Category Archives: Nonsense

Vaginal Rhymes

Posted on January 14, 2012 | 1 comment

Something about being with MQD at the midwives’ office makes us both giggle like teenagers.  We sit down and try to have have this sort of “Look at us, we’re grown ups” kind of conversation while we wait but it never lasts.  Within minutes we are examining the pictures on the walls and giggling.  In the exam room the other day there was a quilt on the wall.  It showed a woman’s reproductive system at various times through a pregnancy.

I pointed out to him my favorite square on the quilt.  “I’ve always thought that square looks kind of like a monster…  oooohhh….. don’t be frightened by my falllllooooopiaaaannnn tuuuubes….”

If you are lucky in love there are moments when everything else fades away just like the movies and you have tunnel vision on your beloved…  All you see is this person whom you adore and there is nowhere you’d rather be.

That’s what happened moments after MQD said. “No.  Not a monster.  It looks like a rapper…. counting down the centimeters you are dilated.  ONE centimeter… TWO centimeters… ” and he slid his hand back and forth, making the “wikkee-wikkee” international sign for record scratching.

Sigh… that, friends, is how you know someone is “the one.”

 

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Posted in Nonsense, Pregnancy

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Breaking News…

Posted on January 5, 2012 | 6 comments

Sometimes I can be a little bit of a know-it-all.  And I imagine that makes living with me difficult occasionally.  I really try not to act like I am the Great Knower of All Things, constantly imparting my infinite wisdom.

Sometimes I really struggle with being seven years older than my husband.  I pull gray hairs from my head and I see his under 30 smile and I wonder what he sees in me.

And very occasionally these two facts combine and create a perfect moment in time.

MQD was born in July of 1983.  So when Billy Gibbons revealed  a global truth to the world that summer … MQD had just been born.  He was probably not listening to Casey Kasem’s American Top 40.  So, it’s possible he doesn’t know that “Every Girl is Crazy ’bout a Sharp Dressed Man.”  And I am not about to tell him.

 

Side note: MQD, it is not only your bowtie that had me weak in the knees this morning (or this 800 pound kid of yours I am lugging around in my innards.)  But for the billionth time since we have moved in to our house I started to prepare to leave for work and the time had come to find my keys.  And there they were.  Hanging on the key rack.  I am pretty certain I have never hung them there.  So, lest you think it is only your “Clean shirt, new shoes…” that keeps me “runnin’ just as fast [ I ] can” in your direction… I’m not that shallow.  I also love you for keeping track of my keys.

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Posted in Family, Nonsense

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Christmas Shoes

Posted on December 21, 2011 | 7 comments

I am a wee bit of a sap.  I cry at the drop of a hat.  At Hallmark commercials and baby pictures. Disney World.  Perfect pancakes.  Songs.

But if you thought this was going to be the part where I confess that I just can’t get enough of  The Christmas Shoes song (the song about the young boy whose mother is dying and all he wants is to buy her a pair of shoes for Christmas before she passes) you will be disappointed.  That song makes me want to put a knitting needle in my eye and twirl it around.

In fact, most things designed to bring out the sap in a person don’t do it for me.  If it has chimes or a xylophone the chances are good it will bring out the very best (or the very worst ) in my sense of humor.  That all depends on how you feel about mockery and sarcasm.

That having been said… I do have Christmas Shoes.  Released in the fall of 2005, my Candy Cane Chuck Taylor’s fucking rule.  Every year I wear them the week after Thanksgiving.  Before I put my tree up or drag out the Christmas decorations.  Out come my Chuck’s.  I wish I had worn them a bit more in later November, early December.  Because it seems I can barely see them this week.

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Posted in Family, Nonsense, Pregnancy

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She’s a Lady…

Posted on December 20, 2011 | 5 comments

Part of the art of being a woman...

There is a moment on a roller coaster, just before you begin the descent when you feel weightless.  Free.  If you had your eyes closed, if you had never seen the ride, in that moment you’d have no idea that moments later you’d be falling.

