“It has your name on the subscription label,” I said.
“Oh, all right,” she said, clearly irritated. Then added, “But I only read it for the recipes.”
Working at Home—Sort Of
Friends and acquaintances often stop me on the street to ask, “Hey, what’s that thing hanging out of your nose?” No, what I meant to say was they ask me what it’s like to work from home.
I didn’t always, you know. For twenty-one years, I went to work like a normal person, fudging on my so-called “time card,” saying I had to interview “somebody, anybody,” and leaving for a prolonged and gratifying trip to the mall.
This was easy to rationalize because journalism isn’t a nine-to-five job. Nosiree Bob Woodward. In the exciting world of journalism, you never know when you might be called out for a, whatchamacallit, fire or something.
The biggest thing I miss about working in a newsroom with other real, live human beings (not including the sports guys, of course) is the office gossip.
Around here in my little upstairs office, writing with a ten-year-old cat asleep in my lap and a toddler blissfully sedated by a Blues Clues home video downstairs, there isn’t anybody to “dish” with or about.
It’s not like Snowball is suddenly going to rouse up, treat me to a Sheba-scented yawn, and start gabbing about the day’s only visitors, a man who wanted to rake my yard and whose fly was unzipped, and a teenage boy who hung a piece of paper shaped like a pizza slice on my front door.
What can I tell you? It’s lonely at the top. Of the stairs.
The other thing I miss is the chance to catch up on my sleep during staff meetings.
Last week, I decided I was sloughing off too much and decided to call my own staff meeting. It was just like old times. Asleep in thirty seconds.
I woke myself up, told myself that I was a Huge Disappointment to the profession, and that there would be a nasty pink memo placed in my Permanent File, and ooga-booga, wasn’t I scared now?
I then made myself so upset by nearly firing myself that I gave myself the day off and checked out the Bali separates sale at Penney’s to cheer myself up.
The next day, still reeling from nearly getting downsized, I faked a cold and hacking cough, called in sick, and told myself that if that wasn’t bad enough, my husband’s grandmother had died (thirty-two years ago, but who’s counting) and I wouldn’t be able to work that day.
Some things never change.
People who work at home always whine about how it’s really “sooooo difficult” to get other people to respect that they’re working.
They go on and on, saying things like: “Just because I’m at home doesn’t mean I’m not in a serious work mode and I’d appreciate it if my neighbors and friends would respect that.”
Are these people crazy? There are some days that I long for another grown-up to talk to so much that even the zipper-challenged yard-raking guy seems a possibility. Almost.
Jehovah’s Witnesses are welcomed into my home. (Little-known fact: The FBI’s famous Witness Protection Program was actually created for homeowners who can’t stand hearing one more word about the end times and ask to live in remote areas under new identities.)
You gotta respect anybody who gets all dressed up in Sunday clothes and goes door-to-door on days so hot their high heels sink a half-inch into the pavement.
The trick is to do all the talking yourself. Pretty soon, they’ll look at their watches and say, “Speaking of end times, wouldja look at what time it is now!”
The whiny work-at-home set is also fond of saying that it’s a trap to work at home if you don’t take yourself seriously, and that means you should work regular hours and EVEN GET DRESSED.
Horse hockey.
I honestly don’t think I will ever be able to work in a real office again because they’d have to understand that I can only write in Joe Boxer bottoms and a tattered Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt.
And as for regular hours? What was the point of quitting my real job? Hell-o.
No, I believe you can see from all this that working from home isn’t so bad if you have a great boss like I do.
I can easily see myself working from home many, many years, until I am old enough to qualify for one of those George Foreman grilling machines. (Is it just me, or have you noticed that everyone over sixty-five has become obsessed with those things? It’s like the Snake Light of the new millennium.)
I’m starting to ramble so it’s time to go. My annual performance review is coming up in a couple of weeks. Oh, forget it. I’m going to take a bubble bath.
House Painting: “If You Want It Done Right”
We’re into Week Four of painting our house, which is seventy-five years old and has enough problems to make Sears spokesmodel Bob Vila throw up his hands and run to the nearest doublewide sales lot screaming, “Gimme fake butcher block and lots of it!”
Months after deciding it was time to paint, I am reminded of the words of the late philosopher Henry David Thoreau—or perhaps it was Buddy Hackett who said, if you’re going to buy an old house, for God’s sake, buy brick.
