Roller Coaster Life

I can’t keep up with ups and downs of the COVID spikes. They’re like a roller coaster. All I know is that California remains in quarantine and that means I continue to be stuck at home with Alf and the hound.

We’re barking at each other more than usual. We’re reading more, watching more TV, and needing more sleep. By the time we emerge from this, like bears after a winter’s hibernation, we may not recognize who we are. We’ll need to introduce ourselves all over again to family and friends.

“Remember me? I’m your mother.”

“I thought you were dead,” my daughter would say.

“Not dead, just buried,” I would say.

“You look a little long in the tooth,” she would say.

“That’s better than crinkly skin and hollow eyes.”

“You’re almost there. You need to soak in a milk bath and soften up,” she would say.

“As long as it’s almond sweet with lots of rubber ducks with me.”

Calvin says, “Has someone told you you’re brain is rotting too?”

Fashionable

In a conversation I had with a friend about being raised with money.

“In my mother’s day, the maids who cleaned our houses in the neighborhood arrived in a Cadillac they had bought together,” she said.

Intrigued, I asked, “Did they also dress the part?”

“Yes. They wore wonderful hats, dresses and high heels,” she said. “They changed clothes inside the house, did their work, then changed back out of their uniforms and into their street clothes, got into their Cadillac and drove home.”

A class act, I thought.   

“But my mother never left her maid out of her sight. In fact she followed her everywhere pointing out areas that needed attention.”

I wondered how she must have felt about that. Someone who owned a Cadillac must have known how to clean well, I thought.

“That was my mother, never trusting anyone to do the job right. Cadillac or no Cadillac.”

Calvin says, “Mistrust goes deep. Like my breeder who never left me out of her sight in case I barfed on her new carpet.”  

 

 

 

Heights Are for the Birds

My Los Angeles sister had a birthday this week and she wanted to take a balloon ride, so her husband organized one over Temecula. It seems that region now sprouts vineyards and beautiful landscapes. So they got up at the crack of dawn to be in the basket by 6:30. They were there with several other crazy people armed with bottles of champagne and off they went like Mary Poppins. She loved it.

I would have turned green and hung my head over the side and thrown up the entire time. I do that on boats, too. 

I remember years ago taking a chairlift ride over a theme park with Alf and my children. My legs dangled from the seat and there was only a minuscule handlebar keeping me in.

There was too much sky and space around me.

I couldn’t look down.

I couldn’t look up.

Either direction made my stomach flip.

I had to keep looking straight ahead and pretend this was a bad dream that I’d soon wake up from.

Then it the middle of the ride, the chair stopped. The cable made loud, crunching noises. There I was suspended between earth and sky.

I began to perspire.

My hands locked onto the handlebar.

One of my flip-flops came off and sailed into the giraffe area.  While my children squealed with delight, I was having a panic attack.

The ride resumed with a jolt and continued on forever.

I wanted to yell at the top of my lungs that I wanted off! Nobody warned me this would be hazardous to my health. So I did the next best thing – I closed my eyes, took deep breaths, and visualized strangling the owners of the park. There should be warning signs in large letters before a person gets on one of these things. How do skiers do it? I know. They’re packed into parkas and boots for protection. Me? I was in shorts and sunglasses. More in keeping with a Margarita on the ground.

Calvin says, “I love heights. I can drool and fart to my heart’s content.” 

 

 

What Your Grandmother Missed on This Subway Ride

I schlep the subway into work everyday. Public transportation is always drama. You never know what might erupt in front of your face.

For example, this morning a couple, in their 50’s, came on board. There were no seats for both of them together, so the woman sat in one row, next to a young buck in dark glasses, earphones, a baseball cap and a hoodie, drinking a large coffee in a paper cup. He draped his arm on the backrest of the seat invading the wife’s space.

The husband, in the row behind her, leaned over and told the kid to remove his arm. “Don’t tell me what to do!” the kid said.

The husband barked the order again. Then he repeatedly swiped the kid’s arm. The kid wouldn’t budge. He only got louder. “Take your hands off me!”

This was reality TV happening before our eyes. I looked around to see if anyone was filming this on their smart phone. Others were rubbernecking to see the oncoming explosion.

Not me. I prayed. I didn’t want to arrive at the office with blood-stained clothes.

“I”m calling the police!” the kid shouted.

We stopped at another station. More people got on, mostly elderly women. The kid leaped up to give his seat to one of the women, and stood hanging from a strap staring at the husband the rest of the way.

“Let me see your eyes,” the husband said.

The kid pulled out an ear bud. “What did you say, old man?”

“Let me see your eyes,” the husband said.

The kids yanked his dark glasses off and glared at the husband.

We made it thought the tunnel and into the first station in the city. Lots of people got off leaving several empty seats. The kid sat down behind the husband.

The husband turned around to face the kid. Here it comes, I thought. Do I call 911?

“I’m sorry for getting angry,” he said.

The kid shrugged. “It shows you’re taking care of your mom.”

“That’s my wife,” the husband said.

Oh no, here it comes, I thought.

“Okay, it shows you’re taking care of your wife.”

And with that the kid got up and got off at the next stop.

Calvin says, “Wow. Close call. I’d have circled the kid and bayed at full volume until the cops turned up.”

Give Mom a Kick-Butting Day

Mother’s Day is just around the corner.

That horrid one day of the year when families take mom out for brunch and fuss over her with eggs Benedict and Mimosas. Then she’s returned to the daily grind and all is forgotten.

I’m sure the restaurant industry contrived the holiday to beef up their bottom line in May.

What if mom doesn’t like eggs with a last name and orange juice spiked with bubbles? Maybe she prefers her steak grilled with a heaping plateful of shoestring potatoes and a large pitcher of sangria?

And please don’t give her a cheesy card with a sappy greeting that a computer spit out last century that you found in the greeting card aisle at the supermarket next to the artificial smelling air fresheners for the house. Definitely don’t buy one of those either.

Instead, head out to the mall and buy her an all expense paid shopping spree to her favorite shoe store. Or put her on a plane to a beach somewhere. Or give her a lifetime of body massages at the Holistic Health Clinic where Mai, the masseuse will be happy to walk all over her back.

Then install the dog in the pet hotel so she doesn’t have to walk him for a month.

Hire a private chef for the rest of the year and give her a break in the kitchen.

Oh wait. The kitchen. It needs a desperate overhaul before Wolfgang can cook there.

Maybe mom has a dream she’d like to focus on for a change. Provide her with the tools she needs. Lipstick, make-up, haircut and color, liposuction, a new wardrobe.

Singing lessons? Maybe she’s always wanted to develop her voice beyond yelling at the kids.

Calvin says, “My mom never got to develop herself. I know she had a secret nobody else knew. She always wanted to be an owner.”