Suburban Goddess

In an effort to avoid passing unspeakable rage on to my daughter, I’ve been going to counseling to try to work through my baggage from the past year’s events. I think things have been going pretty well; I’ve managed not to kill anyone yet. (I still wish a violent case of herpes on certain people every single day, though).

Anyway, with the holidays coming, my therapist is stepping up the appointments. Apparently, this is the time everyone sails off the deep end. I’ll admit; it’s going to be difficult for me… but thankfully, I have a ruthless work schedule that will keep me pretty busy. The hardest part is going to be that there is no one here to share them with me.

Enter the conversation with the therapist that I did not want to have.

“You shouldn’t date for at least a year.”

(blink. blink.) “Is that a year from when he left, a year from the divorce date, or a year from NOW?”

“Have you been dating already?”

(blink. blink.) “Ummm….uhhhh….. define DATING.”

Apparently, it takes two years for the human heart to heal from the trauma of a breakup. And that’s provided that you do it the healthy way; there are those who get stuck somewhere in the process and never get over it. I do NOT want to be one of those people.

So I am forbidden from dating until after the first of the year.

“You’ll make it,” reassured my therapist. The funny thing is, I know she’s right.

But what the hell will I write about?

Over the course of the past month, I’ve read that pharmaceutical companies are guilty of giving drug samples to doctors that have not yet been cleared by the FDA. Our government is aware of this; the FDA has a list of those drugs.

They refuse to release it to the American public.

Also, over the course of this month, NASA has finished an extensive survey of our airline systems through the eyes of several pilots. The results were “frightening….”

Yet they refuse to release the report.

Classified documents, confidential conversations…. all for the sake of “protecting” the American public. Well, I ask you:

Who the hell is going to save us from the greedy corporations?

“Oh my God…”

“What?”

“I was looking for the Better Business Bureau logo, the award of excellence one with the wreath…”

“So?”

“So I just found it… under the filename BBB Reef.”

I recently invested in Season 2 of Dora the Explorer; I swore I wouldn’t cave, but she’s one persuasive little Latina. Every evening, Alex is allowed to watch two episodes before I can’t stand it anymore and my subconcious starts to tell me, “Turn it off or start with the binge eating…”

Tonight I was working on a cake for my boss (which will probably be the topic of tomorrow’s post), when I hear Dora the Doctor trying to figure out why one of her petulant furry friends with a Spanish accent is sneezing so excessively. Perhaps he has a sinus infection, Dora. He probably caught it by swapping snot with the other furry burros down at the Furry Burro Daycare. About that time, I had a crisis with my buttercream icing, and tuned Dora out. I didn’t think about it again until later, as I was getting Alex ready for bed.

The dog always hovers nearby, as if food will magically appear. Actually, where Alex is concerned, he’s not altogether wrong. (I have occasionally found a stray Dora fruit snack lodged in her diaper or stuck to her shirt). Tonight was no exception; as I pulled her shirt over her head, he tilted his head back and waited. Unfortunately for the dog, he’s always had sinus issues. Any time he tilts his head back, he goes into a sneezing fit.

After the fourth sneeze, Alex nodded her head knowingly. “Mommy, Bubby’s not sick.”

“No, baby? How do you know Bubby’s not sick?”

“‘Cause Bubby’s LERGIC.”

Um, okay. So here’s my question for Nick Jr…. Can you make a pre-med Dora series? Or how about a criminal justice version? Dora the Corporate CEO! Because my kid is listening, and I really want her to be learning something useful instead of another excuse to miss school…

Since I’ve moved into my new home, I often find myself waiting for things to fix themselves. It is only after I’ve received a third letter (certified) from the homeowner’s association do I realize, “Crap, I need to do that.”

This particular weekend, I looked out my back door to find my deck looking back at me. The wood had faded to a silvery grey, which matches the brick of my house, but doesn’t particularly do anything for me. As long as I can remember, I’ve wanted a deck. Now that I have one, I realize that decks require maintenance. And maintenance, when you are a single woman, SUCKS. So I packed up the kid and we headed over to Home Depot. After setting her up with various pictures of kid’s rooms from the neighboring Disney paint display, I set out to figure out how in the hell one refinishes their deck. 45 minutes later, I left the store with a gallon of deck cleaner/stripper and a gallon of stain. Easy enough.

The first rule in deck stripping is to make sure you have sufficient daylight when you begin. I chose to begin at 6:00pm on Friday night. Not smart. This means I was on my hands and knees with a wire brush by 8pm, and my motion-sensor light does not work unless you’re STANDING. Use your imagination. If you’re laughing, your imagination is right on target.

When I awoke on Saturday morning (with Alex’s help), I stood in front of a pristine deck… after admiring my handiwork for a few moments, I pulled out the can of stain and began to paint. With a brush. One board at a time.

Yeah, go ahead. Laugh at me. Because if I were standing on the other side, I’d be laughing at me too. WHAT was I THINKING? As I finished the final board of the flooring at 6pm with the sun setting behind me, I realized I didn’t have enough paint to finish one rail. ONE RAIL. Do you know what it’s like to stand three feet from the finish line and suddenly realize you have no use of your legs? After stretching the last of the paint as far as I possibly could, I realized I would have to go back and get more paint. I called it an evening, and sat back to look at my new, imitation-cedar deck. It’s amazing what changing the color of something can do to the atmosphere; I spent the rest of the evening sitting in the patio furniture and dreaming of ways to turn my backyard into a Japanese oasis….

Tomorrow…. more paint.  And maybe a koi pond.

I’ve been fighting off more of my child’s bizarre daycare diseases… she was kind enough to pass on the stomach bug that coincided with the Butt Strep, so I’ve been unable to keep food down for the past three days… I like to call it “Involuntary Bulimia.” I apologize for the lapse in posting, and hopefully will return tomorrow.

