Running a Marathon

 

The date approached quickly, and when I woke up at 4:50 am, I was glad it wasn’t raining. I slept like crap because the dog was scratching his collar all night. After the alarm went off I put on the clothes I laid out and drove to the Whole Foods parking lot to catch a shuttle bus to the start of the California International Marathon.

When the bus arrived, there were a hundred more in front. The bus idled, and someone came on to tell us, we could stay on the heated bus or get off, but don’t leave any of our crap. I ate two nature valley granola bars, so really four granola bars, and drank water before I decided to walk toward the start line. Along the way men were pissing off the side of the walking path into a small stream, and even with this siphoning of exhibitionists, the lines for the endless chain of port-a-potties were enormous. Not sure if I had to pee, or if I was nervous, I decided to wait in line, knowing by the time I reached the front, I’d have to go.

I took my place in the ten minute mile group. Even though I didn’t train, I felt fine because I run four days a week, granted it’s with a dog that stops to pee on every bush, and in the end I get about four miles done in an hour, but I figured the height of my psychical fitness lied within me, waiting to be awakened.

The race started, and I took it one mile at a time. Two people gave me advice, my friend Jane, who said it would be fine, as long as I drank the water at every water station, and my older sister, Lacey, who said, “Anyone can run a marathon, you just can’t stop.” Lacey ran a marathon in Disney World ten years earlier with my little sister, who said Lacey spent the last five miles crying to an embarrassing degree but was too absorbed in her emotions to notice the looks she was getting.

I did great the first two-thirds of the race. In fact, at the end of the race I was annoyed by my chipper self at the beginning, taking notes in my phone so I’d remember things to write in my blog, waving to the sidelines cheering crowds, and thinking about everything I was grateful for.

I stopped journaling a few months back because I burnt out on it. When I started gratitude journalling in June, it turned into a painful exercise where I felt like I was lacking genuine feeling, rather on task for the promised rewards of an endless depth of riches.

The new-age “organized religion” of well-to-do white people claiming their exceptional good fortune comes from their undeniable connection to the universe rather than a social caste system is irritating. I imagine the conferences for these mindfulness gurus are 95% Lululemon models, and they’re too idiotic to realize the confounding factors of their good fortune. 

Around mile 20 my joy shrunk down to nothing, and I had to push through unfamiliar pain. I started being passed by waves of people I remembered flying by much earlier. 

There is not a physical limitation to running a marathon, aside from having legs. Women with a hundred pounds on me, we're jogging past. Old people, that looked like they just came from a Chiquita Banana commercial, trotted past, head down, forward momentum from their curved back pushing them through each step. At one point a women passed me pushing an adult man in a reclining wheel chair. She smiled at me, and I smiled back, giving her a pained thumbs up.

The only people I passed over the last five miles were the injured, sitting on the side of the road, fighting back tears, stretching out whatever atrocity happened to their body. These people actually looked like Fleet Feet sponsored athletes, lean and muscular, dressed in the most appropriate attire, which made it more sad.

The race started in Folsom and ended at the state capitol building in Sacramento. Midway through the race, when I still had space in my mind to think, I ran through my old neighborhood, Carmichael, the neighborhood I associate with my married years. We ran passed my old grocery store, library and cross streets. I remembered seven years earlier, when I had the kids in a jogging stroller and I ran into this marathon. Someone on the sidelines congratulated me, and I had to admit, I didn’t push my kids in this stroller the 15 miles prior, I just came from around the corner. The neighborhood looked beat up, and there were more homeless tents, but maybe it always looked like that.

I passed the office of a psychic I once visited. She ate McDonalds and drank a red bull while she told me nothing exciting, and I left there feeling like I wasted money. Maybe she knew I would try to change things if she said what laid in store for me.

Like all psychics, she closed up the session by telling me coins I find on the ground are from my dead relatives saying hello. I passed a penny laying on the ground five times over the entire marathon. I usually pick up this minimal monetary treasure, for luck, but I couldn’t stop on the run for fear I’d end up stuck in the bent over position. Someone once told me, “Never pass a coin in the street, it tells the universe you don’t want money.” I figured in this case I was telling the universe I value my health over money, and they’d appreciate that.

It was the beginning of December, and I didn’t start Christmas shopping. My kids’ ridiculous list of Christmas wants were laughable, and I did everything to curb their expectations of getting iPhones and computers. I planned on buying them a PC, but when my son was sent home a letter from his teacher reprimanding him for not listening to her, I said there would be no computer and he lost TV.

