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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
Three early-morning observations and adventures that tell me the calendar isn’t lying about the day of the week today:
1) When you crawl out of bed in the morning, and your third step lands with a *SQUISH*, it could mean many things. Rain from an open window, perhaps. A leaky roof. A faulty air conditioner.
When you own a dog, and your third step in the morning lands with a *SQUISH*, it could also mean many things. Many rather more unpleasant things. At that point, you can only hope it means that you’re standing in something that came out of the mutt’s front end, as opposed to one of the alternatives.
For the record, it did. So it could have been worse. Still, soggy kibble squishing between your toes is about as ‘small’ as a small comfort gets.
B) There’s nothing in the world that can send a shudder down your spine, and smack you with a pit-of-the-stomach empty feeling of being helpless and isolated and utterly alone, quite like noticing the toilet dispenser is empty, after it’s too late.
“The shower curtain? Too unsanitary. The toilet brush? Too scritchy. The dog?”
It happened to me, this morning. Just after cleaning regurgi-chow off my toes, and just before my shower. I sat there, naked and paperless for a while, pondering my options. The nearest toilet paper was thirty feet and three rooms away, so I looked for something more convenient. The shower curtain? Too unsanitary. The toilet brush? Too scritchy. The dog? A possibility — because poetic justice is simply delicious — but I figured the wife would track the evidence back to me eventually.
So, I made a run — a duck-walking, tight-clenched run, to be sure — for the paper. And to be sure this indecent iniquity wouldn’t recur any time soon, I brought back all the paper I could find. Seventeen rolls of fluffy tissue are now stuffed under the sink, in the medicine cabinet, behind the toilet, beside the trash can, on the towel rack, and wrapped around the shower head. Basically, everywhere except actually on the toilet paper holder beside the toilet. What sort of self-respecting husband would put one there?
iii) I’m in charge of the weekend laundry in the house. How that came to pass — what devilish contract my wife had me sign, or which unspeakable embarrassment I’m making up for — I don’t remember. What I do know is that laundry is a pain in the ass, so it’s best to do as little as possible, and to serve the need for fresh clothes as close as humanly possible.
So, for instance, we’ll often use our last clean towels on Sunday morning. Sunday afternoon, I’ll wash a load of towels, dry them, and fold plenty enough — read: two — for all of our Monday towelling-off needs. By Wednesday or Thursday, I might even get around to folding the rest. I go the extra mile like that.
Sometimes, I’ll cut things even closer. I’ve been known to dry my only clean jeans overnight, trusting that they’ll be fresh and fluffy in the morning when I need them. Retrieving them involves a walk to the basement in my boxers and sock feel, but that’s a small price to pay for getting things done at the last minute.
A somewhat larger price to pay, however, would involve also drying my last clean pairs of underwear in that same load overnight, particularly if I didn’t realize until the morning that all of my clean boxers are in the basement. I took stock of the situation upon emerging from the shower, standing clean and squeaky in front of my open undies drawer this morning. Finally lumping two and two together, I did what any guy would do in that situation.
I bolted, naked and streaking, down two flights of stairs to find my underpants.
Unfortunately, I did this just as the mailman was delivering the day’s junk mail to our front door. Our front door with the rather large window, through which I couild see the shock and queasy horror on his face. Given that he’s the one who’s supposed to be ‘delivering’ the ‘packages’ each morning, I’m not sure we’ll ever get our mail again. ‘Snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night’ is one thing, but ‘an impromptu peepshow of some doofus’ junk’ is not part of the Mailman’s Credo, so far as I know. Maybe that’s in another verse.
Of course, I kept on running, scrambling down the staircase and out of sight down the basement steps. When I finally fished a pair of boxers out of the dryer, they were cold, clammy, and possibly still damp. Hardly the ideal spot to store my privates for the day. Having little choice, I put them on anyway, finished dressing, and finally, mercifully made it out of the house.
Let’s recap — that’s a footful of dog barf, a bare-assed TP fiasco, a naked scamper into the cellar, one mailman traumatized, and a gonad-shrivelling pair of underwear. All before even making it to the office.
So, how’s your Monday going?
Permalink | 4 CommentsYou see this look? The quivering lip, the flared nostrils, the trickle of sweat meandering down my cheek? This is fear.
I’ve been invited to a birthday party tomorrow. It’s not my birthday, so that’s not the scary part.
