The Fabulous Vacation, Part I: Preparation

I'm sorry for the long stretch without an update. There was a lot of work I had to do before I went on my glamorous vacation. It's not all lolling and COPS-watching around the House of Bingo, you know. I didn't have to do all the housework by myself, of course, because I've got these two hardworking kids to help out. (Note to the childfree reader: that is a joke.)

Scott is so dedicated to lightening my workload that he's nearly stopped showering and changing clothes this summer to keep down the volume of the laundry. Still, I had so many dirty clothes piled up in the laundry room that there was more than one load of pink clothes. You've put off the washing way too long when you have to do multiple goddamn pink loads.

God only knows how many towels I washed, too. Anna would have helped with that, but she has an aversion to touching napped fabrics. She really does. If I made a little velvet cosy for my debit card, I'd probably save hundreds of dollars a month, but my local Sonic and Walmart would go under from the abrupt withdrawal of Anna's patronage. Since she couldn't fold clothes, she kindly volunteered to sharpen all the blunted pencils and square up any stacks of paper that weren't precisely aligned.

So far, these kids have been a poor return on my investment.

I didn't kill myself cleaning because this house is so old and ratty that it's pretty much held together by the dirt and cobwebs (or "nature's lace" as Sister 4 calls the spiderwebs in the corners). Everything we own is falling apart. When I finally got the last load in the washing machine, I started scrubbing the kitchen sink. I had to stop when the washer started draining and backing up into the sink. Then out of the corner of my eye, I saw something falling from the sky. I thought it was leaves from the tree outside the kitchen window, but more and more were falling, which is strange in the middle of summer. Looking closer, I saw that it was big fluffy clumps of bubbles. Tide detergent bubbles, the same thing filling the sink. I looked out the window, up at the roofline where they were coming from, and wondered how in the hell the washer could be backing up onto the roof. I called the kids in to witness it, and I wondered if I could get the plumber in late on a Friday afternoon, and then I thought, "Eh, that was the last load. Fuck it."

It's exactly this attitude that makes me unfit for home ownership. If I'd known that adulthood meant dealing with this kind of bullshit, I'd have pretended I was retarded at birth and finagled my way into an institution¹ or, I don't know, married for money. When you're poor, it's like the universe conspires against you. A few days ago, for instance, we had a big thunderstorm and lightning struck our cable. Well, I guess that's what happened, but I'm no meteorologist or anything. The televisions in the kids' and Mom's bedrooms that were hooked up to cable were all fried, while the tvs that are hooked up to satellite were spared. It's possible that the kids somehow rigged up this scam to get new flatscreen tvs for their rooms. If so, it worked, because I bought them new tvs rather than get the plumbing fixed. That's the kind of hellish choice the poor face all the time², but you don't see your big-name celebrities hosting telethons for us, do you?³

So you can see why I haven't had any spare time for blogging. Stay tuned for Part II: The Fabulous Vacation.

¹ Yeah, yeah, I'm a cruel insensitive asshole. I blame society and the breakdown of the traditional family, frankly.

² We're victims of American-style poverty -- not the kind where your kids starve while flies crawl around on their eyes, but the kind where they have bulky old televisions without satellite in their rooms.

³ I'll set up a PayPal account, if you'd like to contribute.

Kop Kitsch

The gang members on his beat never gave Little Officer Timmy the respect he deserved until the day they saw him strangle his own K9 partner in cold blood.

Mulroney was bitter about his appointment to the Curfew Enforcement Task Force.



I like my cops the same way I like my coffee: hot, black and with a couple of doughnuts on the side.



His plan to infiltrate the crime ring was foiled when the suspects saw through his undercover disguise.


Officer Percy called on his guardian angel whenever he arrested a particularly rough subject.

Officer Teddy was later discovered to have abused his position of trust with the children and left the force in disgrace.



The department ignored years of complaints of brutal maulings before acknowledging that their "Predators On Patrol" project was a public relations failure.

Sure, the perp said he was a Harvard professor, but the SWAT team was taking no chances.



