Slumber Party

The new push around the communal home is for less swearing. (For those of you keeping track at home, we now have six adults living here, albeit some only temporarily - Mom, Jack, Me, Tony, Levi and Christine, Tony's mom. It's Jersey Shore with a lot less gym and tanning. But more laundry.)

Anyhow, upset with the amount and quality of profanity in the house, Mom issued an edict that we should all try to be a little more...intellectual in our discourse with each other. Keep in mind that my soft-spoken and mostly well-behaved mother used to have a mouth like a trucker, which you can still bring out in her IF she's properly enraged. However, she never swore that much in public and never casually. Just when she was angry. You won't like her when she's angry.

Somewhere along the line, though, things got a little off-course. Instead of sounding more intellectual, we merely sound weird. Perhaps we'll adjust. Perhaps we're just resisting the change. Perhaps it was Mom's choice of substitute for every swear word.

She chose "slumber party."

So now, JUST now, I had to refer to something as a "pain in my slumber party." Tony, five minutes ago, referred to someone he met while showing his mom the sights as a "slumberpartying idiot." Levi kicked open the door to the library last night, shouting "what the slumber party is going on in here?" (Which, as an aside, is not actually necessary, because the library has glass doors. He could see Mom and Jack watching TV. He's just a slumber party.)

To be honest, I'm not sure how long this experiment will last. The novelty will surely wear off soon and it has to be odd to hear a group of adults continually referring to a "slumber party." Outsiders probably think we're some weird pajama cult that sleeps in the high school gym in our Barbie sleeping bags.

Until then, I'm going to keep my slumber partying mouth shut and take this like a man.

Three guys. And two gals

Last night, every adult in my house went out for dinner together. For those of you playing along at home, that would mean that all five of us piled into the big car (which finally has legal Kentucky plates, after several months of trips to the BMV and many faxes) and drove off into the sunset.

What makes this so fun is that it isn't easy to put five full-grown humans in a four-door car, no matter how you slice it. So Levi and Tony get to ride in comfort in the front seat, while Mom, Jack and I squeeze into the back. (Unless Jack is driving and then Levi STILL gets to ride in comfort and Mom, Tony and I squeeze into the back. Seems like Levi's living on easy street here, doesn't it?) Anyhow, Jack likes to make Mom miserable, so he spends the entire ride squishing her into me, until she blows her top. Or he'll squeeze her knee, which inevitably makes her pee her pants. In my car. You know, stuff adults in cars do all the time.

By the time we'd made it to Five Guys, everyone was ready to get out of the car and have a few square feet to themselves. This is how the evening went down:

- Mom and Levi got into a (physical) slap fight trying to get in the door of Five Guys because they both tried to go through together. Not the best first impression on the folks in the restaurant.

- Jack left his change at the register.

- Jack and Mom got into a (verbal) slap fight because Jack, as usual, didn't bring his cell phone with him to dinner and Mom wanted to go to the Verizon store and get a replacement phone for him. (His is dying a slow death.)

- Jack, peeved about the slap fight, swept all of his empty peanut shells into Mom's lap when he went up to get the food from the counter.

- Mom, peeved about the peanut shells, scraped them out of her lap and put them all over Jack's chair.

- He saw them, but sat on them anyhow, earning the new nickname "Peanut Butter."

- I, of course, had to take five phone calls during dinner, prompting Tony to give me the same lecture I used to give him about phone calls and emails while we were out. Note to self: just keep mouth shut in the future.

- After dinner, Jack went to the bar to drink away the pain of the peanut shells in his tush while the rest of us did some window shopping.

- I bought a giant artificial flower arrangement for my entryway. Levi and Tony took it back to the car together and it was only when they returned that we realized they must have looked like quite the happy couple, taking their flower arrangement to the car in their complementary polo shirts and matching shorts.

- Mom, when throwing away her milkshake remains, managed to toss it in the trash can in such a way that she got chocolate ice cream sprayed all over the front of her shirt and in her hair.

- On the ride home, Levi had to hold the flower arrangement in his lap, finally experiencing the type of car ride I usually endure, with Mom peeing on my leg and being squished into me the entire time.

In other words, a typical family night out.

The Big 3-0

Well, folks, as much as I've tried to avoid it, my 30th birthday is right around the corner. In less than six weeks, I'll hit the proverbial wall and have to admit that I've accomplished less than half of what I thought I would by this point in my life. (Unless you count marriages, because I've tripled my expectations there. Small victories, people.)

And honestly, I'm not that upset about it. At this point, it just seems like another day. Most days, I'm so tired and burned out from being a Captain of Industry that I feel 500 years old, so 30 seems like a real bonus. And anyone who knows me understands that I'm not the most introspective type, so I'll probably spend five minutes obsessing about my life's accomplishments and then start reading a fashion magazine. Which will start me obsessing about my fashion sense.

