My World Cup Highlights

I have officially returned from the longest vacation I have taken since my wedding in 1993. Yes, I have been married THAT long with means I am THAT old. Or, it means that I was a crusty child bride sold off by my parents for a handsome dowry that consisted of a day-old Challah loaf, unused, stay-press JC Penney bed linens from the Carter Administration and a set of chipped wedding china purchase at the St. Vincent De Paul clearance sale in Baraboo, Wisconsin during a tornado warning. Or, it means that I am terrible at math, an embarrassing truth, and have forgotten when exactly I walked down the aisle wearing a borrowed dress with colossal shoulder pads, natural hair and a MAC matte lipstick with Spice liner favored by Madonna during her Blue period.

Because the trip was so long and involved with so many delicious stops along the way, Dave and I have decided to start fresh by doing P90X, a sadistic exercise regimen that we hope will counter the affects of eating our way through four Eastern states that consider the Italian sub with hot peppers, a well rounded, four food group meal and the combination pizza a light, healthy salad-like appetizer best eaten before a breaded entree or after the clock strikes midnight.

So, this morning, after the first session of isometric exercises for arms and back, or as the dude in the DVD should call it, Satan’s unbearable upper body beating, I can pretty much guarantee that this post will be short and sweet due to my inability to lift my arms past my belly button, accompanied by a nagging sensation in my neck that I am wearing a choker made out of bowling balls and boulders.

In short, we had the trip of our lives, kissing and hugging family without stopping and reconnecting with old friends who slipped through the cracks and are now back on our tracks. The highlights of our three weeks may read like a senior yearbook page of immature insider information and cheesy, pre-baked bites. But it was more meaningful, fulfilling and all around awesome than any vacation we have every had and I want to scribble down my notes with hearts for i’s and smiling faces for o’s before the noise of my normal life washes it away.

Pickle and her awesomeness, a full fridge, a Jill embrace, Vinnie’s Italian food trough with Jamie and Chrissy, Brothers Pizza every other day, Tyson’s extra hands to help with Otto, pizza pick-up and beer runs and that look, Tyson, Tyson, Tyson, my parents patience and willingness to have us take over the house that ghosts built, the World Cup with beer chaser, the New Jersey greenery, Adelle and her brisket, the huge backyard and the naked Otto swimming in a kidney shaped pool from 1973, naked Otto shitting on the pool deck while we watched in horror, Otto peeing freely in and on every bush he could find, three days of uninterrupted rest with a summer cold, patching up a broken man and healing a heart, The North End with my Boston Baked Beans, Otto in museums, New York City, Otto pooping in Central Park, Heavenly Heather and her crushing crew, that kitchen in Queens, the argument over purple, meeting Pistols, a day with my mother shopping for recliners (whaa???), blowing off Maine, Otto’s new siblings, squeezing Stephanie and Cliff, those margaritas in Portsmouth, the beach, the storm, the presidential candidate, the Fish ‘N’ Chips, the Brazilian beans and rice, the sister, the old diaries which will soon come out, the never-before Papai pizza night, the teary goodbyes, the beginning.

Walking Along With Sticky Fingers

I am back in my parent’s house, sitting in my high school room looking at the same stickers I placed on the full-length door mirror back when Guess jeans were a proud and posturing second skin coming up to your nipples and Fiorucci meant something more than “slut” in Italian in the hallways of the high school hierarchy. The room is now my mother’s all-purpose room but I cannot help wondering how the stickers could still be there after eight boyfriends, three colleges, six cars, four cities, one husband, one baby and twenty-six years of humidity and humiliation. Here are the stickers, as seen from nostalgic eyes…

1) The Who - Day on the Green, 1982 concert sticker from their Cow Palace show where the Clash opened for them and my world opened like a loose leaf binder filled with clean, crisp, wide-ruled paper covered in profound doodles and heart-shaped squiggles. A fact: Pete looked down at me in the front row and smiled and flapped his arms as manically as I was flapping and didn’t care that I looked like a small, confused Romanian orphan chicken drowning in a sea of mud and warm beer. It was, and still is, the best concert I have ever seen. I was deaf for two days afterward, hearing nothing but the low, grinding sound a whale might make while trying to take a number two in unfamiliar, frigid waters. I still hear ringing whenever I dare slip on a pair of Dolphin Shorts or play Quadrophenia on vinyl or Otto screams just a little too loud for a little too long right into my ear canal. And yes, I was only thirteen and my parents let me go. Whaa???