"Now say, 'Pretty please, Officer, don't lock up my bear.' "



The rest of the force laughed until Officer Patches unloaded seventeen subjects from the backseat of his patrol car.

Journey Proud

I'm getting a little journey proud¹ about my upcoming weekend away from home, which is a very rare occurrence for me. Okay, I did go on an overnight trip to my older son's wedding three hours away in May, so technically I suppose this second night away from Mom and home in one calendar year makes me a bit of a world-weary traveling sophisticate. I've hired the same caregiver who stayed with Mom last time, and I'm fairly certain that she won't smoke crack or pawn the silver, at least not without the cooperation of Scott and Anna, although their loyalty can be bought if her crack is the good shit.

So I'm not too worried about Mom making it for a couple of days without me, and Lord knows Anna and Scott are old enough to leave behind. So what am I dreading?

1. I've been a shut-in for so long that I've developed a mild case of agorophobia, just to round out the set of phobias I already had.^2,3 I'm not panicky when I leave the house, but I feel awkward and self-conscious in public. Maybe this is more a function of being old and fat and ugly than being agoraphobic, because I've really let myself go. Actually, I didn't just let myself go, I insisted that I leave and I let the door hit me in the ever-broadening ass on my way out.

2. I can't go off and let a near-stranger stay in my house in its present filthy condition, but I'm the world's worst housekeeping procrastinator, so I'm putting off cleaning until the last possible second, at which point I'll go crazy and shriek at the kids to help and then yell that they're not doing it right. Then we'll get one room very very clean, doing things like cleaning crevices in the picture frames with Q-Tips, and only leave time to barely pick up in the rest of the house. That's my system. I should patent it before one of you cowardly scumbags⁴ steals it and writes a book and makes a fortune off it.

3. I have nothing to wear. Seriously, if you looked in my closet, which I beg you not to do, you'd wonder if that's just where I store old clothes suitable for painting and dumpster-diving. I'm not going anywhere that requires dressing up, but I don't think I own anything that's not spotted with grease stains. It's sort of a hazard of my diet.⁵ Maybe this zit by my mouth will get so big people will avert their eyes before they notice what I'm wearing. (Oh great, I bet that's the one wish I'll make in my lifetime that's going to come true.)

I'm kind of excited about getting away, though. Three of my sisters and I are going to the American Idol concert. I don't really like concerts and would never buy an Idol singer's cd, but it should be a great time, because my sisters are funny as hell. We're considering making signs mocking the performers we particularly hate. We'll do Creepy Blind Scott's sign in Braille, of course. If you have any suggestions for sign slogans, leave me a comment.



¹ A feeling that's a combination of anticipation and dread that causes insomnia and anxiety before a trip.

² A crippling fear of driving kept me from getting my license until I was 42, but I'm also afraid of heights, elephants, daddy longlegs and public speaking. I blame my mother for this, because she's got several phobias. She's terrified of flying and is so weird about electricity that I think she was probably scared to change lightbulbs.

³ Oddly for such a couple of pussies, Mom longs to be a storm tracker, one of those crazies who drives TOWARD tornadoes, and I'd abandon the whole family so fast their heads would spin if I had the chance to go on a crabfishing boat in the Bering Sea. Call me, Sig Hansen. I'll bait your traps, IYKWIM (and I'm not sure I do).

⁴ That's my John Walsh impression.

⁵ Shut up, I didn't say it was a weight loss diet. It's a high-fat, high-calorie diet of my own devising. And I'm going to patent it before I say another word here about it, you lowlife dirtball. (That's more of my John Walsh.)

Way Down Upon the Swanee River*

I've been looking at real estate listings online and gawking at the way other people decorate. Someone posted a link to this house at my favorite forum, and it reminds me of my grandmothers' houses.

Nana's house looked exactly like that, every inch covered in fancy geegaws as "purty as dog doodoo in snow," as she once complimented a manicure I'd given her. She had huge collections of snowglobes and porcelain bells, among other things. She took art lessons and painted in oils and on china. She drove around the Gulf Coast gathering different colors of sand, which she layered in designs in jars and jugs. You'd think there wasn't room for one more objet d'art in her house, but you'd be wrong.

