercifully, it landed, with a thud, on the asphalt and rolled to the gutter. We stood. The cop car idled. After what seemed like a week later the Mexican stand-off ended, the car shifted back into drive and continued his slow, silent tour of the neighborhood.
We retreated to the safety of the local city park, where watermelon was free, there was continuous (bad) entertainment under the band shell, one of the adjoining streets had been closed off and was being used for hayrides and tandem bicycle rentals and I came home with an empty coin purse and a plastic bag full of goldfish. My mother reported that the cop circled the neighborhood every five minutes for the next two hours but she was prone to hyperbole at times.
My mother died 10 years ago today, btw. She would. She's sitting somewhere now thinking "Ha!" My father and I used to drive her to drink, or at least that's what SHE said caused it. She also revered Thomas Jefferson and dying on the same date he did would have pleased her to no end. The date, not the death.
The cannon, btw, was retired many years later. My father overloaded it and blew the barrel right off the little wood caisson, breaking one of the exquisitely crafted wheels in the process. He fixed it and it sits on his hearth now, under the screaming eagle. But it's all for show, it never worked quite right again. The city eventually stopped putting on the 4th of July picnic and carnival in the early 80s, the expense was killing them. My father left my mother, remarried and now lives about 90 minutes away. But for some reason it doesn't matter. Because every 4th of July I dress in red, white and blue and I make the flag cake and, even though my yard and barbecue were taken by the bank two years ago I will get out my grill pan and make burgers and hot dogs and potato salad and lemonade and I'll watch "1776" and "Yankee Doodle Dandy" and after dark I'll run out into the middle of the street to see what fireworks there are to be seen.
And I'll wax rhapsodic about the 4th of days gone by and I'll stop and think about what a truly remarkable thing celebrating Independence Day is.
So...HAPPY 4th, my friends! May your parades be long, your brass bands in tune, your barbecues easy to light, your baseball game successful and your beer cold. May you and your friends and neighbors have spectacular fireworks tonight. Because 234 years ago a bunch of sweaty men in bad wigs crossed the Rubicon and, in doing so, gave us this wonderful summer day.
I'm going to the store in a minute to try and find affordable chicken for said picnic. BTW...brown your chicken then stuff it in a hollowed out round loaf of bread coated with herb butter, wrap it in foil and shove in a 325 oven for oh, two hours or so then wrap it in newspaper and put it in a tote bag. Best picnic chicken you'll ever eat. Not to mention the freaking BREAD bowl. YUM.
I'm going to spend my last 5 bucks on chicken and be home in time for "1776," which starts in an hour and I will end up watching alone, as always. Eh. The hubster has never quite seen the pleasure that the gift of sharing something that gives another person pleasure brings. Although, I'm guessing that suffering through a movie he doesn't pick gives him NO pleasure, and never will, as he has a mindset going into it and will now be swayed. I suppose that a bunch of guys dressed in plus fours and powdered wigs singing their way through the declaration of war against England seems, in the telling, like a major waste of time but trust me, it's one HELL of a show and at least make sure you see "The Egg."
Because I'm off, I'm leaving the both of you with the following. It's probably the best thing I've ever done, she said modestly. Anyway, Happy 4th. Stay safe, be well and never, never forget what went down in that war over 200 years ago to bring us here.
My father built a cannon.
I must have been about 10. We had just moved to the city I live in today. My father, a precision machinist by trade and a Confederate General wannabe the rest of the time, got it into his gun loving head that he could build a cannon and damned if he didn't. Oh, it was a scale model, it's brass barrel finely spun on one of "The Shop's" machines. It sat on a handmade wooden caisson, beautifully constructed with large wooden spoke wheels. The entire thing was probably about 15 inches in length and for 364 days of the year (365 if it was a leap year) it sat on the side of the hearth in the living room. It made a nice tableau in there, the large, carved wood screaming war eagle clutching a brace of arrows in it's claw proudly gracing the wall over the mantel, my mother's kerosene lamps flanking my grandfather's clock and a red lava light ON the mantel and the little cannon sitting proudly on the red brick hearth.
On the morning of July 4th, however, my dad would wheel the little cannon out to the porch. He would put out the flag and then go to work. First, into the muzzle of the cannon went a small measure of black powder. Then something else I don't remember now. And finally, the "wad", a small disc of pliable yet firm material, about a half an inch thick and the exact diameter of the inside of the barrel. This was then tamped down with a wooden stick he had fashioned to look like something he had seen in a Revolutionary War movie, "Johnny Tremaine" if I remember right. And finally, a pinch of gunpowder was put into the little hole that had been drilled into the barrel from the top, towards the back.
A long, fireplace match was struck and touched to the little pile of gunpowder and everyone retreated a safe distance from the little cannon, about 12 inches would do it. The powder flared and went out. And about 5 seconds later, "BOOM!" came the shot, smoke puffed from the mouth of the cannon and, largely due to the echo set off by the set up of the gun on the roofed front porch a MOST satisfying noise was generated.
This shot usually occurred at about 7:15am. On a national holiday. When everyone was home. Sleeping in on a day off was highly overrated in my father's mind. My father actually felt national holidays in general were overrated and only let his employees have the day off because the government forced him to, an attitude he hasn't changed, btw. Earlier this year, on President's Day, my phone rang and the caller I.D. indicated it was my father. I cheerfully answered and was treated to a good five minutes on why the hell was I home, what the hell was President's Day and when did we start celebrating THAT? He doesn't believe in taking vacation time either, I am continually lectured on why I should NOT be taking vacation days. I took a day off to attend my uncle's FUNERAL and he's still bitching about how I shouldn't have done that. I told him not to worry, when it's time for his funeral I'll go to work instead if that would make him feel better about it, but I digress...
So, about 7:15, the first shot was fired on Burbank. At approximately 7:20 my best friend's father would appear at our front door, having been rudely awakened on a day off. He would have been there earlier but he usually paused to put on a pair of pants, light a cigarette and open a beer before he headed across the street and volunteered to tamp the next load, cannon and all, up my father's ass.
The cannon then was relegated to every hour on the hour. My mother refused to go near the thing but my father and I could load and light in our sleep.
This was interspersed with periodic firings of the cat food cans. But only if someone had been "back home" (which meant someone in my father's family had been back to Mississippi even though they all actually grew up in Oklahoma, which they all claimed wasn't any part of the Midwest at all but really belonged to the Confederacy) and brought firecrackers back with them. Firecrackers were absolutely illegal in the Los Angeles area, even way back then and were always a treat. My best friend Marilyn, my dad, her dad (now on his second six pack of the day and having forgotten the early morning wake up war cry from the Dean's house) and I would place empty cat food or tuna cans upside down on a firecracker in the middle of the street, with the wick sticking out the side. Someone would light the fuse and then we ran like hell for the curb, where we waited breathlessly for the eventual explosion and oohed and ahhed over the height achieved by said can.
One afternoon we had just lit the fuse and straightened up to observe a black and white, quietly making his way down the block, searching for 4th of July miscreants with sparklers (which were also illegal in my town, in fact, EVERY kind of firework was illegal here, we're at the base of some notoriously dry foothills and the fire hazard does make it understandable, not to mention the idiots that set their garages on fire and blow off the occasional finger. If you can't light your barbecue without ending up in the E.R. you really shouldn't be allowed to play with gunpowder). Well, the fuse had been lit, the can was over the firecracker, the cop car was about 10 feet away and the four of us were pretty much shit out of luck.
The fuse smoldered forever. The car slowly passed directly over the can. We stood at the curb, the four of us looking as if we had just turned around to view at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and were now giant salt licks. The firecracker had the longest fuse known to man. The car slowly, silently rolled over the can and continued on it's agonizing way. His rear bumper cleared the focus of our attention and then, about five yards later, the thing went off like a roman candle. The cop car jerked to a stop. We stood, frozen. It was a shame now that I think of it, that can must have gone up a good 25 feet. We waited and waited and finely, mercifully, it landed, with a thud, on the asphalt and rolled to the gutter. We stood. The cop car idled. After what seemed like a week later the Mexican stand-off ended, the car shifted back into drive and continued his slow, silent tour of the neighborhood.
