Back Pocket

My parents came to town this weekend to help me clean out my garage and took measurements to come back and fix the beam I accidentally smashed my car into while I was wiping my dog’s drool off the back seat.

My parents celebrated 48 years of marriage this week. It’s remarkable. Even if life extension really kicks us up a couple of decades, I don’t have that type of intertwining in me.

After my last relationship ended, I put my punani up on a shelf to help me process the last twenty years of my life. That was three years ago. I know that’s how long it’s been because I have an equation: my cat’s age minus four years. I guess I am a born-again virgin, or in harsher terms, I’m an Incel. 

There were clues I’m an Incel. I’ve googled “What are lizard people,” and I believed an Instagram post about cats being interdimensional beings who are protecting us energetically. When I told my son, he told me I was wrong, and he seemed very sure of that.

I want to change my celibacy equation, and it won’t be because the cat dies. To make sure my dust-covered punani doesn’t get chucked out in the next haul to the dump, I’m back on a dating app. This one is the best yet, Hinge.

Even though I don’t see a long-term relationship in my near future, I’m going out on dates. There are good guys on there. The ones who are back-pocket-boys make it pretty clear. Here’s how it’s done: we both mention our custody agreements and how busy we are, then find a time to meet for coffee to get an IRL read on them.

There are the ones who like to get right into text innuendo. They start “want to get textual,” but it gets old pretty quickly. I mean, it’s got to be backed up, or there is a total loss of interest. Like real sex, an hour of texting innuendo is too long. Keeping that up for days, it’s coming across as a sex addict.

One guy came out of the gate hot. He was right to the innuendo, then cancelled on two meetups in a row. I told him after the second cancel, I’m taking this as a sign from God, and don't want to meet up anymore. He wrote again the next day, some sexy nonsense. I had to just delete it before I felt the urge to write back - you can’t orgasm from a text.

It won't hurt to have a back-pocket-boy until I find a guy I actually click with. So that’s where I’m at. There is the fear of the back-pocket-boy being a psycho. I’ve watched enough true crime to know things can go left real quick. 

I figured out the draw with True Crime. The interviews aren’t with the bad guys; they are with the police detectives and prosecutors – people who don’t have any aspirations of wealth and fame, but dedicate their lives to making the world safe.

I’m amazed by them. And every middle-aged woman who watches true crime is reminded of the army of light workers establishing order in this crazy world. They’re like cats, but working in our dimension.

They remind me of my daughter. She is so kind. Many years ago I made a vision board with her. Her board included making friends and world peace; the most selfish thing she asked for was to learn fashion design. I was embarrassed when I showed mine; it was something Scrooge McDuck would create.

My daughter started high school this week. I heard someone say they’re amazed by parenting because it allows them to go back in their life and understand their younger self.

When I was my daughter’s age, I was already regularly smoking weed, cigarettes, and getting shit faced. I see her innocence, and I wonder what the hell went wrong. But I can’t blame my parents. It was just a different time. My parents had five kids back-to-back. For a three-month window, my parents had five teenagers. 

My parents have PTSD from when we were in high school, and I pray that my kids just stay away from all that shit. My daughter has social anxiety rooted in her changing schools. She went from an idyllic Catholic school where kindness was as generous as a PBS cartoon to a new school that was five times its size. My daughter was excited to start at her new school and walked onto campus that first day with the same attitude as Ralph arriving on the island in Lord of the Flies: “This will be fun.”

The school, like the island, had a diabolical definition of fun. This tarnished her rosy disposition of the world. 

Since I grew up in a huge family and we always lived in neighborhoods with a bunch of kids, there was never the disillusionment of living in a PBS cartoon. It is reasonable to imagine running around with the neighborhood kids in the nineties, and for someone to turn on me and call me a fat, gay, retard. Then, they’d make the group of kids laugh by doing an act-out: puffing up their cheeks with air, slapping their left wrist against their chest, and swinging their hips side-to-side with the right wrist hanging limp at their side.

If I ran home crying to my mom, she’d hand me a Pinwheel cookie, and I’d join her on the couch to read Mary Higgins Clark. My only revenge would be announcing that, regardless of how desperate they are for more players, I refuse to play smear the queer with them that night.

