Welcome home

Thirteen ways to know you're at our house:

1. The area near the front door looks like a shoe store on clearance day.

2. You can't get a hamburger for dinner, or any other type of meat.

3. Fruits Basket is probably playing on TV somewhere.

4. Cats are watching you balefully from high places.

5. The shelves are stuffed with books, and all around the house you find open, face-down books in various stages of being read.

6. You can access the Internet in at least three different ways at any given time.

7. The reading material in the bathroom is a copy of Archaeology magazine, open to a page with a photo of a hideous unwrapped mummy.

8. Black is clearly someone's favorite color.

9. Someone else is clearly in love with jewelry.

10. The kid-drawn art on the fridge is anime-style.

11. It's an all-female house, but the older family photos include a tall, dark-haired guy with a nice smile.

12. It's okay to randomly burst into song if you feel like it (and if you wait long enough, someone will).

13. Someone will probably still be awake at midnight.

Mr. Sandman

Apparently that three-hour nap I took this afternoon was a bad idea, since it's 3:41 in the morning and sleep is nowhere in sight.

I wasn't intending for the nap to stretch out that long, and indeed when G was younger she would have woken me almost as soon as my eyes closed. But now she's twelve, and twelve-year-olds are crafty enough to know that if they wake you up, you might make them stop watching TV and clean their rooms or take a shower or something equally heinous. So, if I happen to doze off, she leaves me unconscious until I wake up on my own. In fact, she has literally tried to lure me into napping in the past by covering me with a blanket when I'm lying on the sofa, which seems all sweet and solicitous until you realize it's like throwing a towel over a parrot's cage. Hey, you're annoying me. Stop squawking and go to sleep.

The worst part? It works!

Injurish

Four weeks ago upon the stair
I met a man who wasn't there
He kicked my leg from under me

...at least, that's the only explanation I've got for how I managed to pull a calf muscle, not by skiing or parachuting or zip lining, but by climbing the stairs in my own home.

I should say first that climbing stairs is hardly an uncommon activity at our house. It's a townhome with four levels connected by three flights of stairs, and you can't so much as get a glass of water without going up or down some steps. We've lived here for two and a half years and I have legs of iron. Or so I thought.

Ha ha! That'll teach me to think!

So on this night, I'd just sent G off to bed and was on my way upstairs to my own room. As I reached the third step, she called "Hey, Mom, come and look at this," and when I pivoted to go back down again, something went ping in my right calf. Imagine a big, thick elastic band breaking inside your body, and you'll have a pretty good idea of what it felt like. All at once, I couldn't put any weight on my leg, and it hurt like nineteen different flavors of hell. I said "AARRGHGHGHGH!" or something like that, and went hopping and stumbling into G's room, where I sat on her bed and tried to stretch and massage and do anything that might make the pain stop.

After a bit, it improved enough for me to hobble into the kitchen for some ice and then upstairs to lie down with my leg propped on pillows. While I was lying there, it occurred to me that if this was a really serious injury--which seemed unlikely, given how it had happened, but then there I was, immobile--I was hosed. It was after ten on a weeknight, I was home alone with a not-quite-teenage kid, and there was absolutely no one I could call to take me to the ER. The idea of teaching G to drive the car fluttered across my mind, and then I decided that since there weren't any actual splintered bone ends sticking out of my leg, I would wait overnight, and maybe my Jedi mind powers would heal me while I slept.

I wouldn't exactly say that brilliant plan worked, but I was able to get around better by the next day, though I still couldn't put my foot flat on the ground. I thought of gritting my teeth and toughing it out, but finally gave in and went to urgent care, where I saw a doctor who looked as if he'd just graduated from high school. (Does this mean I'm getting old? Probably. Dammit.) I described how I'd hurt myself and what the pain felt like, and then we had the following exchange:

Doctor: Are you a scientist by any chance?
Me: No, why do you ask?
Doctor: You're very meticulous about details.
Me: I'm an editor.
Doctor: That explains it.

