Lovin' Galore

Geoffrey was doing his homework last week and looked up proudly from his paper saying, “I need three words that end in ‘ed’ so I wrote jumped, punched, and humped.”

I almost spit out my Diet Coke, “What was that last word?”

“Humped.” He said plainly.

“Ohhh, jee wiz. Umm. OK. So, we say that word about the dog, but it’s actually a bad word, so you’re going to need to choose something different.”

I walked away grateful he mentioned the question because I don’t really check their homework unless they’re being obvious liars that they finished so they can watch TV.

I haven’t had the dog neutered, although I think he would be the perfect dog to make more of, because I’ve been too busy. Everyone in the house finds the dog humping a disgusting nuisance and we kick him off of us, except G who finds it hilarious. I’ll come in the room screaming when I see G walking around with the dog who’s twerking at the end of a Conga line.

My summer break started this week. Being a teacher is not great pay, but having summer off is like winning the lottery. I dropped twenty pounds of baggage and will take care of household things to do, like getting the dog neutered.

By the end of the semester, I was in a tangle of anxiety, and I think it’s from interacting with ninety 18-22-year-olds every day. Sounding like a northern California hippie lady, I think I absorb too much of that young adult stress, where they have the entire world in front of them, their bodies can’t even contain all of this life potential. 

I love talking with my students, we really have some good laughs, but occasionally one will come in and have a breakdown, and being forever scared of HR, I can’t give them a hug, but just try and give them verbal hugs, and reassure them, all of this is fleeting, and they will have a new set of problems in five years, hopefully, more manageable problems.

One way I can tell being around thousands of twenty-year-olds affects me is my period. I’ve always been a period interloper and jump on any woman’s cycle I talk to for five minutes, but by the end of the semester, I’m having a period every two and a half weeks. April 2023 I will forever remember as the month of PMS. My boyfriend probably thought I was on the verge of burning the house down because of how I reacted when the genius dog eats cat poop and leaves bits of it on the carpet.

If it’s not students, it's coworkers. Last semester one of my coworkers was going through a divorce. He was devastated. I could hear him sniffling as he walked up the hall and then would stand in my office doorway for an hour, unloading a mountain of drama. At first, I was interested in the authenticity, but after a while, it was a huge inconvenience because whatever work I don’t get done, I have to bring home with me to do after I pick up the kids from school.

I was listening to a lot of Zig Ziglar’s motivational speeches at the time. He gives helpful career advice, and his recommendation for dealing with the person in the office who eats all your time by having a one-sided conversation in front of you is to tell them straight up, “Go ruin someone else’s career.”

I told my mom I was going to do this and she said, “No. He might shoot you!”

I always take my mom’s advice seriously, so I just told him I’m too busy to talk, and he found someone else to listen. 

At first, I thought I could give advice. Like I was some pro-divorcee, but honestly, I don’t know anything. I had lived by the guidelines that you make your kids think their other parent is fucking awesome, the best human being alive. I think this might have some long-term problems though because, after a while, the kids must think to themselves, well if you think he’s so great why aren’t you guys together?

My daughter came out of therapy the other day and said I think it would be helpful if you told me why you and Dad got divorced. I told her I would, over the weekend. I need time to think of what to say. I suppose it could be an opportunity for me to finally use ChatGPT because I have no idea how to say this without inducing a smear campaign against the other half of her DNA.

Another problem with pretending you think their dad is the fucking shit, is you then have to pretend their partner is the shit too. One time G asked me if I knew my IQ score, and I said no, and then he let me know his step-mom is a “genius” based on her IQ score. I wanted to say, “Who’d have thought? Well, now I know whom to call if I ever need to guess the next shape in a pattern.” But instead, I cheerfully said, “How lucky for her.”