I know, it’s hardly the war zone from Boyz in the Hood, but maybe I had social anxiety too, and leaned into substances as a way to self-medicate. I will never know, and it doesn’t change anything, so it doesn’t matter. 

My daughter started high school, so I think the rosy disposition could come back. She made it through all the social chaos of middle school. I was not my finest self on the first day back to school, and we were almost late to drop off. That afternoon, when I drove my son to practice, I said, “I’m so sorry for saying the f-word so much. Let's get a swear jar. I’ll put a dollar in every time I say it.”

We both laughed after he said, “Don’t do it. You’ll be broke by the end of the week.”

I think I’ll ask my cat to help me be better. 

Ponytail

 

“He’s a construction worker and a poet,” he said, looking at me. He wasn’t waiting for a response, but I nodded. I looked at his burgundy Members Only jacket and vertical striped t-shirt with alternating stripes of navy and goldenrod. His hair was a dense pillow of brown curls breaking apart, frayed and unkempt.

He looked like he was straight from central casting. So did the guy next to me, another agent like him, and they steered the direction of the conversation toward jazz. I had nothing to say, but after minutes of listening to their soapbox to our circular table of ten, I admitted my knowledge was limited to a jazz appreciation class I took at Cuesta College twenty years ago where the lecture was viewing the Ken Burns documentary Jazz. I added something about buying my instructor’s recommendation, Sketches of Spain.

Both agents agreed, Sketches of Spain is great.

I ate from my plate of California cuisine on a paved courtyard at the off-season ski resort, wondering if an entire week at a writers’ retreat was a good idea. This was the first night, and I already felt like I had met fifty people from Brooklyn.

After dinner, I went back to the condo I shared with three twenty-somethings. They were smart, easy to talk to, and passionate artists. My evenings were always committed to reading people’s pages for our workshop the next day. It took me hours to do what many of the recent MFA students were completing in twenty minutes. But I needed the alone time since I came from a pretty solitary existence to full days where I was socializing with a hundred people.

Our mornings started promptly at 8:30, and we workshopped for three hours with an assigned group of twelve people total. We grew to really love each other, and as we moved through the week, reading two new people each day, it was like we were slowly getting naked in front of each other. We were revealing true selves.

There was a break for lunch, and then each afternoon there was a succession of three to four panels where authors and agents would give information and insight into their lives. “He’s a construction worker and a poet,” the same agent said, talking about how he found his latest writer. 

The panel was on the process and power of securing a person who believes in your work. I jotted notes occasionally: online presence doesn’t matter, age doesn’t matter, and keep query letters brief. These were all noted from the panel during a Q&A where I felt so embarrassed for the people asking questions I wanted to climb under my chair and hide. Each question was a desperate cry for validation and projection of anxiety that their work hasn’t been recognized. The question askers were not just standing up butt naked; they were gyrating their bits and bobs for the room to acknowledge.

My roommates invited me to a party held by the staff after an evening reading and a keynote from a famous author. When we approached the massive cabin, it was pretty obvious we were the only participants granted this invitation. Nervousness escalated as we ascended the stairs to the kitchen. The room was circular with tall vaulted ceilings and all the wood and stone accoutrements of a mountain home. My roommates and three other attendees orbited the faculty, hugging the kitchen island. Occasionally, one would turn around and chat with us, saving us from seeming like uninvited bacteria nibbling away at the exterior of their tight-knit circle.

I spoke with the author who workshopped my piece. She was a nice person and supportive in my bubbling up of plans that started to form from the week of focused inspiration. She introduced me to a writer next to her. He was very kind and asked me about my stories, widely smiling and saying, “I love it when the main character is a liar.”

He told me about his day job as a professor. I was realizing most of these writers had a life not much different than my own. They loved their teaching jobs as it afforded them the safety to be a writer without an anvil of pressure hanging from their neck. I talked to him for over twenty minutes, and the entire time I felt disdain from the woman standing next to him. She was thin with shoulder-length platinum hair combed straight back, without any part, like she came up from underwater. She never looked at me, only the man I talked to. She was ready for me to go the minute I came.

