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.

Mattress Pad

A dirty old mattress pad ended up in my front yard last week. Only half was in my yard at first, the other half laid across the sidewalk and into the street. A conscientious passerby decided it was an unsafe obstruction, and instead of moving the entire thing into the street, they moved the entire thing into my yard. 

My house sold, so it shouldn’t be my problem, but as a will of good customer service, I plan to put on plastic gloves and a garbage bag poncho and stuff it into my dilapidated garbage bin for pick up tomorrow.

The month long process of the sale going through had some stressors, the most major being where we’re going to move. I have two weeks to figure that out. I’ve been putting in offers on new houses, but with this market, I’m hardly competitive. I think I’m grossly overpaying with a 2.5% over asking price bid, but some lunatic comes in 10% over asking with a fruit basket. 

On the first bid, I tried the friendly personal letter accompaniment. It wasn’t mandatory, and must be a liability for discrimination. I’m not doing it again because writing an over the top emotional plea for someone’s house made me feel like a moron, only because it didn’t work. Tell me my offer is tied for first candidate though, and I will write the most ass-kissing letter needed with a picture of my kids and me looking like the current landscape of the American Dream.

When my house went into contract, my little sister said, “Oh how exciting! You’ll probably loose five pounds and constantly clean out your house.”

I have the opposite problems with deadlines, they make my appetite insatiable, and napping seems like the most appropriate action. We did some thinning out, and dropped off a couple garbage bags at the Goodwill. As I pulled the old sewing machine from the trunk Geoffrey ran over and begged me not to give it away. I whispered in his ear, “It’s broken.” 

I think one of the workers heard me, the less serious one. The other guy, kept running inside to check with his manager that my old shit was acceptable for the tax write-off slip. 

We have a problem with holding on to things, and Marie Kondo’s techniques don’t work. I get joy from an old water-damaged notebook scribbled in when my kid was 3 years old, I love the moment of deliberation in the morning when I pick from my twenty different coffee mugs, and I can’t part with the candy dish full of Chinese fortune cookie fortunes that sits on my kitchen counter.

My realtor said, “Bring the kids along!” And I’m at a point where I will have to. My kids come at new people with similar interrogation techniques as a nosy Grandma. Kiki needs to establish marital status and Geoffrey likes to know annual income. He doesn’t have context for cost of living, but like Kevin O’Leary, he could make a millionaire feel they weren’t living up to their potential.

Kids are always going to be inquisitive, and man are they drawn to people with differences. They’re past the point of asking the transitioning Target checker their gender, or running up to a little person thinking they’re a playmate. Little kids hone in on people who look different purely out of curiosity. It really is an act of celebrating differences to ask questions. Adults, on the other hand, prefer casual obliviousness, “Oh, I didn’t notice half your face was melted off from a fire, and your right arm ends at the elbow and has what looks like a chicken claw at the end… But now that you mention it.”

It will be nice to have their hyper critical eyes examine the properties because I’m starting to waiver in my expectations, and they’ll give an unfiltered impression, like Mr. Wonderful, “It’s a shit hole, take it behind the barn and shoot it.”

My parents call me every morning, one then the other, to ask me how things are moving along in the process, and I keep repeating, “I’ll know more in three days.”

They demand answers about future plans, and I’m considering yelling into the phone, “Stop loving me so much! I’m going with the flow!”

They don’t know what “go with the flow” means. My dad called this morning, panicked, “Call your mom. She is canceling our trip to Monterey so we can move you out of your house!”

I said, “Dad, me, you and mom cannot possibly move my entire house next weekend. I am hiring movers… Unless you think Grandma will be able to jump in.”

I can picture the four of us trying to move. I’d have to light the house on fire so no one felt the need to admit we cannot move my king size memory foam mattress. I better get used to them pointing out everything that can go wrong because we have to satellite from their house for July.