We retreated to the safety of the local city park, where watermelon was free, there was continuous (bad) entertainment under the band shell, one of the adjoining streets had been closed off and was being used for hayrides and tandem bicycle rentals and I came home with an empty coin purse and a plastic bag full of goldfish. My mother reported that the cop circled the neighborhood every five minutes for the next two hours but she was prone to hyperbole at times.
My mother died 10 years ago today, btw. She would. She's sitting somewhere now thinking "Ha!" My father and I used to drive her to drink, or at least that's what SHE said caused it. She also revered Thomas Jefferson and dying on the same date he did would have pleased her to no end. The date, not the death.
The cannon, btw, was retired many years later. My father overloaded it and blew the barrel right off the little wood caisson, breaking one of the exquisitely crafted wheels in the process. He fixed it and it sits on his hearth now, under the screaming eagle. But it's all for show, it never worked quite right again. The city eventually stopped putting on the 4th of July picnic and carnival in the early 80s, the expense was killing them. My father left my mother, remarried and now lives about 90 minutes away. But for some reason it doesn't matter. Because every 4th of July I dress in red, white and blue and I make the flag cake and, even though my yard and barbecue were taken by the bank two years ago I will get out my grill pan and make burgers and hot dogs and potato salad and lemonade and I'll watch "1776" and "Yankee Doodle Dandy" and after dark I'll run out into the middle of the street to see what fireworks there are to be seen.
And I'll wax rhapsodic about the 4th of days gone by and I'll stop and think about what a truly remarkable thing celebrating Independence Day is.
So...HAPPY 4th, my friends! May your parades be long, your brass bands in tune, your barbecues easy to light, your baseball game successful and your beer cold. May you and your friends and neighbors have spectacular fireworks tonight. Because 234 years ago a bunch of sweaty men in bad wigs crossed the Rubicon and, in doing so, gave us this wonderful summer day.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Eating Well.
So...has anyone been in a fast food restaurant lately?
I have to say, I haven't. The lack of funds coupled with the lack of car and, well, there's been a LOT of "dining in" the last couple of years. But, while 98% of meals are still cooked (and cleaned up after) by me, we ARE able to indulge in the occasional meal out now.
Last Sunday, the hubster had to go to a meeting in downtown L.A. The hubster (who spends a great deal of time telling people I have NO sense of direction and can't find my own way to the bathroom without a map)looked up where the meeting was and told me "It's about two blocks from where the Avon Express pick up store is." This, btw, is NOT the greatest part of town but hell, I was dropping him off and not staying myself, I figured it was HIS lookout.
After wandering around said unsavory area for a few blocks, being on the right street but the address wasn't what it should have been, I looked up at a street sign. We were on West. The address he had given me was on EAST.
Back across town we chugged. It's June here in So Cal, there's a reason they call it June gloom. It was pushing 8pm, it was chilly and it had started to rain. About 10 minutes later we found the equally unsavory area his meeting was in, dropped him off (after assuring myself that it WAS the right address and seeing someone we both knew entering the scuzzy warehouse type trendy loft in the middle of the urban blight also known as Downtown Los Angeles) the boys (who have been so long without a car they come along for rides to the garbage can) and I headed for home.
Fortunately I know my way around downtown, I worked there for many a year. I headed towards Alameda, turned left and started up towards Union Station and the freeway. We hadn't had dinner yet. I assumed the hubster would be fed at this meeting (I assumed wrong, btw, as did he)and it was now past 8, dark, cold and raining. At a red light I glanced at my wallet and considered my options.
"I've got 20 bucks" I said. Anyone got any more? The boys did, so I started thinking of inexpensive grub. I threw out a casual suggestion..."there's a Farmer Boys up here you know..." They leaped at the idea.
Farmer Boys is a favorite of ours. It's kind of a restaurant and kind of a Burger King. The menu is fairly extensive, one orders at the counter and puts your number on the table and the food is delivered. Their fried zucchini is to DIE for. And there aren't any of them remotely close to us here in the urban village, most of them are in the nouveau not-so-riche-as-they-think-they-are Inland Empire. This is what the people who live there call San Bernardino. An Empire sounds ever so much better than Corona, which just sounds like beer, don't you think? Me neither. I don't care what they call it, it's still the leading edge of the Mojave Desert. This Farmer Boys, however, is quite possibly the only one in Los Angeles County. Opposite the Produce Market, it's open 24/7. So is the Produce Market.
I parked the car in a place I could SEE it and we trooped in to order. As I said, we weren't in the best of neighborhoods. Farmer Boys seldom are, btw. But they're clean, friendly, secure and good food at a decent price. Now, will someone please explain to me WHY my standby turkey on whole grain is 870 freaking CALORIES?????
That menu board was one of the scariest things I've seen since the Wicked Witch of the West melted. All that wonderful, made to order food. Complete with calorie count right next to it. Fish and Chips. Oooooo, sounded wonderful, hot and crunchy on a cold and rainy night. All TWO THOUSAND CALORIES of it!
I started looking at the burgers. For the last 20 years or so I have shied away from burgers in favor or things like turkey on whole wheat. The burgers, however, were sitting there with numbers like "550" next to them which, compared to the turkey and the coveted Fish and Chips started looking like a real bargain. Then I saw it.
CHILI CHEESE BURGER. 460.
NO SHIT???????
So there we were, on a cold and rainy night in June in a semi-deserted industrial area in downtown Los Angeles snug in a booth where we could watch the parked car through the window while I went into raptures over the chili burger I had denied myself for these many years. Chili, rain and cold are made for each other anyway, but there, and the 24 hour Farmer Boys, I felt I was having one of the best meals of my life.
We found ourselves on the road home, full and content. Perhaps it was the fiber in the chili. My younger son, the recent college graduate was musing about my burger discovery and decided that the lower calorie count of the burger I had was due to the lack of mayonnaise and 1000 Island Dressing that is usually present on a straight burger and I'm inclined to agree. Works for me, anyway. So, the dilemma I face is this? What's better (or worse)? The more healthy turkey on 42 as yet undiscovered grains bread at 870 calories or the chili cheeseburger at slightly more than half the calories but every stinking one of them will end up attached to my butt?
When my son graduated we celebrated with the once a year excellent meal at the local overpriced eatery and THEY didn't have the calories next to the salmon pate on the menu. I'm guessing that the rule that states you have to put the calorie count by the food you're serving only applies to menus too big to actually hold. If it has to be screwed into a wall, you have to paint numbers other than the price on it.
It's also possible that if you pay 20 bucks for a side of creamed spinach it doesn't go straight to your thighs. Perhaps there's some sort of causal connection there.
What all of this means though, is that, in spite of my newly found drive-through freedom, I'm going back to cooking. The turkey sandwich may still have 870 calories, but if I don't write them down, they don't count. Yeah, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Odds and ends.
This housekeeping thing is getting to me.
I sat up late last night because my son decided to wait until after midnight for someone to give him a ride home...a ride I could have given him three hours earlier. I have NO freaking clue why the ride from his girlfriend's brother is better than a ride from his mother. I mean, sure, a ride from his GIRLFRIEND, of COURSE that's better than a ride from his mother but his girlfriend's BROTHER? Not only that, but he finally came in after 1am. He could have been sleeping at his girlfriend's apartment, which is right across the street from his place of summer employment. This would have afforded him the luxury of two extra hours of sleep, since he wouldn't have had to get up two hours early to catch a freaking bus but noooooo.
I wouldn't be bothered so much by this if he wasn't working with power tools right now. Tired and tools don't mix. Just ask Anthony Weiner.
Well, since he was in a state of flux, so was I. This means I didn't get to sleep before 1:30 either. I amused myself by watching "The Banger Sisters" on cable while I waited. Why do I watch that movie, it's awful! But I keep watching the damn thing. I keep thinking I've missed something and when I find it the movie will be good. I mean, Goldie Hawn, Susan Sarandon, Geoffrey Rush. Oscar winners, each and every ONE of them. Why is this movie no good? I don't get it.