That night I walked to G’s room. Kiki and him were laying in bed, and before I was at the door, I heard her say, “She was never a good mother to you.”

I came around the corner shouting, “Kingsley!”

She whipped her head towards me, and a smile came across her face. “I am trying to comfort him… because he lost TV,” she said.

“Don’t tell him stuff like that! It’s psychotic.”

Later that week, at bedtime, she started crying, too absorbed in her emotions to see how ridiculous she sounded, “You aren’t going to buy me a laptop! That is all I want for Christmas.”

I was brushing her hair, and her emotions were impenetrable, so I jokingly said, “What do you need a computer for? You plan on writing a manifesto.”

It went unnoticed, aside from my boyfriend, who chuckled in the other room. 

I was expecting a divine moment when I was running the marathon, maybe a vision from God. It didn’t happen. In front of the last Del taco I’d run past, my boyfriend texted, “How are you doing?” 

I could be on the side of the road, with a flat tire, and a broken arm, and I’d write back, “Doing great!” But this time, all I could say was, “I’m doing OK.” Which meant, “Tell my children I love them, and not to fight over the $1,200 I have in my savings account… it has to go to my credit card.”

The closest I got to an out of body experience was when my hands started to tingle at the start of the last mile. I decided to walk in case I pass out. Entering Midtown Sac, the streets were lined with poster board waving crowds, my favorite board read “Run Bitch!!” I alleviated the stress with humor, and let all the spectators know, this is the only marathon I’d ever run.

A finisher passed me, and said, “You say that now!”

I jogged across the finish line, and was handed a much deserved medal. Someone handed me a ticket for a free beer, and I asked if I could get a Marlboro Light instead. With no one there to celebrate with I hobbled over to the shuttle busses heading back the the Folsom Whole Foods. I chatted with other finishers, and when they saw me descend from the bus like a woman who was taking her first steps in a decade, one man said, “You need to have a glass of wine and get in a hot bath.”

I didn’t tell him my bathtub is really only good for toddlers, and any full grown adult, has to sit with her tits out in the freezing cold. It’s the opposite of relaxing. I just said, “Oh, I’m an alcoholic, I’ll just take some ibuprofen.” He apologized for some reason.

I hobbled around Whole Foods to buy dinner, and drove home. I took a shower before my kids came back, and the moles on my stomach were circled with blood from my t-shirt rubbing them for five hours. They begged to put up the Christmas tree, and my immobility forced us to have to wait till the next day.

Christmas came, along with record breaking snowfall in the mountains, which equates to never ending rain in Sacramento. My boyfriend pulled back the curtains in our bedroom this morning, and said, “It looks like an ad for seasonal depression out there.”

The weekend before Christmas, my kids went to their dad’s, and we wrapped presents. The kids called and said, “Were driving to the snow.” They said “the snow” some some soft-pawed, city-slickers, and I imagined them parked along side the summit with a slew of other underused SUVs, wearing pristine snow suits, and riding a saucer down a carved out hill, with a million other people..

I took the kids to Tahoe the week before, and when I picked up Indian food from the liquor store at the end of the street, the cashier said, “I took off your twenty percent local’s discount.” I haven’t lived in Tahoe in over twenty years, but I still got the essence of someone who can drink twelve Coor’s Lights while shoveling snow in a t-shirt. We went sledding that week, with my sister and her kids. We hiked out into the middle of nowhere, and after finding a slope steep enough Becky would send them down what ended up looking like a Plinko board of decent, and my job was to fetch the sleds the kids would drop, flying a hundred feet away, while they were trudging up the hill. The outing ended the way it should, someone getting injured, and everyone suffering from extreme cold and snow in their boots.

I was nervous Christmas morning, my kids would be unsatisfied by their loot, and then let me know it. My strategy for any rudeness was to watch Manchester By The Sea as a family, and afterward, while we’re all recovering from sobbing hysterically, I tell them, “This Christmas I gave you the gift of gratitude.” I’d put on Lululemon leggings before. I didn’t have to worry about it because their dad bought them computers, so everything I gave them was a cherry on top.

I woke up the day after Christmas with the craziest pain in my left wrist, that I diagnosed as carpal tunnel syndrome brought on from a lifetime of going to bed like a Precious Moments ceramic figurine, curled up on my side, with prayer heads under my cheek, but it also could be that my resting position is a limp-wrist, hunched-over, George Burns. I bought a brace on Amazon, the last of my Christmas shopping.