All our stuff will go into storage and I’ll be working remotely. The goals will be to find a house and not watch more than four hours of TV a day. The kids are growing up, and I’m looking forward to a home that fits us all. The other day I shed a tear when I realized Geoffrey doesn’t call breakfast “breakfrist” anymore. And when we were watching My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Aiden came on the screen as the love interest, Kiki gave a grimace and said, “That is not what a guy I would like looks like.”

I asked her if it was his long flowing silky hair, or ridiculously thin scarf, and she said it was definitely his hair.

With speech impediments disappearing and TV crushes blossoming, I’m back in touch with early child parenting because of our new puppy; getting up all night and waking up at 5:30am. I worried Max might be Chuck Berry reincarnate, intentionally pissing all over the place, but he has too much interest in dirty panties to be such a dominate. The first few days the dog had accidents in the house, and like a natural dog mom, I already think he might be the smartest dog in the world because he hasn’t had an accident in the last three days.

Just like the mattress pad, that isn’t going to take care of itself and blow down the street, I have to clean out the house, pack up boxes and hire movers to get our stuff into storage. My window shrunk to the smallest it can possibly be allowing for going with the flow. So here’s to procrastination, making changes, and Chuck Berry on the receiving end of an eternal golden shower.

Sobriety Update

 

My sister and I were talking about our sober apps. My app is a tracker, and every morning I check in and read my inspirational quote. There’s only 30 unique quotes so they recycle each month. I could buy more, but I like my money too much. 

I told my sister I notice on Facebook a huge uptick in people from high school going sober. Maybe it just happens as we approach 40, for health and family, a realization that alcohol adds no value.

I’m lucky my closest friends are either sober or not big drinkers, but this isn’t my first venture into the land of dry bars, and sometimes when you quit there can be people who discourage the move, and in retrospect they make you drum your fingers on your chin, and think, “What the fuck do they want me to be such a sad sack for?”

My boyfriend doesn’t drink much, and when he does he ends up with a headache. I told him he should probably eat more bananas and he’ll be fine. I don’t know why I was pushing for him to keep up the good fight, if I started drinking vicariously through him I’d end up hating him like I hate myself when I drink. 

I told him, “I’d probably be able to handle alcohol if I gained 20 pounds.”

He said, “ I don’t think its worth it.”

“But I’d end up a B-cup!” I added with optimism.

He was probably thinking, “But, that butt!”

My butt would get gigantic. I’d show all those true crime enthusiasts how you actually catch a serial killer. Shove that big booty into some Lulu leggings and go running around the park. One of them will surely venture out of their molester vans parked along the park perimeter, trying to get their hands on that bouncing booty.

My current butt size is already attracting men who get dropped of at the park as part of their adult daycare. They probably have the same intelligence as the serial killers, but luckily didn’t have a childhood with a psychotic dad putting cigarette butts out on their face every night after he drank 18 Natural Ice. 

Unsuspecting at first, I just assume, what a friendly person, always waving and saying hello. And then we have an actual, “Hi how are you? You from around here?” Conversation, and one will go right into how they’d love to go line dancing together sometime, or I notice another one standing on the corner with a fishing pole going into a shallow mud puddle. I’ll ask him if he’s caught anything yet, and he’ll smile and say he’s waiting it out. I realized, the nice ones are childhood trauma deprived serial killers.

I tell my kids alcohol is poison. They’re predisposed to these horrendous genes, and I can name five relatives who drank themselves to death or let alcohol drive them into a major come to Jesus moment. I figure it will help the kids when they first dip their toe into it, that they realize getting black out drunk is not all it’s cracked up to. Luckily my daughter has inherited her dad’s IBS, and I think having a holy shit storm in the aftermath of alcohol will be reason in itself to reassess the pros and cons of binge drinking in order to get home before midnight.

My son, he doesn’t have that though, and he has the same problem as me, where he can go to crazy town, with the best intentions, and end up wallowing in the pendulum's back swing.

We went to the tennis courts at the park. He envisioned himself running about like Andre Agassi, and when reality didn’t match that image, he had a full blown, racquet smashing melt down. I was able to talk him off the ledge, but after more ball-chasing he sat down on the bench pouring his bubbly water over his head and agonizing about his inadequacies. There’s only so much, “This is your first time… Practice is all you need,” before I decided it’s time to close the spectacle down and head home.