At Christmas, she unpacked and set out hundreds of St. Nickknacks she'd made over the years, like baby food jars filled with hard candy and made to look like Santa with cotton ball beards and felt hats and pompom noses and googly eyes. She even had felt outfits to dress candy canes in, so that they looked like elves and carousel horses. She was the Martha Stewart of kitsch.

Nana had beautiful handcarved South American dressers hidden in closets to make room for crappy matched sets of bedroom furniture, and her living room furniture got increasingly gimmicky as she aged, with heated massaging recliners and sofas with hidden cupholders and pull-down trays paired with chunky end tables my grandfather made with awkward middle school photos of all the grandchildren shellacked into the surface. Those end tables honestly looked worse than they sound, if you can imagine it.

Grandmother Read immortalized her grandchildren on tables too, but her pictures were just stuck under the glass. She must not have loved us as much. She also had framed paint-by-number pictures hanging in the dining room painted by some of the scuzzins, mostly of noble Indian chiefs, but most of her decorative impulses were expressed in the medium of crochet. She had a plastic Indian doll's face with a crocheted surround and yarn braids hanging over the can opener in her kitchen. One of the scuzzins stole it as we were packing Grandmother's house away, along with some crocheted bed dolls and rolls of toilet paper. Poor old scuzzin Libby was afraid we'd get all the good stuff, I guess.

My mom didn't become one of those old ladies who decorate. Maybe the gene skips a generation. Luckily, I have enough children to keep me busy in my old age and can while away the hours crocheting laptop cozies and making felt Christmas covers for their cellphones, if they don't push my wheelchair out into traffic.

*Far far away
That's where my heart is yearning ever
That's where the old folks stay

Kitchen Burnout

Not so long ago, I used to cook varied, balanced meals from scratch every day. Granted, they weren't healthy or anything -- I have always cooked like a southern woman from the '60s, so there was no shortage of fat and salt and vegetables cooked until the vitamins gave up and moved out. Still, my family always got a meat, a starch, two vegetables and a hot bread. That was back when I gave a damn.

These two remaining kids get the old wornout dishrag of a mother and think tacos are a wholesome home-cooked meal. They're going to look back on their childhoods and reminisce about the delicious aroma of Hamburger Helper wafting from Mom's kitchen. They think cooking from scratch is clawing open a bag of frozen french fries.

Not that they deserve better, the ungrateful little bastards. Everything I cook seems to fall into one of these categories:

1. Yuck, I hate that;

2. We had that for lunch at school today; or

3. Mmmm, that sounds good! I'm not going to be here.

So I'm not inspired to spend a lot of time preparing meals. Until that day in the distant future when my interest in culinary matters returns, my main criteria for meal planning will remain

"Can I start it during one commercial break and serve it during the next?"

and (the bottom line)

"Will it make a turd?"

Kitsch My Ass

I wish you'd get off the crack and raise these grandchildren.
I wish you'd shopped around for a nicer nursing home.
I wish you hadn't been knocked up when I was running for vice president.

This is a lovely take on the traditional Balding, Naked, Tattooed Skank with Unicorn theme.

Mmmmm, Jesus on the halfshell.

You know the kids swore they'd feed and water and walk the dragon every day.

If I ever become a serial killer, I'm going to be the kind that taunts the police. I'll stab my first victim with this tribute to the Heroes of the Streets and leave it embedded in his chest.

Reader, This May Be My Last Post

It's not that I'm not enjoying blogging, it's that I fear I'm actively dying.

Mom woke up at 11:00, ready for her late night snack. I sat her up on the side of the bed, brought her something to eat and drink, and sat on the only chair I have room for in her bedroom, the potty chair. While she has her snack, we either watch television or do what we did tonight, collaborate on the NYT crossword puzzle.

I could hear Anna in the kitchen bickering with her boyfriend Sam, but that's nothing new. They always squabble like an old married couple, so I tuned them out and kept calling out clues for Mom until I noticed that Anna was sounding increasingly panicky. I laid Mom back down and went into the kitchen to see what was up.