Christmas, 2005.  Emily was three months old.  We’d not yet decided that we’d not be opening the restaurant back up.   And what had been a tumultuous marriage even during its ascent was smack dab in the midst of that beautiful moment where everything is weightless. I was home full time with Emily.  And happier than I had ever been, blissfully unaware of what lay ahead.  And wholly unconcerned with the past that had brought me to that moment.

Christmas of 2005 was my last moment before free falling.  I had a house full for Christmas.  Jeremy ran out to get a few last minute gifts (read: do all of his shopping, he is famous for last minute shopping.)  From a local antique store he purchased this ornament.

I love it.  I loved it then.  And I love it now.  But I have never understood nor asked why he bought it for me.  It is a small bell, filled with something that I imagine once held a stronger smell.  There is a ribbon with a quote.  A quote I have researched but for which I  have never found the origin. 

...is knowing when not to be too much of a lady.

Part of the art of being a woman is knowing when not to be too much of a lady.

We came out the other side of marriage with an amazing daughter to show for it and a friendship that has withstood more than  a few tests.  I am not without fault.  In our ten plus years together I can say that on more than a few occasions when the fault behind an altercation could be pinned on me it was because of what one could call less than lady-like behavior on my behalf.   My tendency to take out my frustration in a passive-aggressive manner often manifested itself in behavior best classified as such.

And now this.  An ornament. Bearing a statement that all but sums up my philosophy.  A philosophy I’d always suspected he all but completely rejected.

“I love it,” I said.  And I hung it on the tree.   From time to time since then I have wondered what he was thinking when he saw it.  It is undeniably me.  But not a me I ever really thought he appreciated.  Maybe the colored (and I am just going with colored, because they were certainly not rosy) glasses that had distorted the way I had looked at our marriage and at my life for all those years also skewed the way I imagined he looked at me.  Maybe  not.

More than likely he saw it and thought as the last minute shopper does, “She’ll like this” and that was all.

That is the story I tend to come back to time and again when I roll it around in  my head.  “She’ll like this.”

This ornament has tremendous weight.  For it is the moment our coaster went over the edge, when I felt the weightlessness leaving me and the descent beginning that I realized I’d not survive the landing if I didn’t abandon all hope of being a lady.

A lady is polite.  And keeps her gloves on.  And her mouth shut.

There would be nothing ladylike about the months that would pass between that Christmas and the Christmas of two years later when Em and I were in an apartment 200 miles from home, a divorce attorney’s business card the only thing on my refrigerator.

A lady would never have had the strength to fight through all that ugly to get to the Beauty that is today.  And I suppose that is the art of being a woman.  The strength, the wisdom to keep going until you find Beauty.

Merry Christmas, to the Ladies.  And the not so Ladylike among us.

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Posted in Bad Mood, Family, Nonsense

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The JR

Posted on December 13, 2011 | 1 comment

Everyone has had that job.  The job that they took that was only going to last a little while.  It was an “in-between jobs” job.

I hated buying more than one uniform shirt because I wasn’t going to be there very long.  Sometimes I wore a long grey skirt instead of black pants.  And a plain black long sleeve tshirt instead of a Jolly Roger shirt when I was tending bar.  Because rebelling is not my strong suit but dammit, I hated that uniform.

I had never had sidework like that before.  Two hotel sheet trays of tiny solo cups of horseradish.  Four of coleslaw.  Make sure you are prepped to make at least 100 Bloody Marys. On Sunday.  At lunch.

Sell all the soup you can, but don’t eat it.  Eat things you see being made.  Made to order. Fried eggs.  Not scrambled.  Don’t ask about what you saw in the walk in.  It is a strawberry.  Even though it looks like a grey furry mouse.  It is a strawberry and it is someone’s idea of a science experiment.

Never, ever run out of cigarettes.  The other waiters, career waiters that have been at this since you were in elementary school and will still be at it when you are long gone, they are not likely to strike up a conversation with you unless you catch them on a smoke break. Get someone in the kitchen stoned.  Just once.  So they know you are not stuck up.

Figure out how the hostess station works.  Because that is where the money is made.  Coffee and $1.99 breakfast and a two-top of surfers.  They are cute.  But it won’t pay the bills. Suck it up and hope you get the family with the screaming kids and that they didn’t see the big sign that explains you can eat a LOT for almost free.  Write down their order.  Because it doesn’t impress anyone that you don’t have to.  And later when a customer tells you that they ordered wheat toast and sunny side up eggs even though that is total bullshit and they may have said that in their minds because what they actually said was French Toast and scrambled, you will have it written down.