The biggest problem is that I don't know what I want to DO for my birthday. I've been in friend hibernation so long that I would have about three people to invite to a party, and throwing a party for yourself has always seemed a bit...narcissitic. I have a business to run, so I can't take a trip, which is what I thought I'd do. Turns out a spa vacation is a lot less relaxing when you have to take your phone and laptop. Makes the massage really complicated. We're still hauling ourselves out of the giant we're-not-working-but-the-bills-are-piling-up hole we dug over the last 16 months, so extravagent gifts are out of the question. (I bought all of Tony's gifts at the Walgreens this year. He got a ring toss game and a coffee mug. Sixteen dollars total. I know, it was too much.)

As far as food is concerned, I'm the resident birthday dessert maker. Every birthday, I'll bake something for the birthday person, be it chocolate cake, chocolate cupcakes, chocolate pie, whatever they want as long as it's chocolate. I'm generous that way. I don't expect Tony to whip up something fabulous and my poor mother spends half of every day cooking for the ever-growing pack of hungry adults who live in my house. (I live in a reality TV show now, in case you didn't know.) I don't feel right asking her to add to her duties with a cake.

So, I've decided. I'm going to sleep late, eat a Five Guys Burger with all the fixins, see a terrible summer blockbuster movie and buy myself something pretty (that costs less than $20.) And then have a giant sundae from somewhere that serves ice cream. The perfect recession birthday.

Or maybe I'll just drink all day.

A tribute...

For those of you who don't know, tomorrow is my mom's birthday. And for those of you who REALLY haven't been paying attention, she lives with me now, so we get to spend lots and lots and lots of time together.

Which has actually been quite wonderful. She's honestly the best person to have in your corner when, as a Captain of Industry, you work 14 hours a day and have no time to do laundry, take bathroom breaks or feed yourself. I can count on two hot meals and clean underoos every day now that Mom is here. She even stripped my sheets, washed and dried them and made up the bed with hotel corners and shams and stuff last week when I was completely swamped and my sheets were beginning to walk around by themselves. It was the best day ever.

But I digress - I didn't want to share with you today the ways my mom makes my life better - I wanted to share my all-time favorite Mom adventure story. It's a classic from the Starling family album.

Mom likes to do outdoorsy stuff. She likes rafting and hiking and biking and all that. So every year for her birthday or other Mom-centric holidays, she asks to do something like that. Like for her 60th birthday, when she rode a mechanical bull. But that's a WHOLE 'nother story.

For Mother's Day about five years ago, she and I decided to go biking and canoeing on the towpath up the road from where we lived. (The towpath is a remnant of canal days, where the horses towing the barges would walk. Fun facts.) Anyhow, we signed up for the half-day bike-and-float package, where you ride upriver on bikes and then float back downriver in a canoe. Two hours, no muss, no fuss, back in time for a light lunch and a movie.

I should have known how things were going to turn out when we arrived at the bike shop and the only man working had an artificial leg. NOT THAT THERE'S ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT - it just makes it really hard to test out bikes. Which would prove to be an issue later. He also only had about four teeth, and they all got in the way of his map-reading skills. He got out a grimy little map and showed us the way from his shop, through town, to the towpath. He told us to pick out a bike, ride it around a little, and then we could head off. The guys with the canoes would meet us about five miles up the road for the relaxing post-ride float.

Mom and I set off, intrepid explorers that we were. There weren't any signs at the start of the towpath, but that didn't deter us - we figured we were merely the first ones out that day and we'd enjoy miles of solitude on the bike path while everyone else slept and drank mimosas. We did, in fact, enjoy miles of solitude but only because WE WERE ON THE WRONG PATH. We didn't realize it at first, but when the gravel slowly gave way to a dirt track that was so rough you had to ride standing up for fear of breaking your pelvis, we started to think something might be wrong.

Mom asked me, "Don't you work with people who bring their kids out here to ride? How can they do that on this path?"

She was right - the towpath was supposed to be this glorious bike path that was wide enough for five riders abreast and smooth enough for a tricycle being ridden by a three-year-old. We were on an old washout, it seemed. We confirmed something was amiss when we looked through the woods, ACROSS THE CANAL, and saw riders gliding easily along - families and the elderly and at one point, a barbershop quartet on a pair of tandem bikes. THAT was the towpath. We were on the hellpath.

And then it got worse. Much, much worse. First, the seat fell off my bike, so I could only ride standing up with the fear of sodomizing myself with a rusty bike part, or I could walk next to my bike, carrying my seat. FOR FIVE MILES. Then, we ran into an elderly couple collecting trash along the path who said, kind of cryptically, "Well, it's a beautiful day for a ride, as long as you watch for the trains." TRAINS?