I’m a type of chess piece in the mechanics of my ex and his wife’s relationship, and it nearly made me want to beat on a cowbell with a drumstick and march the perimeter of their house chanting, “Eat shit assholes,” after I refused to go to therapy with the two of them in December so they could determine why my daughter is having such a hard time at their house. Seeing as the intention places blame on me, I naturally declined to be the third wheel at their couples therapy, and they unleashed a retaliation where I can’t pick up the kids from their house to get one-on-one time like I used to.

So, the kids and I operate as a triad, and we can’t have one-on-one trips for the time being. My daughter wanted to watch Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, but my nine-year-old son refused to go. My final bribe was that I’d give him twenty dollars and he could play his switch the whole time, and he still said no. Exhausted from negotiations, I said, “You wouldn’t even go if I offered you a million dollars.”

Of course, he said, “I would do it for a million dollars.”

I told my mom that I wanted to take Kiki to see the movie and she said, “Isn’t that about…” and then whispered, “Periods.”

Then I told my mom, periods have become a main topic of conversation in the house after my daughter’s fifth-grade assembly on pads and tampons. Lucky for my daughter, I’m having them all the time, so she excitedly runs and gets me a pad or tampon when I’m screaming from the bathroom I now understand why I felt like the entire world was crashing down on me the week before. Naturally, my son has become quite informed as well, and I was driving him to football last week, he asked me concerned, “Mom, have you ever had toxic shock syndrome?”

Instead of going to the movies, we had a movie day at home. I was feeling nostalgic and watched old James Bond movies. My brothers and sisters and I used to watch these movies until my dad would come in from work, and see his five kids lazing about and demand we go move the firewood from one side of the house to the other. I don’t know why we didn’t question the motivation for this repetitive reaction to sedentariness. 

The misogyny in the movies is horrendous, however, the villains and henchmen are quite entertaining. We started with The Spy Who Loved Me where my daughter said after seeing the female spy, “She’s so pretty, why would she want to fall in love?” 

And I thought, “Uh, have I said something to make you think that?” But, I reassured her, “Everyone wants to fall in love Kiki. It’s nice to have a partner to share your life with.”

I’m sort of the opposite of my dad and am constantly popping popcorn and refilling drinks. Kiki is my little princess child, and I have to start being more like my dad, or she is going to really need to get a partner, no matter how gorgeous she is, or she’ll starve and live in a pigsty.

Then we watched Goldfinger. The kids didn’t even bat an eye when Pussy Galore comes out of the cock pit to introduce herself to Bond. They don’t know what the word pussy is.

Hopefully, it doesn’t show up on their homework.

Hole In Sock

 

Looking at our feet, as we lay in bed, I noticed my boyfriend and I both had holes in the toe of our socks. I said something about it only mattering if you go to someone’s house who makes you take your shoes off. He made me laugh when he said, “All you can say is, ‘Sorry, I’m a piece of shit.’”

The next weekend I took my kids to an ice skating rink. With the skate rentals, I had to take my shoes off, so I planned for it. Watching the three of us on ice skates explains why driving my kids around after school and on weekends for sports is not the best use of our time. Kiki clutched the side of the rink as she walk-skated the perimeter. Lap after lap, she refused to let go. By the end of our time, there was a slight improvement, I know this because I was right behind her.

People whizzed by us. An older person caught my eye. They were pretty big too, which made them even more impressive. On our third lap, I noticed that person fell, and they were surrounded by ice skating employees. On our next lap, the employees set up cones around them, and everyone skated around this possibly concussed-broken-backed senior. The next lap, EMTs were there helping the injured person. They took off their ice skates, and as I went by, holding Kiki’s hand, I saw they had a hole in their sock.

The start of the week was unusual because I left for work without my phone. I stomached the anxiety that no one could reach me for six hours, but by the time I was in my office I remembered I could text from my laptop, so I let everyone know.

I text my older sister, “I forgot my phone at home!”

Just like Nancy Drew, she wrote back, “How are you texting me then?”

I explained modern technology, and we text-chatted. 