Be nice to the people that everyone knows.  They have been eating here for a decade.  The man that eats breakfast at the bar all of the time, he knows where the sour mix is when you run out.  Go ahead and snicker and say “I bet you do” when the creepy guy say he likes his eggs “Over Easy.” But do not serve him a Budweiser with a Jack back at 11:57 am on a Sunday.  Drop a tray of six dinners.  But do not lose a credit card slip.

Don’t look too closely at the Christmas ornaments that hang from every surface in the entire restaurant.  You will begin to wonder when was the last time they were dusted.  And these thoughts of cleanliness will linger.  And drive you crazy. Put your tray jack back exactly where you got it from.  And never set an empty pitcher of iced tea down.

Learn to wash your own bar glasses.  Quickly.  You will run out if you send them to the dish pit.  Get your own ice.  And then get two extra buckets.  Everyone is slammed, not just you.  But it will be over soon enough.

Do not stay for late night drinks.  Do not ever sing karaoke.  Don’t ask any questions about Alan Ross’ Traveling Karaoke Road Show.  Specifically how it is that it is traveling if it is here every single night.  Do not breath an ill word to Carol Ann.  Don’t bother making a request for a specific day off.  Schedules were made this summer for Christmas.  You are working someone’s shifts that quit.  It is assumed that you will quit before the next summer.

I walked out of every shift wondering if I was going to get fired.  With more money than I thought I had made.  This is what I learned there.

I worked Christmas  at the Jolly Roger.  And all I got was this lousy ornament.

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Heads or Tails?

Posted on December 12, 2011 | 8 comments

Moody doesn’t really begin to describe it.  There’s a 50/50 chance I will begin to cry every time MQD puts his arms around me lately.

And since my brother is not here to say “No shit” I will chime in on his behalf.  I am a crier.  I have always been a crier.  But the tears of late are not of the “Jeez, I have so many feelings” Hallmark commercial tears ilk that have plagued me all my life.

They are the ugly, make your face all splotchy tears that came from a place of anger and fear and pain.

Sometimes it is hard to reconcile the two people that live inside of me.  Three, if you count Baby D.  Happy Go Lucky Kelly wishes Doom & Gloom Kelly would take a hike.  It might leave more room for Baby D, and maybe s/he’d quit poking me in the ribs.    Not likely but a girl can dream.

This hasn’t been the most glamorous of pregnancies.  I never realized how fortunate I was before to feel so great so much of the time.  I have complained about my heartburn.  But heartburn is tolerable.  I was completely ill-prepared for the day in and day out aches and pains.  The can’t get out of bed flu like feeling of all over tired.  The pain in my hips.

I am six years older.  I sit all day now, instead of working two jobs on my feet as I did with Emily.  Every pregnancy is different… blah blah blah…

I went in to labor last time strong.  I was walking daily, miles, not steps to and from the door to the car.  I was positive that an unmedicated birth was in my future.  I was ready.  And beyond hopeful. I was sure.  And I failed.

This time I am afraid.  I know how many things can happen, how many things can be outside of your control.  My body feels weak.  And tired.  And yet I am hoping to make it happen this time.  Because I don’t see myself doing it again.  I see our family of four as complete.  And I don’t want to do this to my body again.

So, it feels like my last chance to make it right.  For me.  This body I have struggled with loving, I want to see it do what it was designed to do.    I want to feel it this time. I want to be in awe, just once, of this body.

But it isn’t the pregnancy and the labor experience that has me inside out.

Last night I finally found the words.

It’s the baby.

I am ready for this baby to make me feel good.

I know it will.  I know when I can put my chin against my chest, my lips resting on a tiny little head, arms and legs all squished against my chest, my hand curled around a tiny little baby butt.    Breathe in baby smell and exhale every fear I have carried in my heart for the last year, I know I will feel nothing but love.

