Designated Driving Me Crazy

Last night was a family party night. And our family knows how to throw down. We were celebrating a big number NINE birthday in a typical manner that involved pizza, too much sugar, the assumption that the children would at least stay as a pack as they marauded through town, and my sister in law and I leaving with each other's sunglasses.

Game six of the NBA finals was streaming on the wall in the shop while Hubs washed down his cake, a random kid's leftover brownie, and any other snacks that fell in the radius of his wingspan with a hearty serving of his brother in law's outdated* beer.

And so as is customary, he tossed me the keys when I gave him the universal sign for "let's go", which is also the universal sign for "I'm about to slit your throat."

We piled in the family truckster and as usual, didn't make it a mile out of town before he started driving me batty. First he started in on ToddlerBandit by stealing from his supply of snacks that I keep loaded up in his cup holder for him to indiscriminately throw on the floor when he's mad at me.

I finally got him to leave the fruit loops alone and he decided to press every goddamn button in or around the dash board/radio area. Minions was playing in the back.

I watched his fingers fumble through the touch screen, making a mental note of how to unmuck his path of destruction.

The last time he pulled this, he converted my car's readouts to metric, and the language was either Icelandic or Swahili. So in town it always appeared I was doing 56 in a 35 and I didn't know whether the digital message was "roads may be icy" or "tire pressure low" or "there's an ax murderer in the backseat".

Suddenly everyone who was not speaking Minion was speaking Spanish.

Spanish. So the whole dialogue was MINION AND SPANISH.

He changed it back. Then Clayton began complaining about the narrator. "There's usually not a narrator on here, dad."

Yes. There is a setting where you can not only turn the subtitles on, but there's an additional voice that READS THE SUBTITLES ALOUD FOR YOU.

I suppose this is so that if you are blind, you might know what is going on in the movie. Like having your friend sit right next to you and whisper in your ear all of the goings-on throughout the entire movie. Which I applaud for the ADA community, but in this instance, and in my state of fried nerves rocketing down the highway at 65 miles per hour, I did not appreciate.

Fumble fumble fumble. Poke poke. Beep beep.

Fixed.

Now. This whole business of him being a terrible drunk passenger is almost ALWAYS compounded by the obscene amounts of sugar he has also consumed, which attempts to metabolize and escape his body by any means necessary, and so he fidgets and squirms and generally cannot be still. This is exactly the worst** time to be stuck in a car with him. Worse even, for him to be in the passenger seat.

With no more buttons for his hands to push, they must find a landing spot.

I spent the remainder of our journey swatting his hand away and generally treating him like a misbehaved toddler with ADHD. By the time we got home, his sugar crash hit and he was much easier to deal with. Life was back to normal, we cranked out a couple DVR'd episodes of trashy TV, and caught up on all the stuff from our lives this week that we forgot to talk about that we couldn't talk about in front of the kids.

This morning when I got up with a clear head and I saw him sleeping peacefully, as much as I wanted to pester him awake in retaliation, I didn't. There are a lot of guys out there who have a couple drinks and turn into raging, abusive wankers. Mine just ends up eating all the cake and wants to touch my boob a little.***


*It might not be, really. His distributor employeeship perk just makes my husband so jealous that he wants to try new things, like all the flavors in the mini-fridge.

**There is one more worst time to be stuck in a car with him, which I will defer to his sister or whomever the new owner of her previous car is for inquiries.

***I'm not saying I'll let him, I'm just saying I'm not mad about it. That's all. 

Monday Mammaries

I embrace Mondays.

That's not a joke, even. So when you pick yourself up off the floor...

Monday is the day when I muster up all the positivity I can in the early morning hours and tell myself:

"I'm gonna have my shit so together this week, I'm gonna eat all the right stuff and be super organized and I'm gonna just kick this week right in the balls."

~Me, every Monday morning ever, except holidays

Ok, that's enough of that.

Fortunately, I'm not one of those annoying people who goes around trying to motivate OTHER people to strive for great things on a Monday, or to be cheerful, or to embrace their own inner Oprah. It's all I can do to give myself this little pep talk, and before the buzz from the inhuman amounts of coffee I have consumed wears off, reality kicks in and it's back to normal.