Once we decided to paint, my husband and I realized we had different notions about color. My normally guylike husband said he thought we should “go mauve.”
I laughed so hard Co-Cola came out of my nose, then realized he wasn’t kidding. I decided on a tactful approach.
“That’s pink,” I said. “What’re you, some kind of sissyboy?”
We finally settled on a dignified shade of deep purple, which of course isn’t called deep purple on any of the paint charts or “chips”. (A word of warning here to aspiring house painters. The so-called chip has nothing whatsoever to do with the color of paint that will eventually end up on your walls. It’s just a cruel cosmic paint joke. The only way you can really find out what the color looks like is to paint your house completely, then stand back and say, “Holy Shit.”)
Our deep purple is actually called Dusty Taupe and we found it by accident. This is how all the truly great paint decisions are made, I am told.
But before we settled on Dusty Taupe, we’d spent hours staring at samples of colors called Cappuccino Smoke and Lavender ’n’ Lace, which are, of course, blue and orange, respectively.
Next step: finding painters to give us estimates. These were hilarious indeed and varied wildly. Most ended with: “If you want it done right,” and I wanted to say, “Done right? Oh, heavens no! We want as half-assed a job as possible.”
In one case, I quickly deduced that the painter couldn’t speak English so I immediately lapsed into screaming—because foreign languages are much more understandable if they are yelled as loudly as possible—“Will you paint-o my house-o?” This was a dark day for international relations. On the other hand, he did brighten and say, “Si!”
Another painter circled the house with a clipboard, gave a very fair and painstaking estimate, shook our hands, and promised to start “in a couple of weeks.” That was a year ago last August.
This happened on three other occasions, leading me to believe that house painters are disproportionately singled out for alien abductions. There is simply no other logical explanation. (“See, Miz Rivenbark, I know I was s’posed to start painting your house last Thursday but I was beamed to the Planet Dacron for anal probes and, well, the week just flew! Besides, we had some rainy days.”)
I know you can’t paint in the rain, but painters have an unnatural aversion to the stuff.
“Looks like it might rain,” one said, early into the job of transforming our previously sedate house into a giant eggplant.
“What are you talking about? There’s not a cloud in the sky,” I said.
“No, not now,” he agreed. “But the forecast calls for rain.”
“Where? In Seattle?”
The other thing you’ll discover if you’re having your older house painted is that, sooner or later, the painter will summon you and say, in tones usually reserved for the announcement of the death of a
close relative, that you have rot.
“See that wood right there?” he will say. “That’s gonna have to be replaced.”
So you call a carpenter. The problem is, painters and carpenters don’t really like each other. They snipe behind one another’s backs worse than a bunch of gossipy biddies at a Lottie Moon meeting. Mine would tattle on the painters if they were two minutes late, then the painters would tattle on the carpenter, and finally they both ganged up on the electrician because everybody hates electricians. For a while I felt like I was running group therapy. (“Sam, how did it make you feeeeel when Joe here said you should have primed the tongue-and-groove before you put it up?”)
The good news is that with all this painting going on, I haven’t had to cook a meal in more than three weeks.
Sure, it’s just the exterior of the house, but it took my husband two weeks to figure that out. Watching all that hard work just wears me out, I explained to him over the umpteenth carton of take-out Chinese that week.
Besides, I said, it looked like rain.
I Can Quit Anytime I Like
If you watch primetime TV, you know that Southerners are rarely cast in a decent light.
We are uneducated, straw-chewing, chaw-spewing, barefooted, backwoods, beer-gutted, sweat-stained losers.
And that’s just the women.
So it’s hard to explain why I watch so much TV. It certainly isn’t for the Southern role models, which include those fluffy idiots on Designing Women and the sincerely senile Ben Matlock.
Southerners are tired of this notion that we’re all Elly May Clampetts leading the critters around the cement pond and kicking the chicken shit out from between our toes.
Southern women are portrayed as being just bright enough to “fiddle-dee-dee” when excited. Like at tractor pulls or kitchen showers.
But even though TV portrays the Southern woman as having the brains of a bag of Red Band flour, I can’t stay away from it.
I love TV like the cat loves the cream jar, and my husband—who reads books—doesn’t understand.
The other night he approached me during a commercial break with a grave look that I interpreted to mean he’d forgotten to tape Friends like I asked him to.
“You forgot, didn’t you?”