But now.  Now I don’t feel love all the time.  Sometimes when I reach out for MQD I see this man I have been married to for less than  year, I see this  life I had been waiting for for so long and I can barely reach my arms around his waist. My face no longer fits in his neck as it did the day we were were married, his arms no longer create a space for me where I feel safe.

All I can say through tears is that I just wish it would all go away.

I don’t want to be tired.  I don’t want to be cranky and short tempered.  I don’t want to spend the next six months in a newborn haze.  I want to rake my leaves.  And stay up late and wrap Christmas presents.  I want to drink Grasshoppers and write Christmas cards with this man I fell in love with.  And be a newlywed. I want to roll down the hill with my kid in to the leaves we just raked.

But I can’t.  Because I am tired.  And dairy makes my heartburn worse.  And I am too busy being weepy and peeing every five seconds and I can’t even get up off the couch anyway.  Walking to the mailbox makes my hip hurt some days so there is no hill rolling on my agenda.  Because I am fucking pregnant.

And “fucking pregnant” doesn’t make me feel full of magic and love.  It makes me feel full of a lack of gratitude for this beautiful thing that is happening to us.

And even though I am nine feet wide, he finds a way.  To wrap me in his arms and rock me back and forth and say “It’s gonna be ok.  You don’t have to do everything yourself.  I love you.”  And he smiles.  And as quickly as Doom & Gloom Kelly arrived she is gone again.  And “Get a Load of THIS, shit, we’re gonna have a BABY, y’all!” takes her place.

And I am smiling, and hopeful.  And excited.  So maybe the smile is forced.  But I am hopeful.  And excited.

[Note:  Dear Baby D, If you are reading this you are no longer a baby.  You are probably a tech savvy pre-teen.  And in case you are reading and thinking “Holy shit, you didn’t want me!!  You said it!!  That you wished “it” would go away!!” I have two things to say.  Watch your  mouth, we don’t swear in our house (ha!) and of course I wanted you.  Some days I wanted you so badly I was ready to reach down my own throat and yank you out by the feet.   Because I wanted you. Out here.  With the rest of us, please.  So I could have me back, too.  Because contrary to what you might think the world does not revolve around you.  Now, go clean your room. Love you, Mom. ]

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Posted in Bad Mood, Family, Nonsense, Parenting, Pregnancy

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Boobs!

Posted on December 10, 2011 | 2 comments

This is another all time favorite.  It reminds me of a few of my favorite things.

Becoming a mother.  Nurturing my relationship with Emily through nursing, and our journey as a breastfeeding dyad.  Getting to know a handful of truly amazing women that supported me and encouraged me to get involved with La Leche League.  And Boobs!

I could use today’s post about my boob ornament as a platform for discussing breastfeeding.  The impact that it had on me as a mother, on my parenting choices or  the impact I believe it had on Emily.   But I suspect that in the coming year I will talk more about my boobs and the magic that they share with this new baby than any of you care to read about.

I am not really very good at making friends with women.  And groups of women I find even more intimidating than happening upon them one at a time.  I’d not been attending La Leche League meetings long when the Ornament Making party was scheduled.  All in attendance at the meetings were invited, but me being me, I just couldn’t quite wrap my mind around actually going.   It wasn’t really a meeting.  And they had to invite everyone to be nice, right?  So maybe I shouldn’t go…   And I chickened out.

Later in the holiday season imagine my delight when I saw the La Leche League tree at Hotline‘s Festival of Trees. It was a tree covered in golden glittering boobs.  I had found my people.

So many years later I am delighted all over again when I take them out of their cocoon.  There are only a handful of ornaments that get carefully wrapped in paper towels.   And my boobs?  I take very careful care of my boobs.

Merry Christmas, Boobs.  Big, small, lactating, push up brassiered, sports bra bound, hot dog nippled, bartending money makers, middle school distractions, you have meant so much to me and so many others through the years.  I’ll raise a glass to you again soon enough.

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Posted in Attachment Parenting, Family, Nonsense

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Simply Red

Posted on December 8, 2011 | 3 comments

Cherries in the Snow.  Raven Red.  Cha Cha Cherry.  Really Red.  Love that Red. Fire and Ice.  Ravish Me Red.

I was not always faithful to a single shade.  But I was a Revlon red lipstick girl for a long, long time.