The very next day, I left my phone again. How I got in the habit of leaving my house without my phone surprised the shit out of me. 

I usually listen to podcasts as I inch into Sacramento on the freeway, but instead, I had to listen to NPR. After the first day, I felt pretty caught up on world news. I heard one person say, “On average, Americans check their email seventy times a day.” And I felt quite smug, as I considered myself liberated from smartphone shackles.

When I was in my office I did the same as the day before and messaged everyone from my laptop. When I initiated a chat with my sister, I made sure she knew it was me. I wrote, “I forgot my phone again! Remember that time in your apartment in Philadelphia, when I woke up in the middle of the night and shit in your kitchen garbage can?”

It must be a familial problem because she wrote back, “Hahahaha. I almost just peed my pants.”

I wanted to write back, “Sorry, I have a hole in my sock,” but the inside joke would have raised her suspicion.

I haven’t forgotten my phone since, and I’m back to being shameful instead of smug, as I repeatedly check email. I find myself checking the weather a lot. In case you’re not listening to NPR, Northern California has been under a storm for what feels like four months. Every day has a raincloud next to it.

Assuming the internet has divine knowledge, I googled “When is it going to stop raining in California?”

And she told me, “Mid-April.”

I obsessively checked the weather because of a half-marathon I signed up for after concocting my New Year’s Resolutions on January 1. I picked up my race pack in a torrential downpour, and let everyone know I was probably not going to the race the next day. They were all volunteers, standing in the freezing cold, so they gave me a look that yelled, “Fuck off,” and I left even more conflicted.

I had the suspicion that if I didn’t go to the race, the sun would miraculously come out and I’d spend the rest of my life feeling like a little bitch. Maybe not for the rest of my life, but for at least ten years. I’ve listened to too much Tony Robbins. In an interview, he said the reason he does an ice plunge every morning is not for the health benefits, but as a lesson to himself, when he says he’s going to do something, he does it.

So I amped myself up, “When I tell you to do something, you better do it.” I added some Samual Jackson flare at the end. It was a motivation barrage against myself from some part of myself that acts like it's better than myself. Very confusing.

God did me a solid, and when I checked the weather that morning, the gray clouds next to 8 am and 9 am didn’t have the usual rain slashes underneath them. I couldn’t train because of the aforementioned rain, so I was going off of two cups of coffee and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. 

My runner’s high kicked in on mile four. It made the run a literal stroll down memory lane. I passed the place the kids did gymnastics as toddlers, the Embassy Suites we stayed at when my brother got married, and the dentist I went to three years ago when I had dental insurance and never went back to get my cavities filled. This reminded me to add “don’t miss open enrollment again” to my New Year’s resolutions.

Everyone was in high spirits, even the volunteers giving us our dixie cups of Gatorade. I recently watched the documentary Stutz on Netflix and had the realization while listening to Wilco’s Jesus, etc, “Jeff Tweedy must have been a Phil Stutz patient.” The high was really peaking because I shouted at myself, “EVERYONE IS A BURNING SUN.”

By mile twelve the high wore off. My resolve was strong, and I trotted along like a horse with eye patches on. When I crossed the finish line, there were crowds of people celebrating. I got my free burrito and sent a text to everyone of a picture a volunteer took of me holding my medal. They gave me some of God’s money.

Back home I kicked off my shoes and looked at my feet. As I crossed this off my New Year's resolutions list, my inner voice and Samual Jackson proclaimed, “You don’t have holes in your socks, motherfucker.”

Then I limped to the kitchen and took Tylenol because I told myself to.

Banana Head

I was at Safeway getting some things to make it through the weekend without having to do a major shopping trip. I had a list, and made it up and down the aisles in record time. Nearing the checkout, I noticed the lines were short, and pulled in behind a man buying cold cuts and a bottle of booze. I put my groceries on the conveyer belt before he finished paying. I strategically placed soda at the front, so I could grab them from the checker right after he scanned them, and get them back in the cart. I did this with such haste I nearly broke the plexiglass screen protecting him from people that sneeze without covering their mouths. 