Anyway, this morning, as I found myself draped over the computer doing my morning check of our lack of money in the bank the browser I opened prominently featured a link to a whole bunch of recipes. I clicked. And I found a feature on make ahead and freeze meals. It occurred to me that this might just be the answer to part of my problems. I get home between 6:15 and 6:30, as a rule. The three men I share my humble abode with are all in exactly the same place, doing exactly the same thing when I walk in. The hubster is stretched out on the loveseat with one of the back cushions removed and placed behind his head, his feet hanging over the edge, watching "The Rachel Maddow Show". My older son is in his room, watching GSN and my younger son, when home, is sitting in the hole in the broken down 40 year old sofa, texting while he plays something on his open laptop.
"Honey, I'm home!"
"What's for dinner?"
Every freaking NIGHT.
Well, anyway, I figure I can spend the week-end cooking and freezing. I've never done that but it seems to me that it would be a week-end well spent. The freezer needs to be cleaned out anyway, the kitchen needs to be cleaned and that way, when someone asks "what's for dinner?" and can say "Whatever you get off your ass and shove in the oven, I'm taking a glass of gin and going to bed."
I mean, I'm going to end up cooking anyway, right? It's not like anyone else will. If I don't, they go to Taco Bell. So now I'm looking all over the Internet for stuff one can freeze. I mean, cook and freeze. And I'm thinking WTF am I doing, spending Saturday cleaning so I have room to cook and freeze on Sunday and then go back to effing work on Monday?
I turned 57 last week and have come to the conclusion I'm too old for this crap. I've been working for the better part of my life and now I want to STOP working and start doing whatever it is everyone ELSE in my family does while I go to work. Not gonna happen.
The hubster thought maybe I shouldn't cook and clean all week-end and maybe we should plan a trip to Disneyland. Have I mentioned I HATE Disneyland? I didn't USED to. But part of my downfall was liking Disneyland and hanging out with people who didn't just LIKE Disneyland but BREATHED Disneyland. Obsession is a scary thing.
Okay, obsession on moderation isn't bad. I mean, I'm currently obsessed with "Dr. Who" because I'm absolutely CRAZY about the 11th Doctor. However, in time, he will regenerate and this phase will pass. I've been watching Dr. Who since the 4th Doctor and, frankly, I haven't been especially enamored with, oh, more than three, maybe four of them anyway. Just saying...
Anyway, I started perusing the prices to go to Disneyland. If I had 400 bucks and nothing better to do than set fire to it I would probably set fire to it before I go to Disneyland and a) spend an additional 400 bucks on food, drink and t-shirts with that idiot mouse plastered all over them and b)run into all those O.C. DINKS who have nothing better to do than buy annual passes and haul their privileged asses down to Anaheim three or four times a week so they can waste money at what passes for fine dining and twitter about their wine selections and the length of the lines in Fantasyland. These are the same people, btw, who have absolutely NO empathy for their fellow men, vote Republican and support the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy because, after all, if the rest of us had lived within our means and NOT believed our banks when our banks ASSURED us that we could actually afford a home for ourselves and our kids we would not be burdening the rest of the privileged, high class populace with out stupid little problems. Like homelessness.
I have absolutely NO clue why people like this hang out at Disneyland. They seem to have overpriced property to come home to after spending the day reading Disney websites at their "look, I'm better than you" jobs which are WAY too complicated for the rest of us mere mortals to understand. They all have cats to feed and overpriced gas to buy and overpriced restaurants to visit. Why the hell do they have to congregate, like so many lowing bovines, in Disneyland, flashing their platinum cards while they buy overpriced tsotskes on Main Street?
Anyway, I'm leaving the family park to those too selfish to HAVE families (as it would take away some of that precious income and, frankly, I'll admit there IS a kind of point to that (as kids SUCK THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS OUT OF ANYTHING negotiable)and staying home to scrub my sink, clean out the freezer, make lists, shop, cook, freeze and label, all in an effort to make my life easier and frankly, when I think of what this undertaking is going to cost me in time and effort I'm not sure how THAT'S gonna work out.
On the other hand, while they're winding down yet another day at the "Happiest Place On Earth" by cleaning the litter box, I'll be sitting on my ass waiting for my frozen lasagna to bake while I watch the season finale of "Dr. Who" with my family. I've got the better part of THAT deal and that's the truth. Trust me, neither your cats nor the cast members from Peter Pan will be at your funeral. My kids, however, will be at mine, probably figuring out what's left and how they're going to come up with an equitable split but they'll be there nonetheless.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'm going to go buy some of those plastic slats that the sumo wrestlers sit on on that commercial about how these things will prop up your sagging couch in a feeble attempt to fill in the hole my son sits in while he texts.
I sat up late last night because my son decided to wait until after midnight for someone to give him a ride home...a ride I could have given him three hours earlier. I have NO freaking clue why the ride from his girlfriend's brother is better than a ride from his mother. I mean, sure, a ride from his GIRLFRIEND, of COURSE that's better than a ride from his mother but his girlfriend's BROTHER? Not only that, but he finally came in after 1am. He could have been sleeping at his girlfriend's apartment, which is right across the street from his place of summer employment. This would have afforded him the luxury of two extra hours of sleep, since he wouldn't have had to get up two hours early to catch a freaking bus but noooooo.
I wouldn't be bothered so much by this if he wasn't working with power tools right now. Tired and tools don't mix. Just ask Anthony Weiner.
Well, since he was in a state of flux, so was I. This means I didn't get to sleep before 1:30 either. I amused myself by watching "The Banger Sisters" on cable while I waited. Why do I watch that movie, it's awful! But I keep watching the damn thing. I keep thinking I've missed something and when I find it the movie will be good. I mean, Goldie Hawn, Susan Sarandon, Geoffrey Rush. Oscar winners, each and every ONE of them. Why is this movie no good? I don't get it.
Anyway, this morning, as I found myself draped over the computer doing my morning check of our lack of money in the bank the browser I opened prominently featured a link to a whole bunch of recipes. I clicked. And I found a feature on make ahead and freeze meals. It occurred to me that this might just be the answer to part of my problems. I get home between 6:15 and 6:30, as a rule. The three men I share my humble abode with are all in exactly the same place, doing exactly the same thing when I walk in. The hubster is stretched out on the loveseat with one of the back cushions removed and placed behind his head, his feet hanging over the edge, watching "The Rachel Maddow Show". My older son is in his room, watching GSN and my younger son, when home, is sitting in the hole in the broken down 40 year old sofa, texting while he plays something on his open laptop.
"Honey, I'm home!"
"What's for dinner?"
Every freaking NIGHT.
Well, anyway, I figure I can spend the week-end cooking and freezing. I've never done that but it seems to me that it would be a week-end well spent. The freezer needs to be cleaned out anyway, the kitchen needs to be cleaned and that way, when someone asks "what's for dinner?" and can say "Whatever you get off your ass and shove in the oven, I'm taking a glass of gin and going to bed."
I mean, I'm going to end up cooking anyway, right? It's not like anyone else will. If I don't, they go to Taco Bell. So now I'm looking all over the Internet for stuff one can freeze. I mean, cook and freeze. And I'm thinking WTF am I doing, spending Saturday cleaning so I have room to cook and freeze on Sunday and then go back to effing work on Monday?
I turned 57 last week and have come to the conclusion I'm too old for this crap. I've been working for the better part of my life and now I want to STOP working and start doing whatever it is everyone ELSE in my family does while I go to work. Not gonna happen.
The hubster thought maybe I shouldn't cook and clean all week-end and maybe we should plan a trip to Disneyland. Have I mentioned I HATE Disneyland? I didn't USED to. But part of my downfall was liking Disneyland and hanging out with people who didn't just LIKE Disneyland but BREATHED Disneyland. Obsession is a scary thing.
Okay, obsession on moderation isn't bad. I mean, I'm currently obsessed with "Dr. Who" because I'm absolutely CRAZY about the 11th Doctor. However, in time, he will regenerate and this phase will pass. I've been watching Dr. Who since the 4th Doctor and, frankly, I haven't been especially enamored with, oh, more than three, maybe four of them anyway. Just saying...