I assumed she wanted to fuck the writer I was talking to, and I had interrupted whatever cozy conversation they were having, moving closer to each other one inch at a time. I was not a threat; she knew it from my earnestness. After the conversation wrapped up, I ducked away to find my roommates who were standing by the stairwell with the president of the retreat. In the few minutes I stood on the edge of their conversation, she repeated an anecdote about her daughter three times, so I assumed she was a step past tipsy.

My roommates and I decided to head home after we watched the faculty play instruments and sing together. I appreciated my roommates’ indifference to leaving abruptly, as I would have felt obligated to sit there all night, worried it would be offensive to leave after they sang their song. 

We walked home and shared our stories of the night. I thanked them for inviting me. I knew if I were housed with other middle-aged women, this invite would not have fallen before me. The spirited twenty-year-olds radiate with promise and attract guidance, but as the years tack on, that glitter gets encased in grit from life, and requires an archeological chipping to see. 

I looked good though. I dressed well and did my hair and makeup. I knew it was important to be comfortable with being seen, and I can’t pull off lounge wear and a ponytail like I used to. A shift happens after 40 where a ponytail sculpted from freshly showered hair hangs like a dying flower in a short vase. It’s a ponytail that looks like she’s flushed her youth down the drain of all the toilets she’s cleaned, laundry she’s washed, and dishes she’s scrubbed. This look is fine for going to the grocery store, but it’s not making a statement like a poet in a hard hat.

The last night was a talent show showcasing mostly the faculty, who were a well-worn quilt of camaraderie. Some of the attendees participated, and one of them was my roommate who read a poem. I was thrilled by his performance even though I don’t know squat about poetry. I stood up and applauded him. I wished at that moment he was a construction worker; maybe he would have had a standing ovation.

I was protective of him. They had deemed me the house mother, which I thought was cute and represented my inclination to retire to my room after dinner, drink Smooth Move tea, and watch TV on my phone till 1 am. All the socializing was counter to the small life I lead. I loved talking and meeting people, but I couldn’t unwind at the end of the day, and by the last day my eyes turned to little slits above massive sandbags.

The last morning I said goodbye to two of my roommates. I told the poet I was impressed by his bravery; bravery will carry anyone where they want to go. I thought it was a motherly thing to say. I made it for the last panel, a goodbye speech from an author who focused on Lucia Berlin. He told a story about how an unknown student once gave him a copy of their book that he shelved, and he pulled it out after she became posthumously famous. He highlighted that she was a cleaning lady and an alcoholic. I wondered what her hair looked like when she handed him that book: was it a ponytail of straw?

What a privilege the week was. I’m so grateful I was invited and very happy that I went. I’m glad I met 100 people and needed 3 days to lie on my couch to recuperate. I left drained, but bursting with visions of what was to come. An understanding that writing is a gift of observation, and I was like a boa constrictor digesting a cow, downloading a week of dense data at my outdated dial-up speed. Here I am, writing in worn-out loungewear, puffy morning eyes, and a mass of wild, tangled hair, begging me to tie it up in a scrunchie.

Out to Lunch

I was thinking about our smartphones. I think about them too much. I like to blame things on the phone’s magical powers of distraction. I wondered what I would have to blame before the iPhone. Pocket watches became an everyday accessory in the mid 1800s. Imagine the kind of hell that brought on people who only had to be reminded of passing time by a distant church bell. With a tiny gadget chained to their coat came a constant compulsion to interrupt their thoughts by picking up the device and checking the time.

Maybe that’s why I found myself asking my ninety-two-year-old grandma about fate over lunch. My grandma is the nicest person I’ve ever met. She thinks I am the fucking shit, and the feeling is mutual. We went to lunch, and I asked her if she thought life was predetermined. She thought about how every ten years, it was like we were entirely different people. She determined she didn’t think so because of drug addicts and how their recovery is not guaranteed.

Her answer made me wonder if maybe only the tentpole moments are predetermined. Maybe the biggest events in our lives are fixed, but the roads between them aren’t. Getting from A to B still depends on a thousand ordinary choices, and sometimes that's where the shit goes off the rails.

I relished the thought that life was already all planned out. I was about to kick up my feet, while doing all the things that make me happy, and enjoy the ride. But if the transition between those different people is where everything can go down the proverbial dumper, it’s hard to kick my feet up for too long.