I put my bank card in the machine, and answered all the questions, before reaching over the counter and grabbing a plastic bag to quickly load the food after being scanned. I was working fast, and this only highlighted the snail’s pace of the girl standing at the end, working to bag the groceries. She had on a full length, neon yellow, rain coat with grey reflective ribbons running up, down and across it. She looked pained, and when I said hi, she said, “I got braces on today.”

“Say goodbye to eating bananas,” I thought, as I put the bunch into a bag. I buy them for Johnny. I like to suggest them as a cure for headaches, back aches, or feet aches. He usually tries it, and sometimes it works, especially when taken with Tylenol.

Maybe the bagger was curb stomped before her braces were put on because she was suffering. I felt bad for her, but at the same time, wanted to encourage her to suck it up. Those braces aren’t going anywhere for a while. I said, “Sorry, I remember having braces, and it does hurt, but the first day is the worst day. It will only get better from here.”

I think this made her bag slower. After I loaded up three bags, I looked at her still working on her first and desperately wanted to rip it from her hands, saying, “If you don’t mind, my eleven year old is in the car, and even though I told her to lay on the horn if a crack head comes up to the window, I’d still like to make it out there in time to beat him over the head with this pineapple.”

She held a bag of tortilla chips wondering if she could get it in the plastic bag, and I politely said, “That’s ok, I’ll just keep that out of the bag. I hope you feel better.” And she wouldn’t hand me the bag, but instead very slowly put it in the cart like she was playing Tetris on the easiest setting. Then she looked at me like I was an asshole, which was likely just the face she had on from her mouth pain, and I rolled out of there. When my son and I got the the car, Kiki was just finishing up her game of “Rich Girls” on my cell phone and we headed home.

They were filled with dread about starting back to school after Christmas break. Kiki asked Johnny,”Aren’t you sad it’s the end of Christmas break?” He wanted to answer, “I didn’t get a Christmas Break!” 

I told them, “The second half of the year flies by. It will be summer before we know it.”

Then G said, “It’s going to take forever!”

I suppose for them it will, but for me it won’t. Just the other day I ran out of toothpaste, and grabbed the multipack out from under the sink and pulled out the last tube. I remember when I used to buy toothpaste one tube at a time, and it didn’t even seem that often, but now I buy them in bulk, and regularly. In ten years it will probably feel this way buying enormous rolls of saran-wrap. I’ll be at the store heaving a 1,000 foot roll of plastic wrap into the cart, saying, “I feel like I just bought one of these yesterday.”

We spent the last week of break living the life of a depressive, pop-culture fiend, binge-watching TV and eating a lot of food without nutritional value. This doesn’t help my mood. I thought my complaint about the additional remote control for the sound bar went unnoticed, but later, when Johnny was home, Kiki announced, “My mom says she doesn’t think the sound bar does anything!”

I was embarrassed. Men love sound bars, so much so that maybe there’s an undiscovered erogenous zone in their ear. To me though, it’s all the same. I blushed, and admitted to saying it. I probably should have gotten out of the house more.

I told my dad, “I get bad anxiety around this time because I can’t go running form the rain.” 

The origins of my dismissive optimism were made clear when my dad replied, “Join a gym. You’ll be fine.” 

We moved on to another topic. I ate a banana and thought about summer. It’s just one roll of saran-wrap away.

Racy Sounds of the Season

I don’t know how to say this without sounding like a psychopath, but my nine year old son makes a whimper sound that is ever present in adult film, and I don’t know where the hell he picked this up.

I’m not alone in this because chatting with the moms at my daughter’s basketball practice, I found this is common amongst his classmates. Even when I chaperoned the fifth grade trip to the Redwoods, the boys found it hilarious to moan, “Oh Mommy,” as a cheer of camaraderie. 