Anyway, I started perusing the prices to go to Disneyland. If I had 400 bucks and nothing better to do than set fire to it I would probably set fire to it before I go to Disneyland and a) spend an additional 400 bucks on food, drink and t-shirts with that idiot mouse plastered all over them and b)run into all those O.C. DINKS who have nothing better to do than buy annual passes and haul their privileged asses down to Anaheim three or four times a week so they can waste money at what passes for fine dining and twitter about their wine selections and the length of the lines in Fantasyland. These are the same people, btw, who have absolutely NO empathy for their fellow men, vote Republican and support the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy because, after all, if the rest of us had lived within our means and NOT believed our banks when our banks ASSURED us that we could actually afford a home for ourselves and our kids we would not be burdening the rest of the privileged, high class populace with out stupid little problems. Like homelessness.
I have absolutely NO clue why people like this hang out at Disneyland. They seem to have overpriced property to come home to after spending the day reading Disney websites at their "look, I'm better than you" jobs which are WAY too complicated for the rest of us mere mortals to understand. They all have cats to feed and overpriced gas to buy and overpriced restaurants to visit. Why the hell do they have to congregate, like so many lowing bovines, in Disneyland, flashing their platinum cards while they buy overpriced tsotskes on Main Street?
Anyway, I'm leaving the family park to those too selfish to HAVE families (as it would take away some of that precious income and, frankly, I'll admit there IS a kind of point to that (as kids SUCK THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS OUT OF ANYTHING negotiable)and staying home to scrub my sink, clean out the freezer, make lists, shop, cook, freeze and label, all in an effort to make my life easier and frankly, when I think of what this undertaking is going to cost me in time and effort I'm not sure how THAT'S gonna work out.
On the other hand, while they're winding down yet another day at the "Happiest Place On Earth" by cleaning the litter box, I'll be sitting on my ass waiting for my frozen lasagna to bake while I watch the season finale of "Dr. Who" with my family. I've got the better part of THAT deal and that's the truth. Trust me, neither your cats nor the cast members from Peter Pan will be at your funeral. My kids, however, will be at mine, probably figuring out what's left and how they're going to come up with an equitable split but they'll be there nonetheless.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'm going to go buy some of those plastic slats that the sumo wrestlers sit on on that commercial about how these things will prop up your sagging couch in a feeble attempt to fill in the hole my son sits in while he texts.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Oh I wish I were an Oscar Meyer.....
Okay, someone had to say it and now it's out of the way.
I have had an extremely busy month. Mother's Day. Yeah, that was the usual. Then I spent two weeks cleaning the apartment because my baby graduated from COLLEGE the end of May and, try as I might, I could NOT convince anyone that the garbage dump they call the living room really, really needed to be cleaned up because someone might actually SHOW UP. Not for us, mind you, but for the kid.
It also took me two weeks of manipulations and borrowing and trips to the California Department of Motor Vehicles with all of this borrowed loot (at least THREE of said trips were made by the hubster, I'll have it known) but the car was finally, after TWO years, registered and street legal. It was also FILTHY. With a capital FILTH. It had a dead battery. Well, we got THAT taken care of, which absolutely fried my buns because it was sitting there with a virtually new battery when all of this poverty hit but no one would go downstairs and turn the damn key in the ignition once or twice a week and let it fun for five freaking minutes so that the batter stayed charged.
Well, the kidlet graduated on the Tuesday before Memorial Day. I ended up taking three vacation days to a) deal with the cleaning of said apartment, b) deal with the car and c) well, hell, why not?
The graduation was WAY across the Los Angeles Basin at 8am and we were advised to get there by 7am if we wanted to sit down. This meant a departure time of no later than 6:30, which is why I hit the WALL on the damn car sitting there, in the carport, PAID FOR and unusable.
Well, we finally got the paperwork finished on Friday morning. Friday afternoon we got a very expensive battery. However, as the mechanic came to our place, jumped the battery and took the car to his place of business, thus saving me the price of a tow truck, it probably came out about the same. Saturday morning, bright and early, off I went. Yes, in the car. I went to the recycling place to get rid of about 20 bucks worth of cans and bottles that had been accumulating in the car, because that was where we had been storing the empties for the last year. I put gas in the car and hopped on the freeway. I didn't really NEED the freeway, but hell, it had been a very long time since I'd actually driven on one.
As we accelerated up the on ramp the car started to vibrate. I thought it was rough road. By the time we got it up to 50 I was feeling like I'd been put in one of those 1950s exercise machines, the kind where you stood on a little platform, put a wide belt around your read end and turned it on so it could just shake the fat off? Seems rather ridiculous now that I think of it but, on the other hand, we were a LOT thinner back then, maybe there was something to it.
Anyway, the vibrations was eclipsed only by the deafening noise. It sounded like an earthquake at full throttle. If you've never been in one, it's kind of like a roar.
So...me and the two boys got out the cell phones and started in calling tire stores. On a Saturday morning. Did I mention we were going to a party over by the coast and were going to leave about 2pm? We finally found a place with a decent price on tires although by this time I was tapped. The almost graduate and I scraped together enough for four off brand tires and spent what was left on half a dozen cans of beans and three packs of wienies, which we ate for the rest of the week and then some.
We got the tired and then hied ourselves to the car wash, the one I had the coupon for. And we staggered home a mere four hours later, about 1:30. Where the hubster, showered and dressed, was tapping his foot waiting for us because he seemed to think we'd been out for a joy ride. Now...picture this. When I left, unshowered and in yesterday's jeans at 8am to buy some fresh corn and recycle the bottles, the car was rattling, wheezing and under about a half inch of accumulated dirt.
When I came back said car was parked in front, shining, clean inside AND outside, four brand new tires and raring to go. We were going to a party we had missed the year before because we didn't HAVE a car to get there. As we trooped downstairs and the hubster approached the passenger side door he stopped dead. "What the hell did you do to the CAR? LOOK at these scratches!" Okay, I shouldn't have been surprised. He can't read the clock but he's got a "Y" chromosome and that means that he can see a fingerprint on a car from three blocks away. I mentioned that the guy at the car wash had seen them too and he said they could be easily buffed out for about 90 bucks (this is with my generous local employee company i.d.) and I would have that done but I had neither the time nor the extra cash to do it that week-end.
He then accused me of scratching the hood of the car myself. And then finished the tirade by claiming I smash the car for the fun of it and then announce that it's only a "thing" and isn't important. THIS is a bone of contention, I'll admit. The hubster has apoplexy if someone scratches the furniture. He once told the boys that I lined the burners on the stove with aluminum foil because if evened out the heat and reflected it up to the bottom of the pan. Nice try. I explained that I lined them with foil because it was a pain in the ass to clean them. He then said "I wish you wouldn't do that, it's like covering the furniture with plastic."
Well, I stopped lining the drip pans with foil and spent the next six years scraping burned on bubbled over food off of the pans. I notice HE never scrubbed the damn things. Not only that, he decided that the way to properly revere the TV credenza was to take what was left of my rubberized shelf liner and drape it over the top of the thing, thus protecting it from scratches made by the television, DVD player and the occasional human. It looked a LOT like furniture, wrapped in plastic. When I'd had enough and took the damn thing off I found that it had adhered to the wood. After an hour of scraping and scrubbing I gave up, it's now textured maple. Whatever, as they say.
This is where his screaming about "things" comes into play. It's weird looking now. It also has some nicks in it, some of them from moving and some of them from living. Shit happens. If you're lucky, it happens to the furniture and not to you. The hubster has always interpreted my basic "Oh, chill OUT, it's a TABLE for crissake" to mean "I'm going to throw this into the middle of the street and drive your car over it six or seven times." Which is probably what he thinks caused the scratches on the hood because it SURE as hell couldn't have been the THREE two trucks or the car carrier transport now, could it? It couldn't have happened when the two thugs showed up and 2am and threatened us with jail if we didn't let them repossess it...the same two thugs who freaking STOLE personal property out of the inside and I hope you get lead poisoning from the expensive personal thermos you're now drinking your coffee out of you sticky fingered a**hole. It couldn't have happened during the four weeks sit sat out in the open an some impound lot in another county, could it? Nah...I did it. And let's not even get INTO the fact that when we had to get rid of one of the cars we got rid of MINE, not HIS...but I digress. Oh, and btw, he's very welcome for all the work I did to get that car back out on the road. He never said "thanks" but what the hell...
