What Have I Done For Me Lately?

Before I moved in with CC and the kids, the only meat I ate was fish. I hadn’t had a cold cut in probably fifteen years. Suddenly I was living with six carnivores and if I didn’t want to get eaten, I needed to learn how to at least purchase meat, if not cook it.

Cold cuts for school lunches are the one thing we don’t buy on our weekly hot date. We save that for Monday night since Monday (being our day off) is throw-money-at-the-kids-so-they-can-eat-crap-at-school day. Usually CC gets the lunchmeat, because he knows me and the deli counter, and because he’s a good man.

My grocery store has an electronic ordering thing for the deli, which is how I prefer to do it. It prevents me from completely melting down and leaving without lunchmeat. I don’t have to speak to anyone. I can browse the menu at my leisure without the line behind me getting all Jersey, without having to reveal that I am not of Italian descent and do not know the differences between salamis. But when the deli counter is slammed, they shut that system down.

But the other night , at 8pm CC was still with #4 at the long and far away softball game (freezing his ass off, I might add) while I had earlier been at #5’s short and nearby baseball game (with blankets, because I had frozen my own ass off the night before and knew better). Unless I was going to be a complete jerk, I had to get the lunchmeat.

I walked in, saw the line at the deli counter, saw the electronic system shut down, heaved a sigh, took a number and got on line.

Usually three people work the counter; only two were on. I realized that one of them was my least favorite employee of all time. You have one somewhere too, don’t you? The one employee you’ll go out of your way to not have to deal with? If they’re at the gas station, you will drive on fumes and pay ten cents per gallon more to avoid them; if they are at the genius bar, you will walk out and skip that appointment you booked three weeks ago because it was the first available; if they are your barista you know there’s no point in ordering what you really want and you just get black coffee.

Mine is Short-Attention-Span, Slow-Moving Woman at the deli counter. Let’s call her Debi. Because it’s all she would be able to remember were she named Deborah. I met her when CC was out of town last year and quickly learned that whenever she waits on me I end up cutting my order short and getting more expensive prepackaged crap from the aisle around the corner. I can’t take it. For a task that’s already so daunting to me, she makes it like herding cats in quicksand. Except way less amusing.

So I pull a move that makes me worthy of my New Jersey residency status. Debi calls my number and I turn to the woman next to me and tell her she can go ahead because I have a lot to order.

She’s quite surprised at my generosity. Giving up your place on line is really more of an Indiana thing than a Jersey thing. We swap our little numbers because there are still like fifteen people behind us.

Meanwhile, the other employee, Regularly Efficient Man, goes to the back to get a hunk of turkey. He is gone a long time. There then begins a conversation between the two women currently being waited on.

Nice Jersey Lady #1: I had a good spot in front of the TV and then somebody decided he was out of ice cream!

Nice Jersey Lady #2: Oh yeah, it’s a good night tonight! I’m DVR-ing it.

{Exchange related to some TV show I’ve never watched}.

I’m thinking that being out of ice cream is a perfectly good reason to go to the store. I’m thinking in fact that it was mere hours ago that I went out just for cookies. For me. That I ate by myself in the car. It takes me a minute to realize they’re including me in the conversation. My offer to trade places has broken the ice. They mistakenly believe me altruistic when the truth is that I was trying to fix it so the other guy waits on me.

I smile blankly and stay silent.

Nice Jersey Lady #1, rolling her eyes knowingly: My husband doesn’t know the inside of a grocery store.

Nice Jersey Lady #2, in sympathy: Oh no. Never. The one time my husband went to Costco he was hungry and nearly bought the whole store out.

I smile uncomfortably again because they are staring at me and it seems to be my turn to complain about my husband.

Me: I’m lucky. My husband usually does all of this.

I gesture in the general direction of the entire grocery store.

Their mouths drop open.

Me: He’s still at the softball game, so I had to come.

Their mouths drop open further.

Meanwhile, Debi has asked the woman I let in front of me no less than four times how much of this ham she wants (3/4 of a pound. Surprisingly, the answer is the same every time). Regularly Efficient Man finally returns with the turkey. I am very, very afraid that my plan has not worked; he’s been gone a really long time.