As we were walking off the courts he was acting like brat, and jokingly, playing off what I’d seen him do moments earlier, I took my bubbly water and dumped it on his head. Terrible idea.

Both of the kids went straight for the jugular, and pulled their divorced kids card, telling me how little they preferred my company.

Defeated, I walked ahead of them to the car as people watched them trailing behind me crying and acting like I put cigarette butts out on their faces.

The next day Kiki had therapy, and when I picked her up, I nervously sat in the car thinking, “Oh lord, her therapist is going to pin point the entire reason were in therapy after learning about the disastrous tennis incident.”

I actually thought I should have implanted the seed of their general meeting discussion right before dropping her off, “Remember that time Shelly, your dad’s girlfriend, wouldn’t let you sit next to your dad at the restaurant 5 months ago, but you refuse to let it go?”

I didn’t have to because the first thing the therapist said when she saw me was, “Were just working on her stuck thoughts.”

I was relieved, grateful my daughter’s undying faith that no other person in this world will rise up to her status in her father’s eyes led her to fixate on this earth shattering incident.

My sister and I were trying to assess how we ended up with these shit genes, and I think part of it has to do with starting too young. Get right into the party scene and think it’s all about getting faded, as we used to say. This habit led me to think the intention of drinking alcohol is to black out, and then my consciousness is deactivated and some form of alien technology within me is activated.

I crave the abandon, the lack of control, and it starts at the very first sip when I think, we’ll see where this leads me. After a while my mind goes cyborg, and each face I focus on is categorized as either I want to fight you, I want to fuck you, or undecided. Seeing as how my best friends are all related to me, I’m a glad I quit when I did.

Because it’s always a good idea to blame your problems on your parents, I added, “Maybe it’s because mom and dad are yellers who liked to end their rant on a complimentary note, so it left us all with low self esteem and high self confidence. Leading us to think, I should hurt myself and have faith I will overcome.”

I’m a yeller too, and sober or not sober, I’ve got to constantly work on it. When the kids get into a tantrum, I unravel into a similar state of mania, and the three of us look like a motley crew of unhinged desperation. It’s hard though because once we get into a good rhythm and understanding, they go off to their dad’s for a couple days and we have to start all over again.

Everyday is not going to be like the days we sing to Meghan Trainor and dance like Freddie Mercury. Sometimes, I start the day with coffee and they make their way to the couch with a blanket and pillow, half asleep and complaining. In an attempt to change the subject, I ask them things like, “Do you think we have alien technology inside us? And it can be activated at any moment?”

My daughter fully takes the question in, and her jaw drops. However, before I can start on how we should meditate to activate our alien technology, G gets bored out of his mind by the ridiculousness and will likely punch me in my the butt, and ask why it jiggles so much. 

I look at him, and sigh, and then yell, “Hey, Alexa! Play Queen!”

It activates a good day.

Pranksters

The other morning I was heating up soup for the kids’ lunch and the smell made my stomach turn. I ran to the kitchen sink and threw up. My mind went right to, “Oh my goodness, what have I done!”

I remembered swallowing my Ladies multi-vitamin with black coffee on an empty stomach 15 minutes earlier, and rested easy. But a PMS mind doesn’t rest easy for long. The barf in combination with my complexion, that’s looking like Bill Murray’s these days, had me googling “Is it ok to chew Nicorette Gum while pregnant.”

I’m blaming the corona-masks for my zits. My face hasn’t looked this bad since I was pregnant with my daughter. Lots of women report bigger boobs and a pregnancy glow, I looked like I was carrying my baby in my butt and had a face like Freddy Kruger. 

Halfway through my pregnancy I walked into the elevator at work, and my co-worker looked at me and said, “You’re having a girl. I can tell because she’s stealing all your beauty.”

She was right! I ended up with a beautiful baby girl. 