Now...what does all of this have to do with Weiner? He's a man, that's what. He took a picture of his crotch in tighty whities and sent it through the Internet and now all anyone can talk about is Weiner's wiener. Really? And now every Republican is yelling "off with his head!" Yes, I did intend to say that. Now, this needs to be broken down into it's basic differences here. In the first place, Representative Weiner at least kept it in his pants. Okay, his underpants, but my point stands. Mark Sanford, Newt Gingrich, hell, even Strom Thurmond couldn't do that. In the second place, Rep. Weiner has not made a career of espousing morality and the sanctity of marriage. Nor did John Edwards, currently under indictment. Say what you will, John Edwards may be (hell, IS) a scumbag but he's not a hypocrite. A crook? Yeah, probably. In the third place, if you're going to send a picture of yourself in your jockey shorts to someone there should be a ruler somewhere in the .jpg. No ruler, no point to the pic, it's really a waste of every one's time. In the fourth place, did he learn NOTHING from Chris Lee? In case you forgot, he's the one who ended up resigning because he posted pictures of himself shirtless on Craig's List. Frankly, I'd rather see Chris Lee without his shirt than pretty much any guy without his jeans. Abs are hot. Underwear? Not so much.
Only a guy would send pictures of his privates out into cyberspace and get flustered when someone comes across them. No woman would be that stupid. If a woman sends lewd pictures of herself over the Internet she knows she's taking a chance and probably WANTS someone to check it out. Men? I have NO freaking CLUE what they all think.
I blame this entire mess on digital cameras. You take a digital picture and you post it. You really need to be aware of the fact that nothing is sacred online. Nothing. Think about it. Before digital cameras, if you wanted to take pictures of your dick you didn't use a Kodak. You used a Polaroid. Because that way you didn't have to put up with the college kid in the Photomat booth checking out the quality of your photography and then calling you "Mr. Johnson" when you stopped in to pick them up.
Buy a VOWEL, guys. You use the Interwebs, some one, some where, is gonna see it.
And in the fifth and most important place...if the guys name wasn't Weiner, no one west of the Hudson would have heard about it. QUICK...what's his FIRST name?
I rest my case.
I have had an extremely busy month. Mother's Day. Yeah, that was the usual. Then I spent two weeks cleaning the apartment because my baby graduated from COLLEGE the end of May and, try as I might, I could NOT convince anyone that the garbage dump they call the living room really, really needed to be cleaned up because someone might actually SHOW UP. Not for us, mind you, but for the kid.
It also took me two weeks of manipulations and borrowing and trips to the California Department of Motor Vehicles with all of this borrowed loot (at least THREE of said trips were made by the hubster, I'll have it known) but the car was finally, after TWO years, registered and street legal. It was also FILTHY. With a capital FILTH. It had a dead battery. Well, we got THAT taken care of, which absolutely fried my buns because it was sitting there with a virtually new battery when all of this poverty hit but no one would go downstairs and turn the damn key in the ignition once or twice a week and let it fun for five freaking minutes so that the batter stayed charged.
Well, the kidlet graduated on the Tuesday before Memorial Day. I ended up taking three vacation days to a) deal with the cleaning of said apartment, b) deal with the car and c) well, hell, why not?
The graduation was WAY across the Los Angeles Basin at 8am and we were advised to get there by 7am if we wanted to sit down. This meant a departure time of no later than 6:30, which is why I hit the WALL on the damn car sitting there, in the carport, PAID FOR and unusable.
Well, we finally got the paperwork finished on Friday morning. Friday afternoon we got a very expensive battery. However, as the mechanic came to our place, jumped the battery and took the car to his place of business, thus saving me the price of a tow truck, it probably came out about the same. Saturday morning, bright and early, off I went. Yes, in the car. I went to the recycling place to get rid of about 20 bucks worth of cans and bottles that had been accumulating in the car, because that was where we had been storing the empties for the last year. I put gas in the car and hopped on the freeway. I didn't really NEED the freeway, but hell, it had been a very long time since I'd actually driven on one.
As we accelerated up the on ramp the car started to vibrate. I thought it was rough road. By the time we got it up to 50 I was feeling like I'd been put in one of those 1950s exercise machines, the kind where you stood on a little platform, put a wide belt around your read end and turned it on so it could just shake the fat off? Seems rather ridiculous now that I think of it but, on the other hand, we were a LOT thinner back then, maybe there was something to it.
Anyway, the vibrations was eclipsed only by the deafening noise. It sounded like an earthquake at full throttle. If you've never been in one, it's kind of like a roar.
So...me and the two boys got out the cell phones and started in calling tire stores. On a Saturday morning. Did I mention we were going to a party over by the coast and were going to leave about 2pm? We finally found a place with a decent price on tires although by this time I was tapped. The almost graduate and I scraped together enough for four off brand tires and spent what was left on half a dozen cans of beans and three packs of wienies, which we ate for the rest of the week and then some.
We got the tired and then hied ourselves to the car wash, the one I had the coupon for. And we staggered home a mere four hours later, about 1:30. Where the hubster, showered and dressed, was tapping his foot waiting for us because he seemed to think we'd been out for a joy ride. Now...picture this. When I left, unshowered and in yesterday's jeans at 8am to buy some fresh corn and recycle the bottles, the car was rattling, wheezing and under about a half inch of accumulated dirt.
When I came back said car was parked in front, shining, clean inside AND outside, four brand new tires and raring to go. We were going to a party we had missed the year before because we didn't HAVE a car to get there. As we trooped downstairs and the hubster approached the passenger side door he stopped dead. "What the hell did you do to the CAR? LOOK at these scratches!" Okay, I shouldn't have been surprised. He can't read the clock but he's got a "Y" chromosome and that means that he can see a fingerprint on a car from three blocks away. I mentioned that the guy at the car wash had seen them too and he said they could be easily buffed out for about 90 bucks (this is with my generous local employee company i.d.) and I would have that done but I had neither the time nor the extra cash to do it that week-end.
He then accused me of scratching the hood of the car myself. And then finished the tirade by claiming I smash the car for the fun of it and then announce that it's only a "thing" and isn't important. THIS is a bone of contention, I'll admit. The hubster has apoplexy if someone scratches the furniture. He once told the boys that I lined the burners on the stove with aluminum foil because if evened out the heat and reflected it up to the bottom of the pan. Nice try. I explained that I lined them with foil because it was a pain in the ass to clean them. He then said "I wish you wouldn't do that, it's like covering the furniture with plastic."
Well, I stopped lining the drip pans with foil and spent the next six years scraping burned on bubbled over food off of the pans. I notice HE never scrubbed the damn things. Not only that, he decided that the way to properly revere the TV credenza was to take what was left of my rubberized shelf liner and drape it over the top of the thing, thus protecting it from scratches made by the television, DVD player and the occasional human. It looked a LOT like furniture, wrapped in plastic. When I'd had enough and took the damn thing off I found that it had adhered to the wood. After an hour of scraping and scrubbing I gave up, it's now textured maple. Whatever, as they say.
This is where his screaming about "things" comes into play. It's weird looking now. It also has some nicks in it, some of them from moving and some of them from living. Shit happens. If you're lucky, it happens to the furniture and not to you. The hubster has always interpreted my basic "Oh, chill OUT, it's a TABLE for crissake" to mean "I'm going to throw this into the middle of the street and drive your car over it six or seven times." Which is probably what he thinks caused the scratches on the hood because it SURE as hell couldn't have been the THREE two trucks or the car carrier transport now, could it? It couldn't have happened when the two thugs showed up and 2am and threatened us with jail if we didn't let them repossess it...the same two thugs who freaking STOLE personal property out of the inside and I hope you get lead poisoning from the expensive personal thermos you're now drinking your coffee out of you sticky fingered a**hole. It couldn't have happened during the four weeks sit sat out in the open an some impound lot in another county, could it? Nah...I did it. And let's not even get INTO the fact that when we had to get rid of one of the cars we got rid of MINE, not HIS...but I digress. Oh, and btw, he's very welcome for all the work I did to get that car back out on the road. He never said "thanks" but what the hell...