That night I dreamed I had a baby, and it was Jesus. My message from God came. Of typical fashion, it was a month late, and I have no idea what it means. With the marathon off my bucket list, I have other resolutions to foster, some seem harder than running twenty-six miles. It might be worth gratitude journalling again, and if I’m feeling misdirected in my intention, I’ll watch Manchester By The Sea. Everything is like a marathon, really; the long game, a push through, a reliance on hope. Sometimes a penny on the ground is worth more than one cent, and if I'm going to have depression, than seasonal depression is the best kind. So if you ask me how I am, I'm back to saying, "I'm Great!"

Happy New Years everyone!

Texas Salvation

 

The night before we left for Austin, I rushed into my house after dropping the dog off at my parents, an hour and a half away, and taking my kids to their dad’s. I was having extreme cramps in my stomach, and the pain was so bad I nearly passed out, but after I laid in bed for an hour I felt much better. I finished packing my brand new suitcase, a small rolling black Sampsonite my mom gave me for my birthday, with all my favorite clothes, most of which I’d acquired over the last year at my retail job, taking advantage of my amazing employee discount. Then we set the alarm for 5 am, and went to sleep.

We made it to the airport during what could best be described as a monsoon that had been beating down on Sacramento for 3 days. When we pulled into the long term parking lot, the clouds parted, and the rain stopped. We made it through security and on the first flight with ease, so much ease that I said, “Things are going so well.”

I spoke too soon. After we landed in Denver, Colorado, we had an hour to get food and go to the bathroom. I headed for a food stall that had pre-made salads, a preventative measure to my jacked up vacation stomach. I got my salad, and sat next to Johnny on the floor by the people-mover-conveyer-belt in front of our gate. After eating, it was time to board the plane, and we got up and walked to the queue. Johnny said, “Hey, you forgot your suitcase.”

I turned around to get it from where we were sitting, and it wasn’t there. My bag disappeared. I ran to every place I had been. Our turn to board the plane was coming up quick. I went up to the United counter at the gate, panting from sprinting up and down the terminal, I said, “My bag is lost!”

She looked at me like I said, “I have herpes.” She was bothered, and helpless, so I ran what seemed like a mile, down to the customer service counter and she told me I have to fill out a claim online. There was nothing I could do. I needed to get on the plane, with just the clothes on my body and my purse, that thankfully had my laptop. I sprinted back to the plane, and boarded. The United employee burst with schadenfreude, as she waved me away. I tried to not project all my stress onto this miserable sap. 

I’m a white woman, so of course, I’m writing a letter to United explaining the injustice. The letter starts, Dear United, Most of your employees have been replaced by robots, and your remaining human workforce is only in tact so you don’t have to pay taxes on your billions of dollars of annual revenue, but could you just give these people a paycheck and have them sit in an employee lounge all day because their misery is triggering. They have no purpose, and know it. Their only sense of power is by enforcing people to pull their mask over their nose. Traveling is stressful enough. I also think you should give the woman at the customer service counter a bonus.

When we got off the flight in Austin, and walked to the car rental, I started shuffling through my purse to pull out my glasses that are usually smashed under everything, at the bottom of the bag. Not surprising at all, I lost them on the last flight.

I didn’t say, “Things cannot get any worse,” because I was now in a state of internal conflict wondering what the hell the universe was trying to tell me as I shed my favorite personal possessions on the journey from Sacramento to Austin. I walked away from that stress the best way I know how, compartmentalizing it to the tiniest space in the back of my mind.

When we checked into the hotel, the guy at the front desk was Texas nice, and we had the first of many chats.  As he was sliding our key cards in the envelope, he said “We have breakfast from 6:30-9:30 in the lobby.”

Johnny and I were all smiles, about to high-five, when he noticed our unnecessary excitement and added, “Oh, It costs money.” And we laughed at our intense reaction to possible complimentary breakfast.

After vegging out in the hotel, we went to Target to get me situated. The trip was for Johnny’s performances, and I packed accordingly, to be a very pretty plus one. So when I looked at the curling irons, razors, and make up, tallying up the costs, I thought, “Maybe I can pull off the upcoming string of nights out going au natural.” 

My au natural look resembles a woman who pulls over when she’s sees roadkill, to make a stew for dinner, so I just bought all the shit. I’d eventually have to replace it all anyways.