My period came later in the day, so I didn’t have to worry about figuring out how I’d fit a pink baby bassinet in my closet. It does concern me, I’d have no acne indication if it were a boy, and his embryonic development would be getting a steady stream of nicotine from ten pieces a day.

Boys don’t suck beauty from their mom, I didn’t get one zit when I pregnant with my boy. I don’t know where boys get their beauty, but they do get just how to drive their mom crazy with a big smile on their face. This afternoon doing homework, he kept saying, “Mom, I have to tell you something,” and then get up to my ear and burp. He didn’t tire from it, and found it just as amusing the tenth time as the first, and by then I was swatting him away with the kitchen broom.

On YouTube he watched prank videos made by some kid. Not understanding what a prank was exactly, he walked out of my bedroom holding a pair of scissors and said, “Pranked ya!”

I yelled, “What have you done?” And raced into the bedroom, to see that he cut a hole in the fitted sheet.

I told him, “A prank isn’t destroying someone’s property, it’s a trick, like putting Red Bull in someone’s TheraFlu.”

I can just imagine him throwing a cup of juice against the wall, and shouting, “Happy April Fools Day!” 

After which, I drop the broom for a mop and scream, “Its freaking May!”

My daughter is so curious about the idea of starting her period. She is only nine. I get it though, she is ready for her super power, PMS clarity, to kick in, even though I can’t imagine how whack her mood swings will be. When we were talking about it, I started singing in a low raspy voice, “Girl, you’ll be a woman soon, blah, blah, blah.”

And she asked, “Who sings that song?”

Then I got a grossed out look on my face and said, “Some freaking weirdo.” And her and G laughed.

Later, my daughter took out her markers and gave me one of her tattoos. She made a big heart and inside it wrote, “Alicia, but my preferred name is Mom.” It took up my entire back. When G walked up asking what we were doing, I told him Kiki is giving me a tattoo and it says, “Alicia, but my preferred name is…” 

And he quickly finished my sentence saying, “freaking weirdo.”

I hid my face behind my hand because I had to laugh. I’ll probably get more zits from that. He’s figured out a way to make up for the lack of pregnancy acne. Of course.

Cleaning

 

My daughter is hyper focused on middle school and being able to navigate the social structures of cool kids and everyone else. She is mad at me because I told her she’s staying put in her Catholic school, and not because they stayed loyal to us when the entire world shut down, but because middle school is hell on earth, and the only thing it’s good for is setting a benchmark for how awful people can be. 

I informed her, “Anyone who enjoyed my middle school is in prison right now, or just getting out.” Middle school is when bullies have their time in the sun. Like some curious masochist, she doesn’t care, but lucky for her, I make the decisions. I told her “Enjoy the bubble of security I’m providing for you in lieu of driving a Tesla.”

I’m selling my house because I want to take the profits and buy a bigger house. While packing up our clutter I found a box of childhood treasures. My middle school photo album was cheery, but flipping through the pages I remembered what a smiley, brace-face, chubby kid I was. Like a non-threatening puppy to a miserable violent drunk, I had a target on my front and back. 

Our first weekend on the market, and my tiny bungalow is not as in demand as I thought it would be. I complained to my mom that I wasted a bunch of time packing all our stuff up, and she consoled me by saying, “At least you cleaned your house.” 

That’s true, but what about all the hours I daydreamed about my next house; a three bedroom, two bath, with a swimming pool and long driveway my coachman uses when pulling us in our horse and carriage (it’s a Tesla). That time is gone.

After the big house cleaning, my boyfriend and I decided to do a body cleanse. We were going to only drink green juice for two days. I can’t tell you how it turned out because we broke by the evening of day one, thinking the starvation would ruin one of our few weekend nights together. Earlier in the day we bought movie tickets and the neighboring Jimboy’s Tacos was too much to resist. After eating dinner, we had a special gummy for dessert, and it came on like a mack truck. 

