Alexa, Shut Up

Alexa is a thorn in my side. I groan as my kids yell commands at her. After they make their demands, I chime in, tempering expectations, “Alexa doesn’t know that.” And sure enough, she replies, “I don’t know that one.”

When the kids aren’t asking her questions that a graduate student spends a year deciphering through research, they will holler for her to play the kind of songs that drive a woman to madness.

One will scream, “Alexa, play Eight Unicorns!” followed up by the other yelling, “Alexa, volume 10.” 

Then they dance like they ate a bag of mushrooms for breakfast, and I fill up my coffee cup and exit stage right, to work in my room.

This summer is like a prolonged slumber party. My summer school class was cancelled, so we haven’t clung to a structure, unless the structure is structureless. With the shelter-in-place, we end up having three or four day stretches where we move about like we're roaming The Stanley Hotel.

Even dinner turned into something every parenting book frowns upon. Five o’clock rolls around, and I dust off my pajamas to ask the kids, “You really feel like dinner? Because I’m about to eat chips and salsa, two Chobani Flips, and a couple bowls of Captain Crunch.”

By the time I get to eating cereal I’m not even hungry, I’m just bored.

Having no desire to get dressed or put on mascara, it’s like I’m back to being a stay-at-home parent with two toddlers. I have time to do things I’ve put off the last three years, like getting pictures off our old desktop computer. I look like a busted wreck in mostly all the pictures. Happy, but busted; my hair always in a messy bun, no make up, and clothes I wore because they were the first thing I pulled out of my dresser drawer.

All I could do was laugh when I came across pictures from a friend's wedding I remember us speeding to San Francisco for, barely making it on time. I thought, “Really, Alicia? You couldn’t even brush your hair!”

At least the kids are at an age where they can be left to their own devices. I know mom-stress is not high ranking because the L-O-V-E outweighs all complaints, but I do think there’s PTSD from raising babies, especially back to back. You get zero deep sleep (the exception being tough-love parents who get sleep because at night they lock their kids in a cage or some shit) and you spend your days always on high alert so this clumsy and curious person doesn’t accidently kill themself. Walk out of the room for one minute and come back to find your two year old sucking on a quarter and the one year old crawling around on the top of the refrigerator. 

Thank God kids get older. I remember going through the check out at Trader Joes with my babies in the cart, and the cashier said, “It gets a lot better.”

This stranger gave me just the encouragement I needed, instead of the usual diatribe that raising babies happens in the blink of an eye, and you better love every second of it.

My Trader Joe's angel was right, kids turn 6 and then you get a built in buddy. Seriously, the best comrade. The kind of friend you wake up next to on a Saturday, and say, “If we hurry, we can make the 10:30 movie matinee and get in-n-out before.” 

Last week my kids went on vacation with their dad. I had ambitions to write a novel and renovate my house in five days. Should be no surprise, I watched 40 hours of TV instead. When I don’t have my kids home, the endless corridor of time I get to walk down is overwhelming.

There’s the structure I need, small gaps of time to accomplish things, usually found in between cooking and cleaning up meals. Without this structure, I easily convince myself that the best way to prep for my fall semester is to rearrange furniture.  I’ve got my kid’s school to think about too. Homeschooling is going to be better this time around, but If this vaccine can come through within the next two weeks, we’ll get to feel the glory of a hail Mary that makes the stress of this year totally worth it.

For now, I’ll just let the kids spend their time playing. I love listening to them play imagination games. They get embarrassed by my eavesdropping, so I have to be a fly on the wall or else they’ll stop and start harassing me to watch TV.

Listening to them reminds me of playing with my little sister. I don’t know if our songs were as clever as theirs. They have a nice jingle going now, the working title, A Giant’s Fart. Becky and I had the classic, Butter My Muffin and I Shake My Butt, but it relies on innuendo, and given our age at the time of the song, it could be inappropriate. Time really does have a way of making art seedy and predatory.

Becky and I played dolls endlessly. Our favorites were always in tow. We also got sick pleasure in dragging around our least favorite doll. His name was Tuna Fish Head, a Cabbage Patch doll whose hair looked just like the tuna we saw frequently between white bread. Tuna Fish Head was hardly ever clothed, and we’d prop him up alongside the other dolls to berate and belittle.

While on my Netflix binge last week, every time I clicked “continue watching,” I started talking to myself like I was Tuna Fish Head. I walked to the kitchen to refill on Captain Crunch, and I saw Alexa lit up yellow. So, I cleared my throat from the five hours of silence, and asked, “Alexa, what is the notification?”

Alexa told me she thinks I need to buy more fish oil. I opened up my cabinet, and saw a full bottle of capsules.

I shouted at her, “Alexa, stop! You don’t know shit!”

To provoke me, she replied, “I’m sorry, I don’t know that one.”

And, I let her have it, “Alexa, you better close your mouth. Your dick breath is stinking up my house.”  I started waving my hand in front of my face as I walked back to the room to resume devouring TV.

Luckily, my boyfriend came over at the end of every day, and I’d start being nice to myself and Alexa. I remember the last night of my kid’s vacation, he was coming over at 9:30. At 9 pm, I flipped open my laptop and wrote the first sentence to this blog. That's all I got out of the entire five days, and it took getting to the last 30 minutes for me to produce it.