Today was no exception. As I unrolled the frizzy curls that I had carefully tucked into a Pinterest headband after last night's shower, it was particularly difficult to keep my cheerful routine up. Things were already not looking off to a great start. When Monday becomes BunDay, your spark can only be found in the hope that maybe things could only improve from there.

Except that, no.

The stampede of new hires wandering the halls on their break were crowding into the bathroom like it was halftime at a NASCAR show. I had scurried out after washing my paws, not really wanting to linger to look at myself in the mirror to acknowledge or fuss with the disaster on my head. A straggler was holding fast in the right-lane of the hall, thumbs furiously playing catch up before it was time to silence her phone again. She looked up and smiled.

"Oh. I like your dress. That's really.....pretty."

Ok. Let's pause for a minute. Because outside of like, maybe two of my friends who have commented on an outfit in the past, literally NOBODY that I work with has ever thrown a compliment like this at me. Granted, I hide in a cave most of the time. Nobody has ever described me as "fashion forward". But today, today...in my forceful attempt at Mondaying like a bosslady, I put myself in a dress. With a belt AND a necklace. Which, if you really know me, you know that's a huge deal.

One of my biggest phobias is that someone will strangle me with my own clothes or jewelry.

Which is why was hyper-aware and thinking she had been staring at my necklace. But I thanked her and I walked with my head held higher back to my office, tossed my paper towel confidently into the trash (landed the shot, first try), and sat down to conquer the day.

This was the point at which I noticed one of my boobs was out.

Yes.

Well, not out IN PUBLIC, out, like Tara Reid on the red carpet. Out of my bra, out. In my never ending but so far failing quest to find the perfect strapless bra, I grabbed three options from my drawer this morning, and I went with the most comfortable one. Mostly to soothe myself over the hair thing, you know. And the best thing I can do to describe exactly what happened with it is to provide you with an overlay rendition on Esten's preschool drawing of me. You remember the one, right?

My bra. Being useless as tits on a boar.
No pun intended.
 Nipple placement: accurate.
This is basically a selfie.

This is the kind of shit that happens, people. I know it happens to you, too. Don't let everyone's perfect feeds fool you. Life is full of bad hair days, nip slips, and other disasters despite our best, most positive intentions to steer things otherwise. I have learned to laugh about it. I have no other advice to give. If you have some, I'm all ears.

Especially if you have a good lead on a reliable strapless bra.

I'll Dove You Forever

"How are you with birds?"

This seemed like a loaded question. Obviously. I thought it had something to do with the "surprise" trip he has planned for my 40th birthday next Spring. The surprise I keep hinting that I'm not happy about, no matter how much he thinks I might be into it.

I even reminded him that one time I got on a plane and got surprised by getting new parents. (Before anyone gets their panties in a knot I acknowledge that things worked out for the best, but I'm entitled to also acknowledge that this might have slightly damaged the children involved, so stop.)

I thought maybe there was a bird sanctuary on the tropical island he picked. I was just imagining it, deciding that definitely a solid melon colored dress would look best on me in photos as I bravely kissed a parrot perching on my shoulder. I decided that yes, I'd be okay with birds.

Turns out, no. That wasn't exactly what he meant.

"There's a giant bird building a nest on the roof and it won't move. It's freaking me out. Can you get up there and get rid of it?"

Sigh.


As I headed outside to check on the source of his terror, I silently hoped this might turn out like the night I stayed up late before kids when he checked out for lunch on graveyard and I heard his boots thundering up the sidewalk at a lightning pace. He flung the door open and demanded I go rid the flower bed of a scary animal, one that he thought I was better equipped to deal with in my nightgown and no bra better than him in his kevlar vest, tactical pants with reinforced crotch panel, pepper spray, taser, and firearm. When I lifted the blinds, he pointed it out to me in the darkness with his thirty-five pound Maglite.

"That rock? That rock that's been there since we moved in? You're scared of a rock?"

 "I thought it was like...I dunno...a skunk or a raccoon or something...shut up."

But since I love him I never said a word about it. Oh wait. Nevermind.

Back to the bird.

This giant scary bird was a mourning dove. It sat motionless as that rock in a messy nest in the crook above Clayton's room. No matter how close I got (out of curiosity alone) it didn't even twitch. After a little Googling, I broke the news to him.

