Book of Failures

by Amy Lyle

  I tried to look very concerned but he caught me resisting a smile.

  “You know,” he said, “when we first got married, I thought you were just trying to play everything cool, but I’m starting to believe that on many levels you truly just do not give two shits.”{10}

  SOMETIMES MORE IS MORE

  On one of my first dates with Peter (the now hubby) we went to a swanky restaurant in downtown Atlanta. Toward the end of our dinner the waiter came to the table with a three-tiered dessert tray and described our after-dinner options. “We have fresh berries with mascarpone limoncello cream, mango basil vacherin, crepe cake, creme brulee, a flourless chocolate torte and a strawberry cheesecake trifle.”

  Peter saw my internal battle between the chocolate torte versus the berries and said, “We’ll take all of them.”

  The waiter looked confused. “Sir?” “The desserts, we’ll take one of each.”

  It was at that moment that I realized he was marriage material.

  KIA DOUGHNUT

  After putting my three-year-old daughter through a divorce, my returning to work full-time, and moving, I thought the child at least deserved to pick out a hamster. We named her Annabelle.

  Annabelle

  I bought a cute little box that was lined with silk dyed dark purple. It was so adorable when Annabelle would curl up in the box to sleep, like a little toy. Annabelle and Anna loved each other so much. Anna would let her roll around in the little hamster ball, put her in her purse to go to the store and even sneak Annabelle into her bed (which resulted in 1,000 tiny poops). After having her for only a few weeks, we were sad to find Annabelle dead in her little purple box.{11}Anna wanted another Annabelle immediately. I thought we should get a more durable rodent.

  I got an email saying an equine rescue group had found HUNDREDS of guinea pigs in a horse barn that were available for immediate adoption. We picked one out that had the markings of a black-and-white Holstein cow. Anna named her adorable guinea pig Baxter Tater Muffin. She would put Baxter Tater Muffin in a baby doll stroller and walk him around the block. All the neighbors got to know him and would stop and ask Anna, “How’s Baxter Tater Muffin?”

  We had been raising Baxter for three years when I married Peter, and when Peter’s ten-year-old daughter, Maddy, wanted a guinea pig for her birthday, we let her pick one out from the pet store. She named her pig Trixie Krystal. Baxter Tater Muffin and Trixie Krystal immediately got married and started a family. Within what seemed like weeks, the baby guinea pigs started families and within months we had fourteen guinea pigs. I started to give them as presents to any kid that was going to a birthday party and put ads on our neighborhood Internet site for “Free Pigs.” Finally, we were down to three: the two lady pigs and one gentleman pig that we put into separate hutches.

  Guinea pig Kia Doughnut was the firstborn child of Baxter Tater Muffin and Trixie Krystal. The kids brought Kia to me, saying her eyeball “looked gross.” I told Peter we were taking Kia to the vet. “Her eye looks swollen and she may need some drops.”

  Kia with cone

  Kia was returned with only one eyeball and a three-hundred- dollar vet bill.

  Even with only one eyeball, Kia lived a full life, rotating between a huge timothy-hay-filled trough in our garage and an outdoor hutch in our backyard. She died peacefully in her sleep at age seven.

  DON’T MAKE ME KILL YOU

  Peter doesn’t sleep. He likes to say he “doesn’t need a lot of sleep,” but the truth is he’s artificially awake from caffeine. He drinks six coffee/tea/soda drinks every day.

  While I’m trying to go to sleep, he reads Garden & Gun magazine and says, “Look at this—it’s a La Cornue Grand Palais Range, forty-eight thousand dollars. Is that cobalt blue, honey? Do you think that is cobalt blue?”

  “No! I want you to turn out the light!” I bark. He turns out the light but still isn’t sleepy so he checks his emails and texts on his phone. “Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap,” I hear as he texts. “I can hear that,” I say, so he turns it down, but the glow of the phone is so bright I cover my head with pillows to try to fall asleep.

  Sometimes I wake up and his foot is an inch from my face. “I have a cramp! I have a cramp! Rub the arch of my foot!” When I hear earth-shaking snoring, I know he has finally fallen asleep. That’s when I start gently tapping him, but I’ll escalate all the way to shaking him if needed. “What? What? Why are you waking me up?” he asks.

  ”You’re snoring,” I say.

  “I don’t snore,” he says, and goes back to sleep.

  In the morning, I try to appeal to his health by mentioning that he isn’t breathing for about twenty seconds at a time throughout the night and without oxygen he could die. He says, “I don’t think so. I feel great.” I record him on my phone and email him the video.

  “Do you see?” I ask.

  Peter says flatly, “You are so weird! You have all these demands just to be able to sleep. Who needs darkness and quiet to sleep?”

  The snoring continued for six years, over 2,000 nights, which explains why I look like I do—beat down. Even with a pillow over my head and wearing headphones playing whale noises, I could still hear the snoring. One night I cracked. I shook him until he woke. I was sobbing and screaming about how depriving someone of sleep is torture.