After raining for almost five hours straight, there was a substantial puddle of water by the back door. I dread when it rains; I know that my chicken dog will track muddy footprints all over my light tan carpet. It’s not like he understands… I mean, to the dog, brown is brown, and who cares if one shade of brown is darker than the rest?

Do dogs even see color?

Anyway, every time it rains, I pull out the can of carpet cleaner and ready myself for an evening on my hands and knees. So when I got home, I sighed deeply as my dog did the pee-pee dance next to the door.

“I know, I know….”

I let him out in the pouring rain and closed the door for a moment to grab a towel. I figured I could at least try to minimize the damage, but even if I wipe him down when he comes back in, the mud seems to hide deep in his huge furry paws. I was actually almost thankful for the two inch puddle outside the sliding glass door; as least it would wash some of the mud off…

I poised myself like a linebacker ready for a play, and slid the door open, dropping into a three point stance. Right about the same time, a flash of lightning coupled with the simultaneous boom of thunder startled the dog so badly that he kicked it into high gear… he sprinted past me, knocking me over, before realizing that his wet paws had no traction on the ceramic tile…

I watched as he slid past me in slow motion, his body spinning around backwards as he slid away, still facing me….the look on his face reminding me of Scooby Doo (”Row no, Raggy!!!”)….

…until he plowed into the kitchen cabinets.

I can’t help it. I cracked up. Unfortunately, as I was laughing at his pain, he regained his balance and shot past me leaving a perfect trail of muddy brown paw prints from my kitchen, across my living room, into my bathroom, and finally to my bedroom, where he dived under the bed and refused to come out until the rain stopped. And I was STILL scrubbing the carpet.

As I ran through the neighborhood path today, I inhaled the crisp fall breeze and caught the scent of falling leaves and pine needles, suddenly remembering something I had not thought of in many, many years.

My father used to play softball with the Pearlington Volunteer Fire Department. I remember driving to the baseball diamond somewhere close my grandmother’s fishing camp… my friends and I would play in the soft dirt beneath the bleachers, running after one another and playing games. I remember the bright red jerseys of my father’s team; I remember the smell of home-cooked hamburgers coming from the concession stand. I loved the delicious sourness of those huge dill pickles; they were always my favorite. I was weird even then, nibbling away the skin and leaving the soft pulpy middle for last.

As dusk would fall, the lights high above the field would make that eerie hum as they warmed up… until they finally flooded the field with light. Mom would pull out the monstrous bottle of Skin-So-Soft, which was the redneck version of mosquito spray, and slather us down with the oily liquid that ran down between your fingers and somehow always ended up stinging your eyes. (Skin-So-Soft is one of those scents that always takes you back; I don’t know anyone who uses it for what it was originally intended for.) As the spectators would throw back Budweiser after Budweiser, no one notices that the kids now had oily zebra stripes where the fine dust mingled with the Skin-So-Soft… we were oblivious to it ourselves until the next morning when we would wake up with dirt everywhere.

Sometimes there would be shouts or cheers from the bleachers above us; the murmur of the crowd was comforting, always humming away in the background. As the night progressed, we grew exhausted until a point that we would climb into the bleachers, putting our heads on our mother’s laps or curling up next to one another like a litter of kittens. The “ting” and “thock” noises as the aluminum bat made contact with the ball… the metallic shake of the fence as someone would dive into it….the sound of the mothers’ voices gossiping as the air grew cooler…. until my dad would shake me awake, and carry my limp body to the car.

I remember laying in the back of the car on the ride home… the purr of the engine lulling me into the most peaceful sleep. Safe. Comfortable. Loved.

I long for that kind of sleep again.

Nothing exposes you to more bizarre, contagious, and obscure diseases than a two-year old.

Alex has been suffering from what appeared to be a horrible case of diaper rash (all the more reason I’ve been pushing potty-training). Despite the combined efforts of me, her father, and the daycare, it didn’t get better. Every time the poor child would go to the bathroom, she’d grab her crotch and wail in pain, “My booty hurts!” This really isn’t funny, and when she does it in the checkout line at the crowded grocery store, it REALLY isn’t funny. Every blue-hair in a fifty yard radius suddenly dials their hearing aid in your direction and stares at you, mentally comparing your face with last nights’ America’s Most Wanted Top 10.

So I finally bite the bullet and take her in to the doctor. Thank God for health insurance.

As I described the symptoms, the doctor nodded pensively… then she began describing the procedures that were available to collect a urine sample from a 2-yr old. I’ll spare you the details, but I’ll tell you this much; none of them were easy, and they all sounded messy. Just to be safe, the doctor wanted to check the rash. As soon as I flipped my howling naked child over, the doctor nodded happily.

“Oh, she doesn’t have a UTI. This is perineum streptococcus. Very easy to treat.”

It took me a minute to process what she was saying. Any woman who’s had a child is familiar with the term perineum; it’s the part that gets ripped to shreds in a natural birth. But did I understand streptococcus? Like, strep throat?

“Oh yes, it’s the same disease. Sometimes, when a child’s immune system is fighting off multiple diseases, it just gives up on the lesser ones. That’s how this manifests… most parents mistake it for diaper rash and don’t even treat it. But it’s actually coming from the inside-out, not outside in. The tissue gets very red, peels, and leaves the area very tender.” She pulled out her prescription pad, nodding as she scribbled away. “Normal antibiotics, 10 days. She’ll feel better after the first dose. Now don’t be alarmed, because sometimes this medication will turn the stool red.”

Alarmed? Are you kidding? I haven’t got past the fact that strep can make it to your butt….