In high school it was a look  I dabbled with.  There was a Degenerate Art exhibit at the National Gallery in the early 90’s.  I had the tshirt.  It was black.  It said simply DEGENERATE ART.  And I had new black cowboy boots.  Red lipstick completed the look.  It goes without saying that I wish I still had that shirt.

Cowboy boots were eventually  traded for Chuck Taylor’s and overalls, the red lips came and went.

In college I was the girl that didn’t wear shoes very often. I still wore Osh Kosh overalls almost every day.  But low maintenance I was not.

I fell in love with two things early in my college career.  Getting a wee bit baked and acrylic nails.  The hours I spent watching syndicated Beverly Hills 90210 on the WB (the only channel one could get in the dorms without cable) and sculpting the perfect red fingernail out of acrylic were  immeasurable.

To any and all concerned about the effects marijuana can have on a young mind I assure you the acrylic I inhaled in my dorm room did more damage.  Red lips completed the look.  Perfect red nails.  Red lipstick.  Overalls that haven’t been washed in who knows how long.  I was ready to go.

The latter half of my college career had me on my way to or from dinner theatre more often than not.  My “casual attire” moved from overalls to Ben & Jerry’s tshirts, tie dyes and pajama pants.

But the red lips remained.  In large part because the cold cream required to remove the make up I had spackled on for the evening was too time consuming.  And if you have a good reason to sport a painted on mole all night I have always been one to encourage you to go for it.

Bonus points for pearls and a red pageboy wig.

In summary, red lipstick and I go way back.

Red lipstick.  You can open a fashion magazine from nearly any decade and see at least one of the models wearing it.  It is timeless.  Classic.  But it’s only half of the equation.

Red lips without a pout?  You might as well be half dressed.  Ever since I was a little girl my mother has remarked upon my cupid’s bow lips.  (And my heart shaped butt, but that is a post for another day.  One perhaps not so rich with images.)  The first piece of art in her now vast art collection was a Tarkay.  She remarked then that the red pouty lips on all of the women in his paintings remind her of me.

I’d like to think I’ve not lost my pout.  Every girl ought to keep that skill in her back pocket.  But somewhere in the last decade the red lipstick started fading.  Traded in for chapstick with sunblock.  This weekend the red lipstick made a mini comeback.  Just for the day. But a gal can not wear a red feather headband with chapstick.  It was a no-brainer.

Every year when I hang this Patience Brewster ornament I will let it serve as a reminder.  Red lipstick is a bright idea.  Merry Christmas, Red Lipstick.  You have never let me down.  

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Soup

Posted on December 7, 2011 | 3 comments

At first glance you wouldn’t guess that the ornament that says “God made the beautiful skies with stars like twinkling eyes” would rank high among my all time favorite ornaments.   I don’t exactly go very far out of my way to keep the Christ in Christmas.  But this ornament has something special inside.

A little Kelly, circa 1979, plastic dress up shoes, Raggedy Ann pajama top, Dorothy Hamill haircut.  Behind that pantry door was the first and maybe second of what would be many marks indicating the heights of everyone in our family.

On the back it says “Love, The Speedys, Xmas 1979.”

The Speedys lived next door to us when we first moved in to the house I grew up in in 1979.  They had two teenage boys and a huge dog.  Sue Speedy liked to garden and she did so in a manner that made her appear as though she had just stepped out of an LL Bean catalogue.  I remember her seeming so put together.  Decked out in the best of early 80s fashion, whale turtlenecks and duck boots.  There were snap dragons planted in the island between our yard and theirs and I can remember sticking my finger in and out of the snapdragon’s mouths while my mom chatted with Sue.

This ornament is interesting to me for a couple of reasons.  The first, of course,  being that it has a picture of me.  And if you read here, you know I am wildly fascinated by old pictures of myself.  Heh.  But this year it took on an even greater degree of interest.  Christmas, 1979.  My mom was pregnant with my brother.  Not very, as he was born prematurely six months later. But she was pregnant.

