teenagers

My nephew is 15 years old and full of sass.  There are few things that are as frightening to me as teenagers.  It is because they are ruthless and incredibly powerful.  And a teenager with sass?  Good luck getting a damn thing by them.  They also know every single flaw and secret you've been trying to hide from the world, and even from yourself.  Teenagers say out loud what the evil goblins in my head whisper to me.  My nephew knows exactly what to say to take me right back to my most crippling self conscious years of high school.

These are insults he's said as well as some that I anticipate him saying in the coming years prior to him turning 20.  He's got a good 5 teen years in him, his skill will only improve over time.  I have to give him credit, his execution is dynamite and his observations are pretty accurate.  I only have myself to blame, this is my comeuppance for teasing him so much when he was little.


"Look at that pimple, you didn't do a great job of covering that up, but clearly you tried."

"Nice pants, someone is trying something new and failing."

"Didn't you have braces twice in your life?  Why do your teeth still look bad?"

"Do you even floss?"

"How is your butt so big? Shouldn't you have a better fitting pair of pants?"

"Red is not your color."

"Shouldn't you be wearing more makeup now that you're getting older?"

"Your face really isn't symmetrical."

recounting details

I am incredibly bad at recounting details from articles and books I enjoy.  I will read something in the morning and, literally, by the afternoon, I will try to describe it to a friend and fail miserably.  Like a zeppelin crashing and exploding, miserably.

Yesterday I read a beautiful article about confronting death.  Last night I tried to describe it to my boyfriend and it went something like this:

So the article talked about how dogs like to rub themselves on corpses.  The author has a dog that he walks on the beach and it's always trying to rub itself on dead things that wash up on the shore.  Anyway, they think dogs do this because of something to do with hunting.  If they have the scent of a dead thing they can sneak up on their prey.  But the author was like, yeah, but you can still see the dog, so I don't know how that would work.

Anyway, then they talked about a lot of squid washing up on the shore one time, squid everywhere.  He had to take the dog home, it was too much.

Then he talked about something Marco Polo said a long time ago.  When you need it, nature will deliver.  Like they were all on a ship somewhere in the middle of the ocean and all the men were on the verge of starving.  Then a big wall of fish just showed up.  So many fish it didn't look like they were in the water, there was just an actual wall of them.  Anyway, that's not super important.  He said that it's some kind of divine occurrence that would bring all these fish to them at that specific time when they needed them most.  Nature gives you what you need when you need it.  Even though this was a dangerous surefire way for the fish to die, they swam toward death anyway because people are more important than animals.  The author didn't really agree with that.  
Then he was walking on the beach with two friends and it was very dark.  There was an incredibly pungent smell that hit them, something was definitely dead.  They saw a big rock-like figure that they guessed was probably a seal but they were afraid to go up to it because, what if it were still alive and just happened to be really stinky and then it came after them, you know?  So they finally grabbed a few rocks and tossed them at the seal.  It was dead.  

After listening to me ramble on for what felt like forever, my boyfriend blinked for a bit and then asked, "what exactly does that have to do with confronting death?"

I replied, "god, I don't really remember."

You can read the article here - http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/coming-to-terms-with-death-through-the-use-of-vague-metaphors-religious-glosses-and-computer-analogies

I highly recommend it, unless you got everything you needed from my description.

what I know about every woman named Barbara

We all have a few Barbaras in our lives. We know their deal.  There are certain universal truths about women named Barbara.  I'd like to highlight several of them for you.  If you care to argue with any of my observations, please feel free to do so in the comments section.  I invite an open, engaging discussion regarding the behaviors of women named Barbara.

1.)  All Barbaras are 45+ years old.  Nobody has ever met a Barbara under 40.  Nobody after the year 1970 named their baby Barbara.  Babies named Barbara no longer exist.  Can you even imagine a millenial couple throwing Barbara in the ring for their baby's name?

"We could name the baby after one of your grandmothers?"
"But both of them were named Barbara..."
"Oh god, never mind. The last thing we want is a baby coming out of you wearing bifocals and a sweater from Talbots."

2.) All Barbaras have short, curly brown hair that "just never behaves in this humidity!"

3.) All Barbaras drive a beige Toyota Corolla.  What about Chevy Malibus you ask?  Well, fine.  But you better believe they're going to be beige.