We went to the clothes section, and after seeing the price tags, I decided I should go to  Forever 21, because the slight difference in Target prices to Nordstroms was not happening. I foraged the clearance rack, that had only XL or XS random articles of clothing and I picked up a pair of shorts for bedtime. I went with XS, and looked like I was wearing giant underpants made of sweatshirt material.

In the morning, we slept through breakfast because we adapted right to the vacation schedule, and stayed up till 3 am watching TV. With our busy life back in Sacramento, we took advantage of our vacation appropriately, and over the week we watched The White Lotus, finished Squid Game, and caught a few movies.

We headed for the mall, and I bought enough clothes to get me through the week. Unable to escape the Forever 21 demographic, I looked like I was going through an identity crisis, pretending I was 20 years younger. I picked up underwear at Victoria’s Secret, and the sales girl’s cold sore concerned me as she wrapped the undergarments in tissue paper, but I have no access to a washer machine, so I decided to play Herpes Russian roulette, and just rip the tags off each morning, and put on a new pair.

My looks didn’t disappointed because the second night of shows Johnny was approached by a friend, asking if we were up for some group sex! He respectfully declined, and as he retold me about it later, he started with, “You might be flattered by this, but…”

I was flattered, giving some air snaps, thinking, “We’ve still got it!” But one woman’s fantasy is another woman’s nightmare, and if I had to watch my boyfriend have sex with another woman, I would have to file my letter of resignation with him the next day, starting with, “It’s been nice knowing you, but I’d prefer if we didn’t remain friends.”

My last day of vacation is filled with melancholy, missing home but also sad to have to go back to reality. We drove out to the Chainsaw Massacre gas station, hit up the movie theater and then went for one more meal of tacos. When I went to the bathroom, like all the hip establishments we’d been to, the toilets were all-gender. I came back to the table, and announced, “We might not be having group sex, but we can always take a couples shit! If you’re up for it.”

He respectfully declined.

The next day, I packed up my Target shopping bag, and we flew home.

So Naive

I added Blockduko on my phone. It's a game that combines sudoko and Tetris. A perfect combination, that swept me off my feet. The first day was fine, but my time on it increased rapidly from each day on. Seven days later I deleted the game when I spent three and a half hours on a Saturday afternoon playing blockduko and getting fake wasted on non-alcoholic beers.

After pulling myself out of the time warp of fitting shapes into squares, I looked at the disastrous room I had yet to organize from moving, and wished I had those three and a half hours back.

A pile of clothes, no a mountain of clothes sits in the middle of my room. An island I rummage through, then decide on the same t-shirt and jeans that are in the dryer.

My daughter sees this peak of cotton, synthetics, silk and denim as an island to explore full of hidden treasures. One night, when I was working in the living room, she saunters in wearing a business suit draped over her tiny body.

Forming an archipelago, there’s smaller islands, one of shoes, another of purses. Her suit is accessorized with a pair of pumps and a beaded handbag. The shoes fall off her feet with each step, but her clinched toes, drag the them along with her.

“Stay out of my clothes!” I yell at her.

Relishing in the dazzling image of herself, she ignores what I’ve said, and says, “Pretend I am your employee, and fire me!”

I resist the urge to become enraged, and say, “Fine you’re fired!! Now go take my clothes off!”

Then she said, “I am going to find the perfect outfit for you to rehire me!” And runs off.

I do what I usually do when frustration peaks, I announce I am going to the bathroom, and it will take a while. Then I head to the place I find solitude and usually play solitaire sitting on the porcelain throne.

Plumbing is the first understanding when moving into a new place. I soon discovered the toilet in my bathroom doesn’t flush completely. It can take five flushes to clear a bowl. My friend came over, and she went in to use the toilet, and remembering this shitty quirk, I ran after her screaming, “Nooooooo.” But it was too late, she’d lifted the seat.

Profusely apologizing, I told her to use the kids bathroom. “This one’s got issues!” She suggested a plumber, and I thought, “That’s not a bad idea.” 

Since this moment of solitude was a pretend-number-two, I went to my bathroom. However, I wasn’t playing my usual solitaire, I had Blockduko, and once I start the game, seconds turn to minutes. After an unknown amount of time my daughter bursts in wearing a long skirt, and a sequin dress. This time she has an entire face of make up, bright red lips and blue eyeshadow. She says, “How can you say no to this?” And fans her hand down her body showcasing her fashion choices.