What usually takes 45 minutes, only took 15. We walked to Hagen-Das after dinner, we’d already blown it, and I ordered an ice cream cone. Sitting on the bench, in the unfamiliar scene of a crowded pavilion, I knew I was high because I became uncomfortably paranoid I was licking my ice cream cone like some type of sex pervert in front of hundreds of people. 

After that eternity, we walked into the the theater and inconspicuously headed to concessions for a diet coke. I didn’t talk, I just stood there, reading the menu board for five minutes. Feeling the relief of getting to sit on a recliner chair in a dark theater, I quickly walked to the escalators, and almost flung myself down the stairs going in the wrong directions. Now, I can’t tell you if the movie I saw was good, but the dark room and eyes forward was heavenly.

The next day I woke up feeling clear. It must be how people feel after rubbing their face off on the carpet during a Ayahuasca trip. I googled, “Does marijuana cause brain damage?” I didn't see any reassuring search results. The supposed growth from my mind altering experience could be minimal. The eye twitching that developed from the mounting stress of having to follow my kids around with a vacuum cleaner disappeared. 

If my house sells, it sells, and if it doesn’t we still have a cozy bungalow. At least it isn't middle school. The greatest self-discovery is that I only like eating a gummy at home, when my boyfriend is next to me, so we can laugh to the TV for hours. And, of course, to only ever order ice cream in a cup.

Best Friends

I was thinking about the infamous line from Streetcar Named Desire, “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” As a single mom, I can’t depend on the kindness of strangers because I have to always assume strangers are child molesters. Instead, I have to always depend on the kindness of my family and feel guilty for inconveniencing them and worry that my kids are being treated like cargo.

With a task list creating schizophrenic distractions, it’s hard to live in the moment while simultaneously keeping an eye on the prize. I decided to sign up for three classes this semester, and let me say, I definitely underestimated the amount of time I’d need to dedicate to these classes while working and being a mom.

Every Monday we go to little G’s tutoring. Kiki and I sit in the lobby, and as the two women who run the center go back and forth from the learning room to their office, my daughter likes to overshare all the details from her life. I appreciate her transparency, but her need to tell everyone about her “Divorced Child Syndrome,” can make me cringe. Although, those encounters pale in comparison to her calling me a racist at the top of lungs, after I gave her a made-up math test that had fractions on it.

If we weren’t in public, I’d have asked her, “Are you working for MSNBC now?” But instead, I explained to her what racist means, and if anything, I was being mathist. I should later warn her that the holy white saviors who are inept at contextualizing tend to be the quickest people to cancel because they are unable to live up to their own level of scrutiny.

I had to drop one of the classes I’m taking, and sadly, it’s child psychology. To be fair, we spent the first four weeks talking about genetic deformities, and it didn’t seem like we were ever going to get to a point where I’d find out what I’m supposed to say to my kids after they tell me they want their parents to get back together. After the instructor assigned a seven page paper, I withdrew from the class, figuring I should spend that time on the ninth draft of my screenplay.

I asked my daughter’s therapist how am I supposed to respond to their questions on mom and dad getting back together, because saying, “Astrologically your father and I have low compatibility, in all areas, not just sex and communication.” Just seems wrong.

Her suggestion was hardly a revelation, especially considering the cost of her expertise, but reassuring. Just keep driving it home, that it’s better for two people to suffer than four. Not really, but because they were so young when we got divorced, they need to be told that mom and dad don’t get along, and this is better for everyone.

The kids stayed with my parents last weekend. I maximized their time away, and feel like I’m back on track. As the kids pulled away in my dad’s truck, my daughter blew me a kiss and closed the door in my face, but my son packed up two garbage bags of stuffed animals from his room, and told me he will call every hour. My guilt compounded when his little eye balls filled up with tears and he said, “You’re the greatest mom in the whole world.”  I returned the compliment, and after they drove away, got to work. 

When they came back home, we had a wonderful day, without any nagging distractions. That night, they were curled up sleeping, and I gave them each a kiss and took a picture to add to my “sleeping beauties” photo album. I was reminded of another great movie quote, “A boy’s best friend is his mother.” From Psycho.

