The Odd Broad

Danger on aisle four!

It was the day after Christmas and we were making a quick family trip to Target to pick up some supplies.  Only, I'm not always so quick these days; in fact, Hubby often tells me I shop like the elderly.  (Well!?  I don't get out as much as I used to!)  And then there was the matter of the miniature tree I'd been trying to find for the bambino, for next Christmas.  I just needed to go and look at the discounted holiday stuff...

And that's when it happened.  I'd found William's tree: a whimsical little number, on sale for the unbelievable price of $4.50, and I called Hubby over to share in my joy.  "Hey, come see this!"  The aisles were crowded, and we probably should have left the store 20 minutes ago, and although I noticed he gave me a barely perceptible roll of his blue eyes, Hubby complied.

"Excuse me," he said to the woman and teenager blocking the aisle.  "Oh, sorry, sorry!" said the boy, who looked about 14 or 15, and I remember thinking it was a little strange the way he'd apologized like that.  

In hindsight, had I been playing the role of Hubby, I might have replied, "That's okay, man" or something to that effect.  But alas, Hubby did not.  And before we knew it, the kid's mother was screaming, in an outraged, aggressive tone, "What's his problem?  He's giving you a dirty look!?  Some people are so rude!"

Now that this soul had grabbed my attention, I couldn't help but notice she was a rough looking, pajama wearing, heavyset woman.  A tough broad, you might say; easily two times my size.

"I hope he teaches his baby some manners!"

Um, yes.  She was talking about us.  We were being made into quite the spectacle.  Hubby and I stood motionless, my hand on the baby's stroller, and it was only then that I realized I was still holding onto my tiny tree.  "So...what was it you wanted to show me?" Hubby asked, cool as a cucumber, not acknowledging the screaming banshee five feet to our right.  (So very Hubby of him.)

I should mention that my Scorpio husband possesses the infuriating ability to exude zenlike calm in the face of extreme anger.  Often he's looked at me, after I've worked myself up into a terrific Sagittarius frenzy, and has calmly asked, "Why are you yelling?" which naturally only adds fuel to the fire.  It seems he had the same effect on this woman, too.  She was becoming unhinged.  As she stomped over to the next aisle, still screaming about what a bastard my husband was, her silent teenager in tow, I hissed, "What did you say to that kid?  Were you rude or something?"  Hubby looked at me like I was nuts.  "I said excuse me, what else was I supposed to say?"

It was really time to leave.  But not before I picked up a miniature green tree skirt and some tiny garland (Yes!  Yes!  Yes!) and also not before a very large dude, who I took to be the woman's brute husband, walked by Hubby, looked him straight in the eye and said, "You're a f*cking asshole."

Holy schnikes!  Were we in Bizarro Land or something?  Hubby hadn't even done anything to this kid, and now these crazies were going all Jerry Springer on us!  "We're gonna get effing stabbed!" I whispered to Hubby.  "I don't want any trouble!"  I joked.  And I didn't.  I can be as mouthy as the next person, but there's a time and a place.  Something about this lady and her companions (there were several of them) told me they were not to be trifled with.  Some inner voice, or spirit guide, or maybe just my years of city living instructed me not to engage.  Truth be told I wanted to wrap that miniature garland around her beefy old neck when she'd made that crack about teaching my son manners, but her wrath had subdued me into a kind of mystified stupor.  Incidentally, what kind of an example was this crackpot setting for her own son?  

Are people going mad?  This wasn't the only spontaneous public meltdown I witnessed that week, I also saw an elderly man screaming F bombs at a woman in a crosswalk later that day.  Do the holidays bring out the crazy in people?  Did we somehow unconsciously manifest this ugly exchange?  

Luckily we made it home without getting jumped in the parking lot.  And after some reflection I was actually quite impressed by Hubby's levelheadedness, because a different man may have started screaming right back.  But that's not Hubby's style, especially now that he's become a father, and I was glad of it.

That night I wrote in the One Line a Day journal I've been keeping for William: "Bought you a miniature tree today for next Christmas!  With mini lights, etc.  Yay!"  A decidedly abbreviated and rose colored version, for sure, but that's the thing about life, and motherhood- sometimes we get to edit out the ugly.  Like unprovoked Christmastime altercations in Target and stuff.