We found out what they meant soon enough. Seems the hellpath was merely a feeder for the deathpath, which was just train tracks. We followed the train tracks, figuring they'd get us to civilization at some point. They did, but not before becoming a trestle bridge that crossed the river. WITH NO WALKING AREA. Nope, just a bridge made of train tracks and a 30-foot fall to your death or certain paralysis below.

Did I mention I'm afraid of heights? Mom had to talk me across that bridge like a hostage negotiator, wheedling, cajoling, tempting me with a Hostess Sno-ball, whatever it took. We carried our bikes across this giant bridge, praying the whole time that a train wasn't coming. I resolved to throw my bike in the river, make my peace with God and hug that train. I wasn't jumping.

We finally ran into a little town called Clinton, Ohio, where we accosted a nice man in his yard who put the seat back on my bike for me and gave us directions back to the towpath. By that point, I'd made several hysterical phone calls to my brother and my boyfriend at the time, both of whom had no idea where we were but thought it was pretty funny that we were so lost. We also called the folks at the bike/canoe shop, who had pretty much the same reaction.

Two miles of riding later, we found the canoe portage. And 30 minutes after calling the bike shop, a father-son team in a pickup showed up, unloaded a canoe and took our bikes. For a minute, we thought they were just stealing our bikes. The one gentleman, though, finally spoke to us, to tell us that we needed to watch out for branches in the water, because, and I quote, "earlier this week I came out to cut some of them branches out of the water but I dropped my chainsaw in the canal and I haven't been able to fish it out yet."

So I went the entire canoe trip visualizing a running chainsaw slicing its way along the bottom of the canal, just waiting for the opportunity to remove one of my limbs. Makes for a relaxing trip.

By this point, Mom and I had turned a 45-minute bike ride into a three-hour epic journey and we were starving, so we paddled down that canal as fast as we could, giving the whistling, cheerful bicyclists the finger every chance we got and scarfing down Hostess Sno-balls like they were Powerbars. By the time we got to the end point, we leapt from the canoe, ran to our cars, and I honestly don't think I've ridden a bike since. Or celebrated Mother's Day.

Mom thinks that was the best trip she's ever taken. Which is why she's such an awesome mom. Happy Birthday, Skippito.

Fairy Ann, Wheeler-Dealer

My mom is a wheeler-dealer. Put her on the phone with a salesman, and she'll get the best deal they've ever given anyone. Throw a stack of coupons and an office-supply catalog at her feet and the doorbell will ring 20 minutes later with a guy delivering your free paper and a bonus box of kittens.

I share none of my mom's special abilities. It embarrasses me to use a coupon anywhere but at the grocery and even then, I sometimes feel bad holding up the line with my fist-fulls of money savers. This is why, now that she lives with us, Mom does all the negotiating. Just today, she battered the woman from Scott's into some sort of crazy discount by threatening to go back to TruGreen. And she got the TruGreen lady to give up some serious ground herself, by threatening to go with Scott's.

It's an art, really. She sits down at the phone with her legal pad at the ready and her loins girded, cracks her knuckles and goes to work. Twenty minutes later, the Schwan's man is paying her to take his food.

Now this can go the other way, too. Lots of people have made money off my mother by sending her coupons. DSW, for one, can send every employee to college off the interest on Mom's "Special Birthday Discount" coupon purchases alone. Tony has razor blades to last until his beard stops growing. We have enough Tylenol to stock a hospital. And her car smells like freshly-baked sugar cookies because the Manager's Special at the car wash wasn't a good enough deal alone - it needed the additional air freshener and chassis wax. (Come to think of it, we could all use a good chassis wax.)

So the next time you click a coupon link in your email or accept the senior citizen parent of a military service member discount at the movie theater, think of my mom. She's probably in line behind you, waiting to combine her offers to get in for free.

Breathing....

I find it impossible to meditate. I really want to, I really need to, but I find it utterly impossible.

It's bad enough that I can't quiet my own mind - two seconds of "Breathing in, I know I am breathing in" and my mind is thinking about what color to paint the meditation room (we turned Tony's old office into a meditation room) or what I'm going to eat for dinner or why my customer just emailed me at 10:30 at night. I've never been good at quieting my mind. In yoga class, it is much the same. Sometimes I hit that sweet spot of not wondering what my butt looks like in these pants or if I'm showing too much cleavage because I swore this tank covered more when I left the house and did I leave the iron on but I couldn't because I haven't ironed anything in over a year and surely the house would have burned down by now and how much insurance do we have and could we just take the money and forget about rebuilding the house that is slowly bankrupting us and oh, god what if we do go bankrupt, where will Mom and Jack live and so on. That's your little peek into my mind. Never quits.

But sometimes, every once in a great while, I'll be breathing and softly gazing at my candle and my mind will go white and it is a beautiful thing.