He was a hilarious guy and I kind of enjoyed the appointment, even though he scolded me for not wearing proper walking shoes while injured--I had tried my best to choose a reasonable pair that morning, but was hampered by the fact that my closet is full of three-inch platforms and spike-heeled stompy boots--and suggested that I go out and buy some New Balance or Saucony trainers. Er ... no. The corporate dress code does not allow for that sort of thing. He also said that it would take four weeks for my leg to heal completely, and at the time I nodded and smiled and thought Yeah, sure. I'll be fine in a couple of days, tops. Well, he was right, because it's been four weeks today, and the last tiny lingering bit of soreness is finally leaving me. (Which probably also means I'm getting old. Dammit!)

So, to sum up what I've learned from this experience:

1. You can hurt yourself doing nothing.
2. Leg injuries take longer to heal than you think.
3. Doctors sometimes know more than you do.
4. It's bad not to know any of your neighbors when you might need a ride to the hospital.
5. I'm getting old.

Unsupervised

Seven things I did while G was at overnight camp for most of a week:

1. Spent pretty much an entire day lying on my bed and reading.

2. Took myself to see Captain America.

3. Had French bread and Salsa Verde Doritos for dinner two nights in a row.

4. Belted out "Rehab" repeatedly at the top of my lungs while cleaning the kitchen. (RIP, Amy Winehouse)

5. Borrowed one of G's shirts so I wouldn't have to do laundry.

6. Used my laptop, uninterrupted, for hours at a stretch.

7. Ate the last fudgsicle.

I know, wild and crazy, right? It's like Lord of the Flies if the protagonist were a middle-aged suburban mother!

I can't help myself

Today I went to Subway, and while I was waiting to pay for my order, I looked to my right and saw a laser-printed notice that read:

THIS LOCATION OPEN 24 HOURS
BEGINNNING JULY 15

"Do you know your sign has an extra letter?" I asked the teenage cashier.

"What?" he said.

I pointed. He started to laugh.

"Hey, [name]," he called to the manager, who was showing another employee how to clean the drink machine. "You put an extra 'n' in 'beginning.'"

"What?"

"In the sign. 'Beginning' has an extra 'n.'"

"Oh," said the manager. To me, he said, "That's been up for two weeks and no one else has noticed."

"I'm sorry," I said, starting to feel like a jerk. "I'm an editor. It's my job to notice."

"It's in all of them," giggled the cashier, who had gone to inspect the identical signs stuck in different locations around the shop.

At that point, I grabbed my sandwich and my Diet Coke and escaped, because the manager was looking a little too angry for my taste. Hey, buddy, I usually charge people money for my services. How about a free cookie or something instead of a glower?

Aging ungracefully

Shopping for a dress for G to wear to her sixth-grade promotion ceremony:

Me: You don't want that one. It's going to make you look like a 40-year-old woman.
G: You mean...like you?
Me: Yes. And I don't even want to look like a 40-year-old woman, so I'm pretty sure you don't either.

Mathletes

G: We had our math placement test for junior high today.
Me: Oh?
G: There was stuff on there I've never seen before. What are those problems with the number between two lines?
Me: I don't know, draw one for me and maybe I'll recognize it.
G: It looked like | 25 |
Me: I have no idea what that is.

(pause while both of us look at it, baffled)

Me: Maybe it means, "Twenty-five, YAY!"*

We both got a good laugh out of that. Clearly neither of us will be medaling in the Math Olympics anytime soon.

*Like this emoticon: \o/

A visit to the past

G suggested going to Medieval Times for Mothers' Day this year. As it happened, I'd never been there before, which made it an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone by celebrating the holiday and adding an experience to my list of new things, so off we went.

I was secretly expecting it to be cheesy tourist crap--which is why I'd never gone, despite living in the area for 30 years--but I was wrong. IT WAS SO MUCH FUN. The idea is that you're at this tournament in medieval Spain, and the section you're seated in is represented by a particular knight, and you cheer him on in battle. It's easier to get into than you might think; even G, who is usually too full of almost-teen self-consciousness to participate in that sort of thing, was screaming and clapping and yelling "Boo!" and "Get him!" during the final epic battle between the Yellow Knight and the evil Green Knight. There are displays of dressage and falconry, and tournament games, and jousting, and hand-to-hand combat, and it's really pretty neat. (And it didn't hurt that three of the knights, including ours, were smoking hot. Wow.) Here are a few photos:

The arena before the show started. 