  “That’s what they do during Navy Seals’ training and when they need to extract secrets from prisoners of war. They deprive them of sleep!” I took my pillow and marched to the door. “You have to go to a sleep clinic or we can’t sleep in the same bed.”

  The requirements of the sleep clinic are … sleeping. They hook you up to a bunch of wires that monitor your brain activity, eye movement, heart rate, blood-oxygen levels, snoring and airflow. They provide a report of the activity.

  Peter was shocked by his results. “Oh my god! I had eighty-two events!” I’m not up on sleep-clinic vernacular and looked confused. Peter continued, “I stopped breathing eighty-two times in one night! My oxygen level is really, really low. I need continuous positive airflow or I could die.”

  I smiled and hugged him.{12}

  SUMMER OF THE BURRITO

  My metabolism has slowed to a crawl. I’ve thought about getting all the fat sucked out of my “problem areas” because a girlfriend of mine had her muffin-top fat liposuctioned and her stomach looks amazing.

  The problem with liposuction is that unless you give up burritos and everything delicious, the fat will return. Now, the fat can’t return to the spot that has been liposuctioned because there are no fat cells there anymore, but the fat will come back SOMEWHERE. You would have to change your eating habits for life, and unfortunately, I have never met a burrito I didn’t like. So, burrito fat could return to the area above your belly button, which frankly is worse than a muffin-top. What if it settles in your neck or under your armpits? You can’t Spanx your neck.

  Regardless, I do support any and all procedures that make you look and feel better. Case in point, I pay to get my hair colored to cover the gray.

  I’ve had my teeth straightened and I whiten them. Every night I use Retinol face cream. It’s supposed to dry your face so that a layer of skin flakes off. Several times a week I use a “hydration mask” to put back some of the moisture the Retinol strips out.

  Volcanic ash anti-aging mask

  In the winter I get microdermabrasion, which is supposed to take off another layer of skin. Semiannually I get chemical peels. The solution they apply makes your skin blister and eventually fall off to reveal new, smoother, regenerated skin. Even with all the skin layers being removed and exfoliated I still have wrinkles, so I get Botox and fillers.

  Potions and lotions

  My friend, Carrie, and I were talking about all the money we spend on our faces and she asked me if I would ever invest over $10,000 to get a facelift because she was thinking about it. I told her the truth: We should just get boob jobs. If we had giant boobs, no one would notice our faces. She’s taking my advice under consideration.<
br />
  NICE TO MEET YOU

  My friend, Marcia,{13} recently got divorced. She had been married for fifteen years when she discovered that her husband’s business trips involved hookers and weed. After the appropriate mourning period, and at the urging of her sister, Marcia created an online dating profile.

  The “dating profile,” which all the sites recommend filling out, is supposed to allow people to get a glimpse into your character and hobbies. Marcia wrote a little bit about her family and said she was interested in someone who enjoyed traveling. She also mentioned that church was important in her life.

  She is very beautiful and started getting the profiles of men that were interested in her right away. Although many of the applications were normal, listing a love of sports, allergies to cats, or a desire to visit Italy with a partner sometime soon, an exorbitant number of profile sections listed minimum requirements for certain attributes, such as “D-cup,” or “Must like anal,” or “No old chicks.” Several guys stipulated: “Absolutely no hair, anywhere.”

  Marcia’s stipulated age range was forty-five to fifty-five. You would think that “No hair” would not be a concern. What about good credit or no incurable STDs?

  I understand people not wanting to waste time if someone has characteristics or personal habits that turn them off, such as smoking, but I’m suggesting they might save their anal-sex requirements for at least the third date.

  Marcia went off-line for dating and online to get her master’s degree. She ended up marrying a gentleman that she met in the organic vegetables section at Whole Foods. They are very happy and are currently putting in a koi pond.

  PROCEED WITH CAUTION

  I have OCD, four kids and a large dog. I mop incessantly. While I was cleaning, the TV commentators were discussing how the gravity-defying gymnast, Simone Biles, had changed the sport of gymnastics.

  Simone Biles does midair twists while rotating in a different direction, with a blind landing, they explained. Other gymnasts had begun attempting more dangerous routines to have a shot at beating Simone. One vault routine, described by The Wall Street Journal as “one of the most daring of any event in the Olympic Games,” is called the “vault of death.” If you miss the landing, you will crack your neck, be paralyzed or possibly die. It’s so dangerous even superstar Simone Biles said, “No thanks.”

  I left the living room to mop my bedroom for a few minutes, then returned to finish up in the mudroom when I heard the Olympic commentator say, “This event has left us confused and amazed.” I rushed to the TV to see if Simone, or any of the other gymnasts had attempted something even more life-threatening. I was puzzled to see a synchronized swimming event.

  I caught the end of the Russian team’s routine, done to very dramatic “gladiators are coming for your heart” type music. The commentator yelled out, “EXPLOSIVE, BRILLIANT AND STAGGERING.” A few swimmers were lifting another swimmer out of the water and flipping her. The routine was dynamic, but “explosive”? They showed clips of other routines and I thought one of the commentators was going to pop a vein. “They really do the unthinkable! Look at that synchronization!” And “It gives me goose bumps!”