2) The Led Zeppelin metallic decal I bought at Tower Records two days before moving to Boston – I put that up as a protest to the unfair treatment I had received from two cruel parents who insisted on moving me three thousand miles away from everything I held dear and sacred and plopping me into a hot and muggy town that favored while pumps over penny loafers and boy bands over Bonham.

3) The Boynton cat sticker with two kitties hugging each other with the words “Keep Smiling” in bold capitols - Apparently, this was so profound to my tortured teenage heart that I used it as my senior quote when nothing else would come to mind. I have always sworn that I am an inherently lazy human being and if that doesn’t prove my point than I casually throw up my hands in apathetic defeat.

4) A sad, little pink and silver soccer ball – the lame little sticker is the last remnants that I played a sport that I had once loved but soon hated after moving to the new school and getting on a new team with a coach who could deflate one’s balloon of enthusiasm quicker than a sharp sewing needle and a gun filled with broken glass and expired milk.

5) The perfectly poignant Benetton 012 sticker that represented everything cool and colorful and pre-collegiate about the 1980’s - Before sexting and sucking and scape-goating, there was shopping, sleeping and seeing the world in all the colors of Benetton, even fluorescent green, a color that made everyone look like day-old vomit on a sunny subway platform

6) The rainbow-colored sticker of a parfait with a cherry on top - I was fifteen and it was cute.

The Best of Sick and Tired

Being on vacation with the flu sucks. Sure, I am sleeping off the last three months of stress and anxiety, a sunny spring where we really got our butts handed to us on a plastic Ikea platter filled with BPA, Agent Orange and Syphilis. Instead of celebrating in a foreign land with cold beers and chlorine-coated belly flops I have to get all coughy, sore throaty and ruin the scheduled itinerary of funscapades for myself.

Is it really fair that while Dave, Otto and Tyson are running around hiking and swimming in murky lakes and picking up girls who chew gum professionally and swim in neon bikinis better suited for small, Brazilian favella children I get to lie here in a thirty-five year old bed drooling away on a pillow that feels like it’s filled with a combination of mulch and wet cement from the pool installation of 1975?

While they drink in the sounds and sights of the Jersey wilderness I have the honor of lying around in a yellow, clown-themed guestroom as the ghosts of Dave’s past girlfriends surround me with their cut-off belly shirts and feathered hair strategically clipped up atop frosted-tipped heads that resemble the ugliest members of Poison, White Snake and Cinderella all wrapped into one stone-washed denim hallucination.

Am I bitching? Maybe. Am I feeling sorry for myself? Possibly. But I do admit that I have not had this much rest or experienced this kind of delicious, suburban silence since graduating from high school without a summer job or a thick envelope in my hands from one of the many colleges I lazily applied to. All I had was an impressive shoulder pad collection and a cloudy dream. Those were the days…

The Fish Are Biting So Far

So, since I have been catching guppies as of late and reliving the 80's of my youth, like the high-waisted, ripped-denim, belly-shirted, big-boobed, boozy fishing vixen to the right, I have not had the time or the Internet access to postulate and post. But I am mid-fishing trip and have to say a few words of thanks.

On our first leg of our journey we swam back to my hometown and had a few days to relax and take in some really great, quality family time. In the past, family time meant ancient arguments and festering feelings over such heated topics as to fry or not to fry bacon inside the house or what the true definition of cleaning out the basement really meant, 1-800-JUNK or The Container Store 2010 Hoarders collection?

This time, it was peaceful and pleasant and lovely and Fonzi cool. Thank you to my parents who were gems and my sister who was just a sister for a lovely change. There was no Mary J. Blige drama, no hollering back, no crazy, no wacko know how. I got to see my best pal Chrissy, my savior in all things family and friends and we ate like piglets and laughed like hyenas, the kind that invade Australian campgrounds and steal marshmallows and small children.

Then we hopped in my parents car with my nephew, our new manny of many skills and drove to Dave’s folks house, a Shangri-La of kidney shaped pool parties and prepackaged foodstuffs. Sure, the demons were circling the perimeter of the property, waiting to throw some fuel at the fire pit of pent-up pouting but after a Dallas-like discussion and a Hallmark moment of clarity the clouds parted and the sun of understanding came out to play. Thank you both for hearing and seeing and speaking so well.

Then, like real city cats looking for some gritty fish bones we hopped on the train and rode into New York City. Once there, we met up with a few of my dearest yet farthest. The anticipation was epic and the experience did not disappoint. I got to reconnect with a couple of people that have meant so much to me over the years and a new one that I hope I will see a lot more or.