Sam had gotten out the s'mores maker (As Seen on TV!) that my older daughter Ellen bought me a few years ago, knowing I secretly wanted one and wouldn't buy it for myself. Sam discovered it was out of Sterno, so he filled the well with rubbing alcohol and lit it despite Anna's protests. Well. Rubbing alcohol certainly is flammable! Anna and my youngest, Scott, were cowering away from the blazing inferno on the kitchen table. Rather than let the flame go to waste, of course, I made myself a s'more and stayed in the kitchen to make sure all the emergency exits remained clear until it burned out. Scott chose to make his s'more in the microwave. Sam admitted that he doesn't actually like s'mores and was only interested in setting something on fire, so he didn't have one. My marshmallow tasted funny, and I'm having a flareup of my troublesome old hypochondria, so I'm pretty sure I'm going to die of ethanol poisoning.

If I do, please make sure the first line of my obituary reads, "Accompanied by the sudden sound of a host of wildly flapping angel wings, Bingo left this earthly plane early on the morning of July 14, 2009." And whatever you do, don't send any floral arrangements with babies' breath in them or Ellen will make a spectacle of herself huffily removing them and rearranging the flowers at the funeral home.

A Visit from the Nurse

One of the visiting nurses was here this afternoon, and we discussed my mother's condition and her current drug regimen. I took her off her blood pressure medicine and her hormone replacement therapy last year. Her blood pressure's great. It was never very high anyway. After her stroke, one side of her face drooped for several months so she couldn't smoke, and she didn't enjoy her nightly bourbon and coke¹ without her cigarettes, so dropping the alcohol and nicotine cleared the bp issue right up.

I don't recommend stroke as a stop-smoking aid², though, because it's only effective if it paralyzes just the right set of muscles, and it's hard to guarantee that. My husband, for instance, continued to smoke after his entire right side was paralyzed by stroke. As a matter of fact, after a second, milder stroke a few years later temporarily paralyzed his left hand, he was still able to smoke after I bought a device that held his cigarette for him. Yes, yes, I did, you self-righteous judgmental nonsmoking bastards. And do you know why?

BECAUSE I SALUTE THE NOBLE AMERICAN GRIT AND DETERMINATION IT TAKES TO KEEP UP A SMOKING HABIT DESPITE PARALYSIS AND NICOTINE PATCHES AND NURSING HOME ANTISMOKING REGULATIONS.

It's a proud family tradition, and I myself powered through three months of Zyban treatment by smoking even when they stopped being satisfying. Besides, as I said just yesterday, coughing is the only activity I do that gets my heart rate up, so smoking is my one concession to physical fitness.

Anyway, the nurse agreed that Mom doesn't need to treat her blood pressure, but she wants me to start her hormone replacement therapy back up for a month or so to see if it will help with the frequent crying and anxiety. Her antidepressant has helped some, but she could be better. I'm skeptical and wonder if a woman in her mid-seventies needs the hormones, but we'll see. I'd talk it over with our family physician, Dr. Goddamn, but we don't always see eye to eye about drug therapies.

I love my doctor -- he's very warm and caring and knows all the local gossip and is hilariously profane³. He makes house calls and gives me samples and has treated me and my family for over thirty years now and is just a good man in general.

However, he uses my medical history against me in completely unfair ways:

*He won't prescribe me diet pills even though my fat has progressed from merely unsightly to actively repellent and despite the fact that a few timely amphetamines would totally make the housework less of a drag, just because of a little hypertension.

*He won't give me anything for my anxiety or my super industrial strength insomnia for the lame reason that addiction prone alcoholics should avoid habit-forming mind-altering drugs, the fascist. He had the gall to suggest I study calming zen techniques, which of course is easy to say when you're the one with ready access to a prescription pad.

Sometimes I swear to God he thinks that his medical degree and decades of experience make him a better judge than me of how best to treat my wackitude. I should point out to him that his stubborn high-handedness may be part of why he never achieved fame as the personal physician of Michael Jackson.

Back on topic, the nurse thought Mom looked pretty good and gave me some ideas for increasing her manual dexterity so that she can start using a fork and spoon again to feed herself (she does okay with finger foods), if I can get her to do the exercises, so that was good news. Now I'd better get outside and water while she's taking her nap.