I remember the snapdragons that spring.  I remember Sue Speedy’s duck boots.  I remember my brother being very small.  (Or at least I think I do. The line between photographs jogging your memory and real memories made up of smells and “brain movies” is fuzzy to me.)  But I have no memory of my mother being pregnant.  None.  I remember the way her perfume smelled, the way she looked in this amazing water-colored silk dress.  Her closet.  But I don’t recall her being with child. Strange the things the mind omits.

I wonder how Emily will recall this pregnancy.  If she will remember the nights I climbed in her bed.  Because pregnancy induced insomnia had me pacing the house and her steady breathing and warm little body relaxes me.  Last night as I slid in beside her she rolled over, brushed her hand across my face and said “Sleep, Mommy.  You need to sleep before the baby gets here.”

Earlier in the evening I was overwhelmed.  A sudden rush of “holy-shit-we-are-going-to-have-a-baby” consumed me and I sat down on the couch with a huge exhale, called MQD and said “I can’t make dinner.   My hip hurts, I am tired, I just can’t.”  Kindly, he said to just tell him what I’d like for him to pick up and he’d get it on his way home.  Ever the pregnant woman I was not satisfied with this answer and complained that the pressure of having to make up my mind was making me feel like I was going to cry.

Em sat beside me on the couch.  She put her arm around me and kissed me on the cheek.  “Just let it out, Mom.”  I smiled at her wordlessly.  She held my hand.  “We can get Mexican food?   Yanno, Mexican soup.”

She’d effectively broken the spell of my bad mood. “Sweetheart, I don’t think we have ever had any Mexican soup.  Do you mean Chinese food?”

“Yeah, Mexican soup is Chinese food.”

Of course it is.

And so I wonder if she will remember when we sat on the couch, side by side, because she no longer fits on my lap.  And she offered me Mexican Chinese soup and held my hand.  “We’re a perfect little family.” And my eyes teared up, worried that somehow I was destroying our perfect family of three with the new addition.  She continued, “and it will be even more perfect when the baby comes.”

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Posted in Family, Nonsense, Parenting, Pregnancy

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Silver teacups and Princess Parties

Posted on December 6, 2011 | 3 comments

In case you are still staring at my words from yesterday morning in disbelief… I am back again to blow your mind.  I don’t just love my mother-in-law.

I love my ex mother-in-law, too.

It will rain on my car every time I wash it for the rest of ever because nobody gets this lucky.  I didn’t get one great mother-in-law.  I got two.

The day we found out Emily was going to be a Girl I think the Carter’s outlet in Williamsburg got a phone call.  Ready the pink clothes!!!  Pam is on on her way!!  Em’s dad is one of three boys.  And one of many male cousins. And finally the Worthys would have a GIRL!

Like many first time moms I had all kinds of ideas about how I was going to dress my little girl.  She didn’t need to wear pink just because she was a girl.  She would have a yellow bedroom.  And I would never velcro a bow to her head, even if she looked like Charlie Brown.  I stuck to my guns on a few things.  She had a yellow bedroom.  And she never did have a velcro bow.

But there was  a day in the early fall when I was nesting something fierce and doing baby laundry, preparing my home for this little girl that would change my world.  I opened the lint trap in my dryer and I laughed.  I called Pam and I said “You win!!  There is PINK lint in my lint trap.”

I had a beautiful baby girl.  That wore a lot of pink.  And it didn’t kill me.  Or her.

Merry Christmas, Pam.  Since your retirement and move to Arizona we see less of you but your presence in our life is strong.  We had Grandmama Pam’s Sweet Potato Casserole for Thanksgiving.  And I think I will have to master your Chocolate Delight here pretty soon.  Through the magic of Skype we got to see your Santa dance and sing and I was reminded of the first Christmas that Em could walk.  It was cute the first hundred times she pressed the button.

A silver cup engraved with Emily’s name hangs from our tree.  It was a gift from your father, Pop-Pop, when Em was born.  It was too sweet to put away in a box of baby memorabilia, too precious to leave out all the time. So I put it in with the Christmas decorations.  Every year it reminds me of your grace.  You loved me and your son enough to encourage us both to love ourselves and each other enough to move on and let go.  I am forever grateful that I didn’t have to let go of you, too.

Grandmama Pam's Princess Party. Just a year after Em was born Pam got another Princess, Lily!!


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