Um, yikes.

Just waxed my facial hair for the first time since...well, since the day I went to a birthday party for my cousin's daughter.  She's a Pisces.  It is now mid-August.  You do the math.

 

Return of The Dance Macabre

The other night Hubby and I were lying in bed, plotting the demise of our upstairs neighbors.  They're the worst, you see.

It's was 2am on a week night.  We'd finally gotten our sweet bambino back to sleep after he'd been awoken for the umpteenth time by a mysteriously loud banging.  What was going on up there?  Were they...

Practicing boxing moves on a punching bag?

Rearranging furniture?

Walking around in combat boots?

Incidentally, when I was growing up it used to be considered a serious insult amongst the neighborhood kids if someone were to tell you, "Your mother wears combat boots!"  I'm not sure who came up with that one. 

The really weird thing about our upstairs neighbors is that we have no idea how many people are even living up there.  There was that middle aged couple who helped the leprechaun-ish man move in back in January, but we haven't seen them since.  In addition to this leprechaun, who is always very pleasant, there's a tough looking, lanky kid who I've spotted smoking butts on the front porch; a muscular guy with wire rimmed glasses who once offered to carry my stroller downstairs; a blond girl who comes and goes and a twenty-something brunette who sat smoking in her car one day before coming into the house carrying a white garbage bag.  About twenty minutes later she was gone. 

All of these souls have keys except for one guy (possibly the muscly armed lad), who asked Hubby to let him in one day and told him, by way of explanation, "That's my dog that stays up there."

Um, what?

There's no way around it, the situation is beyond strange.  But who am I to judge?

"Well," I yawn to Hubby, "Whatever it is they're doing right now, noone could ever be worse than Charles was."

I've told you about "Charles," Dear Reader, do you remember this post from back in 2007?  About my NYC neighbor who used to dance macabre in the wee hours of the morn?  (I'm not using his real name, of course, for fear of being killed.) This pale, gothic person provided many nights of free entertainment for our out of town guests, who'd make guesses as to what on earth he might be doing up there.  Was he...sacrificing wildlife?  Killing hookers, perhaps?  We never could tell.

Mostly he was just annoying.  After all, who wants to listen to rhythmic banging over their heads at 3am?

One night things really came to a boiling point when, right smack dab in the middle of his Dance Macabre, we heard him chant, "Do you want me to fucking kill you????!!!!!  Rain, Fire, Rain, Fire!"

I tried my best to imagine a scenario in which this sentence would not make me want to crap myself.  Nope, couldn't find one.

Now initially, I thought he said "Pain, Fire, Pain, Fire!"  In the end, I decided to go with the weather theme because I found it slightly less threatening.  In any case, I've never stopped wondering who (or what) was on the receiving end of that dreadful question.

"Hey, I wonder if he's on Facebook?" I hissed into the darkness.  "Let's Google him!"

Why had this never occurred to us before?

One quick search on Hubby's Droid and we'd found our goth.

Hubby's voice was a whisper, and the words that came out of his mouth made something in the pit of my stomach turn over, as if on cue: "He's a writer.  He writes horror novels."

Of course he does.  A sickening chill went down my spine.   How perfectly terrifying.  

"Can I see?  Give me the phone, I wanna see!"

But Hubby resisted.  "No, it's too creepy.  His book covers are really creepy.  You'll be scared."

Creepy?  What exactly did he mean by creepy?   He was right, I would be disturbed.  Maybe not now, but soon, and for the rest of my life.  I'm the type of person who can read the description of a scary movie on the TV guide and be awake all night thinking about it.  Which was precisely why I wanted to see what that damn website looked like!  

I let out a silent giggle. "I wonder if any of his stories are about a sax player and an aspiring actress?"

I couldn't sleep that night, thinking about what it could be, specifically, that made those book covers so eerie that Hubby didn't want me to see.  The next day I went online and discovered that our reclusive former neighbor is a celebrated author.  He's published a plethora of horror novels, some while we were living below him, and he's also a teacher.  I also gathered from his facebook page that he's ten years our senior, and that he shares a birthday with one of my closest friends.