One of the ladies I talked to works at an elementary school, and said she’ll talk to the counselor about what we’re supposed to say because after I told my son he can’t make that noise he asked, “Why not,” and I was stumped. So I just said, “It’s a noise people make in the bathroom,” like a lowdown dirty liar.

The most likely suspect for teaching the youth bedroom moans is YouTube. I sit through as much Mr. Beast as I can with my kid, but I have yet to hear it there. Just plenty of winky-winky face references at 4:20 or 69, but they go completely over my son’s head. Thank god. If I had to explain it to my son, I’d liken it to heavy metal bands, cloaked in devil iconography, but singing about Jesus. Mr. Beast says 4:20 and 69 like a run-of-the-mill goofball, but he’s too busy building his production empire to blaze up and do the least fun sex-act, and probably spends his free time doing transcendental meditation and drinking yerba mate.

Luckily my kids miss out on any indication their mom and (not legally documented) step-dad have sex because of our damn dog. He stands outside the bedroom door, scratching and barking the entire time. Nothing grounds a sexy moment more back in reality than having the throes of passion interrupted by hearing “Shut up,” yelled in frustration.

The outside of my bedroom door looks like the inside of a coffin that someones been buried alive in. I’m assuming it’s the dog’s youth, and he’ll grow into a pup that doesn’t need to be in the action all the time, but the dog inspired me to write an adult-children’s book called Stop Having Sex Without Me, a labradoodle’s story of obsession and betrayal.

When Kiki yells to me, “I’m going to live with you full time.”

 

I pull her in for a hug, and sweep her hair out of her face, and say, “Oh girl, you’re just having a rough patch, and things will get better…” not adding, “If you lived here full time, I’d never have sex again, but there’s a chance the dog will grow out of this, in which case you can watch all the anime and sneak Coca-Colas full time.”

As a child of parents who weren’t hiding their sex life, I can say, the idea of your parents having sex does get less gross as you get older. The memory of walking in on my parents or the stupid ceiling fan rocking are not a source of betrayal anymore. Oh my god, I’m like the dog… but old. Needless to say, my son didn’t hear those sex moans from me because I’ve never had sex when they were home. Split custody does have its upsides. 

Split custody can be hard around the holidays, but mostly because of tempering other people’s sad reactions when you tell them you don’t get the kids till December 26. When my sister asked what we're doing for Christmas, I told her Johnny and I are making manicotti and watching movies all day, and she seriously asked, “Where are your kids?”

I wanted to say, “Oh, I finally could afford to send them to boarding school, but their return ticket isn’t till June. Total bummer.” Instead I took a deep breath and said, “Oh they’re at their dad’s. Where else would they be?” A slight rebuttal of passive-aggressiveness at the end.

The week before Christmas, Johnny said, “I bought you something for Christmas we both can enjoy.” 

I nervously replied, “I think we bought each other the same present.” 

I found out he was talking about lingerie, so maybe he thought I bought him a leather daddy outfit, in which case, he didn’t seem against it. However, my intuition didn’t fail me, and we bought each other espresso machines. We set up a coffee station in the kitchen, and as we drank espressos we said, “Now we drink coffee like the rich!”

I sent him a text about setting up the other espresso machine in the bedroom instead of the kitchen. An hour later I saw a text from him that just said, “HAHAHAHAHA!”

I forgot what I text earlier, so I scrolled up and read, “I think it’s too racy to put our espresso machines side-by-side, so I’m putting one in the bedroom.”

I LOL’d back at him and texted, “It autocorrected. Racy should say crazy… but it would be racy too!”

Now we have an espresso station in the bedroom. The noise that thing makes is more like machine gun diarrhea with grunts, so I’ll have an easier time explaining it to the kids, and it will be so much less offensive if they start mimicking it’s sounds. I just hope when they’re asked where they learned to make that noise, they don’t reply, “I hear it from my mom’s bedroom.”