Thank you, Tyson for coming a long for the ride and being such a huge help and my favorite person! I am so sorry the Celtics lost but the fourth quarter is really not their friend.

To Mikey, for hopping on a train and meeting us under the blue whale, for always really being there when I needed a chat or a laugh and for making a baby as beautiful and successful as Marty. Nice work.

And Heather, the hostess with the ability to put her ankles behind her head and still dance The Nut Cracker. You have always been one of the most important people to me and I am thrilled and honored that we got the chance to rewind and start again. You met us in the city, you showed us your town, you introduced us to your stellar, A+ children, a pair as lovely as the loveliest cherubs in a priceless Rembrandt, you opened up your beautiful home to a hornet’s nest of crazy for a full twenty-four hours, you fed us your newly purchased groceries, you showed us what great parenting is really all about, you laughed that laugh that I fell in love with twenty years ago and you let us all drink in your wonderful husband and the family you painted together.

And finally thanks to Jodi, a new friend who took the time to meet a stranger on a corner of an unfamiliar Brooklyn street and walk her to an even less familiar café where we guffawed at our lives and did spit takes over our idiosyncratic choices and oddly parallel lives. You have always been someone I admired from afar, a writer of beautiful, brutal truths, a skill so few truly possess and a gift that no one can stop. But after meeting you and the twinkling twosome face to face I feel lucky to even call myself a fan, much less a friend.

I will continue to write about our travels when time permits but if it was not clear in the above paragraphs I am having the time of my life, save for a sore throat, an old man cough and the Nyquil addiction. But overall, I am one lucky mother and apparently, one great fisherwoman.

Fishy Fishy Fish

Gone fishing for a bit but I promise to return with a stinky catch and many a tale of a wayward sailor.

The Apple Falls Sideways

When one looks at their family tree, whether it is as tall and straight as an oak or as crooked as a cashew tree, one should see some semblance of similarity. When I glance at my far-reaching, sunburst of distended branches I call my family forest, I shudder in shame at my inadequacies.

My fraternal grandmother Celina had eleven children, enough for two competing basketball teams and a slow-speaking water boy to live under the same roof. My maternal grandmother, Phyllis, had five, a no less amazing feat when you consider the fact that she had hair as long and luscious as Crystal Gale did on her 1979, “Don’t You Make My Brown Eyes Blue” tour and her last baby came as a shock around her forty-eighth birthday and years prior to Fem-Bot fertilization that is the gold standard of today’s baby booming Barbie’s.

I have always known that being a mother to an overpopulated pond of Piranhas was not in the cards for me. And yesterday, was a full frontal of my familial failings in full color. I, along with three other moms from school, babysat Otto and his crazy classmates during a two-hour teacher appreciation luncheon, a well-deserved gathering for a group of adoring angels that take care of our little deviled eggs.

We arrived as the kids were sitting down to lunch and while they nibbled on quesadillas and refried beans the color of a day-old corpse, the party began. We pushed the teachers out of the room and the minute they left you could see the twinkle of trouble light up in every set of little, lovely eyes.

J wanted more food, D wanted to show me his shirt, O spilled his water on his lap and started to cry, L and C insisted they were done and N, E, J, and got up mid-bite and ran toward the reading nook to bone up on The Pigeon and The Hot Dog. W sat on mommy, G cried over spilled blocks, another G was angelic while wrapped around her mother and N wept wildly after E refused to share.

Then the potty patrol party began. In fits and starts like a rag tag group of unruly army recruits we hustled the tots into a bathroom with teeny little toilets and low lying sinks and watched as hoards of half-pints relieved themselves in all manners of making. We then returned to the main room where Georgia, mom of all moms, read to the gaggle who now surrounded her feet like a swarm of baby bees in a very cute hive. As the queen bee soothed her charges with No More Monkeys Jumping On The Bed, another mommy and I began cleaning up a mess that rivaled the aftermath of The Million Man March.

Then the professional playtime began as a plethora of plastic manipulatives, a new fangled, politically confusing nickname for traditional toys were poured onto the rug by any and all small hands that could form a fist. I sat down to join the juniors and within minutes I was buried under a pile of puny people. Every kid in the class, including Otto and his car collection but excluding a few bookworms and the town crier were on top of my lap and laughing like jackals at a hunt.

Now, a thirty-pound kid resting in one’s arms or sitting on one’s legs is more than doable and adorable. But when you multiple that weight by the square root of Pi you get bone crushing, back-bending pain only a Romanian weight lifter could withstand. Sure, I asked for it after riling the kids up and screaming ‘Dog Pile!” But, who knew they could truly comprehend the canine term for “buried alive” at the tender young age of three?