Reeled back to reality, I insist on privacy, and a voice in my head that says, “One more game, Alicia!” 

“No!” A second inner voice yells, and then adds “That could be another hour! And imagine all the intel China has gleaned on us from playing Blockduko 20 plus hours this week.” The first inner voice rebuttals, “Oh wow, they’ve learned were a real threat to the People’s Republic due to our incredible capabilities of procrastination and terrible time management.” I sided with the second inner voice, even though the first was right too.

I went to stand up, but my legs were numb. Like Murtagh in Lethal Weapon 2, stuck on the can from a toilet bomb, I needed Riggs to pull from bowl. Except I didn’t have a Riggs there, and had to get myself up on legs lacking any feeling.

My boyfriend moved in this week, and now I have a Riggs, although I would rather blow up on a toilet than have him pull me from my own waste. I’ve mostly kept the facets of my life disjoint; my kids, boyfriend, work, even writing. So the major overlapping that is taking place gave me anxiety that reared its head while I slept; in a string of dreams about a lion in my house, followed by murderous nightmares.

My biggest worry about us all living together was how the kids would feel, their happiness. They also won’t appreciate another person using their bathroom for the greater of the two options. Of course, I had other concerns, because it’s already a lot having to clean up after the three of us. 

My kids gave me those posters in preschool with their handprints and an accompanying poem, about how their tiny handprints wouldn’t be on my walls forever, yet I am still finding their hand prints all over my freshly painted walls, reminding them they assured me this would be over by now. I’d pull out their preschool crafts as contracts, but they’re lost in the moving boxes.

When my boyfriend and I talked about the move, I confessed, “Im just worried you could be a slob.” And then we looked around at the mess, and both had a laugh. The scene of a big, happy, messy family.

The first night we were all together went better than expected. There weren’t any unravellings, or arguments, and we all went about our business in a copasetic ballet. I’m excited for this new chapter. It will be nice to have a witness to the madness. Someone to laugh with when G drinks vitamin water like he’s blowing on a trumpet, and lets the bottle suction to his lips, so he ends up with a hickey around his mouth for days, or when Kiki, at nine years old, announces to me she’s bisexual before I’ve had my first sip of morning coffee.

Last night, I was cleaning around the house and heard the kids talking to Johnny in the living room. One of them asked him, “Johnny, are you part of our family now?” My heart swelled, momentarily, because then I looked down and saw the jewelry box drawers open and earrings flung about. Before I could come out shouting, I saw a tiny sample bottle of cannabis intimacy oil in the drawer. I threw it out, organized the mess, and thought, “We’ll just let this one slide.”

My mom called me the next day, and asked, “How did the move-in go?”

I told her, it went great. She was cleaning around her yard, bear scat from bears coming to eat apples off the trees. “The bears love me, Alicia.” She said.

“You’re just like Brad Pitt in Legends of the Fall, Mom.”

“Bears are our spirit animal,” she reminded me. Then she added, “I just don’t need to see their shit every time I come outside.”

“I know exactly what you’re talking about. But I’m tired of seeing my own shit.” Without the game distracting me, I finally cleaned all the clothes off my floor, combining all the islands in the closet. Standing back, it was a little disorganized, but it looked good.

Last night Geoffrey came into the room to sleep next to me. In the morning, Johnny was curled up in the fetal position, freezing because tiny G wrapped himself in the comforter like a taquito. After I came back from dropping the kids off at school, we had coffee, and he asked, “Remember that first night we hung out?”

Of course, I did. We were both newly single, and wanted to keep things light. Then he said, “Remember how we said we can’t fall in love with each other.”

We laughed out loud. How could we have been so naive? We go together like Tetris and Sudoku. 

Little Girl Blue

 

On the drive to school in the morning, I put on an uplifting tune to get the kids in good spirits. The other day I put on “Top of the World” by The Carpenters, and we passionately sang along. 

I looked at my daughter and said, “Isn’t Karen Carpenter the best!”

She took it as a question, and replied, “I don’t know… Taylor Swift is pretty good.”

When we join up with the serpentine car line, my daughter turns the music off, embarrassed someone could hear us.

Sometimes the morning music works, and sometimes it doesn’t. If we’re in a rush my daughter literally falls apart. Hurriedly getting out of the car, she pulls her backpack with such fury, all the contents spill onto the curb and then she screams, without any concern that she’s surrounded by loads of people.