We thought the dove never left the nest. But that's not true. It was actually the male sitting all day and the female taking the night watch. They mate for life, and you always see them sticking together. Always. They don't even hang out in flocks or anything. They just hang out with each other watching Netflix.

You guys. They are just like us. These doves are our spirit animals.

They don't even squawk or shit on all the patio furniture or act like those asshole killdeer. If he had said, "can you get rid of the killdeer?" I would have loaded up the hockey wagon with bricks and run over all their babies. Because they're loudmouth jerks.

The doves are staying. Until their one baby is born. And then I will clear their nesting material out. I'm fine with that. He's not fine with that. He wants to burn the house down now. 

Wife Preserver

We kicked off the official start to Summer yesterday by getting the SS Lee wet for the first time this season. Well, technically it was the second time if you count the test run after the annual spring thaw mechanic work happening earlier. It didn't sink that time, and it made it back to the dock.

It was hot as balls yesterday, too. So I just cannot tell you how happy I am that my children do not play stupid ass summer sports. There is no fiber of my being that wishes to burn my rump roasts on a hot metal bleacher seat despite my love for them. I am very sensitive to temperature extremes, and at least in the boat I have quick access to cool off.

It also couldn't have come at a better time for my sanity. Memorial weekend came on the heels of my out of town work trip, and as is customary for liquor and travel fueled celebrations for others, that meant Hubs spent a LOT of it away from home. Add in the boat races that needed extra hands on the water and I almost forgot his name by Tuesday.

We do not camp. Well, I do not camp. But boating is that thing that allows us to shut the world out, regroup as a family, and center ourselves where there's no wi-fi. To go where there's no time to be anywhere except when the sun goes down, to not stress about work, or deadlines, or asshole bosses or coworkers, or classmates, or whether you locked the front door.

"I thought YOU locked the front door."

"No, you were the last one out."

Shit.

I'm kidding.

Boating seems to be where we fire on all cylinders. Communication breaks down in other places, and how could it not when we are going different directions all the time? But when it comes to this, he's the Captain and I'm the First Mate.

I even have a shirt.

*Not actually me, FYI

 That's not me, mainly for the following reasons:

1. I believe we have established that I still do not understand selfies and also I have T-Rex arms.
2. My shirt is in the laundry and I'd rather write a blog post than do laundry.
3. This shirt breaks my "no graphics/words" rule because TBH my rogue underboob awkwardly eats things and ruins the joke. So my shirt very likely just says "Mate". Which is weird.
4. I wanted you to see where to go buy one if you really liked it, so here's the link.

Anyway. We are like team RamRod at the ramp. I envision that when other couples are having their court ordered counseling sessions triggered by the domestics we witness during their disastrous loading/unloading attempts, that they sometimes talk about us, not out of jealousy over the sweet sweet boat we have, but for our graceful dance, the one without words, the one that we execute like two Russian ice skaters who were forced at gunpoint to pair up and practice from a very tender age and can get very near one another with such sharp blades and no blood gushes forth.

They are SO jelly.

But we have it dialed. And we know that once we are away from the dock, we pause, but the dance continues. He makes the Boat Drink* while I remove two towels. One for the children to stand on while I sauce them up. One to sit on because the seats make my legs sweaty and that is disgusting. The children assume prison pat down stance. He kicks off the playlist for the day. I slip my wedding ring off and put it in the cup holder while I rinse all the sunscreen off my hands because I worry that the sparkler will slip right off my finger and sink 400 feet down, which is not even close to how far my heart would sink if that happened. We leave the world behind.

And we go burn a literal boat load of fuel. And the boy children take turns pushing themselves and each other to try new things at the end of a rope. And then ToddlerBandit needs a nap. So we just float. And swim. And float some more. And do literally nothing. And it is fantastic. It's really the best thing.

TB last year. Kid loves the boat.

TB this year. Professional chillaxer.
Still needs a haircut.
Still isn't getting one any time soon.

When we're done, it's all the same in reverse. He wipes down the outside, I gather up towels and garbage. I haul the bag to the dumpster and then I pee because it's a long ride home. Then we answer the eight million questions of the Fish and Game guy if he's there like, "no we didn't catch any fish" because "no, we didn't go fishing" because "there's never been a pole allowed on this boat", and "we were out there approximately seven hours". I help him with the cover, I make sure all the buckles on my side are snapped, and I put the back straps on. And we go. He is in charge of starting the movie for the kids once we're headed home because I don't know how electronics work.