After my curdled calls of “uncle” went unheeded they lost interest in suffocating me and turned their attention to arguing over magnetic building blocks and plastic foodstuffs. And before a rumble broke out over who got the fake fried chicken or the pretend pasta we set up the cots and sleeping sacks for naptime, a hilariously feeble attempt to sooth nine children into a state of calm, restful slumber. Two of the moms had left with their children so Georgia and I remained to try and convince the rest of our charges that they should close their eyes and do a sleepy time dance in the land of organic milk and pasteurized honey.

Otto has been the one non-sleeping hold out since the beginning of the school year, much to my embarrassment and the teacher’s exasperation. So, when he incessantly whispered to me in a loud, fake quiet voice about his red car and his blue shoe and a mean dinosaur and an old boo-boo I was hardly surprised. But all the other critters used our poorly masked fear to their advantage and frolicked and fidgeted on their cots like a group of twelve-year old tumblers at a cheerleader, co-ed sleep away camp. When J would lie down, Y would sit up. When C would turn over, H would do a high kick. When I shushed they cackled. When we pointed they popped up.

With the lights off and the midget music drifting across the room like a Yani-flavored foghorn, we tried everything to get them to take a tiny snooze for the sake of our egos and their mental health. But no one blinked, much less batted an eyelash and we did our best to keep the peace until the teachers returned and shooed us away like two mangled moths in a creaky screen door.

As I walked out of the classroom I thought of both my grandmothers and how they breastfed, bathed and battled a battalion of beasts every night and survived to tell their tales of no. And for a spilt second I thought that there was no way I could possibly share a speck of DNA with these wonder women, these meteors of motherhood. Maybe my crazy, cruel sister was right all those years ago and that, in fact, my parents did find me in a dumpster and raise me as a child pickpocket they could call their own. But, when I got to my car and looked in the rear view mirror I saw Celina’s under eye circles slouching next to my nose and a Phyllis chin hair saluting my reflection and I knew I belonged to these brave, beautiful baby machines. I just belonged to them above the neck, that’s all.

Sickness Can Suck it!

Aging is inevitable and irrefutable and just plain inescapable. Unless, of course, you are Oprah and you have weekly, all-capped declarations in one or more of your media outlets that holler, “LIFE BEGINS AT FIFTY!” This bumper sticker statement is always followed by a eight page pictorial of your fourteenth house and a detailed account of your thirty-thousand dollar full body scan that shows no significant health concerns other than your co-dependency on chocolate-covered blood diamond earrings and a suspiciously, ever-present B.F.F. who dresses like your reflection in a thinning, Nordstrom’s dressing room mirror.

We are at an age where shit goes wrong, not so much with us but with our parents and older loved ones. And I think it blows butt chunks and sucks sewing scissors. For every ailment we think we may have in our late thirties and early forties it is pretty much guaranteed that the people who birthed us, fed us, clothed us, tickled us, paid for us, drove us, grounded us, taught us and released us into the wild are facing some crispy crap sticks right about now.

I just want them to know that they fucking rock it and will clock it! And, that after all the years of the stiff upper-lipping and repetitive reassuring and skinned-knee dusting, their kids are here and ready to roll some heads, crush some craniums and pop some professionals, if need be.

To my dad, my little brown man, my petulant Papai. Look at your pesky predicament with those rose-tinted, Coke-bottle glasses you’ve worn since 1971. The hospital really is your true Shangri-la with its a 24-hour, manly maid service, a private, fluorescently lit bathroom that smells of an impending, disastrous deodorizer and deliciously dangerous disinfectant, a bed that rises and falls with a push of a button, much like your many merry moods, a kitchen that specialized in all things steamed, pureed, flavorless yet fruity, and a sealed window that helps lock in the bad air and shun the good.

And to Diana and Paul, who have nursed and doctored three wonderful children and three delicious grand children with their ever-present golf swings, custom-made cooking and frequently frequented frequent-flyer miles.

In our family we face adversity and defend ourselves against the shit-splattered fan known as life with a dirty, inappropriate poem about some slut sack we never met in a place we’ve never been. May you all get better fast and bet faster when getting. Here’s to a speedy recovery!

On the tits of a barmaid named Gayle,

Were tattooed prices of beer, stout, and Ale,

And on her behind,

For the sake of the blind,

Was precisely the same, but in Braille.