Dressage display.

Our knight was the Black and White Knight.

This is a flower that he kissed and then threw to us in the stands. I've never seen G come so close to swooning before.

Galloping blurrily off to the joust.

Jousting!

They have the obligatory overpriced merchandise to buy, and people wanting to take your photo and sell it to you for $10, but we ignored all that and just enjoyed the pageantry. G is already longing to go back, so I suspect we may be spending her next birthday there. Definitely a good time.

One thing that bothered me a bit about the day--and in fact has been a general annoyance lately--is that almost no one realizes I'm G's mother anymore. She looks older than she is, mostly because she's so tall, and I look younger than I am, and so strangers assume that I'm her friend or elder sister, or sometimes her aunt. When we arrived at the castle, the person checking reservations at the gate wished the women ahead of and behind me a happy Mothers' Day, but not me. Inside, they were handing out flowers to the mothers; I wasn't offered one. Obviously with my 40th birthday only a few months away, it's nice not to look old enough to be the mother of an apparent teenager, but I am a mother and proud of it, and I'd like to be recognized as one.

It does sting a little, too, to think that if P were still alive, people would probably have no trouble pegging us as the parents and G as our child; it's G and me being on our own together that throws them off. But there's not much I can do about it, short of investing in some MOTHER and DAUGHTER T-shirts or sticky labels--and embarrassing as G thinks I am at times, I'm not that over the top. Yet.

Body follies

We had an unexpectedly chilly weekend and I turned the central heat on a few times. This morning, I woke up with a split lip, a bloody nose and aching sinuses. Dry air much?

Also this morning, G had an adolescent complexion crisis. She came up to me in the kitchen, pulled her hair back and said "Look at this!"

"Hmm, looks like a breakout," I said.

"What do I do?! I don't have enough concealer to cover all that!"

"Well, there's not much you can do," I said. "You can't wear a whole face full of makeup, so you've just kind of got to deal. I'm sorry."

"Isn't there anything that can help?" she moaned.

"We can try buying some tinted moisturizer after I pick you up tonight," I offered. "That might cover it a little without looking all heavy like foundation. I know it sucks, but the reality is that for the next few years, breaking out is going to be a fact of life for you."

"I didn't know it was going to be this bad," she said as she went away to try artfully draping her hair over her forehead.

I didn't have the heart to tell her it can get a lot worse!

After years of experience

G: Can I have a bagel?
Me: You just ate a huge dinner and dessert. You don't need a bagel.
G: I'm hungry though.
Me: Give your meal a chance to settle, and then if you're still hungry, you can have a bagel.
G: How long do I have to wait?
Me: An hour.
G: Are you going to start the hour over again every time I ask?
Me: You know me so well.

Stupid trees

Or, as I have also called them over the last 48 hours, dumb trees, damn trees, rotten trees, and FUCKING TREES I HATE YOU.

Gah.

In case you hadn't guessed, I am allergic to trees, or at least to their pollen. In late March and early April, the trees pollinate like crazy, merrily propagating their DNA all over Southern California in a great big arboreal orgy, and I turn into a sneezing wheezing dripping coughing snorfling mess. Allergy medicine keeps it at least somewhat under control (when I was in college, before you could buy Claritin without a prescription, I thought I was going to get thrown out of my Asian American Lit class one spring for blowing my nose 39809849034 times in an hour) but it's still miserable.

The enemy.

 On that note, why is it that when you have a cold, you're sick, but when you have allergies, it's "just allergies?" I would much rather have a cold than a full-blown allergy attack--at least with a cold, you don't get that maddening sensation of the entire inside of your head itching, from the roof of your mouth to the space between your sinuses and your brain. Plus, with a cold you're officially allowed to eat soup and lie in bed, whereas with allergies you're supposed to jump up and run a marathon because it's "just allergies" and you're "not really sick." Only you are.