On Thanksgiving, we ate chips in a hotel room. They loved it.

The Chaperone

My daughter was happy when I told her I'm volunteering in her classroom as part of the Meet the Artist program, giving a short history lesson on a famous artist before the students do a project inspired by them. Afterward she said, “You better wear make up.”

“How rude,” I replied, but the morning of, I put on “my face,” as my Grandma would say. My Grandma also said, “This winter’s gonna be harsh, I know because my hair is growing faster than usual.”

My Grandma made sense to me. It didn’t make sense to me that after I signed up to chaperone my daughter’s fifth grade field trip to The Redwoods, I wasn’t assigned her as a student to look after. The trip was two nights and three days, and chaperones watched over six kids day-and-night, except for a one hour break each afternoon. The day before we left on the trip, I told everyone not to be surprised if the next time they saw me I have a giant coldsore, and I packed a small suitcase with clothes and two boxes of nicotine gum.

When we arrived at camp, I attended the chaperone meeting, listening to our responsibilities, and unhearing the rule, “No gum allowed.”

I’m not a disciplinarian, and three days was just enough time for the girls to not throw a coup, and take over the cabin. I let them stay up past the bedtime, and after they found spider eggs under a bunk bed, I had to let them share beds, since they refused to sleep on the “bug bed.” By the end of the trip, I was just your average House Mom, sitting with my book in front of me, telling the girls to go to the playground, as I ferociously chewed gum. 

The girls and I grew a bond because of the confidence building activities. We climbed a vertical obstacle course. After living my entire life unable to do the monkey bars, I climbed a ninety foot wall made of ladders, tires and ropes. The wildest of the activities was a rope swing, where I was hoisted up to the top of a redwood in a harness, and then let go of a rope, so I free fell, and swung back and forth, screaming in fear, and relief that the most savage camel toe of my life didn’t split me down the middle. 

I realized why I couldn’t chaperone my daughter, she wouldn’t get the most out of the confidence-building exercises. Maybe it’s peer pressure, but through watching other people, courage builds up. I saw her when everyone met in the cafeteria. She’d give me a hug before saying, “I have to go to my group, and you aren’t supposed to chew gum!”

The day we left though, my daughter said more kindly, “Fuck the bus,” and she rode home with me. We listened to Kelly Clarkson and ate candy, and I noticed her hair growth in the three days was remarkable.

The next week the kids went to their dad’s and my boyfriend, whose been traveling all month, and I had a rare night together. We celebrated, and instead of eating the usual gummy, I decided to smoke from his vape pen. The gummy is perfect for me, I don’t know the chemistry but the strain works well; I watch TV with tunnel vision, laughing my ass off. Shortly after I hit this vape pen, I could tell that it is not the strain that gels with my body, or mind really.

We were watching Hulu, and every commercial was for pharmaceuticals to treat depression, or a depiction of society as Utopian, full of confident and happy people enjoying their buffalo wings or whatever. A commercial for cancer treatment medication sent me over the edge. The actress wasn’t wearing a scarf on her bald head, she was a healthy looking person. So I convinced myself our world is doomed, everyone is getting cancer because of micro plastics and electronics, and there's collective sadness from an inability to create the perceived euphoric feelings of chopping it up at chain restaurant happy hours.

I did what any sensible person would do, I smoked from the same vape pen the next night! This time I spent hours thinking about the overwhelming endorsement of censorship. The problem with abortion talking points being minimized to women’s rights, when it is an intersectional debate concerning race, class, capitalism, socio-economics and circling back to the great pharmaceutical giants working as our nation's chaperones. 

I’ll vote on behalf of my women idols, but still, why doesn’t anyone talk about the sale of fetuses for science, and how abortions are good for business. It is quite interesting, especially since stem cell therapy isn't accessible to people who don’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend. Ethics focuses on definition of life, rather than the selling of discarded fetus tissue. We're already in a preliminary Gattaca, evident by the nonexistent “special-ed” at my daughter’s school, and now we’ve got a Soylent Green medical industry on the rise.