I read four Kurt Vonnegut novels in June. My favorite one was Sirens of Titan. The book planted the seed about our predetermined lives. I wanted to know more about Vonnegut and understand the fascination he has with time. His “personal life” section of Wikipedia wasn’t giving me what I was looking for, so I watched a documentary on him made by one of his close friends.

It’s a biography, recounting his life, but a story from the beginning holds all the information I was looking for. Vonnegut told the filmmaker about a time when he was young and walking in the forest. He put his face up to a tree and had a vision. He saw all the destruction and death he would see again, exactly, a few years later, when he was a prisoner of war in Dresden during World War II. He saw what would be, and I think this story explains the themes behind his lifetime of work. The future exists and is hidden from us, but there could be a glimpse given at an unexpected moment. How could that not have been a lifelong source of bewilderment?

Whatever iteration of my life I’m in, there’s no guarantee I’ll make it to the next one, but I know there’s some weird shit going on. Like Vonnegut, one or two things have happened to me that have become epicenters of thought in my brain. Everything goes back to it; everything is born from it. A black hole in my mind.

When we went to my Grandma’s house to pick her up, she walked us around to show her Fourth of July decorations. My Grandma was happy to tell me she is going to the movies on Tuesday to watch Jaws. It’s her first time watching it, and I sang the “Du-nuh, Du-nuh, Dun-nuh” song and told her she’ll love it. She mentioned the only problem is finding out the movie times. I told her I could put the app on her phone, and she said no, she doesn’t want to do that, she’ll just call the theater.

After we sat down at the restaurant, we decided on our order. My Grandma handed me her delicate wristwatch and asked me to fix the time. It needed to be set an hour later. Next time I see her, she’ll probably ask me to set it back an hour.

Great Jeans

 

Last weekend, the kids and I went to Tahoe to visit my parents and my sister’s family. It’s a short drive, about an hour and a half. The kids sit on their phones the entire time, and only speak when my podcast is bleeding into the audio from the string of 10,000 short videos they consume.

As the car snaked up the mountain, we entered a butterfly migration; we drove through hundreds of butterflies that met by my windshield at 60 miles per hour. I felt terrible, but figured the only way to go was forward; eventually, this mass murder would come to an end. Time dilated, as in most moments of crisis, and with every butterfly that bounced from my windshield, I screeched in horror.

It stayed with me. Just like the Sackler family, when I woke up the next day and looked at my coffee, I wondered how much damage was done. At least fifty butterfly effects were eliminated; all those chains of events now cease to exist.

Along with the kids and dog, I brought a basket of dirty laundry and a box of clothes that don’t fit. My dryer broke the day before, and I figured I’d take advantage of my parents' laundry machine as I gnawed on my thumbnail, thinking of the looming financial hit to replace this very necessary machine. 

The box of clothes was mostly all jeans; the best jeans, an amazing collection I gathered while working part-time at Madewell. I started working there shortly after getting divorced because I had the time and wanted the discount. I was teaching at two other places, and Madewell became my third job. The thing about having three jobs is that there is absolutely no time to lie around and eat cheese and crackers while watching a three-part docuseries about a killer grandma. I was thin, and I bought a bunch of jeans for that very thin version of myself.

Whitney Cummings said in her podcast with Kathy Griffin that she got rid of all her jeans from when she had an eating disorder because it was part of her healing. With my older sister’s encouragement, I decided to do the same. Even though I didn’t have an eating disorder, I was tired of looking at these jeans. Occasionally, I’d pull them out when I was feeling trim, but would come to the same stuck-at-the-bottom-of-the-butt conclusion. I probably won't go back to filling my free time with a fabulous retail job where I get to chat and look at beautiful clothes. So my little sister was the lucky recipient of my healing.

She must have thought I was crazy as I pulled each pair out and gave her all the highlights as to why they are so amazing. I held back tears when I pulled out my favorite pair, the High-Rise Slim Boyjean. A jean that does not exist anymore in the Madewell jean universe, but has this amazing way of lengthening legs and making the butt look like it’s straight from a successful BBL surgery.

My sister is supposed to take her daughters on a big Girl Scout camping trip. My mom told me my sister has anxiety about the trip because she is sharing a cabin with a bunch of people, and she worries about farting in her sleep. I totally understand, since I have a similar situation looming.