4.) All Barbaras wear support stockings with their crocs.  The support stockings are to decrease their chance of getting varicose veins.  The crocs are because they've given up on fucks.

5.)  All Barbaras have a full bottle of Chanel No. 5 perfume on their vanity for special occasions.  But for everyday use, they spritz on Jovan Musk that they buy monthly from CVS.

6.) All Barbaras call things "nifty."

7.) All Barbaras own a tiny dog that barks too much.  During neighborhood walks the dog definitely won't stop even though Barbara yells their name over and over again.

"Princess, be quiet!  Princess, nobody wants to hear you bark!  Princess, stop that!  She's usually really sweet, she won't bite you...  PRINCESS!!"

8.) All Barbaras have office enemies named Tammy.  Barbara and Tammy have "never seen eye to eye on policies and procedures and Tammy is constantly late for the bi-weekly manager's meetings."

9.)  All Barbaras give powerpoint presentations at each quarterly meeting.  It takes them 5-10 minutes to figure out how to set up the phone and open and operate the powerpoint.  They always have to call the IT team for backup and IT guy Matt rolls his eyes each time Barbara calls.

10.)  All Barbaras have a desk drawer full of Nutrigrain bars, but every once in a while they like to reward themselves by going to the vending machine for Famous Amos cookies.

platonic conversation

The other night I had to parallel park an enormous 2002 Chevy Silverado in a tight spot in my neighborhood.  I've gotten pretty damn good at doing this over the past few months but that night I was relieved to have a man who happened to be walking by on the sidewalk come over and gesture to let me know I had plenty of room to continue to back up.  He helped me park the truck and I was grateful.

I rolled the window down and thanked him and we started to chat.  He was bundled up, looked to be in his 50s or 60s, (clearly much older than me), and he was telling me a story of a road trip he took to Mississippi many years ago.  He was laughing as he told me he was with his cousin and they were pulled over by the police but got out of it because the officer liked his car.  It was a nice moment and I thought, "so far so good, old man, don't ruin it, don't say it, please don't say it..."  And then, he said it.

"...You know what? You are a beautiful woman."

God damn it.

Disappointing.

We were having such a nice, platonic conversation that I was genuinely enjoying.  Come on, old man, you're a stranger.  You're clearly at least 20 years my senior and you are NOT Keanu Reeves.  Why do some men find it necessary to turn a completely normal chat between two adults into an opportunity to let a woman know they find her attractive?

"Just so you know, I have a penis, and when it gets hard later, it may be because of you."

"Just so you know, as a guy, it is my responsibility to let you know whether or not I'd want to bang you." 

"Just so you know, I'm a man and you are a woman and blee--blow--blah--MY ENDORSEMENT OF YOU." 

Whenever this happens I have my own fantasy.  I fantasize about blowing these assholes out of the water, (in a totally platonic way).

Guy - "...you are a beautiful woman."

Me - "Stop right there. Please don't derail this conversation by saying something completely unnecessary to force me to demur and play Female Skunk to your Pepe Le Pew. I could have walked two moons and then circled the earth for 1,000 years without knowing what you think about how I look."

Guy - "But I can't help myself."

Me - "You are not a snow leopard. You're a human man and you're perfectly capable of having a conversation without complimenting another person. I'm sure you're able to do it with your son, or boss, or WIFE-yeah, I see your wedding ring."


I know this might sound severe, he's just giving me a little compliment, right?  What a bitch, I should be grateful when someone finds me attractive!  Fuck that, I don't need some stranger's unsolicited nod of approval.  I shouldn't have to be forced into the role of diminutive, shy-but-grateful, pretty lady. My being attractive has NOTHING to do with you getting pulled over by the police in the 80's, no matter how suave and cocksure you think your delivery was.

So just fucking BE COOL and keep it platonic.  And hell, if you don't mention my appearance and the conversation actually progresses and goes well, (and also you are Keanu Reeves, and I am single), maybe I'll end up complimenting you.

"You know what? You are a beautiful man. I loved you in John Wick, what a triumphant return to action form.  Point Break is the best movie, I fucking love the part where you fire your gun into the air multiple times after Patrick Swayze, who has a president's mask on, jumps ov..."

the angry, flaming dandelion

"Lean over and give mom a big hug and a kiss and tell her I love her."  