The next night, I barfed out all this fear to my boyfriend. After a ten minute incessant speech, I looked at him like he should have the answers. Then I summed up all my feelings by saying, “I just don’t think I can hit that white vape pen anymore. It’s no good for my brain.”

The next day I left for a screenwriting conference,  and the minute, really within one minute, I entered my hotel room I started my period. Now it made sense why I googled, “How do I know if I’m schizophrenic” that morning.

This week I received letters from all the girls I chaperoned on the field trip. They were so sweet, and reminded me how everyone is just a little weirdo in a meat suit. My daughter was very pleased when she said, “Everyone says you’re the best chaperone because you let your girls stay up late. And I heard you wiped up four giant spider eggs, and threw them in the dumpster outside.”

The last part made me cringe, and defensively I said, “I didn’t want to kill them, but as the chaperone, I felt like I had to.”

Broken Doorbell

My doorbell is broken; a wonderful way to avoid solicitors. I tried to fix it after moving in. It requires an App, of course. I couldn’t get the doorbell to sync, and gave up, but I still have the app on my phone and now I get neighborhood alerts. I avoided adding neighborhood watch apps because I don’t want to read about petty grievances with messy front yards or someones trash cans, so I ignore the notifications from the doorbell app.

My cat comes-and-goes as she pleases. I won’t see her for two weeks, but then she’ll saunter in at 2am, meow loudly, making the dog run laps in excitement that is wild older sister is visiting. She jumps on my dresser and stares at me with such intent, I don’t know if she wants me to pet her or she’s plotting an attack.

In June, she must have taken to another family because she was gone. I thought she died, and was worried sick that Geoffrey would have a broken heart. I decided I’d just pretend she was alive, and I’d never tell the kids because they’re gone half the week, and will never notice. When Geoffrey leaves for college I'd retire the food dish. But my boyfriend and I were enjoying the Saharan heat one afternoon on the back porch and we heard her meow. I grabbed a flashlight and was convinced she was stuck under the deck, bending the chicken wire, telling him, “I see her!” I swear I saw her green eyes glowing in the light, but we heard another meow, I turned around, and she was walking towards us through the overgrown backyard like a tiny panther. 

I think she is mad I freaked out when she brought in a dying baby bird. She dropped the bird at my feet and instead of praising her, I swept it out the backdoor and dumped it over the fence. Or maybe she’s pissed I raise my pets Christian Scientists to make them strong. I keep her food dish above the kitchen sink, and I refill it every couple days, so I know she’s eating at night.

I received a notification from my doorbell app for a found cat, and I thought it could be her, so I decided to check it out. It was a different cat. Then I scrolled, and I saw more postings about found or missing cats that weren’t Midnight, ending on a video post of a mountain lion walking through someones backyard at 1am. I shut the app, and said, “This is why I don’t look at this shit,” trying to wipe the video from my brain.

In June, I told my sister about the cat’s disappearance, and she remembered how she lost my mom’s dog. My mom moped around crying and depressed, the entire time subtly blaming my sister for the dognapping. Then a month later, the dog showed back up, tied to the front door. My mom was overjoyed, but one morning while drinking coffee, my sister came in from working her overnight nursing shift, and my mom said, “You see how the dog is hiding his genitals, I think he’s been sexually abused.”

I wonder if my mom manifested her dog’s return. It reminds me of when Kiki was four years old, and we went to Vancouver. She left her baby blanket in the restaurant, and the next day she was devastated. We called the restaurant, and it was closed. When the taxi driver picked us up to take us to the airport we told him the story, and he said, “That’s where my son works! He’s probably there now.” And he called his kid, who said they had the blanket, and we picked it up a few hours before flying out of the country. I always think, "Of all the cabs!"