The party is at a friend’s house. A couple, actually. Nice people. Hardly scary at all.
The party is for their daughter’s second birthday.
There it is. FEAR. Can’t you almost hear the spooky Psycho ‘*enk! enk! enk!*‘ music?
“I don’t personally have a lot of experience with large groups of children — for basically the same reasons that I don’t have much experience with large packs of hungry wolves.”
To be fair, it’s not their daughter that frightens me. Frankly, if anything, she’s scared of me. I don’t know why; we’ve always gotten along well. I never use her forehead during pattycakes, and I even gave back her nose, after I pretended to steal it. I’m a good Uncle Charlie.
(Maybe it’s instinctual, somehow. Lots of women are frightened of me, so maybe she’s just a quick learner. Perhaps she’ll even take out a restraining order some day — just as soon as she learns to sign her name.)
Actually, her parents tell me it’s a ‘phase’ the kid’s going through. Starting a few months ago, she became more aloof towards men, and only seems to warm up to them when they have something she needs. They figure she’ll grow out of it.
(Sure. Right after menopause, if most women I know are any indication. But I digress.)
The point is — one two-year-old kid, I’m okay with. But what if she has friends? I’m anticipating a veritable toddler posse, running and screaming and falling and pulling and kicking and poking and putting their fingers into orifices where they don’t belong — and not always their own orifices, either! I’ve read about these things!
I don’t personally have a lot of experience with large groups of children — for basically the same reasons that I don’t have much experience with large packs of hungry wolves. They’re dangerous, they’re shifty, and they often smell a little gamey. Also, they’ll turn on you at a moments’ notice and eat you alive. I won’t even go into the claws and the sharp pointy teeth. Too scary.
Of course, for all I know, there won’t be other children there. This girl’s a great kid, but how many friends can a young lass like that have at the age of two, anyway? I know I didn’t have any guests at my second birthday party.
(Or twenty-second. Or thirty-second, for that matter. Those were not fun parties. That’s a lot of donkey tails for one guy to pin.)
Also, I’m not sure what I should get the girl for a birthday present. I don’t remember turning two myself, and have never been a girl, as far as I know. So how can I know what she’d like?
For instance, I might buy many of my friends a nice bottle of wine for their birthdays. But she’s so young. Who knows if she’s made it past the whites and into the reds yet? Is she still drinking white zinfandel? Has she settled into merlots? What’s the right accompaniment for strained carrots, anyway? It’s a disaster.
There’s always jewelry, I guess. Women like jewelry, right? But I’ve seen this girl playing with her toys; she’s still in that ‘everything into the mouth’ phase. I might give her a nice necklace, and next thing you know we’re checking her dirty diapers to see if she’s passed the pearls she swallowed.
No, I’m just going to play it safe, and do what I do for most women I buy gifts for — I’ll give her a gift certificate, and she can buy exactly what she wants. I’m not sure where yet — maybe I’ll stop by Nordstrom’s, or Bed, Bath and Beyond on the way over there tomorrow. Maybe she’s into Victoria’s Secret; I don’t know. She could buy a thong, and use it for a hammock, maybe. That’d work, right?
I don’t pretend to know the right answers. I’m just hoping to make it through tomorrow without birthday cake in my hair, or somebody else’s finger up my nose. Wish me luck, eh?
Permalink | 3 CommentsA few weeks ago, my wife ordered Caller ID for our home phone. It seemed like a good idea at the time — hear the phone, check the number, see ‘Out of Area‘ or ‘Smarmy Sales Weenie‘ or ‘Creditor, Threatening to Sue‘ ninety percent of the time, and don’t answer. It’s a nice strategy for ducking the telemarketers, repo men, and cold-calling charities of the world.
In theory.
Problem is, I have an even better strategy for avoiding those calls. It’s worked for years. It’s called, ‘Never Answer the Phone Under Any Circumstances‘.
Is it a perfect system? No, not really. Because occasionally, I’ll give in — usually when I’m expecting a real call — and answer the phone. Invariably, it’s someone begging for cash, selling some service or gizmo for cash, or demanding cash in return for not breaking my kneecaps with a rusty shovel. How annoying.
For the most part, though, things were fine. People would call, we wouldn’t answer, and that would be the end of it. Every couple of months or so, the wife or I would check the voicemail messages, and we’d find out which family members, appointment confirmations, and winning lottery notifications we’d missed. Then, we’d erase them, and pretend they never happened. Simple.