It's a team effort, this.  Can he do it all himself? Yes. Totally. But you'll never catch him out there by himself. He's not that guy. Could I take the boat out with my friends or the kids for a fun day out without him? No. Not at all. I wouldn't want to. A First Mate needs a Captain. That's how it works.

Now before you think I'm getting all soft, let me remind you that as soon as we got home and the towels were in the dryer and the cooler was unloaded, things were....back to normal.

I headed to the back yard where Hubs was walking with a full armload of firewood that I assumed he was going to pile up near the back patio. Just as he dumped the entire load atop his already blazing bonfire I said,

"ToddlerBandit's girlfriend just stopped by to tell us that her parents were inviting us over to sit by the fire at their house."

He stared at me blankly.

"Could you not have maybe told me that BEFORE you watched me dump that enormous load of wood on this fire?"

"I thought you were hunkered in back here. I didn't know what your plan was."

"I for SURE would rather be at their place. But now we have to wait for this to die down."

And so again, our communication about all things off the water sucks. So we scooted our chairs back a little from the flame that was threatening to singe our eyebrows off and bored one another to death until we loaded up and headed off to better company.

**************************************

Because a lot of people ask for it, and because it's not that complicated, and because it doesn't even have a fancy name, here's the recipe for:

*Boat Drink

• Coconut Rum - Parrot Bay is Hubs' fave - eyeball to your level of alcoholism
• Pineapple juice - He uses a whole mini can per drink
• Sprite - However much room is left in the cup

 

WCW: Teagan

Bellafaye Garden

It's Woman Crush Wednesday! It's been a while since I've shined the spotlight on a special lady. This week, it's ToddlerBandit's crush:

TEAGAN

She is Coach's daughter. She is teammate's sister. She was the babysitter when I had those pictures taken. Yes, those pictures. 

So we know she's trustworthy and she can keep a secret.

But let's talk about the pull of the Universe for a minute. That thing that draws a person to another person, even if person A is significantly more interested in person B than person B is in person A. For example, I joke at length that this was the case with my husband and I. (He was B and only stopped short of a restraining order out of laziness).

Specifically, the pull in ToddlerBandit's Universe can't be explained, but can be demonstrated and understood by those who know how he can sass-mouth me but bend to his Grandma's will, how he turns his curly head away from some hockey moms at the rink, no matter how friendly they are to him, no matter how they try to bribe him, but makes a bee line like a heat seeking missile to others. Others, like Teagan.

Hockey season may be long over, but he still reminds us at least once a day at random that "Teagan's my girlfriend", or "Teagan is coming to my house". He is basically in love with her in a way that he is not in love with anybody else. He would take a Nerf bullet for her.

Not a dart. A b-u-l-l-e-t.

He'll probably start pulling out his own teeth soon when he realizes he can get cash for them just to start putting money down on a little house with a white picket fence for the two of them. 

You know, it's like that adorable bat-shit crazy obsession that you hear about in love stories and on all-day crime marathons on Investigation Discovery.

Tonight, he got in an especially heated argument about it. With a cat. And it went just exactly how you imagine it went.

This asshole is trying to steal TB's GF

ToddlerBandit: "Teagan's my girlfriend."
Tom: "Teagan's my girlfriend."

TB: "No. Teagan's MY girlfriend."
Tom: "No. Teagan's MY girlfriend."

TB: "NOOOO. Teagan's MYYY girlfriend."
Tom: "NOOOO. Teagan's MYYY girlfriend."

TB: "MINE!"
Tom: "MINE!"

TB: "NO SHE NAAAHHHHT!"
Tom: "NO SHE NAAAHHHHT!"

TB: "You're naughty."
*throws tablet across the room* 

And after I settled him down from his little testosterone/steroid/jealousy induced rage, I explained to him that Teagan doesn't like when boys fight over her. And then I was silently happy for Teagan's dad, who has an added level of deterrence from teenage boys with this mini maniac on the loose.