Who knew?

At least we can finally say we've solved the mystery of what in hell was going on up there.  Hubby and I are pretty sure we've figured it out, you see:

He was getting into character.  Oh sweet Jesus, now I'm scared again. 

Just a walk in the park...

There are certain things I miss about living in Southie.  (And no, not the feral cats living in the basement.)  Living next to M Street Park, for example, or so close to Castle Island and the beaches.  Not that we don't have parks in Dorchester, we have plenty.  It's just...

Sissy came to visit me the other day with the kids and we all went down to the park.  As she stepped out of her car, her feet crunched on a broken bottle of gin and a used condom.

After we'd been there for awhile, we noticed three big kids come into the playground.  They looked like  they were in high school, although the longer I watched them, the more I suspected they were maybe in junior high.  They were acting...weird, you see.  At first the nasty old bitty voice in my head thought, oh great, here come the riff raff, but then they began limbering up and sort of discussing their plan of action.  "Okay, you go this way, and I'll start out that way..."

They were playing some sort of intricate game, with leaps, with a don't touch the ground theme or something.  And they were really, really into it.  Lukey the Wonder nephew looked at them out of the corner of his eye, as if to say, Huh?

It reminded me of that episode of The Office, where Dwight and Michael and Andy couldn't touch the ground and kept hurling themselves onto things.  It was weird.  But certainly intriguing.

As Sissy was putting the kids into the car and I was making my way back home with the bambino, she called out to me.  "Hey!  You want a condom?" 

Gotta love this town.

Something isn't right here...

The DVR in my bedroom is slowly spiraling out of control.  I currently have 62 episodes taped of Who's The Boss? 

I could swear that number has tripled since yesterday.  Nobody needs that much Tony Micelli in her life.  Not even me.

This gives me the Kozmic Blues

I almost retched into my milkshake last night when a friend's Facebook status mentioned something about Amy Adams to play Janis Joplin.

Amy Adams?  Seriously?  Is nothing sacred?

With all due respect, that redhead with the sickly sweet voice is set to portray Janis?  It was all I could do to get past that treacly voice of hers in Julie and Julia, but for her to be chosen to represent one of the most important musical icons of the Twentieth Century?  It's not right, I tell you!

It was almost enough to send me into complete hormonal overdrive.  Not that I harbor a strong opinion on the matter or anything.  (And not that I'm particularly hormonal lately.)

I was still able to finish my milkshake, luckily, but just barely. 

The Educated Consumer

Baby chicks on conveyor belts getting their furry yellow heads scanned by a nonchalant assembly line worker is the stuff that nightmares are made of.  (Can you tell I'm part way through watching Food, Inc.?)  

Reader, if you get the chance, watch this insightful, Oscar-winning documentary, which in its opening sequence states: "The companies don't want farmers talking. They don't want this story told."

And they sure as hell don't want us tuning in!  But this is America, is it not?  Land of the free, home of the brave, and all that jazz?  Why are we allowing big business and our elected officials to bamboozle our taste buds?  We consumers have been deliberately kept in the dark, but we can certainly speak with our wallets.  In that respect, I'd like to kick them where it counts.  Dirty bastards. 

Have you seen this film already?  If so, what did you think?  xoxo

PS: I am also seriously hooked on Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution.  What a lovely bloke he is.  Two thumbs up.

PPS: Hubby just set down a plate on my desk, containing broccoli, a salad, and a veggie burger on a whole wheat bun.  God bless that omnivore.   

Hmmm...

So the man downstairs and his wife are away on vacation, and he left the door to the back entrance ajar, presumably so the three stray cats he feeds can come and go as they like.

At the risk of sounding redundant, I'm going to repeat that last bit: he left the screen door and the storm door WIDE OPEN, so these three morbidly obese stray cats can come and go at their leisure. 

I don't mean to sound unkind, but these cats are quite possibly the most corpulent felines I have ever encountered.  (And this is coming from a woman with a cat so overweight she developed feline diabetes!)  This is also coming from a lifelong animal lover.  And even I find this door situation a little nutty.