Nice Jersey Lady #1: My God, I thought you were back there plucking the feathers off of that bird!

Even with the plucking, he still finishes before Debi. Only by seconds though. I step up to him before Debi can call my new number.

Nice Jersey Lady #2: Thank you again, so much!

Nice Jersey Lady #1: That was such a nice thing that you did, letting her go ahead. There should be more people like you.

I am quite sure that there are far more people like me than she realized.

What good turns have you done lately? Who’s the service person you go out of your way to avoid?

Why Orange Exists as a Color

Somewhere out there right this minute, a realtor is advising a homeowner to paint the inside of their house in a neutral palette before they put it on the market. Conceptually, it’s a good idea. Neutral is. . . neutral. Non-offensive. Unnoticeable. Calm, even.

I have nothing against neutral as a genre.

But I enter my plea with all realtors, homeowners, and interior decorators to please not ever allow anyone to paint ALL of the walls, baseboards and ceilings the same dirty shade of off-white.

“Swiss Mocha” my ass.

Tinting white paint with a spot of brown and covering all available surfaces in it is exactly the same as rubbing your walls, baseboards, and ceilings with sponges dipped in mud puddles.

Although, this isn’t anything you notice at first. Not until you get all the boxes unpacked anyway, which takes about a year if you’re really lucky.

Then you start painting the kids’ bedrooms. One per extended school break, because kids are naturally good painters and will totally bust their butts for fifty bucks. And with each gallon of paint you shake and stir, you start to dream of other colors in other rooms. Soon, every room in the house that you, personally, never spend any time in is painted. Excellent colors. Colors that fit the personalities of the people who do spend time in those rooms. Colors you would be proud to show off if said rooms weren’t otherwise so offensive.

And you start to notice Swiss Mocha.

How it makes your 1970’s suburban split-level look its age and style; how no number of pictures on the walls can prevent it from sucking your soul out little by little. How it never looks clean, no matter what you do to it (although, in Swiss Mocha’s defense, most of what you do to it is resent it and deem it unworthy of washing one more freaking time).

This was my state of mind regarding the Swiss Mocha on my walls when CC left for Denver for six weeks at the start of last summer break, leaving me in charge of a household of five kids and two puggles. It was the first of many extended trips he had scheduled for the year.

The morning he left I woke up in a blind panic, drenched in sweat, from a dream in which I was standing at the edge of a cliff with one foot in the air. I had just started to lose my balance and the adrenaline jolt woke me up. I knew that the only way we were going to make it through him being gone was to stay busy. But how? How was I going to keep five kids with no itineraries occupied all summer without myself going crazy?

Then #2 and #3 spent a Saturday helping the youth group paint a lady’s apartment and they talked about how much they enjoyed it. Now, I’m a terrible painter. I’m impatient. I can’t paint a straight line nor can I tape one. I don’t enjoy it. Yet, at dinner that night it was out of my mouth before I could talk myself out of it.

Me: We should paint the house while your dad’s gone. You know, as a surprise.

Them: That’s crazy.

Me: Isn’t it though?

Them: Okay. Let’s do it!

We made friends with Bryan, the guy at the paint store. I brought all the kids in and we let him in on our surprise project for CC. He was fantastic.

As you can tell from these pictures, there is no greater joy in a child’s life than painting. Especially painting one’s own house during summer vacation. For free.

The puggles helped, too.

CC and I had been fighting about colors since we bought the house. He was a neutral advocate. I wanted statement walls. The longer I looked at Swiss Mocha, the greater I wanted those statements to be. The golds I chose for the main areas were tame for me, but would be a stretch for him.

When it was time to move on to the hallway, I had an idea. I was thinking: ice cream; I was thinking: sunset; I wanted something amazing in this dark hallway with no natural light; something joyful that would be the first thing we saw when we walked out of our rooms in the morning. The plan was to extend that color out to the first wall you see when you walk in the front door.