For now, she fills her time with ballet, track (the hard, hurdling kind), gymnastics, and all the other whatnots she does - she seems to be just a small rubber band with a head, really. And the head they plopped on her is super smart and the stuff of princess tales, with the kind of face that you can't look at very long or you'll go blind, it's that pretty. And that's not even counting when she smiles.

I suppose when you combine all that with her calming demeanor I can see what draws ToddlerBandit in.

Small Town, Big Deal

This week I set out upon an airplane journey with pretty high hopes and a good attitude. I did that thing that these hipster kids do these days where they check in online and they say:

"No thanks on that printed boarding pass, just email me one. I'm trying to reduce my carbon footprint."

Mostly it was because our printer is usually always out of ink. After my phone's inbox dinged marking the arrival of my pass, I marched directly to my nightstand and grabbed an old boarding pass from my September flight home from Detroit out of my copy of Andy Cohen's diary (published, not personal) because I needed a bookmark.

This is, after all, why I usually print my boarding passes. To keep my spot in my current read while I travel. We've established that I'm a staunch anti e-reader, correct? I'm mainly scared shitless that I'll accidentally knock it out of airplane mode and the pilot will come over the speakers thusly:

"Attention passengers. We seem to have careened 3,600 miles off course and are now currently over the ocean and out of fuel. Apparently someone has their wi-fi activated. I thought Mitzi was clear when she told everybody to turn off their shit."

And everyone would stare at me.

I set out at the appropriate time of sixty-seven hours prior to my flight departing at 6am or so. I queued up fifth in line for my mandatory frisking and impressively had all my shit together. Laptop and liquids out, shoes and jacket off, ID* and phone in hand with that QR code at the ready. I slid my bins forward, smiled at the humorless agent whose sole mission was to still berate everyone instead of rewarding us for knowing the drill as she asked for my ID. As I stretched my hand out - I shit you not, the email DISAPPEARED.

IT. DIS-A-FUCKING-PEARED.

Wait, what? Yes. Not in my "deleted" folder. Not in any other goddamn folder. It disappeared into another dimension. Completely.

She was having none of it. I had to collect all my shit and my shoes and get all dressed again since they make you strip down to your underwear and schlep to the front counter to get:

A PRINTED BOARDING PASS.

TSA has no idea I'm a big deal. And they don't care.
*I'm only a big deal in my own small mind. And to like,
MAYBE four of my friends. Max.

 Fortunately for me, this happened in Lewiston so the counter was about seven feet away. When I explained my misfortune to the saps there, they laughed.

"You must have Verizon. There seems to be a spot by security that eats emails on Verizon phones sometimes."

And then they disappeared in the back to double check all the underpants of all the checked luggage for explosive explosives and explosive diarrhea, stock the aircraft with snacks, tighten all the seatbelts to "toddler size" just so we'd all feel bad about ourselves when we got on, give the pilot a shoulder rub and a pep talk, and loop around in time to scan the still-wet ink of the boarding pass they just handed me.

If you live here or have traveled through our airport you know that I am not even a little bit making this shit up.

I checked my email again. It was back, but I didn't trust it. As I disrobed for the second time in the Bermuda Triangle, I verified my suspicions. It evaporated before my eyes again.

Soon I was happily settled into my seat in 19B. I'm not usually an aisle seat kind of person, but 19A was taken when I tried to switch. Now I could see that 19A was some hipster a-hole and he was full of himself. I could tell this because he wore a kind of purposefully rumply suit jacket with purposefully rippy jeans and purposefully shaggy little man-beard but not too much shag and perfectly manicured eyebrows. And some kind of Jack Sparrow but not exactly Jack Sparrow but nonetheless a little bullshitty hand tattoo.

Thankfully the flight attendants threw coffee at us first thing, but he wanted to chat. I hate when people want to talk to me. Not that I'm an uppity bitch, but I have always bristled when people start in on what is VERY MUCH LIKELY JUST NORMAL CONVERSATION.

When I was younger, I would get sweaty as the questions swirled closer and closer around, "so do you have any brothers or sisters?" or "how come your parents are so old?" and so I ended up over-sharing and talking WAY too much so that I had some control over the conversation as a distraction to people asking questions I did not want to answer.

I still do this. A lot.