Last month, I was very surprised to read an email from a well-known summer writers’ workshop. I apply to writers' programs a couple of times a year, and usually forget about it until I read the rejection email a few months later. However, this time, it was an acceptance email.

The accommodations available ranged from a single bedroom in a house to sharing bunk beds in a condo. I only checked the single room accommodations. They were double the price, but this is what credit cards are for: accommodations and dryers.

In the text box asking for any additional information, I was very clear: I can snore the roof off a house. I have been told, at least. I’m not bothered by other people’s snoring; it sounds almost like ocean waves, but I’m in the minority. From what I can gather on TV shows, when someone sleeps next to a snoring person, they generally toss and turn, punching their pillow, then smothering themselves with the pillow, followed by a psychotic look, where they decide to smother the poor, innocent snoring person.

I can’t risk my life by sharing a room with a stranger who can’t handle snoring. Plus, I don’t fart in my sleep, I fart when I’m awake, and I don’t want to share a room with someone because I won’t be able to fart, and by the end of the week, I’ll be as inflated as a balloon. Even my new jeans won’t fit.

I applied for the writers’ workshop in January. I’ve spent years on a screenplay, and its life has been small, passed around to individuals who like it, but don’t salivate at its potential. Since I put all this time into it, and maybe thirty people have read it, I decided to write it as a novel. A screenplay is like a hundred-page, incredibly detailed book outline. I was like Stephen King on his cocaine-fueled weekend writing Misery, but it took me a week and a lot of coffee, cheese, and crackers.

The manuscript is 30,000 words, so it’s too short to be a novel, but I’ll be able to fatten it up. The program director emailed me asking about a second manuscript. The manuscript I applied to the program with is for one-on-one sessions with real editors, but a second manuscript is for the daily small-group workshop.

 

“Ummm, but I’ve only written one book.” I should have said. But I’m on my summer schedule. I can take another feature script that has only been seen by a small group of people and write it as a novel. 

After I told my older sister that I shed the weight of my amazing jean collection. She kindly said, “You’re going on summer, you’ll probably be able to fit back in them soon.”

I happily disagreed. “Lacey, if I want to wear size 25 jeans again, it will have to be my number one priority. It will have to be all I think or care about. I have to write a novel. So the jeans, no matter how perfect they are, really aren’t that important.”

Then Lacey told me about an episode of Maury Povich she watched over thirty years ago, about a woman who was raped by a ghost. She said it popped back in her head recently, and she called my mom, who was out with her twin sister. When Lacey told them about the episode, my Aunt Donna said, “I saw that episode too.”

Both of them were scarred by this horrific episode of daytime TV, and decades later came face to face with it, but their shared experience alleviated their fear of ghost fuckers.

Her traumatic story reminded me that I was a butterfly murderer. I didn’t say anything. I know, with time, I’ll figure out how to shed that baggage or pass it off to someone else.

Because now, before I start snoring the roof off the house, in addition to thinking about the novel I’m writing, I’ll also think about this episode of Maury Povich that I never even saw.

The Realist

 

I started the new Real Housewives franchise, Long Island, and it is absolutely marvelous. I’d even argue it’s the most real of all the Housewives series. There are only four episodes so far, and by the time I got around to it, I had three in the cannon that I had no problem binging in one night.

The accent takes a minute to adjust to. It’s like starting a British series: at first it’s all “Wah wah wah, wah wah,” and then suddenly your ear clicks and it becomes perfectly clear English. The Rhode Island accent is especially fun. It makes me want to tease up my hair, swipe on red lipstick, and throw a suit jacket with giant shoulder pads over a silky camisole. It’s how every glamorous, slightly disinterested woman in a 90’s movies talked.

Every Real Housewives series builds storylines around each woman, teasing them out over the season, and this cast did not disappoint.

When Crystal from RHOBH dropped a midseason bomb about being bulimic, I couldn’t help but wonder if it was a desperate attempt to generate a storyline beyond a home remodel. The best reaction, though, was Erika Jayne, who didn’t even blink before saying, “I just use laxatives.”

I’ve always thought of bulimia as deadly. Even in the Amy Winehouse documentary, they said she didn’t die from insane amounts of drugs and alcohol, but from the insane amount of hurling she did after she ate any food. I honestly didn’t think someone could make it to 40 as a bulimic, so clearly I am wrong, and so is that Lifetime movie my health teacher showed me in high school.