The other day, more accustomed to the anxiety of car line drop off, she had minimal damage. Only her water bottle fell out of the side pocket. Her mood intensified, and she looked at me and screamed, “I hate you.”

I waved goodbye, and rolled out of there, but having my daughter yell, “I hate you,” to me had a reverberating effect, that I squelched by eating 3 muffins and a granola bar as I worked at my computer upon returning home. Of course, I thought of the perfect comeback too late, I should have rolled all the windows down, blasted Superstar, and sang along loudly while looking at her, “Don’t you remember you told me you loved me, baby.”

That would teach her. Instead, I made a post it note, so I wouldn’t forget - “Kiki is grounded for saying I hate you.” Taking away her precious iPad is the best way I establish control. The fear of not getting on the internet to watch The Simpsons, or Youtube videos about The Simpsons, reminds her to act like a decent human being. 

After I finished working, I ordered Little Girl Blue on Amazon, the biography of Karen Carpenter. Her sad story is akin to Brittney Spears, but she was under the tyrannical thumb of her mother and brother, and the only way she could demonstrate control in her life was by starving herself, as opposed to Britney who demonstrates control by making Instagram videos with her shirt off.

Over the summer we stayed at my parents’ house in South Lake Tahoe. One night, I got in the shower as the kids were watching TV. While I was shampooing, I thought I heard a distant calling for me, but figured it was just reverberations from the active day at the beach. A moment later, the kids busted through the bathroom door holding a phone. Both panicked, “Mom, where were you? We’ve been screaming for you!” 

“I’m taking a shower.” I answered, since the visual wasn’t enough.

Then Kiki said, “G called the cops because we couldn’t find you.”

“WHAT?!” I yelled with my hair sopped in conditioner. 

G held out the phone to me, and sticking my head out of the shower, I explained to the operator, that I was in the shower when my kids called and everything is OK. The cops eventually came by to confirm that my kids aren’t part of some illicit ring, trying to escape. Kiki said to the cop, “It wasn’t a prank.”

It made the cop skeptical.

Geoffrey glues himself to me. In the afternoons we take the dog on a walk, and he always wants to hold my hand. Often, we run into an Italian woman and her beautiful tiny poodle. She talks in Italian or baby talk to Max, and then we chat. One day, we were walking back from the beach and she drove up next to us. “Is your puppy tired?” She asked concerned.

I said, “No, he’s fine.”

Then she asked if she could drive us home, so he didn’t have to walk, and I lied, “Were so close.” Parenting my dog like Karen Carpenter’s mom.

She relented, and happily waved goodby and said, “Ciao!”

All three of us waved back, and loudly said, “Ciao.” 

My sister, Becky, is in Tahoe too, and we spent most evenings at her house. She’s constantly running around taking care of her four little kids; crafting, making soda stream concoctions, and pushing them on the swings.

When I’m in the folding chair, and they scream for me to push them on the swings, I usually just holler back to them, “Pump yourself with your legs.”

Then they ask Becky, and I feel bad, so I go push them.

Becky told me she had someone over for a playdate earlier in the week. Her four year old was on the swing screaming for her mom to come push her. This lady looked at my sister and said, “She can be such a bitch sometimes,” before trudging over to the swings to push her kid for what probably felt like an eternity.

Becky always talks about how she wants to go back to working full-time, and I was like, “Becky, no one will be able to match your level of enthusiasm. Not even half as much.” 

Her day is exhausting, and I think she’s just venting, otherwise, she’d be out the door in a business suit, and low ponytail, carrying a briefcase, every day at 6:30 am.

One afternoon, when we were walking back, Geoffrey and I were holding hands, and he looked up at me and said, “Becky should write a book called, How to Raise Happy Kids.”

And I said, “I don’t know. Im pretty good too, right?”

Before I needed to cry along to Karen Carpenter singing, Goodbye to Love, he gave me a hug, and said, “Yeah.”

We moved into our new house. It took forever to get the internet, appliances and movers, but finally everything we need is here. It is in a box, or under a pile, but it is here, and in a few weeks I’ll get this stuff all sorted and organized.

When the internet guy came over he seemed starved for conversation. I worked on an air mattress in the unfurnished house. Sitting with the comforter over my legs and laptop on my lap, I looked up at him as he told me about every life decision he made over the last twenty years. Then he asked me what I did, and after I told him, he said, “Oh, your students must love you.” Smiling while raising his eyebrows up and down.