But people next to you on airplanes want to know where you work and if you're married and if you have kids and sometimes you just don't want to say. Sometimes, some of us have jobs that we'd rather not talk about or work for companies or industries that lack public favor at times. Sometimes hubs tells people he's a garbage man or a street sweeper because he can handle their reactions to that better than when he's honest and has to deal with the ensuing requests for legal advice regarding some "bullshit speeding ticket I just got" or an ask to "swing by and tote my asshole neighbor off to jail because he hasn't returned my socket wrench since last spring".

Also, having sympathy that sometimes these questions can be overly probing prevents me from asking, too. This likely makes me look self centered and a bit of a snit. In case you're of the camp that believes me a snit. For this reason alone, anyway.

But this guy. THIS guy wanted to know if I was FROM Lewiston. Because you know, nobody vacations here so this is obvious. I knew off the bat that he was no investigator. He then began to regale me of his top twelve reasons for loathing Lewiston, impressively compiled in the short six months that he has lived here. They included the smell, the lack of entertainment, and most importantly, the lack of opportunities for adventurous activities.

He asked what I personally do to...you know...stay busy.

He asked me. A mother with three children and a full time job what I do to STAY BUSY.

I'm a MOM, motherfucker. That's like....my HOBBY. When I think about it, I try to flex my vagina muscles to get them back to the places they used to be before my children put them all in different time zones. But sometimes I get busy and I forget. Until I sneeze and pee a little. Or I read a funny book and I pee a little. Then I remember I should do that.

My husband and my kids are the daredevils of our family. We collectively burn a lot of fuel on the boat, but other than that one time that Stephanie guilted me into surfing? I'm happy to float and make sure nobody is drowning. I'm happy to sit from the stands and cheer as they ALL work up some disgusting ballsack sweat on the ice. I'm even happy to wash all that gross laundry when we get home. I don't need to lace up skates myself. I don't feel like I'm missing out. At all. My heart is full to visit with other moms and to watch them work hard and to listen to ToddlerBandit squeal with delight when he sees the zamboni.

I have an unhealthy number of friends who run marathons and who have participated in ironman competitions and mud runs and whatnot. And that is awesome and I will support them. But it is not and will not ever be my thing.

He indicated to me that his 26 year old stay at home wife who had birthed one kid would-just-simply-die if he did not take her at least a dozen times a year to some quadruple black diamond snowboard death run in the Alps every year. Like. Die. She would die.

Fortunately for he and his wife, he was headed to Portland where he would learn for sure whether he was being promoted and could move again, this time to Oregon.

Where does he work, you ask? Can you guess?

Yes. He is the regional head asshole in charge at a place that rhymes with "YOUR EYE'S GONE".

Why is it gone? Because I fucking scooped out my own fucking eye with a rusty spoon when this fuck told me he's the boss hoss at VERIZON. VER-FUCKING-IZON. The one that ate my email. That one. And instead of doing something about the Twilight Zone coverage here, he's just gonna move because his daredevil wife with the still-good vagina muscles thinks it sucks.

He is lucky that Hubs is in charge of all our electronic whatnots and that I don't even know where the goddamn Verizon store is or I would terminate our contract tomorrow for the reason that "your boss is a giant prick".

I just can fucking not with some people.

So this was the point where I opened my book. This is the universal sign for "shut the fuck up now or I will stab you". This is mine, anyway. Occasionally my husband continues to talk to me when I am reading. He typically does this when he has had too many vodka-Monsters and can't settle down. He knows to only do this while I am in bed because I do not store the knives there and the kitchen is very far away.

It also helped that people have an inclination to judge a book by its cover, and mine could literally not have fallen from the literary heavens at a better time:

Thanks, DUKE DIERCKS!

This is a super funny book by a guy who moved to Sandpoint. He's like a straight, not-international David Sedaris. He also has three boys so I feel very bad for his wife. Which is the main reason I bought this. (Only kidding a little. I thought maybe it was a survival guide. It's not.)

I put in my requisite number of days away from home and was happy to make the return journey. I always overestimate the sleep I will get and this time was no exception. I was exhausted to that point where I felt like I was forgetting something but I wasn't sure what.