Hubby shut the door.  Hubby locked the door.  Someone keeps opening it.  Each time we lock it, someone comes back and opens it.  (Literally, leaving the door wide open!)

Now, before he left, our neighbor did come upstairs to tell us his sister-in-law would "probably" be stopping by to pick up his mail; what he failed to mention, however, was that she'd be leaving the back door open for any Tom, Dick or Harriet to saunter through.

Is it me?  This is a bit unusual, no?

I feel I should add, other than this small hiccup, our new apartment is a dream come true: in a great area, close to the beach, less than ten minutes away from Sissy and Luke, and it has a front and back deck!  We're loving it!

But the neighbor downstairs seems a little...peculiar.  Not that I'm a stranger to living above odd ducks.  (It's still too early to tell if this man will match the eccentricities of my former landlord, Smeagol, of Lord of the Rings fame, but I certainly look forward to finding out.)

Car Luvin'

My older sister is forever trying to coerce me into watching trash television.  Case in point: Rock of Love, Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, Sex Rehab, The Two Corey's, Strange Love, the 2003 Michael Jackson interview with Martin Bashir...

Often times I fold.  But not the other night.  For nothing could convince me to watch what my sister was witnessing.

Sissy and I recently discovered the joy and wonder of Blackberry Messenger.  We're already pretty much in constant contact throughout the day, but somehow this has enhanced our communication even further.  I BBM chat with Sissy while walking, shopping, at work, on the toilet...

Received on Tuesday, 8:16 pm:

Sissy: "Okay...Luke is not allowed to love cars anymore.  Watching "My Car is My Lover" on BBC America.  These guys that have sex with cars...they find them sexually arousing.  One guy even did a helicopter.  So fucked up."  

Had my sister just said someone "did" a helicopter?  I asked her how, exactly, does one "do" a car?  She told me to use my imagination.  (I tried but I still couldn't figure it out.)  Apparently these lads hump cars.  Sissy said one of them molested a car that looked exactly like Kit from Knight Rider.  Poor thing.  These car fuckers are referred to as "mechaphiles;" men who are sexually obsessed with cars.

Sissy: "He did a helicopter.  He became visibly sexually aroused at a car show...he was kissing the cars and rubbing them."

Sissy went on to explain that the helicopter he did was from Airwolf, that 80's TV show.  Oh dear.

Sissy: "They had him on surveillance camera f-ing his bud's car.  The one man wore a hat with bear ears and decorates his car with stuffed animals.  And he did a helicopter." 

(Again with the copter banging!)

Apparently the other gentleman spoke of f-ing his car like a rabbit as well as raping cars.  Very, very disturbing.  He also does a punch buggy.  A white punch buggy named Vanilla.  He likes to lick her.

Poor Vanilla.  At this point I asked Hubby if he could try and pull up some of this nonsense on YouTube, if only to appease my sister, who was tired of experiencing it alone.  We saw the man licking Vanilla, but after about three seconds I had to look away. 

The other dude's "car lover" is named Todd.  (It was Todd's reliability that first attracted him.)  I asked Sissy if these people only do their own cars, or if they'll eff just any old car, in any old parking lot.

Sissy: "Vanilla and Todd are their cars, but the older guy kind of crosses boundaries with other people's cars."

Ah.

Yesterday I texted Sissy: "Gotta run.  Gonna go fuck the coffemaker."

Sissy: "The Keurig is a good lay I hear."

So, so wrong.  On so many levels.  Happy Friday, Dear Reader.  xoxo

The Accidental Carnivore (or "Pork You")

As you may have heard me already mention, on September 1st I decided to give up meat.  Well, actually, I tried to become Vegan and succeeded for a good two weeks, but there are times when I desperately hanker for a hunk of cheese.  (So I've eaten a bit of feta.  And what's homemade pesto without the parmesan?)

I've come down with the flu twice since this experiment began, and after talking to two long-term vegetarians who recently began eating fish, I decided that maybe I should give it a try as well.  (Making me more of a Pescatarian?)  I've eaten shrimp twice and one night we baked some cod.  I've never particularly liked fish, but I liked it that night, because I was a woman on the edge. 