Something is wrong with this world we live in, I tell you. I can't do anything about it right now, though, because I have to blow my nose again. And then go out and kick a tree.

It's not Fiction Friday, but how about a Manuscript Monday?

Just for a change of pace, I thought I'd post the story I wrote for that Writers' Digest contest back in January. Entries had to be 750 words or less and begin with the sentence It was on a bright, starry night that the traveling circus rolled into town. I gave mine a title when I entered it, but for the life of me I can't remember now what it was, so here we go:

---

It was on a bright, starry night that the traveling circus rolled into town. Lydia and I were right there to meet it, all fizzy inside with excitement. We hadn't had a circus come in at least twenty years—-maybe thirty. I guess word gets around on the entertainment circuit.

“You remember the last time, Sissy?” Lydia asked as we watched the hubbub of people and animals. Two men passed in front of us, sweating, hauling a lot of striped canvas attached to ropes. A few yards away, a lady in a red-and-white leotard bent over backward, casually, and walked a few steps on her hands.

“I remember.”

“It was fun, wasn't it?”

I nodded.

“What was your best part?”

“The acrobats,” I said, knowing that wasn't what she meant.

Lydia giggled. “Not mine. My best part was when we--”

“Hey, you kids!”

We turned around at the sound of the voice—Lydia first, then me—and found a man just behind us, looming thin and tall and straight like a pine tree, made even taller by a top hat that looked out of place with his work clothes.

“That's the ringmaster,” I whispered.

“Aren't you girls out kind of late? Your folks know where you're at?”

“Yes sir,” said Lydia, looking up at him as only Lydia could, with those big eyes of hers as sweet and melting as brown sugar. “Daddy said we could come down and watch a while. You gonna set the whole circus up tonight?”

Like most grown-ups, the ringmaster clearly thought Lydia was cute as a button. “You bet,” he said. “By the time you wake up in the morning, it'll all be ready, and tomorrow night we'll do the show.”

“And are there gonna be elephants and horses? And a tightrope walker? And a lion tamer?”

“All that and then some.”

I was imagining it—the roar of cannons, the glitter of spangled costumes, the smell of animals and popcorn and sawdust—when I realized that Lydia was giving the ringmaster that look, the one she used to get when we were perusing the candy display at the old five and dime. She drew a slow, deep breath, like the first half of a sigh, and leaned toward him with yearning written all over her sweet little pixie face. Before she could get any further than that, I stuck out one of my brand-new Sunday shoes and trod on her foot hard enough to leave a crater in the soft black dirt.

“Oww! Sissy!”

“Oops,” I said. “Sorry. We've got to get going now, mister. We'll see you tomorrow, okay?”

“I'll look for you,” said the ringmaster, and ruffled Lydia's hair. “You girls be careful on the way home. There's bad things in the dark, you know.”

“We know,” I said. “Come on, Lyds.”

“We're going to get them all after the show anyway,” Lydia whined as I dragged her through the park, past the abandoned swings with their rusted-out chains . “Mayor Gibson said so at the town meeting. What difference would it make if I have this one now?”

“Because there's no show without him, dummy! He's not just some old carny, he's the boss of the whole circus. If you hurt him—if you so much as spook him—they'll pull up and leave, and then I won't get to see it. And I been waiting too long to let that happen.”

“But Sissy—”

“But Sissy nothing.” I curled my lip and showed her the tips of my teeth, gleaming in the moonlight. “If you mess this circus up for me, Lydia Jones, I will get up early one night and hammer a two-by-four right through you, just see if I won't.”

“Honestly,” Lydia huffed. “Anyone would think you didn't want to kill them.”

“I want to kill them all right,” I said. “But after the show. Don't forget whose fault it was that I almost missed it last time.”

That shut Lydia up. We trudged on, with my legs just outpacing her shorter ones.

“The stars are real pretty, aren't they, Sissy?” Lydia offered after a while, wanting to make up already, or maybe just hoping to avoid being staked in her sleep. “So close and bright. It'll be a nice night tomorrow.”