Back to Rhode Island. This season, there’s Rulla, whose husband is actively having an affair. She puts on a brave face and talks about it openly with her friends. For now, she wants to stay with him.

Then there’s Ashley, who was on the bachelor, super shy, incredibly sweet, and famously saved herself for marriage. A 29 year old virgin, remarkable. Now she’s married with two toddlers and is drowning in early motherhood. In one scene at the park, her baby is on her hip, swatting her in the face, while her toddler is yelling that he had to pee. And what did she do? The most real thing possible: she ignores her kids, keeps talking to her friend about how stressed she is and how her marriage is kind of trash, and then starts to cry.

Next is Alicia (YASSSS), who’s been engaged to her baby daddy for nine years but refuses to marry the mother fucker becasue he wants a prenup that would leave her with nothing. Her gaggle of Italian aunts come over, and they swap stories about their ex-husbands. One aunt says, “My husband wandered.”

Her accent is so thick, no one understands what the hell she said, but because they’re a group of women bull-shitting, everyone just nods knowingly. Thinking her aunt said “wanted,” Alicia asks, “What did he want?” Eventually, the aunt annunciates, and the misunderstanding clears up.

Later that night, I found myself laughing out loud thinking about that scene while watching TV with my kids. I tried explaining it to them. They didn’t find it as funny as I did, but they laughed a little.

Eventually, Alicia role-plays confronting her partner about the prenup. She points out that she does everything; laundry, cooking, cleaning and raising their kid. Rulla, who is very smart, gives her excellent talking points to bring to the table. 

The rest of the cast is dealing with serious rumors, which they either deny or fully lean into.There’s almost no shame about any of it. When Rosie says she took sick leave and decided not to return to work, it cuts to Kelsey, who straight up says, “Rosie didn’t go back to her job because she fucked her boss and got fired.”

That’s the level of honesty we’re getting. The absolute best part of it, there is no shame. If Rulla wants to stay together with her low-down, cheating, dog of a husband, it's ok. We get it. If she decides to leave him, it’s ok too. If Kelsey is conflicted about leaving her rich ass sugar daddy who has a different girlfriend staying in each of his houses, we get it. Jobs are hard, and right now she is living like damn royalty.

The master dame of the group is Liz, who looks like she could point her finger and summon a lighting bolt. She’s the most witchy woman I’ve ever seen, in the best way. She owns multiple weed stores, lives in a waterfront mansion, got wasted and lost her shit at her husband’s birthday party, and, in her fifties, has mother fucking six-pack abs. 

What makes this franchise feel so fresh is how real the storylines are, and how little shame is attached to them. It feels almost feminist: women showing their messy, complicated lives without being punished for it.

I love the entire cast, even Rosie who is the principal shit-stirrer because she is so transparent about not wanting to have kids. In the last episode, when she tries her middle-school-level drama tactics, Alicia goes full gangster on her and caps it off with, “Welcome to fucking Rhode Island, bitch.”

Thank you. I feel very welcome and I love it!

*I might have thrown extra fucks into some of these "quotes."

IntolerIdiots

“Hey lactose Intoleridiots, guess what I’m eating?” Kiki shouted as she came down the hallway to my room. G and I were sitting on the bed, and we looked over and saw her dangling a slice of delicious smoked gouda.

G’s brows furrowed and his nostrils flared. “Well at least I can run a mile without throwing up!” he yelled at her.

Her face shifted to anger too. 

“Can we please just chill?” I interjected, trying to keep this from blowing up into a weird screaming match that diffuses in two minutes, where they both move on completely unaffected, but I’m left with an adrenaline spike.

G went non-dairy because of stomach aches. An elimination diet. But it doesn’t seem to be working. It might be psychosomatic, maybe from stress he’s under at school. His life doesn’t seem that stressful to me, but I’m only seeing part of his world when he’s at home and I stare adoringly at him while he tells me about his great ideas.

We broke the non-dairy stretch last Sunday when we went to Dairy Queen for Blizzards. Geoffrey insisted on bringing Max the dog, even though driving down the freeway at 65 mph causes him to freeze up and drool like a faucet.