The blanket mysteriously disappeared after my ex-husband starting saying things like, “She’s too old to be carrying around that filthy blanket.” 

She became very secretive about her blanket, and would cram it under a pillow if anyone not related to her was around. Remembering the blanket, I got pissed off, and sent him a text that said, “Did you throw away Kiki’s baby blanket or just hide it?” 

He wrote back, “What blanket?” 

I replied, “The pink one. Her prized possession that you thought was making her weak and pathetic."

I’m blaming it on the heat, but I got caught up in negative thinking, so I decided to start listening to self-help audio books. It helped. The audiobooks are reminders for me not to boil over in rage when thinking about something that happened five years ago. Keeping those thoughts at bay are critical for opportunities that come knocking, otherwise I'm distracted and they’ll ring a broken doorbell. So I’ll refill my cat’s dish each morning, and not worry about a baby blanket thats been gone for five years. I’ve got more important things to do, like not think about mountain lions.

Secrets to Success

My mom called me very excited, and she reported, “You won’t believe what I just heard!”

“What?!” I said on the edge of my seat.

“They’ve found a common factor behind the super successful like Bill Gates, Steven King and Elon Musk. They drink Diet Coke all day long. Or Diet Pepsi. Either one will work.” She said proudly, obviously, having just discovered the secret to success.

I’m reading my annual parenting book. Parenting books are not my cup-of-tea because it’s hard to stay focused. I’m forced to re-read pages because my mind wanders into a daydream. It takes forever to get through one of them. I can’t remember what made me start this parenting book, it was so long ago when I cracked it open. Maybe the kids going back at school, or the intense closeness of summer. It's called The Conscious Parent, and really embraces the spirituality sold on Oprah, complete with the Tolle and Dalai Lama endorsement smacked on the cover. I’m digging the hippie-let-your-kids-be-themselves vibes.

As a parent, I just try to be present, and listen. This usually means leaving my phone in the other room. I impart my wisdom best I can, and unfortunately this can involve scare tactics. Like Nancy Reagan, I stand at the frying pan and demonstrate “this is your brain, this is your brain on drugs” for my kids. Standing in shorts that are too small for me, and holding a spatula I just sang Rain On Me into, I remind my kids, “You have to take life seriously!”

I’m so worried about my kids being introduced to drugs I’ve implemented a “Just Say No” campaign in my house because I’m from a hippie town in Northern California called South Lake Tahoe. Yes, the international tourist destination. If you live there though, it’s sort of a bleak landscape, after you erase the beautiful landscape, because you see the peace-love-and-happiness intentions to self-destruction. 

I have no idea if this label is PC, but it's for a character whose done so many hallucinogenics their brain doesn’t work properly, and Tahoe is ripe with them. They are called The Burnout. They’ve taken a plunge into psychedelics they weren’t able to fully come back from, and spend the rest of their adult life working jobs with a crew of high school kids, never noticing the growing age gap, and regaling the new-to-adulthood audience with stories from their wild partying days.

I met a bunch of burnouts in my youth. At the time, I thought they were cool, free-spirits, lighting the world on fire with their lack of inhibitions. But as I got older, they were unchanged. I remember going over to a coworker’s house, and she was dehydrating banana peels next to the heater vent because she planned to scrape out the inside of the peel and smoke it for a new trip. I thought what ingenuity, but a few years later when she died of a drug overdose, I could make some associations between drugs and living up to ones potential.

It’s cool when people report of a singular psychedelic experience that changed their life because they felt an energetic connection to all life, the power of the mind, and a sense of reality being malleable. However, from my experience, this is few and far between, and I have to take a hard line because the nuance of drug use can't be conveyed to children. So I tell my kids that drugs are for losers! Yes, I said losers. You can put a red hat on my head, and a fish filet sandwich in my hand, but I care about my kids. So much so that I’m willing to read the most boring books, and let them drink Diet Coke at breakfast. Or Diet Pepsi. Either one will work.