I want to be clear though: I've eaten no red meat, or milk, or butter; no chicken stock, even, which I probably consider to be the most difficult staple to do without.  There have been no evenings filled with roasted pork tenderloin, no Thai basil chicken.  Mashed potatoes certainly don't taste the same without milk, but you won't find me adding any to my spuds.  No siree, Barbara. 

This is something I've taken very seriously.  Nobody can believe I've lasted this long, least of all myself.  Just yesterday, in fact, I privately marveled at how amazing it was that I hadn't eaten chicken, pork, or beef since the start of September.  Pretty freaking monumental, if I do say so myself.  (Smug-e-ty smug smug smug.  Smug as a bug in a rug.)

I plopped down on the couch next to Hubby and proceeded to watch Ina Garten grill beef sliders.  (Oh, I haven't given up watching other people prepare meat, masochist that I am.)  I continue to lust after meat.  Even as I mentally replay the image of those poor chickens being sent to the slaughter in the PETA video, it still can't totally curb my desire to bake them in a pot pie.  Old instincts die hard, I suppose.

Beef sliders.  Beef sliders covered in melted cheese.  They looked nice.  Real nice.  And then it hit me.  It hit me like a ton of bricks.  It was as if someone had dropped a cow on me.

"OH MY GOD!!!!!"

I gasped in horror and covered my mouth with my hands.  I stared blankly at my husband, unable to utter another word.  (Yes, it was all very dramatic and musical theatre but what do you want from me?)

"What?  What's the matter?  What is it?"

It would be a good forty seconds before I could spit it out, and even then I didn't want to say it.  Because if I said it, then it would be true.  And it couldn't be true, although I knew there was no denying it. 

"I FUCKING ATE MEAT YESTERDAY."

Mother f*cker.  Reader, it was true.  Something about those mini sliders had jogged my memory.  I was flabbergasted.  I'd fallen off the wagon, and hadn't even realized! 

Sliders.  The day prior was the Halloween party at work, and I was in charge of it.  Sliders were on the menu; cute little sliders with tiny buns and little tomato slices.  My mom was in town and she and Sissy brought Lukey the Wonder Nephew to the party.  (He was the cutest damn cowboy you ever did see, complete with John Wayne swagger.)  I'd been quite busy all day; all week, for that matter.  At one point I made a plate up for Lukey with a chicken finger, mini pizza and a pig in a blanket.  Our little cowboy went straight for the pizza. 

And that's when it happened.  Like a dream, I can now clearly remember reaching for that chicken finger, and taking one bite, then another.  A minute later, without even being aware, I mechanically popped that frigging mini wiener right into my piehole.  I feel I should mention, I WASN'T EVEN HUNGRY!  And by that time both bits of food were stone cold and therefore not very tasty.  Neither my mother nor my sister thought anything of it, and I didn't either, until the next day at 2:00 pm when I watched the Barefoot Contessa get her grilling on.

Am I a complete nut job?  Who falls off the wagon without noticing?  Is this something people do?  Should I be nervous?  Is my subconscious so starved for pork and poultry that I would accidentally consume it?  Or was I so preoccupied by work duties that I momentarily became a nervous eater? 

If I am to fall off the wagon, I'd like the act to be pre-meditated.  I'd like it to be a fully conscious decision.  I'd like the meal to be...really effing delicious.  Truly worth it, you know?  Not a goddamn mini wiener and a cold chicken finger!

When I went back to Sissy's house that night I even complained that there was nothing for me to eat.  (Because I couldn't eat meat.)  Even that night, when I got home, I remarked to Hubby that the only thing I'd had to eat that day was a crappy slice of pizza.  I really, truly believed this was so.  I reheated some pasta puttenesca, devoured it, drank a glass of wine and promptly fell asleep.

I must be mental.  Do I have early onset Alzheimer's or something?  And here I'd been acting all high and mighty for forgoing eggs and chicken stock when I'd already tumbled head first off the chuck wagon!  And furthermore, I didn't even get to enjoy it! 

If that's not a kick to the balls then I don't know what is.

Poor little chicken.  Poor little piggie.  I'm really very sorry.  I honestly didn't mean to eat you.  xoxo