Now...what does all of this have to do with Weiner? He's a man, that's what. He took a picture of his crotch in tighty whities and sent it through the Internet and now all anyone can talk about is Weiner's wiener. Really? And now every Republican is yelling "off with his head!" Yes, I did intend to say that. Now, this needs to be broken down into it's basic differences here. In the first place, Representative Weiner at least kept it in his pants. Okay, his underpants, but my point stands. Mark Sanford, Newt Gingrich, hell, even Strom Thurmond couldn't do that. In the second place, Rep. Weiner has not made a career of espousing morality and the sanctity of marriage. Nor did John Edwards, currently under indictment. Say what you will, John Edwards may be (hell, IS) a scumbag but he's not a hypocrite. A crook? Yeah, probably. In the third place, if you're going to send a picture of yourself in your jockey shorts to someone there should be a ruler somewhere in the .jpg. No ruler, no point to the pic, it's really a waste of every one's time. In the fourth place, did he learn NOTHING from Chris Lee? In case you forgot, he's the one who ended up resigning because he posted pictures of himself shirtless on Craig's List. Frankly, I'd rather see Chris Lee without his shirt than pretty much any guy without his jeans. Abs are hot. Underwear? Not so much.
Only a guy would send pictures of his privates out into cyberspace and get flustered when someone comes across them. No woman would be that stupid. If a woman sends lewd pictures of herself over the Internet she knows she's taking a chance and probably WANTS someone to check it out. Men? I have NO freaking CLUE what they all think.
I blame this entire mess on digital cameras. You take a digital picture and you post it. You really need to be aware of the fact that nothing is sacred online. Nothing. Think about it. Before digital cameras, if you wanted to take pictures of your dick you didn't use a Kodak. You used a Polaroid. Because that way you didn't have to put up with the college kid in the Photomat booth checking out the quality of your photography and then calling you "Mr. Johnson" when you stopped in to pick them up.
Buy a VOWEL, guys. You use the Interwebs, some one, some where, is gonna see it.
And in the fifth and most important place...if the guys name wasn't Weiner, no one west of the Hudson would have heard about it. QUICK...what's his FIRST name?
I rest my case.
Friday, May 13, 2011
"...and you know what you know."
Okay, so I have a son receiving his Bachelor of Arts Degree in two weeks. All I have to say about that is that, when his diploma finally arrives in the mail, it had better say "with assistance from his mother" under his name. "Mom? Can you front me 20 bucks?" "Mom? Can you print this for me?" "Mom? Can you bring my script to campus, I left it on the dining room table" "Mom? Can you pick me up?" "Mom? How does the Pythagorean theorem work again?"
Yes, that last one is true. My son, who was doing college level math in high school (until he got to Calculus which finally did him in, apparently it does that to a LOT of people) was asking me for help with his Geometry homework. Which is kinda funny if you know me because, while I can do accounting type math in my sleep I got a "D" in high school Algebra by making Sister what'shernameagain? a promise that I would never sign up for another math class. I promptly broke said promise by signing up for Geometry (which was required, btw) and cutting through it like a hot knife through butter.
So there I was trying to explain to my son that you certainly COULD figure out how high the flagpole was if you were given the length of it's shadow because it then became nothing more or less than a simple right triangle and could easily be figured out using the basic "a squared + b squared = c squared." There are two things all Geometry is based on. The aforementioned theorem and "pi x the radius, squared." These two basic rules cover angles and arcs. There's not much else to it.
My older one, the one with autism, had a wonderful advisor while he was in middle school. He claimed people who loved words liked Sondheim and people who loved music liked Rogers and Hammerstein. He had a point. He also said the visual people understood Geometry and anayltical people understood Algebra. Which, I guess, makes me visual. Because if you want to know what x to the 4th power divided by 5 is, well, frankly, I think you have bigger problems than I do. I suppose Werner Von Braun may have needed to know crap like that but I see no reason for the rest of us to be concerned with it. It will not help me balance my checkbook or argue interest rates with the guy named "Brian" who keeps calling me from Bangalore saying that my Visa card with the Bank of America has been written off and is now in his office. Except that I never HAD a Visa card with the Bank of America and this concept is something that "Brian" is having great difficulty understanding.
Like Algebra.
Well, anyway, graduation looms large and I'm both dreading it and anticipating it with unbound joy and excitement. Dreading it on purely practical matters. My youngest child graduating from college means that I'm pushing 60 like a freight train. Not looking foreward to THAT, although it can't be as bad as 50 was. Fifty was bad becuase I didn't think it would be any big deal and, several months into being 50 I discovered it wasn't something I liked much. But I dealt with it. I always do. Like I told the concerned executive last week as I was breathing into a paper bag "I'm okay. I'm always okay. Eventually." Apparently someone in my family was pragmatic.
Also...as we remain without a car and three out of four of us have no steady employment, we will have to catch a bus for the college campus at 5:30 AM. Yep, AM. As in before dawn. Because the particular school within the college that my son is graduating from is having their ceremony at 8AM and we've been advised to arrive no later than 7 if we expect to sit down. Eight o'clock in the freaking morning. Outside. On the lawn. The treeless, mosquito infested lawn. Did I mention it's at 8 in the morning? In front of the only building on that campus that didn't fall down during the Northridge earthquake. I'm not sure WHAT that has to do with it, I just threw it in. Fun fact.
I'm taking my mind off the early hour ceremony by planning my wardrobe. See, everything has to revolve around confortable shoes, as I'm likely to be hiking in from a bus stop and there's the possibility I'll end up standing. On a wet lawn. Full of mosquitos and fleas. I have no doubt that there's some sort of biting bug network that has already sent out an alert that my ankles will be arriving at 7am, just in time for breakfast.
In my mind, I will look like a gamine somewhere on the beach in Cannes. In reality I'll probably look more like a manatee in a striped shirt. This, btw, is where my capacity to visualize comes in handy. It's okay though, it's not MY day, it's his. Not that he'll remember much of it, he'll be too tired and glad the whole four years is over and worrying about the next two years...yes, a graduate degree is coming too.
I will also be worrying about my in-laws and a) will they be coming? and b) how do I avoid them if they do? They're my kid's grandparents and I hope they come. And I will be nice and talk and pretend like nothing every happened and trust me, a LOT happened. Then I will take the next day off to recover from the gin induced headache I will have, because this will take a LOT of gin. Not only that, I will be sore from cleaning the damn apartment. Again. Because if I don't clean it they will not only show up and join us for lunch, they will come back with us for cake and champagne. If I go to a LOT of work cleaning and prepping they probably won't set foot in the urban village let alone my home. Which is kind of funny, because the urban village has, collectively, more money than GOD. Seriously. Bob Hope lived down the street from us. Sort of. Okay, it was six blocks. Andy Garcia shops at my Trader Joe's and Smokey Robinson has been seen at our corner liquor store. This is normally the kind of thing that impresses my step-MIL to no end. Of course, these are people who actually walk to Bob's Big Boy and Trader Joe's instead of being shuttled in there BMW's so it might not impress her at that.
Two weeks from this Tuesday this all goes down. Seventeen years of lost homework and PTA meetings and plays and lunch money and detention and forged signatures and calls from the boys vice principal all draw to a close on the 24th. Like algebra, I'm not quite sure how it all happened. I shall refrain from singing "Sunrise, Sunset" however. Selfishly, this is what I wanted to happen. He's grown up, and he still smiles. A LOT. The job may not have been well done, but it's the job I set out to accomplish and, for once in my squirrely life, I seem to have done so.
BTW, I also understand the Theory of Relativity. And, what's more, so do you. Now, explain to me why I'm working as a receptionist?
Yes, that last one is true. My son, who was doing college level math in high school (until he got to Calculus which finally did him in, apparently it does that to a LOT of people) was asking me for help with his Geometry homework. Which is kinda funny if you know me because, while I can do accounting type math in my sleep I got a "D" in high school Algebra by making Sister what'shernameagain? a promise that I would never sign up for another math class. I promptly broke said promise by signing up for Geometry (which was required, btw) and cutting through it like a hot knife through butter.