This is a text I received from my brother in mid December 2014 while I was sitting in the MRI waiting room at the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.  My mom was having yet another MRI done which would determine whether or not the tumor behind her eye had spread even further into her brain.

It was a fucking rough year, 2014.  It was my mother's 8th year in North Carolina, about 7 hours away from Maryland where I grew up and where she had spent most of her life.  This was a year that had hit my mother especially hard.  She had never been an exceptionally healthy or cheery person, but over the past few years she began to seem even less healthy and less cheery than before.  She was sleeping even more than she usually did, which had already been most of each weekend.  She was even angrier and more irritable than usual.  More and more often our phone calls ended in her hanging up on me.  

In the summer of 2014 we found out she had non-Hodgkins intraocular lymphoma.  Cancer had started as a growth behind her eye and had spread to her brain.  She needed to start treatment immediately, and so she did.  

My mother is a blazing, angry woman by nature. I have spent most of my life afraid of her fury.  Nobody has ever been immune to it, not my brother or sister, my father, many of her acquaintances, coworkers over the years, my teachers.  The list goes on.  I was stupid enough to think an already-large fire couldn't get worse.  Clearly I had no idea cancer would be the gasoline that would be doused on the already-raging bonfire that was my mother.  I was unprepared for the coming months and what the weight of cancer would do to her mentally.  

For some families, cancer brings them together.  "Cherish this time with your mother," people told me.  "Tell her you love her, don't take her for granted, hug her, hold her."  Clearly these people had never met my mother.  You don't try and hug a bonfire.  You keep your distance and when it gets too hot, you step back so you don't get burned.  Cancer could either put that fire out or cause it to explode.  Explode it did.

My mom has every right to be angry.  She had trouble with her sight for over a year and had been to multiple doctors before they finally figured out what the problem was.  She was tired all the time and had been for years.  The news of cancer was dropped on her like a ton of bricks in September.  And in a matter of a few months my mom was being driven two and a half hours back and forth countless times from Leland to Durham every week.  She went through intense inpatient chemotherapy.  She had MRIs taken of her whole body in the middle of the night. She had needles inserted into her eyes every other week.  She was forced to quit smoking.  All of her medications changed drastically.  She was taken away from her house, her cats, her bed, her routine.  This is all enough to make anyone angry.

I guess I just never realized how much that anger would be thrown at me and my sister, and to a lesser degree, my brother.  My mother was a hothead but she could at least appreciate my sister driving her back and forth for treatment, buying her groceries, making her food, cutting her grass, right?  She was an angry woman but she would be grateful to me for driving down to take care of her every month when she came home from chemo, right?  I never expected to be the enemy in all of this.  But her fear and anger had to be thrown at someone, and my sister and I just happened to be the only ones brave enough to stand closest to the fire. 

So when I received this text from my brother after over three months of my mother's battle with both cancer and with my sister and I, I was surprised.  Did he know our mother?  Had he even met her before?  Was this not the same woman who had chased him down the driveway, faster than I ever imagined she could be, as he drove away after mouthing off to her as a teenager?  Was this not the same woman who marched onto a softball field in the middle of my sister's game, got into the face of an umpire and screamed at him to stop the game because it was getting too dark?  Was this not the same woman who looked down at our father while he laid in bed one night after a fight with her and said, "you're going to have to sleep sooner or later, Mike?"  

Finally, after having finished the MRI she walked out into the waiting room toward my sister and I.  Dressed in her unofficial uniform; sweatpants and a fancy blouse, her narrowed eyes ablaze with rage as she came toward us.  Her white thinning hair sticking straight up.  My mother, like an angry dandelion, walked toward us and I imagined trying to walk up to her and give her a hug and a kiss for my brother.  I imagined my lips and arms catching fire first before the flames engulfed my entire body while my mom, without stopping, continued out the door, now raging stronger as I burned quickly, like kindling, to the floor of the waiting room. 

inflatable christmas

Gone are the days of large C9 bulbs and silver tinsel you find in your living room long into spring.  The Christmas decoration future arrived in the 2000's in the form of giant, air-filled snowmen and reindeer.  Inflatable Christmas shit.