When we got home, I backed up the driveway to charge the car. Geoffrey and Max got out, and I saw a gross puddle of drool on the back seat. I pulled fast-food napkins out of the middle compartment and leaned back awkwardly to wipe it up. While sweeping my arm around, my leg extended and pushed onto the gas petal. 

The car shot back full speed, right into the side of the garage.

I pulled forward and got out to assess the damage. When I looked at the garage, I felt really sad. It was such a stupid mistake, and now a pain in the ass to deal with. 

Then I looked at G, who was completely horrified. 

“I was behind the car,” he said. “I jumped out of the way.”

All of a sudden, the realization of what could have happened came crashing down on me, and I was overcome with a combination of fear and relief. It was actually a fucking blessing that I ran into the house.

I gave him a hug, and the dog ran around our feet. 

G added, “You could have run over Max too.”

“I’d be able to forgive myself for running over the dog.” I said, squeezing him harder.

I went into the house, laid down, and closed my eyes. It kept replaying over and over in my mind. I saw my foot, unexplainably pushing on the gas petal. I saw my son jumping out of the way. Imagining if he hadn’t made my entire body seize, and I felt sick.

When I told my sister it was replaying in my mind and I was having visceral reactions, she said, “It’s going to take at least three months for that to stop.”

Then she told me about how her son fell into a pool while they were on vacation. He didn’t know how to swim, and they weren’t paying attention for a minute. Her daughter noticed, and my sister jumped in and saved his life. 

It was years ago, but she told me she still thinks about it, just not as much. For at least three months afterward, it was all she thought about. She even had nightmares reliving it.

We both agreed that Geoffrey was protected by angels. Lacey and I have joked that our poor guardian angels were overworked during our going out and getting blacked-out drunk days, and that they expect more from us now than ever. 

Obviously, it's a joke, because they swooped in here and saved my son from me. Oh my gosh. I guess we don’t have to assume our angels are working part-time just because we aren’t living reckless lives anymore.

Lying there, trying to process what just happened, I asked God what he was trying to tell me. Decoding messages shouldn’t be so hard. Did I have too many things on my mind? Was I distracted by meaningless thoughts? Maybe it had to do with the kids getting their report cards that week, and I was bummed that they didn’t get great grades.

It didn’t take long, maybe ten minutes from almost running my son over, to realize that I really don’t give a shit if he gets C’s. 

I wouldn’t love him more if he got all A’s. I'll keep encouraging him to do better, but I’m not going to shame him for not having a passion for managing five Google Classroom calendars. 

If I see running my car into the garage as orchestrated, if my son was never actually going to get hurt, and it was simply a moment meant to remind me to always value him for who he is, then there’s no reason to look so far into the future and worry about how a seventh-grade report card will impact a person at 25.

Inherently, I know this is true, and I’m not sure why I got so worried when I saw their grades weren’t perfect. This moment could be a stepping stone to ten years from now, but it isn’t determining an outcome. Everything is malleable. 

Except dairy intolerance. 

And who knows, I could be totally overthinking all of this. The message could have simply been: when you’re having stomach problems, do not go to the high priestess of dairy, The Dairy Queen, to indulge.

Radiance

 

I was walking out of the math building on campus, heading to teach a class, when I saw a very fashionable guy sitting on a bench. The sun was beaming down on him. His sunglasses, vintage leather trench coat, and worn bell bottoms made him a standout. I gave him a big smile, and he said to me, “I love your radiance.”

I was flattered and had to come up with a quick reply because I was caught in a stream of people on the move. I said, “I love… you.”

I was immediately embarrassed to have blurted this out to a stranger. I probably should have said, I love your radiance too. Greatness recognizes greatness. It’s only the second week of the semester, so I’m still looking good at school. My hair is curled, and I’m wearing cute outfits I plan in the morning while I do my rowing machine and watch psychic Tyler Henry TV shows.

It’s delightful to be back on campus, and in Northern California, we are having the best winter of my entire time living here. (In case it matters, I do live above the fogline.) January was all sunshine and 60-degree days. Today, February 6, the heart of shit-winter, it is sunny and 72 degrees. I went on a seven mile walk-run, and am basking under these sun beams on my couch right now.