So there I was trying to explain to my son that you certainly COULD figure out how high the flagpole was if you were given the length of it's shadow because it then became nothing more or less than a simple right triangle and could easily be figured out using the basic "a squared + b squared = c squared." There are two things all Geometry is based on. The aforementioned theorem and "pi x the radius, squared." These two basic rules cover angles and arcs. There's not much else to it.
My older one, the one with autism, had a wonderful advisor while he was in middle school. He claimed people who loved words liked Sondheim and people who loved music liked Rogers and Hammerstein. He had a point. He also said the visual people understood Geometry and anayltical people understood Algebra. Which, I guess, makes me visual. Because if you want to know what x to the 4th power divided by 5 is, well, frankly, I think you have bigger problems than I do. I suppose Werner Von Braun may have needed to know crap like that but I see no reason for the rest of us to be concerned with it. It will not help me balance my checkbook or argue interest rates with the guy named "Brian" who keeps calling me from Bangalore saying that my Visa card with the Bank of America has been written off and is now in his office. Except that I never HAD a Visa card with the Bank of America and this concept is something that "Brian" is having great difficulty understanding.
Like Algebra.
Well, anyway, graduation looms large and I'm both dreading it and anticipating it with unbound joy and excitement. Dreading it on purely practical matters. My youngest child graduating from college means that I'm pushing 60 like a freight train. Not looking foreward to THAT, although it can't be as bad as 50 was. Fifty was bad becuase I didn't think it would be any big deal and, several months into being 50 I discovered it wasn't something I liked much. But I dealt with it. I always do. Like I told the concerned executive last week as I was breathing into a paper bag "I'm okay. I'm always okay. Eventually." Apparently someone in my family was pragmatic.
Also...as we remain without a car and three out of four of us have no steady employment, we will have to catch a bus for the college campus at 5:30 AM. Yep, AM. As in before dawn. Because the particular school within the college that my son is graduating from is having their ceremony at 8AM and we've been advised to arrive no later than 7 if we expect to sit down. Eight o'clock in the freaking morning. Outside. On the lawn. The treeless, mosquito infested lawn. Did I mention it's at 8 in the morning? In front of the only building on that campus that didn't fall down during the Northridge earthquake. I'm not sure WHAT that has to do with it, I just threw it in. Fun fact.
I'm taking my mind off the early hour ceremony by planning my wardrobe. See, everything has to revolve around confortable shoes, as I'm likely to be hiking in from a bus stop and there's the possibility I'll end up standing. On a wet lawn. Full of mosquitos and fleas. I have no doubt that there's some sort of biting bug network that has already sent out an alert that my ankles will be arriving at 7am, just in time for breakfast.
In my mind, I will look like a gamine somewhere on the beach in Cannes. In reality I'll probably look more like a manatee in a striped shirt. This, btw, is where my capacity to visualize comes in handy. It's okay though, it's not MY day, it's his. Not that he'll remember much of it, he'll be too tired and glad the whole four years is over and worrying about the next two years...yes, a graduate degree is coming too.
I will also be worrying about my in-laws and a) will they be coming? and b) how do I avoid them if they do? They're my kid's grandparents and I hope they come. And I will be nice and talk and pretend like nothing every happened and trust me, a LOT happened. Then I will take the next day off to recover from the gin induced headache I will have, because this will take a LOT of gin. Not only that, I will be sore from cleaning the damn apartment. Again. Because if I don't clean it they will not only show up and join us for lunch, they will come back with us for cake and champagne. If I go to a LOT of work cleaning and prepping they probably won't set foot in the urban village let alone my home. Which is kind of funny, because the urban village has, collectively, more money than GOD. Seriously. Bob Hope lived down the street from us. Sort of. Okay, it was six blocks. Andy Garcia shops at my Trader Joe's and Smokey Robinson has been seen at our corner liquor store. This is normally the kind of thing that impresses my step-MIL to no end. Of course, these are people who actually walk to Bob's Big Boy and Trader Joe's instead of being shuttled in there BMW's so it might not impress her at that.
Two weeks from this Tuesday this all goes down. Seventeen years of lost homework and PTA meetings and plays and lunch money and detention and forged signatures and calls from the boys vice principal all draw to a close on the 24th. Like algebra, I'm not quite sure how it all happened. I shall refrain from singing "Sunrise, Sunset" however. Selfishly, this is what I wanted to happen. He's grown up, and he still smiles. A LOT. The job may not have been well done, but it's the job I set out to accomplish and, for once in my squirrely life, I seem to have done so.
BTW, I also understand the Theory of Relativity. And, what's more, so do you. Now, explain to me why I'm working as a receptionist?
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
California is a community property state, you know.
So...you want to know why Arnold and Maria are splitting the community property? I have no clue, but I have plenty of ideas. I'm betting that he ignored her on Mother's Day, probably opined that she wasn't his mother IF he mentioned it at all, told the kids he would give them a hand with some sort of Mother's Day surprise for her and then, when they had their part in place and told him he was too busy to come through and topped the week-end off with a rant on how Mother's Day is such a big deal and the Father's Day festivities aren't nearly as big. I'm also guessing Maria found this out when she stopped into her local post office to send something registered and the nice ladies at the counter told her about the rant because Arnold let loose with the green-eyed monster while in line for postage the previous day.
The last time they were out on their anniversary he never mentioned the day and, when she finally brought it up he acknowledged it by refusing to let anyone know and later offered to take her home, lock the door, pull the shades and open a bottle of Cristal where no one would be able to see that he had any affection for the woman.
I'm also guessing that Arnold works at home now, which was, most likely, the straw that broke the camel's back. He drops his cigar ashes wherever he is at the time, spends most of his day on his laptop on Twitter, hogs the remote, leaves the newspapers in a heap on the floor, has no idea whether or not his kids are even HOME let alone what they're doing at any given time, refuses to dance with her, insults her dead mother while spending the money Maria's dead mother left them and can't be bothered finding out if she had any plans at any given time while he just walks out of the mansion without telling a soul where he's going or how long he intends to be there.
Maria has, undoubtedly, spent the last 25 years listening to Arnold tell all about the women he hangs out with and how young and hot they are and how they fawn over him and she's the only one who doesn't see his value to mankind. I'm guessing she tells him stuff which he claims she never said and whenever she opens her mouth he continues reading or twittering while he says "uh huh" because he's expected to acknowledge her existence on the face of the earth and when she calls him on claiming he didn't know something she's told him at least six times he claims she's a harpie and just like her mother.
They undoubtedly go to family events like weddings and he sits at the table with his arms folded, glaring at the guests on the dance floor and muttering that none of them are worth his time and he's going to show them by refusing to dance, all the while she sits there miserable while everyone looks at them and figures out the painfully obvious truth that Arnold doesn't want to be seen in public with his family, especially his wife and he has no intentions of touching her, or smiling at her, or showing any affection at all in any place people might see him do it because he's better than all that. Then he regales his friends at parties by mimicking her family's funny accents and telling people that she can't find her way out of a paper bag because she can't read a map.
The constant parade of pictures taken with, and stories being told about the young women and their amazing implants most likely haven't helped any, either.
Oh wait...Maria has money. She can dump the bastard. Which is more than I can say for the rest of us.
Maria isn't stuck with Arnold. A lot of women are. They are unable, financially, to pack up and leave. It's not a good world for that. I'm not advocating splitting up, either, not by a long shot. But I can fully understand how, after 25 years, a woman can just take so much loneliness before she cracks. Men never have a freaking CLUE how it makes the woman who quit school to go to work so they could get a degree and a better job feel when she sees all the Internet pictures of him with the dim witted chicks fawning all over him. Men don't get the fact that their "it's just business" excuses don't mean a damn thing. I'm not talking about whether or not their sleeping around (which, from what I hear, Arnold does) it's the cavalier attitude about the entire thing.
You can't compete with some vapid blond surgically enhanced bimbo when you're scrubbing a toilet, or cleaning up cat puke, or hauling it out to work the morning after your kid has had you up all night because her boyfriend dumped her. These are things men never experience. Guys don't get up with love lorn teenagers. They don't sit at lunch reading homework assignments and they look at the window envelopes that come in the mail and toss them aside, unopened. And then they look at the women in their lives and see the lines and the fat and the grey hair and the dark circles and they say "well hell, just LOOK at yourself? Why shouldn't I want someone who keeps themselves up? You look like shit."