Sexy Annoyance

I didn’t like Queen’s Gambit. There, I said it! I could tell, within minutes, the show was written by men. The main character is not Emma Stone, but some other skinny red-head with fetal alcohol syndrome. She is a chess grandmaster whose brilliance is a divine result of taking copious amounts of drugs and staring at her ceiling. 

I understand that TV shows get to take some liberties, like Carrie Bradshaw’s weekly Village Voice column funding her Dolce closet and NY apartment, but I could forgive the unexplained wealth thanks to Samantha’s generous serving of dick-jokes. In Queen’s Gambit there wasn’t a counterbalance to the unexplained intelligence, and my tolerance was worn real thin by the repetition of close-up shots of pursed lips and doe eyed Not-Emma-Stone demonstrating she was thinking real hard. I actually screamed at the TV, “You’re playing chess bitch, not taking a selfie!”

The desperation for a diverse cast lends itself to some pretty cringeworthy recycled tropes. However, it was the childhood best friend character that made me move the box of See’s chocolates off my lap so I could get my notebook and write down her great line, “Fuck em’ if they can’t take a joke.”  

In case you’re wondering if the Queen’s Gambit is based on a real life woman, Google says no, but her mannerisms are taken from the racist hermit Bobby Fischer, so the show’s motivation of advancing female roles on TV bitters since they decided to just slap a vagina on a man. It reminds me of Ms. Monopoly, the board game adapted for young girls who prefer a business suit over a princess costume. I felt a burning rage after reading the tagline on the Ms. Monopoly box, “The first game where women make more than men.” 

**

My kids and I were sitting at the table doing our work, when they started bickering. Kiki turned to G and yelled, “YOU SEXY ANNOYANCE!”

I tried not to laugh. They picked up the word listening to Top Pop, but have no idea what it means. I didn’t know what to say, so I told her to be nice. I will figure out what to say if I hear it again because “sexy” is the last thing she wants to be screaming at the boys in her class who annoy her.

Kiki is a huge proponent of “Girls Rule, Boys Drool.” She takes in a lot of hyper-aggressive-girl-empowering content, but I have to remind her that it is sexist to say you don’t like someone because they are a boy. I advocate, ”Girls rule AND Boys rule!”

Then G chimes in, “No, actually Girls drool and Boys drool.”

Even though there's a lot of music about Girls ruling the world, reality is falling short at the moment, especially here in California where female dominated industries are shut down because of coronavirus. Construction is in full force, but hair stylists are being snuck in the back door. Local coffee shops and restaurants are closing down, yet Starbucks has a line wrapping around the block. The elementary schools are closed, but the NFL and NBA are underway.

Gavin Newsom is out eating Foie Gras while the children of California are acting like they’ve been eating paint chips. I can’t help but assume it’s strategic that women industries are shut down because someone has to keep the kids off the paint chips. High school and college students are capable of distance learning, but little kids cannot without assistance, and this should be prioritized over the National Football League. But I don’t know if it’s Napoleon Newsom or our country's crippling litigiousness because now we’ve opened the floodgates of liabilities that could keep everything closed forever. Everything but the NFL and Starbucks.

**

Back to Queen's Gambit and this Girls-Rule-the-World entertainment narrative. Maybe it’s manifesting a brighter tomorrow, the same way I have a “Harvard Mom” bumper sticker and my kids are seven and nine, but currently girls aren’t even ruling their own industries. If this were a TV show, a scientist would find the cure to coronavirus after getting eyelash extensions and her butthole waxed. There would be no need to demonstrate a culmination of knowledge through education and practice, rather the cure would come to her in a psychedelic daydream after eating mushrooms. 

In reality, we just have to wait this out. Even though women's jobs were the target of Newsom’s corona cure because there aren’t lobbyists protecting them by paying him, in a couple months the country will be vaccinated. The little kids can get back to school and everyone back to work. It’s going to be a long road to recovery for the economy, but at least we know, we will always have football. That's a really sexy annoyance!