Driving through your average American suburban neighborhood you will find these massive inflatable creatures all over, and with every year comes a new! and fun! character or idea:

Christmas Crocodile Bearing Gifts!



Santa on a Motorcycle with Sunglasses™!


Jesus, Lord, at Thy Birth!


If you can dream it in a nightmare, America can inflate it and put it in your front lawn.

In my humble opinion, these inflatable Christmas decorations should be used sparingly.  An ideal house would include Christmas lights draped from your gutters and spread around your azaleas by the front porch.  Candles in the windows, perhaps some wreathes hanging from your windows.  One massive inflatable Rudolph biting into a candy cane and your yard is COMPLETE.  Less is more when it comes to Christmas.

My brother's philosophy is the complete opposite of this.  I made note of this when I pulled up to his rambler a few Saturdays ago.  Three o'clock in the afternoon, it's a cold day and my brother, my dad, my sister-in- law and my niece and nephew are scattered on a lawn roughly the size of an elementary school cafeteria, staging various inflatable Christmas decorations.  There are at least ten of them.

It is utter chaos.  The decorations are all in various stages of "flate," some sagging, some flattened to the ground, others proud and full.  The entire house, from the front yard, to the front porch is a tornado of Christmas.  Most people, if they pulled up to the house might say, "Good GOD, what happened here?  Was it an F5?  Were their any survivors?  How sad, the storm left them with so much Christmas shit in their yard."

On the porch there is a life-sized Santa statue facing the wall.  His arm is hanging limply, jerked into an awkward, uncomfortable angle.  Something violent has happened to this Santa statue, and for some reason he's being forced to stand in time out.  I ask my five year old niece, "What happened to Santa, why is he not out with the rest of the decorations?"  "An animal got him," she says, her eyes wild, as if remembering that fateful night when an animal almost made off with Santa's arm.  Was it a dear?  Was it a dog?  Was it actually a neighbor, grown impatient with the clutter of my brother's yard, seeking revenge on this jolly man and the arm he uses to deliver joy to children?  We don't know.  One thing is clear, even the local fauna doesn't like what's going on in my brother's front yard.

As you scan your eyes over the yard you'll find an inflatable decoration to tickle any number of fancies.  There's an inflatable dachshund with a scarf and Christmas hat.  There's Charlie Brown and Snoopy on a seesaw.  There's a Santa in a hot air balloon that failed to make it into the air.  There's yet another Santa, popping out of a chimney, flames covering his backside, his eyes wide with surprise, forever caught in a hilariously violent moment that teaches young kids how funny it is when people are on fire.

My brother rushes from one decoration to the other, stressed and confused, like a surgeon with multiple patients he needs to attend to simultaneously.  As he runs around the yard, the over-worked, over-capacity power strip is accidentally knocked about, a plug pops out, just to be plugged back in immediately and cursed at by my brother.  This causes all of the decorations to slowly deflate at once.  Like a sad puppet show, they all start to go limp, bowing down to the ground.  And then click!  They inflate once again for a slow, unenthusiastic encore, like an inflated Aerosmith show.

There is a decoration with two snowmen standing together, one in front of the other like a snowy two-person conga line.  When the electricity goes out they slowly sag forward, the snowman in the back covering the other in a graceful, protective dance.  And then click! they come back to life.  While the snowman in the front remains bent at the waist, the snowman in the back slowly stands erect, hands out to each side, a smile on his face.  He is thrilled.  A front lawn sex show slowly inflates before our eyes.  Should the kids be seeing this?

My favorite part is the main event of the yard, the "snow globe."  When it works properly it's supposed to look like a human-sized globe filled with tiny pieces of Styrofoam snowflakes shooting up from the bottom  and falling between two snowmen who are hugging at the waist in what appears to be a moment of pleasure and elation.  Another Christmas sex show that can be viewed easily from the road.  Have snowmen always been sex maniacs and I just never realized it?

Not only are the snowmen embracing, they are also sharing a leg.  Let me just slow this fun train down for a second and ask why these snowmen have legs.   Have snowmen really evolved so quickly that they easily sprout legs without any magic?  Are legs just a given in the snowman world now?  It used to take a silk hat and a handful of bored, unsupervised children for a snowman to sprout some legs, now it's expected.  What happened to the days when snowmen glided around on a single ball, playing the banjo?