“Can’t we just go back to assuming that everyone who calls is a money-grubbing windbag deserving of our premeditated indifference? Wouldn’t that be easier?”
With Caller ID, though, things are different. Sure, I can still ignore the ringing when someone calls. And I do — there’s none of this ‘check the number to decide’ nonsense. The phone’s often in a completely different room than me; am I really going to expend the energy to go see whether I recognize the number? No. None of that willy-nilly scampering around for this hombre. That’s how the majority of phone-related accidents happen, you know.
(Most of the rest involve bar bets about who can dial a rotary phone with various non-index finger body parts. Nasty business, that. And wholly unsanitary.)
The big problem with Caller ID is that our phone remembers those numbers, and summarizes the results for us. So after a long day at the office, we might come home and see the phone flashing:
‘17 Missed Calls‘
Each call has a number and time stored, so we can backtrack to the important ones and return them with the push of a button.
Only… there aren’t any important calls. Most days, they’re all crap. It’s the Law of Diminishing Returns, with operator assistance and customizable ringtones.
So now our phone has become just another ‘spam’ folder. Great. I check Gmail in the morning — twenty-umpteen bulk messages. I get to work, log into mail, and — thirty-plus more wastes of time in the spam inbox. And now, when I get home from the office, there’s the phone silently flashing, ‘142 Missed Calls!‘, none of which are worth the *69 it would take to return them. Can’t we just go back to assuming that everyone who calls is a money-grubbing windbag deserving of our premeditated indifference? Wouldn’t that be easier?
Maybe not. And I know the wife is happy when she sifts a family or friend call out from the random bullshit noise. Personally, though, I’m still not answering the damned phone — Caller ID or no. If someone wants to reach me, they can email me — or instant message, or call my cell, or wave those semaphore flags from the next hill over. I don’t care, really. Just don’t phone the house. That call cannot be completed as dialed. *click*
Permalink | 1 CommentIn a few short weeks, the missus and I are taking a vacation.
On the first of June, come hell or high water, we’re escaping the grind for a little peace and quiet. We’ll be celebrating our tenth(!) wedding anniversary, and we’ve already decided where we’re heading — Riviera Maya, on the Mexican coast south of Cancun.
(The tourist-grubbing website is sort of funny, actually. They call the area ‘el paraiso es para siempre‘, or ‘paradise is forever‘.
“According to her, they’ll soon find our carcasses somewhere in a Tijuana barrio, sitting freshly scarred and half-dissected in a bathtub filled with ice, with instructions to call ‘nueve-uno-uno‘ on the nearest phone.”
Frankly, we just need ‘paradise’ to last a week, and to not water down the margaritas. We’re not high-maintenance people, with the ‘forever’ sort of expectations in our getaway destination. Who can afford ‘forever’ in ‘paradise’ on today’s salaries, anyway?)
We’re very much looking forward to our time in the tropics, but I’ll admit that my wife is a bit anxious about our plans. She speaks no Spanish, you see, so she’s at the mercy of whatever has seeped into my brain from two semesters of high school Espanol.
Which can be summed up in three handy phrases:
To be fair, my Spanish is a little better than that… but not much. If it’s not alcohol-related, and doesn’t pertain to cucarachas or mamacitas or Feliz Navidad, then I probably can’t help you. But at least I’ll be able to order burritos with the appropriate rolling of Rs. Bambino steps, people. Bambino steps.
My wife, on the other hand, is completely devoid of Espanol experience. She took French in high school — which was phenomenally useful during our trip through the Parisian catacombs, but not so much when we’re ordering Coronas in Cozumel.
So I’m coaching her. Whenever I find that she could practice a bit of native Latino tonguery, I let her know. Like when we discussed our upcoming jaunt with a friend of ours, for instance:
Friend: So, have you guys figured out where you’re going on vacation yet?
Wife: Oh, yeah — we’re going to the Mayan Riviera.
Me: *cough* *kaff*
Wife: I mean… ‘La Riviera Maya‘. Of course.
Friend: Oooh, sounds exotic. Where’s that, exactly?
Wife: It’s in Mexico.
Me: Oh my lord… *ahem*
Wife: What? It’s in Mexico. That’s what I said.
Me: *AHEM!*
Wife: Oh, right. It’s in ‘Meh-hee-coh‘.
Me: Meh-hee-coh what?
Wife: *sigh* Meh-hee-coh es muy bonita; me llamo es Senora Conchita. Ole! Happy now?