From then on, I saw two outcomes to my ignoring his running mouth; he would either kill me or he would leave without hooking up the internet.

Either way, one of my kids will be unhappy. 

I smiled and listened till he finished the job. After he left, I put on music and ate four granola bars.

Feeling Like Mufasa

 

On moving day, my eyes cracked open at 6 am, and in that moment I realized I wouldn’t be able to rent the U-Haul because my driver’s license expired three days earlier. It was a divine realization I’d have appreciated a few days earlier to help me better prepare, but still it gave me enough time to mitigate the disaster since the new homeowners move in the next day.

Sometimes you have to concede, and let a man come to the rescue, so I woke Johnny up and told him, “Movers are arriving in a few hours, and I can’t rent a truck for them to load!”

He decided to call in sick and we headed to U-Haul. His nerves about driving the massive truck disappeared, and he drove that thing like Sturgill Simpson before his big break.

After we got home, I only had an hour to pack up the remaining boxes, which meant things were chucked in with no organizational scheme, and taped up after a very short visual inspection that the majority of items wouldn’t end up broken.

At 10 am, a Nissan Versa pulled up; a woman and her small husband walked up to me with a dolly in tow. I was confused, since they weren’t the image I cooked up when I hired them, and the concern escalated after a seven year old climbed out of the back seat. I took a deep breath, and all my stress seemed to transfer to Johnny who came up behind me and asked, “Did you research these movers at all, or just answer an ad on marketplace?”

Another car pulled up, and a slightly larger man joined the unusual moving crew, and I understood their incredibly cheap hourly rate. The savings went unnoticed because it actually takes people twice as long to move if they weren’t high school football players on a Monster energy drink buzz.

After they loaded up the truck, Johnny drove us to the storage unit, and the Nissan Versa moving crew followed. I lifted the garage door on the unit and shrieked at how tiny the space looked compared to the truck.

The storage center manager sold me on the space by saying, “It fits three rooms. You just have to put your stuff in like you’re playing Tetris, and stack up high. That roof is fifteen feet tall!”

Challenge accepted. 

I realized I was about to loose that challenge after a mover said, “We can cram all this stuff in there, stacking it up, but it will fall on top of who ever moves this stuff out.” Then she added confidently, “It will crush them.”

I ran up to the front office, and after catching my breath, explained the situation. The manager put out her cigarette, and told me it was my lucky day, a giant unit became available 30 minutes earlier.

The Mormon Tabernacle’s Hallelujah blasted into my brain, and I closed my mouth so it wouldn’t leak out and jinx my incredible luck; I wouldn’t have to leave most of our belongs on the street corner with a sign that says “Free,” that I doubt even the enormous population of Sacramento homeless would want to drag over to the under freeway tent cities.

Three hours later the house was mostly empty. Johnny and I returned the U-Haul, and went to eat Chinese food across the street. For the first time, I was self conscious of wearing my tiny pajamas because I didn’t have time to change. The temperature was over a hundred degrees, and the sweat soaked clothes were freezing in the air conditioned restaurant.

“I look like a lunatic.” I said.

“I look like shit too,” Johnny replied.

“I never said I looked like shit.” I laughed.

After lunch, I cleaned the house. The biggest mess was in the freezer where a Taco Bell Skittles Slurpee spilled down the wall and needed to be scraped away. Luckily I had ten finger nails to work through. Scraping at the frozen syrup till each nail went from stiff to bendy.

I didn’t have any boxes left, so all the miscellaneous items made up a sea on the living room floor. I carried them to my car, bit by bit, and then swept and mopped listening to WTF podcast interviews from people I didn’t think I’d care to know about. But as I washed dirty handprints off the wall, I was happy to learn that at one time even Hugh Grant was a normal person. 

I closed the front door after the last swipe of the mop, and drove away with my car exploding and reeking of Pine-Sol from the dirty mop. I looked like the least effective cleaning lady, who finds all her clients on Marketplace.

As part of the plan, I drove to my parents house. I was run down, and thought I should take some time off from house hunting. The string of unsuccessful offers was a sign from God, I needed to wait for the market to cool, and five to seven days seems sufficient. Living in Tahoe is nothing to complain about, but there is a reason people do not live with their parents. 