Traditional gliding ball

This giant snow globe decoration is having a hard 2014, it must have been chewed on by some field mice while it sat in the garage, because it has a few holes.  My brother plugs it in and the styrofoam snow blasts up from the bottom.  "Yay!!" the kids yell with excitement.  It takes us all a few seconds to realize the snow is actually being forced through a hole on the bottom and out into the yard.  "That's bad for the environment!" some people would say, and then they would deflate the snow globe and dispose of it.  "What a mess!" other people would say, and then they would deflate the snow globe and dispose of it.  "This decoration is broken!" still other people would say, and then they would deflate the snow globe and dispose of it.  Not at my brother's house.  "Okay!" he says and walks away, leaving the snow globe on while it shoots a steady stream of Styrofoam into his yard.

Finally, the sun is setting and now should be the time to quit.  But my brother is never finished.  "We want to buy 5 more for next year," my sister-in-law says matter-of-factly. Cars honk  and people "wooOOOOOOoooo" out of their windows as they pass by on the road.  Are they excited and in the Christmas spirit?  Are they mocking him?  Maybe it was a little bit of both.  I feet a little torn myself.  I love Christmas, but I hate shit.  I love fun but I hate things that are stupid.  While a part of me wants to pop all of the decorations in a hateful Professor Hinkle fashion, I decide it would be best to leave that up to the "animals" described cryptically by my niece earlier.  When I come back in a month maybe all of the decorations will be on the porch, slightly deflated, tattered and facing the wall.  I'll ask my niece "what happened, why are they not out in the yard?"  "Animals got 'em."

good girls

My mom told me the most beautiful story of revenge yesterday.  Before I start, let me just praise my mother for being the best bitch I've ever known.  She is a force, she is a beast, she takes NO shit and I love her.

My mom grew up in the 50's and 60's, which, as we've all seen in black and white TV shows, was a time of complete Utopian disillusion, (at least until the late 60's when everything got either serious and sad or psychedelic and trippy).  For the most part, everything appeared to be very wholesome and pristine.  Ron Howard was Andy Griffith's son.  Barbara Eden was Larry Hagman's genie of which he dreamed.  June Cleaver was a perfectly coiffed wife and mother who did needlepoint and stayed at home in case her two sons or husband got home and needed to be fed.  STARCHED, IRONED PERFECTION.  So when my mom's parents divorced when she was 13 it was naturally a big neighborhood scandal.  My mom chose to live with her dad while her sister lived with her mom, even more scandal.

Three years following the divorce my mom was still judged for a decision her parents made.  When she was 16 she had a high school sweetheart named Clay Murray.  He was a frequent visitor of my mom's house, spending a lot of time with her and even her dad and grandma.  One day she asked Clay why they never spent time over at his house.  He told her, "my mom said she'd rather not have you over because she said good girls don't come from broken homes."

Well...that relationship didn't work out.  Not just because of this guy's fuckbag mother, but because apparently good guys don't necessarily come from "intact" homes.

Fast forward several years.  My mom is in the parking lot of the local A&P supermarket where her then-boyfriend worked.  That boyfriend would eventually become her husband and my father, but I digress.  

The two of them are standing in the parking lot and my mom happens to see two people in a nearby car, really going at it.  Like, some lover's lane heavy petting type shit.  

"Whoa, who is that?" she asks my dad.

"Oh, that's Mrs. Murray with one of the bag boys, she's a regular here, you may know her, I think you probably went to school with one of her kids," my dad says, unaware of the back story.

"...huh, I think I did, she has a son named Clay, doesn't she?" my mom says, no doubt grinning a wry thin-lipped smile as she puts the pieces together.

"Yeah, that's one of them," my eventual dad nods.

At this point the two figures in the car have stopped, possibly hearing my mom and eventual dad talking about them.  They make eye contact with my mom and so she waves and walks up to the car window.

"Hi there, Mrs. Murray?  How are you?  I don't know if you remember me, my name is Janet Ould, I dated your son, Clay, a few years ago.  We didn't work out, though.  Apparently he said you didn't think I was a good enough girl to date him.  Isn't that the darndest thing?" and with that, she walks away from the car and back over to my dad who bursts out laughing.

I guess the moral of this story is good girls don't come from any particular kind of home.  And they also don't come from a parking lot of the local A&P.