Today I realized it was one eyebrow pencil and a pair of pants. I'm sure that housekeeping is wondering how it can be so complicated to remember all your shit and in my defense I was mainly worried about properly separating my liquids from my solids in my cosmetics, yet packing them in an easy to access location. One can see that when presented with a task of such importance as the safety of our nation, that my favorite and most comfortable yoga pants and the eyebrow pencil that I never should have spent TWENTY EIGHT damn dollars for to begin with might get lost in the shuffle.

Lesson learned. (My eyebrows are hard to match, before anyone starts judging.)

 I had finished the book and waited patiently on the tarmac with my seatbelt off in Boise for the last of the passengers to board. I had landed again in 19B and knew that I would have to get up for 19A to squeeze by. I sent Hubs a text.

Almost everyone was on board and I thought I was home free. I felt a tap on my shoulder.

You have GOT to be kidding me. This asshole. AGAIN.

He was excited to see a familiar face to share his news with: HE GOT THE PROMOTION! Despite having already finished my book, I thumbed through to a spot about half way and spent the next hour pretending to read just so I wouldn't have to engage. He spent the next hour watching a movie on his unlimited data, latest version phone with its pristine and crack-free screen. I secretly wondered just how deeply within his employees the hatred for him ran. My guess was all the way through the bottoms of their feet into the center of the Earth, just based on the two hours of my life with him I'll never get back.

He managed to continue to be a self-important pain in my ass by pulling out just a little too far in his Land Rover so that I couldn't see traffic after we left the lot.

I hope when he moves on from this small town to wherever he lands in Oregon with the other eleventy million people that live there in that giant town, with lots of activities, where it doesn't stink and he can adventure himself into oblivion, that he gets stuck in traffic. Every day.

And then I hope he gets rained on to death.


*Footnote regarding my identification: I recently renewed my driver's license and received the tragic news that my favorite DMV lady of My Current Licensing and Immigration fame is retiring. Like, retiring and moving out of state. This came as a blow to me, as I am unsure whether she has passed along all the traditions of making me look my best to the other TWO people who work in our local office. I did promise to keep her on the Lee Family Christmas card list if she will leave a forwarding address. Our community will suffer a great loss when she leaves, but has benefited tremendously by her presence all these years. I am so glad that she has been part of my husband's work family. I will miss her. People like Bev are what make living in a small town worth it. 

Sass Mouth

photo: Gunnar Marquardt

Did you know I haven't always been a sass mouth?

Don't worry, It's a chronic condition for which there is no cure. I may not have always had it, but now that I've contracted it, it seems my diagnosis may follow me to my grave.

The onset was slow. I think. Others might disagree. Whatever. I'm pretty sure that I wasn't that big of a pain in the ass as a kid. I kept to myself a lot and hung out with a LOT of elderly people and did a lot of educational things. I was probably for sure really weird.

(This is also why I happen to treasure very-much-so that handful of friends I still have from the wayback because they knew me when I was weird and they loved me anyway. Also, they know me now when I'm weird in all the weird adult ways and they love me anyway. You know who you are.)

My sass mouth though, in the bigger world...has gotten me in trouble. Ruffled feathers. Made me enemies. Cost me promotions. I've watched as other, more satisfactorily compliant people keep their mouths shut and succeed. Have a million "best friends". I literally have no idea how to do this. I know I USED to be able to do this. Perhaps that part of my brain has been damaged. Like Gary Busey.

Without sounding sexist, it's usually only women with sass mouths that people have a problem with. These women are often referred to as "head-strong" or "bitches". I've been called worse.

Men with sass mouths are sometimes referred to as "leaders". I know this because a million years ago I was married to a giant sociopath whose charismatic personality and sass mouth got him immediately elected as "leader" of whatever group or party he happened to show up for that day. Qualified? No. Loudest? Yes.

President.

Anyway. Back to my sass mouth.

TWO million years ago, I worked at JC Penney. For context, here is a sampling of all of the wonderful shit I could have ordered for you via the catalog because there was no internet.

Don't lie. You have some of this buried deeeeeeep in your closet RIGHT now.

We had name tags that had our first and last names on them. We also had a straight up creeper stalker kidnapper stabby murderer type individual who came in pretty late only on Thursdays, made a loop around the store, and made a point of asking 1) what time the store closed and 2) whether you had to work up until closing.