I forgot how my dad goes from a head-in-the-clouds-genius-type to eye-bulging-smoke-shooting-from-his-ears-maniac in an instant, but I was reminded when I helped him unload groceries from his car. I opened the door and a gallon of milk fell to the pavement and burst, my dad screamed, “FUUUUUUUUUCK.” And I did what any almost forty year old kid does, I ran inside and hid until he had a moment to reflect on his reaction to spilled milk.

My mom’s living proof that you can take the girl out of the country, but cant take the country out of the girl, and now it’s even more pronounced, since she’s recently shortened her common descriptor “Big Ol’” to “Big O.”

My parents are having their house remodeled, so we’ve got a crew of people in the backyard everyday, and my fluffy, cuddly, lovable puppy barks at them nonstop. One of the guys tried to pet Max, and I anxiously stood there, as Max was jumping around and barking louder, never warming up to the outstretched hand.

I felt like saying, “It’s so weird, he usually only barks at rapists and psychopaths.”

Which leaves any man unsettled, considering the unknown within them. Maybe he watches weird porn. I’m not judging, it’s the dog, and I’ve seen Max eat cat shit, so it’s hardly an insult to be called a freak by a freak.

After my brother came to visit, and the kids, cat, puppy and I had to share a bedroom for three nights during a brutal California heat wave, I was back on Redfin five hours a day, dedicated to finding our new house. The market cooled as much as I cared to wait out.

My realtor said she went back and counted, it took ten offers before I finally had one accepted. It’s an empty house, so we can do a quick close, and we’ll be in August 5th, a week before the kids start school.

The universe tapered my excitement. On the same day of my offer being accepted, I got a text from Johnny that he was in the emergency room. 

I was getting an overdue oil change from driving up and down the mountain to shuffle kids, and look at houses, when I heard from him. If I checked Yelp reviews, the oil change place might have had a comment like this, “Pack luggage, this oil change is going to take a while.”

The owner, walked around the corner from the garage bay, and curled his finger for me to get up and walk over. It seemed serious. In Tahoe you’re allowed to bring your dog with you everywhere you go, so I tugged at the leash, and Max and I walked over.

“Whoever did your last oil change tightened this gasket too tight, and it cracked.”

“FUUUUUUCK,” is my conditioned reaction, but I was able to mute it slightly, and instead said, “Just forget it, I’ll leave now. Put everything back, and I’ll go somewhere else.”

“Don’t panic.” He said, genuinely concerned. “We’ll fix it since it’s our fault. Does your dog want a treat?”

Then he gave Max a treat and pet him on the head, and I said, “I’m surprised he’s not barking at you.”

I rushed home when the car was done, and packed an overnight bag, that ended up being three sweatshirts because I had imagined myself sleeping on the floor of a cold hospital that night. Another two hours of Marc Maron, and I was in the Sacramento ER. The diagnosis for his main symptom, “feeling like I’m dying” was a kidney stone. He was given the medical equivalent of a pat on the head, a bottle of seriously strong pain killers, to combat the child bearing equivalent of pain.

When the ER visit was wrapping up, I answered calls from every blood relative asking about Johnny. “He’s got a Big O Kidney Stone. 8 millimeters!” I found myself parroting my mom’s voice from our morning coffees.

Everyone sent their condolences, with a unique list of advice. Johnny and I went back to his place, ate food and passed out catching up on our TV shows. Under the terrible circumstances, I felt the comfort of what my life is usually like. The next morning I was back in Tahoe counting down to the August 5th closing date.

I have two weeks to go, and then I get to move my stuff out of storage and to our new house. I haven’t been able to give much thought to the upcoming move, but I’m getting more used to my parents, and they are getting more used to me. 

When I’m stressed out, I need to be under a weighted blanket inside of an igloo in an isolated part of Alaska, and instead I’m surrounded by a probing crew, highlighting everything I am trying to compartmentalize.

I get reprieve going on afternoon walks with the dog and my son whose looking like he recently was rescued from The Coral Island, barefoot, shirtless, tan and covered in mosquito bites. The setting sun, had the bugs ravenous, and as we smacked them on our arms and neck, he made the equivalent of an eight year old’s, “FUUUUUUCK.” And through gritted teeth screamed, “I want to murder all the mosquitos.”

I felt just like Mufasa schooling Simba, “The mosquito is important, even though in this moment it seems like a blood sucking predator.”

He wasn’t as touched by the moment, disagreed, and yelled “They all need to die.”

Max barked in agreement.