Well, of COURSE they look like shit. Because no, they haven't been keeping themselves up for the last 25 years, they've been keeping the MEN up. And their kids and their cats and their parties and everything else that comes with the y chromosome. Arnold, while I'm not especially fond of him myself, has never struck me at stupid. Yet he truly believes that all the cute young girls are hanging on to him because os how awesome he is...an awesomeness, I have no doubt, he truly believes his wife fails to see and appreciate.
Well, here's the wake up guys. No chick is hanging on to you because you're a shimmering star in the cinema firmament. I've no doubt that Hugh Hefner honestly and truly believes that 22 year old draped on his arm appreciates him for his looks, his personality and his sexual prowess. That always amazes me...men always think these women actually adore them for their spiritual selves.
The cold, hard fact is that men, no matter how dissipated or wizened up they may be, are STILL able to offer something women 80 years their juniors want. Sometimes it's money, sometimes it's power, USUALLY it's connections. This is something women, in spite of all our advances, can't do. No 20 year old guy, with the exception of Zsa Zsa Gabor's husband, rides the gravy train with a 70 year old woman in the engineer's cabin.
At any rate, in spite of the fact that Maria has more money than God and will be just fine, we tend to forget that she was in love with this guy when she married him. She's stood by him through births and deaths and marriages and divorces and christenings and firings and hirings and surgeries and unemployment. She stuck with him while he drove the state into bankruptcy and it looks as if she would rather not have been there. She was at the PTA meetings he didn't know about. She was at the parent-teachers conferences he couldn't get away for. She was taking the kids temperatures while he snored.
And then guys go out and public and complain that no one pays as much attention to them on Father's Day as they pay their wives on Mother's Day. Of course, it's his wife who makes sure the kids have a card and a gift for him, it's his wife who invites HIS father over for the traditional Father's Day barbecue, the one that every store and commercial has been trumpeting since, oh, Mother's Day and it's his wife who gets her feelings hurt when she's deliberately ignored on Mother's Day and her birthday and her anniversary and probably Christmas or Hanukkah as well because her husband thinks that's gonna teach her a lesson.
Unfortunately, it's not the "I'm here to lick your boots" lesson guys think they should learn. It's more the "What the fuck am I wasting my life on THIS horse's for?" lesson that no man believes applies to him. But I still feel bad for Maria. She loved the guy. It doesn't matter how much money a person has, that's the same for all of us. She's going to have to heal, the same as everyone else.
Of course, she'll probably have a better view while she does it.
The last time they were out on their anniversary he never mentioned the day and, when she finally brought it up he acknowledged it by refusing to let anyone know and later offered to take her home, lock the door, pull the shades and open a bottle of Cristal where no one would be able to see that he had any affection for the woman.
I'm also guessing that Arnold works at home now, which was, most likely, the straw that broke the camel's back. He drops his cigar ashes wherever he is at the time, spends most of his day on his laptop on Twitter, hogs the remote, leaves the newspapers in a heap on the floor, has no idea whether or not his kids are even HOME let alone what they're doing at any given time, refuses to dance with her, insults her dead mother while spending the money Maria's dead mother left them and can't be bothered finding out if she had any plans at any given time while he just walks out of the mansion without telling a soul where he's going or how long he intends to be there.
Maria has, undoubtedly, spent the last 25 years listening to Arnold tell all about the women he hangs out with and how young and hot they are and how they fawn over him and she's the only one who doesn't see his value to mankind. I'm guessing she tells him stuff which he claims she never said and whenever she opens her mouth he continues reading or twittering while he says "uh huh" because he's expected to acknowledge her existence on the face of the earth and when she calls him on claiming he didn't know something she's told him at least six times he claims she's a harpie and just like her mother.
They undoubtedly go to family events like weddings and he sits at the table with his arms folded, glaring at the guests on the dance floor and muttering that none of them are worth his time and he's going to show them by refusing to dance, all the while she sits there miserable while everyone looks at them and figures out the painfully obvious truth that Arnold doesn't want to be seen in public with his family, especially his wife and he has no intentions of touching her, or smiling at her, or showing any affection at all in any place people might see him do it because he's better than all that. Then he regales his friends at parties by mimicking her family's funny accents and telling people that she can't find her way out of a paper bag because she can't read a map.
The constant parade of pictures taken with, and stories being told about the young women and their amazing implants most likely haven't helped any, either.
Oh wait...Maria has money. She can dump the bastard. Which is more than I can say for the rest of us.
Maria isn't stuck with Arnold. A lot of women are. They are unable, financially, to pack up and leave. It's not a good world for that. I'm not advocating splitting up, either, not by a long shot. But I can fully understand how, after 25 years, a woman can just take so much loneliness before she cracks. Men never have a freaking CLUE how it makes the woman who quit school to go to work so they could get a degree and a better job feel when she sees all the Internet pictures of him with the dim witted chicks fawning all over him. Men don't get the fact that their "it's just business" excuses don't mean a damn thing. I'm not talking about whether or not their sleeping around (which, from what I hear, Arnold does) it's the cavalier attitude about the entire thing.
You can't compete with some vapid blond surgically enhanced bimbo when you're scrubbing a toilet, or cleaning up cat puke, or hauling it out to work the morning after your kid has had you up all night because her boyfriend dumped her. These are things men never experience. Guys don't get up with love lorn teenagers. They don't sit at lunch reading homework assignments and they look at the window envelopes that come in the mail and toss them aside, unopened. And then they look at the women in their lives and see the lines and the fat and the grey hair and the dark circles and they say "well hell, just LOOK at yourself? Why shouldn't I want someone who keeps themselves up? You look like shit."
Well, of COURSE they look like shit. Because no, they haven't been keeping themselves up for the last 25 years, they've been keeping the MEN up. And their kids and their cats and their parties and everything else that comes with the y chromosome. Arnold, while I'm not especially fond of him myself, has never struck me at stupid. Yet he truly believes that all the cute young girls are hanging on to him because os how awesome he is...an awesomeness, I have no doubt, he truly believes his wife fails to see and appreciate.
Well, here's the wake up guys. No chick is hanging on to you because you're a shimmering star in the cinema firmament. I've no doubt that Hugh Hefner honestly and truly believes that 22 year old draped on his arm appreciates him for his looks, his personality and his sexual prowess. That always amazes me...men always think these women actually adore them for their spiritual selves.
The cold, hard fact is that men, no matter how dissipated or wizened up they may be, are STILL able to offer something women 80 years their juniors want. Sometimes it's money, sometimes it's power, USUALLY it's connections. This is something women, in spite of all our advances, can't do. No 20 year old guy, with the exception of Zsa Zsa Gabor's husband, rides the gravy train with a 70 year old woman in the engineer's cabin.
At any rate, in spite of the fact that Maria has more money than God and will be just fine, we tend to forget that she was in love with this guy when she married him. She's stood by him through births and deaths and marriages and divorces and christenings and firings and hirings and surgeries and unemployment. She stuck with him while he drove the state into bankruptcy and it looks as if she would rather not have been there. She was at the PTA meetings he didn't know about. She was at the parent-teachers conferences he couldn't get away for. She was taking the kids temperatures while he snored.
And then guys go out and public and complain that no one pays as much attention to them on Father's Day as they pay their wives on Mother's Day. Of course, it's his wife who makes sure the kids have a card and a gift for him, it's his wife who invites HIS father over for the traditional Father's Day barbecue, the one that every store and commercial has been trumpeting since, oh, Mother's Day and it's his wife who gets her feelings hurt when she's deliberately ignored on Mother's Day and her birthday and her anniversary and probably Christmas or Hanukkah as well because her husband thinks that's gonna teach her a lesson.
Unfortunately, it's not the "I'm here to lick your boots" lesson guys think they should learn. It's more the "What the fuck am I wasting my life on THIS horse's for?" lesson that no man believes applies to him. But I still feel bad for Maria. She loved the guy. It doesn't matter how much money a person has, that's the same for all of us. She's going to have to heal, the same as everyone else.
Of course, she'll probably have a better view while she does it.
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