“Yes,” I said. “It sure will.”

----

That's all for now. Hope to be back in a day or two with a post of actual substance!

All right, I won't eat your baby, but your soul is fair game

I had forgotten tomorrow was Valentine's Day until I went to the supermarket this afternoon and saw all the massive displays of merchandise. Good thing I did, because I was able to pick up some cheap packs of Valentine-themed Skittles for G to hand out to her class. Oh, lucky teacher, locked up all day with 35 preteens who not only are under the influence of raging hormones, but also have a metric ton of pure grade-A sugar coursing through their bodies.

In other news, today we made a special trip to my office to collect unsold Girl Scout cookies so we could return them to the "cookie leader." G was extremely annoyed about having to interrupt her Sunday-afternoon schedule of sloth and indolence to go with me (I needed her to help carry boxes out to the car) until I reminded her that they were her cookies for her Girl Scout troop. I don't know if she was any happier about it after that, but at least she kept her displeasure to herself.

I'm feeling a little miffed at Girl Scouts in general after once again being the recipient of judgey looks from Girl Scout mothers when I went to pick G up at yesterday's International Fair event. I was wearing more or less what I usually wear--black velvet jeans, long-sleeved black shirt, black shoes with a skull-and-crossbones design, and black sunglasses--and all the Girl Scout mothers I passed on my way into the building stared at me as if I were going to steal their souls and eat their babies. These are clearly very sheltered women, because while I was the only person there in head-to-toe black, my clothes were still completely mainstream by almost any standards, nor did I have tattoos or piercings or a hair color not found in nature (and if I had, who cares), and yet you would have thought they'd seen Marilyn Manson stomping up the sidewalk toward the high-school gym.

I wonder what it's like to be that uptight. I also wonder what sort of reception is doled out to people who do have tattoos, piercings, etc., and daughters who are Girl Scouts. It can't be very nice.

The long road to self-sufficiency

Half an hour after lunch ...

G: I'm hungry. Feed me.
Me: Nuh-uh. You are 12 years old. You can make your own snack.
G: Feed me!
Me: Have an apple. Make yourself a sandwich. Microwave something.
G: *gets out a loaf of bread* Fine! Are you happy now?
Me: I'm delighted.
G: Elated?
Me: Ecstatic.
G: Thrilled?
Me: Over the moon.

Six things make a post

1. G has missed two days of school this week due to a sore throat, fever and general yuck. She should be going back tomorrow, as a visit to the doctor today revealed that her throat is red, but probably not strep-laden. Her consolation prize for enduring the throat culture was a chocolate strawberry cupcake at the bakery next door to the doctor's office (which I'll bet just rakes in the cash from parents offering similar bribes consolation prizes), and then I decided I needed some consoling too and got an Oreo cupcake for myself. Mmmm.

3. A friend of mine texted me to see how G was and to say that he picked up a box of Ghirardelli brownie mix for me when he went to Costco at lunch. I texted back "thx for the brownie mix" and my phone autocorrected it to "thx for the brownish lox." G and I got a good laugh out of that one.

4. Last night, we whiled away half an hour by watching a DVD of this production of The Cat in the Hat, which was marvelously inventive and looked exactly like the book come to life. We then pondered the hypothetical answer to the question "If our mother could see this, oh, what would she say?" and decided that it would probably be "YOU TWO ARE IN SO MUCH TROUBLE" and perhaps also "WHAT HAVE I TOLD YOU ABOUT LETTING ANTHROPOMORPHIC ANIMALS INTO THE HOUSE?" (Although maybe not the latter since they do have a talking fish.)

5. Being at home for the last two days has motivated me to do two of my least favorite household chores: cleaning the bathrooms, and washing the cat bowls and cleaning the plastic mat that goes under them. I hate doing both of those things, but it's amazing how much better the whole place looks and feels after I do. Especially the cat area--something about spilled cat kibble on the floor creates very bad feng shui.

6. Being at home for the last two days has also apparently made me a very boring person who posts about boring things. Sorry about that. :P