He did this while staring at your name tag and including your name in his creepy query thusly:

"Excuse me...HEATHER WATKINS...what time does the store close and will you be working until it closes?"

WTF?

And then we'd close up shop like the bunch of highschoolers that we were because all the actual grownups wanted to be at HOME with their families at 9:00 at night, and we'd head out to the parking lot behind the mall where it's all secluded and poorly lit and rapey and whatnot and whaddayaknow...there he'd be. In his car.

Another side note: This was back when there was this thing where we had HOME phones and our names and phone numbers and addresses and favorite colors and underwear sizes were all published for the world to see in this thing called a PHONE BOOK. Today, this is used for ordering pizza by people who don't just order it online. You know...Cavemen.

And I thought...WHAT THE HELL??? We couldn't catch a break. This was the second creeper with a predictable pattern and I almost wished they'd show up on the same day. There was no such thing as "security". We weren't allowed to take a picture because you know - it might make a customer mad even though these guys didn't really buy enough to make torturing the employees a good ROI (besides, they were only terrorizing the female employees, so no biggie). And even if we COULD take a picture, the technology available to us in ALL THE STORE was, no shit, a Polaroid camera.

Probably a good thing I could never snap a pic. Totally my caption for these assholes.

The other dude came in on Sundays. He took advantage of the skirts or dresses policy on those days and came in with mirrors and found a way to ask you to get something off a high display. Or some other distraction. Yes. Skirts. Or. Dresses. And no, this JC Penney was not located on the Warren Jeffs FLDS compound. And before you knew it, he got a peek of your undercarriage all smashed into the JC Penney brand control top reinforced toe pantyhose because you got the best discount on those.

Policy. Just like you know...the name tag thing.

So one day this chick named Kim quit and her name tag was just always hanging around in a register drawer where we stuck coupons and the good pens we didn't want anyone to steal. It had a tiny triangle on it - an indication that she was some kind of wandering customer service overrider overlord, able to simmer people down or give them a special discount for being too stupid to read a sale sign that very clearly was three racks over from where the item they were purchasing lived. The magic triangle was apparently indicative of her Illuminati membership. It had something else, though. It had no last name.

So. On Thursday evenings, I was "Kim". Kim with no last name. And people lost their shit. I got verbally reprimanded. There were threats of being "written up". All of this AFTER I'd already taken concerns about Rapey McStabberton and Peeper McPervypants to the Cheese. Nobody gave a shit.

Policy.

Dumb luck brought the regional manager to town on a Thursday. As she made her rounds with a gaggle of nervous supervisors in tow, she stopped to talk to me. They shot me daggers. She was very pleasant but asked, "Kim, why do you have a name badge that doesn't have your last name?"

I was honest.

"My name isn't even Kim. Kim quit and left this here. My name is Heather and we have a creeper who comes in on Thursdays and makes a point to look at our name tags. He hangs around outside after closing. I don't want him following me home or looking me up. It's a safety concern. I know you would feel terrible if something happened to me and it was because he learned my full name from my name tag. I wear my own name tag on Fridays. I hope that's okay."

She had a poker face. Maybe she was full of botox. Was that a thing back then?

Anyhoo. Not long after that came the regional initiative - and then the national one - that name badges were changing. They were dropping last names altogether. Initials were okay. Just like that.

Did I get any credit? Any recognition? No. Well, nothing positive. I continued getting grief over making waves instead of just falling in line. Why did I have to question things? Why couldn't I just be compliant with the long-standing policies that nobody else seemed to have an issue with?

History is full of women who had big-ol' sass mouths. Today we look back on them and applaud their unwillingness to sit still and shut up. Specifically today - election day - I am INCREDIBLY thankful for those women who I'm sure were such a pain in the ass in their communities who dared to demand the right to vote. The ones who were deemed hysterical (not the good kind like haha she's so funny) and shunned and who lost friends and who were skipped over for opportunities.

I asked four middle aged white men today whether they had voted and all were either disinterested or had forgotten. How easy it is to take that right for granted when they have literally always had it. I may have used my outside voice when I feigned remembering their felonies prevented their participation, leaving them each to explain themselves to their conversation companions I'd blathered my way into the middle of.

I'll never land in a history book, but I'm never shutting up anyway.