And that's usually when Sarge barks or someone calls my name. See, I tell everyone in the house when I'm headed to meditate. I want them to know that for the next half hour or so I will be unavailable to answer phones or questions or watch American Idol or whatever else is going on at the time. I'm conscious of the fact that I'm needed a lot in my house and that everyone needs to know when I'm going off the grid.

Doesn't matter. I swear that somewhere in the house there is a light that goes on about five to seven minutes into my meditation that alerts Sarge or Tony or Mom that I need to be interrupted IMMEDIATELY! The first time, Mom needed me to clean up a Sarge accident. The second, Tony forgot I was meditating and needed me to fix the remote control in the basement. The third, Sarge needed my attention because I hadn't given him any in five to seven minutes. It has become a big joke in the house that as soon as I go in that room, I become the most popular person in the house. Tony could go the entire day without talking to me but the minute my butt hits that cushion and I light that candle, we have ISSUES to discuss.

Tonight, I had a combination of distractions. Before going in the meditation room, I announced that unless the house was burning down or someone was headed to the hospital, I was not to be disturbed. Or I would make sure that the house did burn down and one of them went to the hospital. But, Sarge was barking, the neighbors were having a party and Mom and Jack were two rooms over in the library watching some movie that involved police sirens, chainsaws, screaming and loud rock music. I think it's the latest Miley Cyrus vehicle. Plus, Tony was watching something in the basement that had so much bass in the soundtrack that the floor was vibrating. It was the perfect storm of meditation killers.

So, I did what any good student of meditation does. I fumed. But I was breathing deeply the whole time, so I think that counts.

Double Down!

It isn't news to anyone that I love fried chicken. I've written before about my love for everything Kentucky Fried, and I may have even mentioned that I'll eat until I have to roll around the floor in a big greasy pile, stomach distended from scarfing too many drummies and wings. It might even qualify as an addiction. An obsession, at least.

Last night, I took that obsession to a new level. I ate a KFC Double Down sandwich.

Frankly, what surprises me most was that I survived the experience and lived to type about it. But, we'll start at the beginning.

Yesterday was a bit stressful. Most days are a bit stressful now that I'm a Captain of Industry, but yesterday had its own unique complications and I needed greasy food salve for my wounds. Tony suggested the KFC, and you know as well I do that nothing trumps the siren song of Extra Crispy. Then Mom kicked it up a notch and said that in addition to the bucket we always get, she wanted to try the Double Down.

(Keep in mind that my mom has become one of those senior citizens who eats a dollop of potato salad and calls that dinner. I didn't think she'd be able to handle the double downage. So I offered to share it with her. Aren't I generous?)

And so, at 5:45, we drove off into the sunset, in search of crispy, salty meat products. The KFC here in Florence is about 20 minutes from the house, so the drive there is filled with anticipation, and the drive back is filled with the smell of fried chicken. At the drive-up, I told mom that the guys in the window were probably wondering what two hot ladies like ourselves were going to do with a whole bucket of chicken AND a Double Down, but they were probably just wondering why the entire country hasn't died of a heart attack already. Or what the change from $21 would be since the total was $20.50. Yes, one bucket of chicken with no sides and a Double Down costs $20.50. Mom is not a cheap date.

Once we arrived home, I knew we had approximately 30 seconds before the destroyer of chicken showed up. Tony can reduce a bucket to a few scraps of skin and a pile of bones in three minutes flat, so you have to get in, get what you want, and get out, perhaps with your fingers intact, perhaps not. Mom has a habit of dithering around the kitchen after we get take-out, gathering drinks, getting silverware, checking on the dogs, knitting a sweater, etc. She doesn't understand the Chicken Imperative. I grabbed the Double Down, hid it in a cabinet and called for Jack to Loose the Hounds (let Tony out of the attic so he can eat.)

As Tony was devouring his third piece of Kentucky Fried, Mom finally landed at the table to start eating. We cut the DD in half (actually thirds - Mom got 2/3 and I got the scrappins - she's not good at sharing) and braced ourselves for the chicken-y, bacon-y, cheesy goodness.

The verdict? Meh.

I'll admit, it was tasty. But was it more tasty than a piece of extra-crispy KFC? Not really. The box they put it in kinda steams out the crispiness and the bacon adds another (unnecessary) layer of salt to an already salty product. I enjoyed it, but I don't think I'll be purchasing another.

I did eat two drummies, though, and those were fantastic. That's right, people. I ate a third of a Double Down AND two drumsticks. And some potato salad. Save your judgements for someone who cares that it's swimsuit season.

This morning, however, I felt like I'd been doing salt shooters all night. I've had almost a gallon of water today and my body still feels like the Sahara.

So, my Double Down recommendations:

1. Eat a Double Down at least once in your life. It's a cultural experience.
2. Drink lots of water with the DD.
3. Eat it as soon as you order it so the packaging can't steam it to death.
4. Tell no one.