The day I went in for the paint, Bryan wasn’t there. There was another guy. Another guy who was not in on the plan, not part of the surprise, who didn’t offer me encouragement or help me make decisions. A guy who, when he looked at the close-but-not-quite-right colors I had hoped for guidance with, had an opinion.

Guy: I don’t even know why orange exists as a color.

All my confidence fell away. Maybe I should go with beige. What if CC totally hated it? What if my surprise for him just ended up being a huge waste of time and money and started a big fight? But then I had another thought.

Me: Umm, do you know when Bryan works again?

I went back the next day and Bryan helped me with the orange that CC would never have signed off on in a million years. As the kids were putting it up on the walls they kept commenting.

#2: Oh my god.

#3: Wow!

#2: Dad’s going to divorce you.

#3: Yeah, he probably won’t like it.

#4: Oh my God. Dad’s going to divorce you.

#5: I love orange! Dad’s so going to divorce you.

#1: Holy Crap! What did you to to the wall? Dad’s going to divorce you.

But I loved it. I would literally clap my hands and jump with glee every time I looked at my orange wall.

It took the bulk of the time that he was gone to do this project. We all worked really hard. I got some form of dinner on the table every day, wherever the table happened to be that day. We had the Summer Olympics on TV the whole time we were painting. We painted at 2am watching the replays of the female Chinese weight lifters. We taped the trim at 7am when #5 got up. Every kid got to paint a door in the downstairs hallway any way they wanted to, and #1 put a mural on one wall.

We banded together and we stayed as busy as possible, which lessened our awareness of the very noticeable absence in our midst. We all knew that over-noticing that absence would be our downfall.

He was blown away when he got home– mostly grateful that he didn’t have to do any of the painting.

He liked the orange wall. He said, “It looks a lot less crazy on the wall than it did in your head.”

And that, Guy Who Is Not Bryan, is why orange exists as a color.

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Have you ever planned a surprise for someone you weren’t sure they would like? What’s the boldest thing you’ve ever put on your walls?

Hot Date

I have a theory–a double theory, really– that for any topic you can name, there is either an X-Files episode or a Jonathan Richman song about it

From When I Say ‘Wife’ by Jonathan Richman:

When I say ‘wife’
it’s cause I can’t find another word
for the way we be
but ‘wife’ sounds like you’re mortgaged
‘wife’ sounds like laundry

I’m a wife. I was planning on never being a wife, but here I am. “Wife” had always sounded like laundry to me too, back in those days when I was planning to never be one.

I pictured going blind trying to distinguish between black and navy blue socks in order to match them up; I pictured having to learn how to starch and/or iron. When I said “wife” I imagined Friday night casseroles, yard work on Saturday mornings, and uncomfortable, too-warm clothes that made me pass out in church on Sundays.

Then I got a career that ran nights and weekends and a boyfriend who both cooked and did laundry (not to mention, kept his socks to a respectable black or white only). And “wife” started to look like a giant mystery to me. If it wasn’t what I had always believed it to be, then what was it?

I decided to find out.

One of the common misconceptions that people have is that romance dies once you become married. The way to combat this, according to all the magazines, is to have Date Night. The importance of hiring a babysitter is stressed, and you should put on cologne and pantyhose and drive far away to pay too much money for dinner and a show. In our jobs, both CC and I assist in providing the entertainment for everybody else’s Date Night, so that doesn’t really appeal to us.

Besides, he gets really grumpy if you ask him to wear pantyhose on his day off.

So we have Date Morning.

Every Friday we have our standing hot date. I took all of these pictures to prove how hot our dates are because nobody believes me.

We start by getting dressed up:

Then we go to the bank for grocery money. Yeah, we’re going grocery shopping. Because grocery shopping is hot.

When we get to the teller, CC turns on his charm.

CC: She’s so mean to me, Rita. At home, she makes me call her “mistress”.

Well, I am wearing leather.

He will repeat this joke to every teller that passes within earshot. If there are some that don’t pass by and miss it, he’ll make sure to go see them at their desks on the way out.

Our next stop is the Farmer’s Market.