Me: They are going to eat you alive down there if you keep that attitude, honey. Eat. You. Alive.
Actually, I’m sure we’ll be fine. Most people at the resort we’re staying at will likely be English speakers. And vanishingly few will have the pesos to question what’s being said to them. Simply sounding out phoenetics — ‘For pay-vor, grrrrrrrrrin-goh‘ — should go a long way. That’s what I keep telling her, anyway.
She doesn’t believe me, though. She’s sure we’re screwed. According to her, they’ll soon find our carcasses somewhere in a Tijuana barrio, sitting freshly scarred and half-dissected in a bathtub filled with ice, with instructions to call ‘nueve-uno-uno‘ on the nearest phone.
I say, ‘fine‘. Even at that — waylaid, hungover , and liverless — it’ll be one of the best vacations we’ve ever had. We don’t get away very often, so my expectations are accordiningly modest. If we make it home without forfeiting our passports or spending time in la penitentiary, I’ll call that a success. Viva la Meh-hee-coh!
Permalink | 1 CommentI give up. This New England weather has finally beaten me into submission.
It snowed today. The fifth freaking day of April, and it snowed in Boston. These weren’t flurries, either. No delicate gentle snowflakes, these. These were the wet, sticky, slappy sort of snowflakes. They thudded audibly against the windshield as I drove to work. They may have dented the hood, even. This precipitation wasn’t screwing around.
“From now on, I’m going to storm onto my porch in the morning, wearing short pants, a parka, and one galosh, and demand, ‘WHAT? WHAT THE HELL’S THE RIGHT ANSWER TODAY?!?‘”
To be honest, the snow itself isn’t the big problem here. I do have an issue, in principle, with seeing the white stuff this late in the year. ‘April showers’ should bring ‘May flowers’ — not ‘snow plowers’, for crissakes. It’s baseball season now, and there’s no blizzards in baseball! So sure, the snow is troublesome.
Worse, though, are the wildly fluctuating temperatures. This weekend, we had ‘seasonal’ weather, in the mid-fifties.* On Monday, it was a warm and sunny seventy. Today — thirty. There’s no one on the planet, besides those equipped with a surname of Kennedy or Marcos, with a wardrobe wide enough to accomodate that sort of climatological claptrap.
I sure as hell don’t, that’s for certain. And I’m fed up with trying to outguess the weather monkeys over what to wear. From now on, I’m going to storm onto my porch in the morning, wearing short pants, a parka, and one galosh, and demand, ‘WHAT? WHAT THE HELL’S THE RIGHT ANSWER TODAY?!?‘
Some might say this week’s wacky weather is simply proof of the old New England adage:
‘If you don’t like the weather now, just wait a bit. It’ll change.‘
Very cute and folksy, no doubt. I can readily imagine Grandpa Massachusetts in his rocker, with a Red Sox Nation shawl around his shoulders, dispensing such nuggets of wisdom to the wee ones gathered at his feet.
Except for one thing: that particular homey bit of fluff is true for ninety percent of the inhabitable land masses on the planet. Certainly, the weather’s not going to change much in Antarctica or sub-Saharan Africa, no matter how long you wait around.
(For that matter, nothing much changes in Southern California weatherwise, either — but there’s no stupid adage in Southern California that starts with, ‘If you don’t like the weather…‘ If you don’t like the weather there, they have you committed. Or ship you to Minnesota. Occasionally both.)
In the rest of the world, the weather changes. That’s what scientists call ‘seasons’. Seeeea-sons. My beef is simply this: if we only get four seasons, we shouldn’t have to deal with three of them in the space of a week. The ‘T-shirt and mittens’ look is just dandy down at the sanitorium, but I’m not sure I should go to work that way.
Weather, you win. I’m putting on knee socks and a muumuu, and going back to bed. Somebody wake me when it’s August, or even December. At least I’ll know what the hell to wear outside.
(* The temperature tallies above are in Fahrenheit, obviously. I apologize to our friends across the pond. I’d convert to Celsius, really — if only because it’s a hell of a lot easier to spell — but the math always ties me in knots.
‘Take five-ninths of the number, add thirty-two, and subtract the barometric pressure expressed in milliliters of mercury on the third moon of Neptune,’ or some such nonsense. I could never get it right. I’d have an easier time converting to Kelvin, and reporting how close we got to absolute zero today.)
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