  I started mimicking the swimmers’ moves, using my mop as my teammate, hoisting “her” up—but I slipped, in my socks, on the flip move. My mop whacked a glass lamp on the console table and I practically bit my tongue off as I crashed to the wet floor. As I considered the best way to get up without stepping on 1,000 pieces of broken glass, the commentators finished up.

  “All of these young ladies wear nose plugs. If your nose plug comes off, I can guarantee it is painful and outright dangerous. But don’t worry—these athletes, they hide an additional nose plug in their suits!”This is a synopsis of “the medical aspects of synchronized swimming from the NCBI.”

  The most common injury in the sport of synchronized swimming is knee pain associated with the eggbeater kick.

  I really appreciate the beauty and athleticism of these ladies, but for the record, since synchronized swimming became an Olympic event in 1968, no swimmer has ever had to be rescued from an eggbeater-kick injury. Mopping is more f****** dangerous.

  THAT ONE TIME WHEN WE BOUGHT A PORSCHE

  My car is from the last century, 1999 to be exact. I call it the Booger Wagon because I find actual boogers on the seats and even on the “ceiling.” I asked my husband for a new car and he said, “It is not in the budget.” I looked at the budget and saw that we have kids taking tennis lessons, kids taking equestrian lessons, some participating in after-school math programs and everyone going away to camps in the summer.

  I decided that maybe some of the children didn’t really need

  camp and math tutoring. Having additional income, my husband surprised me with a Porsche 911. It is a very, very beautiful, high- performance car and he really liked it.

  I know this sounds ungracious but I didn’t want a Porsche 911. I’m forty-five and have four kids and wanted a white BMW 5 Series with tan interior and a sunroof. A convertible that goes 180 with a stick shift is not exactly practical. The problem with a Porsche 911 Carrera convertible is that you look like a crazed animal when you step out of it because the wind has beaten the s*** out of your hair and I already had accumulated lots of speeding tickets driving Hondas and Volkswagens let alone a Porsche. Did you know that going over 100 mph is considered “reckless driving,” a charge that involves mandatory driver’s education, a fine of over five hundred dollars and a $1,000 hike in your annual insurance premium?

  Also, people treat me differently when I’m in the Porsche. In my booger wagon, with the four kids and golden retriever, people would smile and wave me over if I needed to change lanes. In the Porsche, if I hesitate for even a millisecond when the light turns green, people honk at me and scream, “Go, you a**hole!”

  A Porsche is like a supermodel. A supermodel looks very beautiful but is expensive to maintain because she eats lots of caviar and wears Prada and Chanel. Seeing an older man with a Porsche or a supermodel always evokes the same reaction: “He must be a real douche.”

  After eighteen months, I told the hubby, “Let’s sell the Porsche.” We sold the 911 and got a used BMW 5 Series, white with tan interior, and a sunroof. I love it.

  YOU’VE WON, STOP FIGHTING

  I immediately drove the new-to-me white BMW 5 Series into the side of our garage. I have driven cars into many things: the spinning brushes at the carwash, my sister’s minivan, my friend Kristin’s vintage MG, and of course, mailboxes, poles and the like. After I swiped the side of the garage, I didn’t even get out of the car; I drove to SSR Collision to see Tommy who fixes all the cars when I run into things.

  What is unique about this particular mishap is that I barely scraped the paint but an entire chunk of bondo fell off the beautiful Certified Pre-Owned car, which launched us into a local, regional and eventual USA-headquarters battle with BMW.

  Peter told me he would handle the situation, but I was so enraged about the injustice I refused his help. “We are not liable” was the dealership’s position. Luckily, I could recite verbatim their Certified Pre-Owned Process-and-Procedures Guide and held my ground.

  “It’s impossible that you have completed the certification accurately AND did not find the damage AND now that you have been made aware of the damage you are still not responsible,” I ranted. “It cannot be all three. Either you knew about the damage and didn’t disclose it, as you are supposed to do as page six, paragraph three states in the pre-certification process, or you did not perform the pre-certification process checklist properly. Either way, you are liable.”Twenty-one days into battle, when my hair started coming out in chunks in the shower, I asked Peter to get involved.

  I drove the booger wagon and Peter drove the bondo BMW to the dealership. Unfortunately, I got there first and went into a tirade with the regional vice president about how their “mission statement and values” were a total farce and, “God knows all the evil you are doing,” before Peter drove
in. I then excused myself to their fresh coffee and snack room. Within three minutes Peter came back out and told me I could pick out another car.

  Peter explained the turn of events to me in terminology I would understand—Hollywood gossip-column talk. “Remember how Bill Cosby for over twenty years denied any wrongdoings regarding the sexual-misconduct cases filed against him?”

  “Dear God, this is bigger than I expected.”

  “Pay attention,” he said. “Bill Cosby said he wasn’t liable, but quietly has paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars in ‘tuition assistance’ to women who have filed suits against him. You were so angry you never let them get past the ‘We’re not liable’ statement and missed the ‘But you can have a new car’ offer.”