These same magazines that specify how you’re supposed to do Date Night also make a Big Deal about Farmer’s Markets. They refer to seasonal, outdoor markets that are supposedly a great savings and if you don’t frequent them you are killing both your family and your community, not to mention your soul and probably a couple of kittens somewhere.

In New Jersey, those types of farmer’s markets are subsidized by the State and sell produce that may or may not be “organic”, and may or may not have had pesticides sprayed all over them, but are most definitely about FOUR TIMES the cost of anything at the grocery store. I’ve got five kids and I figure I’m already supporting those markets through my taxes.

The farmer’s market that gets us all hot & bothered- and I DO mean hot & bothered- is year-round inside a zero-frills building.

If you’re one of my kids, you may want to stop reading here to avoid thoughts that you can’t unthink later.

Although they tell me at the entrance that I’m not welcome there, they never actually check. It does make me a little nervous, which only adds to the excitement.

You know how when you go to Whole Foods you walk out with only one teeny paper bag even though you laid out like eighty frickin’ bucks? The farmer’s market is the total inverse of that. A full cart rarely tops out over forty dollars, which I have to admit makes me more than a little breathless. Plus they have all of this:

I swear to you here, on a pile of kittens, the sign for this item reads “Celery Knob”

(C’mon, I can’t be the only one who thought that.)

I forgive your errant apostrophe because of your errant "h". — I forgive your errant apostrophe because of your errant “h”.

By the time we check out, our minds are full of images of lewd produce and thongs. We’re thinking about testing out the window tinting in the backseat of the minivan.

Next to the farmer’s market is the “meat” market where you can get your Santeria supplies. I think it’s kind of lame that one might buy one’s goat eyeballs and rooster hearts at market, but it is nice to know the resource is there if you need it in a pinch. (The only reason I didn’t get pictures of those particular items is that it smells really bad. Which is why nobody ever buys any eating-meat there.)

Chickens have neither fingers nor paws, people

What more excitement can there possibly be after being around all that suggestive produce, lingerie, and “meat”?

Well. . .Plenty.

You, Flock of Seagulls. You know why we're here? — You, Flock of Seagulls. You know why we’re here?*

Because there’s Fairway, newly opened near us.

Oh, Fairway. *sigh* When I think about you, I just. . .

We know why you're here. Get a room! — We know why you’re here. Get a room!

Fairway is all of your grocery dreams come true. Even if you think you don’t have any grocery dreams.

Because you totally do.

I am very sleepy and have always wanted a kitten. Can I borrow your kid for a minute?

All my grocery store fantasies are here. Fresh-baked chocolate croissants. Cheese samples. Eleventy-billion types of cold-pressed olive oil with store-baked baguettes for sampling. At this point in the date, it’s all I can do to keep my mind on the grocery list. The store isn’t exactly helping. It’s like they want us to be inappropriate right there in the aisles or something.

That's so sweet. — Wait. How did they know his pet name?

You're not helping, coupon. — You’re not helping, coupon.

Even Costco is in on it. And I feel like I should remind you once again that these are actual pictures from an actual hot date.

This picture makes it look as if his member were handicapped, which I assure you is not the case.

With great effort, we refrain from putting up that”Sorry, this lane closed” sign and spending a little quality time together right there on the checkout counter. Even though I see it as exactly the same as a “Do Not Disturb” sign, CC reminds me that this would be a pretty ridiculous reason to get arrested and that besides, the only kid who would have enough money to bail us out is #1, and she probably wouldn’t do it because she’s saving all her money to get away from us.

GOT ANY GOOD GROCERY STORE STORIES?

WHAT DO YOU DO FOR DATE NIGHT?

*update: I just found out at dinner last night that my Flock of Seagulls reference is yet one more joke that I make to CC all the time that he doesn’t get, and yet has never said anything about. Even though he took #1 to see Pulp Fiction while she was an infant. So for him, I give you this link. The Flock of Seagulls line isn’t until about 2:00 in, but it’s a great scene.

Oh, there’s also a Jonathan Richman song called Abominable Snowman in the Market, thereby double-proving my theory.