We're coming down to the end of this summer, and it’s a procrastinator’s dream. I need to see the end of that corridor to start working. The first morning my kids were back, I mopped the kitchen floor, cleaned out the microwave and wrote a blog. Alexa’s been doing her part with the kids, she’s a real peach, and when my kids are away, she’s a real Tuna Fish Head.

The Grandma Mothership

Last night I had one of those dreams where you wake up wondering if you were sucked up by the mothership; I’m in a crowded room, where I recognize a bunch of random people from my life. I also had a dream I pulled a giant seed out of my mouth and that the after school teacher gave my kids three full-grown cats that started pooping all over our house, it was so bad, I stepped in it. Counter to what instinctively seems like a bad dream, I guess dreaming of stepping in cat poop is actually a good sign! Ask Alexa, if you doubt me.

This morning my mom and daughter were working on a baby blanket for my sister’s baby. My Grandma knew my sister was pregnant before anyone. She had a dream, and she even nailed the sex. My grandma’s got the gift, but it’s not like Sylvia Brown level. She’s more of a friends-and-family kind of psychic.

I was still recovering from being beamed back into my bed, so I laid there, listening to them talk. When I came out for coffee, my daughter had fabric scraps puzzled together in a small rectangle and commissioned me to sew it together for her to give to her new cousin. She had the scissors in her hands as she raced across the room to get a juice box, and I snapped to fully-awake mode and yelled, “Don’t run with scissors like that! That’s how people die!!”

My mom agreed with the detrimental consequences of running with scissors, but then calmly showed my daughter the proper way to hold them. The week before, Kiki came in third place in a scooter competition with her cousins. They spent days practicing, and the adults were forced to award medals, no ties were allowed. My brother decided the youngest would get first and we’d work our way to third place based on age. Fair enough, I figured. But Kiki took tremendous offense, and walked away berating herself for the fail.

I felt bad, but after giving her a sufficient pat on the back, and letting her in on how the entire thing was rigged from the start, she was still distraught, so I left her in the room with my mom.

I came back, over twenty minutes later, my mom and her were still talking on the bed, but the tears had dried. I saw my daughter stuffing dollar bills into her sequin purse, and I asked, “Where’d you get that money?”

And she said, “Mimi gave it to me. She thinks I was the best and should have won first, so she gave me five dollars.”

“That’s interesting,” was all I could say.

My mom did not have the time to sit around and console me for thirty minutes every time I crumbled in distress from what I perceived to be an earth-shattering infraction. I was a sensitive kid, so this happened a lot.

She likes to tell me about it now. She says, “You’d always steal your sister’s baby bottle. We’d find you hiding in the closet, and we’d have to rip the bottle from your hands… Nothing changes. Ha!”

We’d squeeze in our bonding time, laying opposite each other on the couch reading Mary Higgins Clark books and eating pinwheels. It’s not as cool as her handing me five bucks and telling me I’m the best, but it’s comforting.

This week I saw my Grandma for the first time in ages. We went to Chilli’s and she gave me the cutest little gold ring she got when she was a kid. She asked me to try it on my pinky, and it fit. She smiled at me and said, “We have the skinniest fingers!”

“You’re right, Grandma! We do.” Then I told her about my dreams, in life and sleep, writing and comedy. She assured me, "Oh, it’s all going so well! You're doing exactly what you should be doing."

And, I don’t even think she said it as a friends-and-family psychic, but as my grandma.

Spending Power

We all agree, Karen is annoying. Karen-culture is a byproduct of capitalism where her voice is magnified because she fills a shopping cart at Target and Costco once a week. If it’s any consolation, no one would give a shit about her otherwise.

It’s not just racism Karen decides to minimize. Her pearl-clutching fuels the fast-paced, sensationalized news racket we’ve got corroding natural thought processes and logic. Why does it make the news that a 40 year old male comic is sending 18 year old women text messages? Sure he’s lonely, and needs excessive adoration, but he’s not a criminal. Its reverse-sexism to say an 18 year old woman is incapable of making a decision, that she’s powerless to a homely looking, brainless man because he’s got the kind of money that produces a couple Karens.

It gives all the power to men when young women are told they don’t have agency. I once had to quit my job because I slept with a coworker for over 6 months, and I didn’t want to see his face anymore. Going into it, I told myself, this is going to turn into a big, fat, uncomfortable learning experience. It could take a lot of learning experiences to figure out a dick is never going to fill a hole made by reality falling short of expectations because of misdirection. But after time, we realize how some bad decisions make us stronger, in the same way that the most beautiful memories can end up turning into nightmares.

So an 18 year old is capable to figure out that when she gets a direct message from a complete stranger, it either means he is a card-carrying lonely hearts club member or a green-card-seeking man who is jumping at the chance to be on 90-day fiancé, because even though our country is is going through a shit storm, it’s still a great country to be in. 

Don’t rush out to buy your Fuck Karen t-shirts (of course) without considering what exactly is her cross to bear. Karens are dismissive, petty and mean, but their entire existence is about consumption rather than creation.

Nothing unites men more than feeling superior to women, so don’t crucify Karen for all the inherent and systematic racism in a country that is run by men. She’s merely a red-herring, a red herring with spending power.