The greater Sacramento area was due this glorious weather. The last five winters have felt we were on the receiving end of Zeus’ golden shower. Not a light sprinkle, rain fell from the sky like a damn waterfall for months.

The last few Februarys, I was in the depths of seasonal depression, but I haven’t had to contend with that this year. I know I’m in a seriously good mood because I walk the hills of my neighborhood staring at the trees, flowers, birds and clouds in awe. When I notice the radiance of the tall green pine trees against a sky-blue backdrop, I know I’m not depressed. It’s just one of those things that I know about myself, like the “ON AIR” light flipping on at a radio station.

If I won the lottery, I don’t think I would change one thing about my life. I’d just pay for a lawn service, a cleaning person, and I’d doordash all our meals from Mendocino Farms. That's it.

I could work on my social life, but I wouldn’t put too much pressure on that because I’m noticing the green on blue. I’d keep that in mind if the radiance ever starts to fade.

I read this little Instagram article about a Japanese man who rents himself out as a “do nothing” friend. He makes a decent living, and in most of the accompanying pictures he’s just sitting next to a client while they both stare at their phones.

I thought about how I could start a business like that. I’d be the madam, and I’d rent out my siblings for phone calls. Each one offers a different specialty.

My older brother only likes to talk about big topics; religion, politics, health. He doesn’t want to discuss people unless they’re the author of a book. My older sister is the opposite: she only wants to talk about people, and the juicier the gossip, the better. Tell her about the coworker with camel toe or bad breath, and she’ll tell you about the person she works with who won’t shut up about their divorce and blows up the bathroom. My little sister can only talk for five-minute stretches. She will hang up on you the second she pulls into whatever parking lot she’s in for her kids’ activities. My younger brother is the Tony Robbins of the group. Come at him with life goals and he’ll be incredibly encouraging, but he’s very into waking up at 4:30 am to be successful and thinks of new-age manifestation and vision boards as lazy wishful thinking.

As the madam, I wouldn’t be expected to take calls, but if I did, my interests would be weird dreams (the sleeping kind), psychics, ghost stories, and Real Housewives.

I have a lot of weird dreams, and I love to share them with my kids. The other morning, I burst into Kiki’s room, and said, “I dreamed there were six-foot corn on the cobs leaning against the wall! Isn’t that amazing?”

Sometimes it makes them smile. Every morning I ask if they had any dreams, and they usually say no. But the other day I walked in my daughter’s room and she said, “I had a dream you were a lesbian.”

I laughed, and sighed, “I really should give men one more shot. I’ll be coming at it with the best version of myself.” 

If she weren’t fourteen, I would have added, They drive me crazy, but that d*** is pretty important. I also like how they can move furniture.

Like I said earlier, I’m having a weather-induced upswing and can’t think of how I’d really improve my life right now. So I’m not in a rush to find a furniture-moving man. I guess I’m in a lesbian relationship with myself.

I’m doing all right, I’ve got all these do-nothing friends that I don't even have to pay for. My older sister has a shopping addiction, and has challenged herself to not shop for the month of February. I decided I'd join her. My last hurrah was at Marshall’s with my daughter. We got Starbucks first and took our time wandering through every department. I can’t really afford a shopping addiction, so by the time we get to the registers, we have to choose our favorite items and abandon the rest of the cart.

As we passed the suitcases, I saw a toddler sitting in the front of a cart. His mom was chatting with someone. He looked right at me, and an enormous smile spread across his face. He started waving. I looked around and confirmed, yes, it was me this beautiful child had decided to say hello to. I smiled back and waved.

This made him freeze. His eyes got huge, and he hid his face in the crook of his elbow. Kiki and I moved into the yoga mat and water bottle section, and when I turned back, there he was again, laughing, smiling, and waving at me. I thought maybe I was crazy and there was someone behind me, but no. It was just me. Once again, I smiled and waved. Once again, he reacted like he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

I found Kiki and said, “Girl, I think there’s a very happy and friendly spirit that's hanging around me. You should see this little kid over here…”

She was holding up two phone cases, one light blue and one was a gray-blue. She ignored me completely and asked, “Which phone case should I get?”

Although I love her radiance, I don’t think I can rent her out as a “do nothing” friend just yet.