¹ Coca-Cola, for God's sake. She's seventy-five years old!

² It doesn't work for quitting drinking, either. For that, you need my patented NyQuil Detox Regimen^TM.

³ His nom de blog is from the time I went to see him shortly after gaining a million pounds when I quit smoking. He glanced at the weight on my chart and blurted out, "GODDAMN!"

Welcome to Hicksville!

I live in a little tiny hick town in the little tiny hick state of Arkansas. Everybody in Arkansas is ashamed of our state's backwoods reputation. We all share an inferiority complex and wish that the rest of the country understood that while we're admittedly unsophisticated, we're not all ignorant inbred hillbillies. Some of us are ignorant inbred Delta rednecks, for instance.

So this weekend is the big four ball tournament at our little tiny hick country club. A young man I know has just gotten engaged to a girl from a wealthy family in a state out west, and he invited his future inlaws to visit his hometown and meet his parents this weekend, so his fiancee's father could join his foursome in the tournament.

This young man's mother has been nervous about the upcoming visit. She's a good hostess and has a beautiful house, but she was worried that the inlaws-to-be might look down their noses at our small-town ways, so she's been working very hard to make sure everything is perfect for their visit.

Yesterday, a few hours before they arrived, she was out in the yard deadheading her gardenias when she heard a weird squeal. There was a hog rooting in her flowerbed, a hog that had appeared from nowhere in her nice nonhog-farming neighborhood.¹ She panicked and called her neighbor and her husband and the police, and they rounded up the pig and removed it from the property, so she was able to serve drinks on the patio without the embarrassment of a hog blundering around and inviting comparisons to "Green Acres."²

My sixteen year old, Anna, went to the four ball banquet last night and to the ladies' luncheon today (her boyfriend is playing in the tournament). I asked her if she met the fiancee. She hadn't, but she sat at the same table today with the future mother-in-law.

ANNA: She kinda looked like a chicken.

BINGO: Did she look wealthy?

ANNA: Like a wealthy chicken, but a chicken nonetheless.

¹ This also happened recently in Arkansas, but I think it's unrelated.

² A television show from the 1960s about New Yorkers moving to a town in the sticks populated by brain-damaged yokels.

The Few, The Proud, The Exterminators

I waited around all afternoon yesterday for the stupid new exterminator who called to say he was coming and then never showed up. He came this morning instead, and I was in short pajamas and couldn't find a robe. Picture a lavender stretchy knit shopping bag stuffed with cantaloupes and loose marshmallows. Serves him right.

We have to break in a new bug-killing moron every other month or so now. Oddly, people don't seem to stay long in a low-paid, no status job dealing with roaches and fleas and dirty houses and vicious dogs and middle-aged fat women in shorty pajamas. What happened to your work ethic, youth of today, you lazy fucks?

For years we had the same guy, Dirk, a comically vain and officious little man who touched up his evangelist hair every time he walked by a mirror. You could tell he thought his uniform conferred great authority, and he was always dropping references to his "college days" at Orkin University. I'm not kidding. He loved to show off his knowledge of roach taxonomy and habitat, droning on at length about Smoky browns and Germans, and once bragged that he was a natural at extermination. Oh, how we laughed at him after every visit, I recall bitterly, now that he has been promoted to a desk job and I face an endless parade of new D'Orkins who ARE NOT NATURALS AND DO NOT CARE, like

Tyree, who was forever implying that I was hungover or that I'd be "partying tonight" because there was a visible bottle of bourbon in my kitchen, although I don't drink;

That one guy, who could treat the main house, the guesthouse, and the yard in less than ten minutes -- I didn't like him much, but the roaches thrived under his care;

Linda, whom my dog took for a man and who made me vaguely uncomfortable because I was never sure if she was coming on to me or was just one of those people who aren't aware of personal space; and,

Nervous Laughter Guy, who never even saw me in my clingy lavender pajamas, so I don't know why he was so terrified.

Oh Dirk, please come back! Let's reminisce about college again.