“No. I taped it, but we’ve got to talk about your addiction to primetime TV. It has to stop.”
“And stop it will. Someday. Now, step aside. ER is coming on.”
He rolled his eyes and looked sad.
“See what I mean? The other night you woke me up talking in your sleep, ordering me to ‘get blood gases, type and cross, get a CBC panel and a crash cart in here, stat!’”
“And your point would be…?”
“Look. Why don’t you try reading? When’s the last time you read a book?”
“Does TV Guide count?”
He buried his face in his hands.
“Okay,” he finally said. “At least watch educational programs for a change. Try the Discovery Channel. They’ve got a great series this month on the world’s great deserts.”
“Don’t tell me, let me guess,” I said. “They’re still hot and dry.”
“What about the Amazing Predators segment? Maybe you’d like that,” he offered.
“It’s not exactly suspenseful TV if you watch an eight hundred-pound lion stalking a six-pound Peter Cottontail. Who do YOU think is going to win?”
Although I was being snotty, I deep down thought it was really sweet that my husband was concerned about my intellectual development and I told him so. During the next commercial break.
“This reminds me of Episode fifty-eight of The Dick Van Dyke Show, when Rob thought it would be good for Laura to—”
“STOP IT! Can’t you see that TV is taking over your life?”
“That’s not true. From midnight to nine A.M., I hardly ever watch TV. You silly man! I can quit anytime I like.”
But, to myself: Oh, no I can’t. Please don’t make me. If you make me give up TV, how can I turn the world on with a smile? How can I take a nothing day and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile?
“Okay,” he said, suddenly smug. “How about this Monday. Eight P.M. Go one entire week without TV. I dare you!”
“Are you MAD? This is sweeps month. And if you think I’m going to miss all-new episodes of Must See TV this month you’re as nutty as that cult leader who kidnapped Sydney and threw her in the hole out in the California desert last week.”
He looked real depressed and was staring at me just like Mandy Patinkin looked at his wife when he’d visit her in the crazy house in between surgeries on Chicago Hope.
“Sydney. You must be talking about Melrose Place.”
“Please put your answer in the form of a question.”
Okay. Maybe there was a little problem. The next morning, I agreed to try one week without TV.
“Starting the first week of March, though, because I absolutely must finish the last installment of A Woman of Independent Means which is based on one of those, whatchamacallit, books you’re so crazy about.”
In anticipation of a TV-less lifestyle, I felt much like Dr. Joel Fleischman in those early days in Cicely, Alaska, when he felt adrift and abandoned on Northern Exposure.
Giving up TV was terrifying to me. I believe TV is the only thing that separates us from the savages. That, and underpinning.
Here’s how my week went:
Day 1: Ate breakfast cereal without Today show blaring in background. Wondered if cereal has always been this noisy. Realized I’d have to start the day without knowing who’d turned 110 in what obscure Midwestern town. Realized I’d live. Cats circled TV and looked nervously from blank TV to me.
Day 2 (evening): Turned on radio, spent next two hours listening to show about NASCAR drivers. Experimented with making race-car noises, softly, then louder. “Vrrroooom, VROOOOOM!” Cats flipped through yellow pages for psychiatric hospitals in area.
Day 3: Stayed late at office to delay arrival at silent, tomb-like home. Drank cheap wine from bottle in brown paper sack. Went to bed in my clothes.
Day 4: Felt better today. Decided to catch up on letter-writing to old friends. Got out stationery, propped up pillows. Realized I didn’t have any old friends.
Day 6: Don’t remember Day 5. Days run together in one silent, lifeless void. Think I can make it. Watch this. I can hold TV remote in my hand and not turn it on. Progress. Hand shakes. Batteries spill to floor and cats bat them under the dresser. Free cats to good home.
Day 7: Sneak peek at TV in restaurant where husband is taking me for reward lunch. Later, get on hands and knees to find remote batteries. Husband approaches from behind. “Looking for these?”
Day 7 (evening): Sounds of rain pattering gently on roof. Distant train whistle. Rustling leaves of oak tree. Who can stand all this racket? Tomorrow, things back to normal.
Day 8: Alert Willard Scott. After a week without TV, I feel 110.
Cat Toothbrushing or Me-oww!!
The veterinarian examined my twelve-year-old cat Tiny Puss thoroughly before finally removing his stethoscope and pronouncing that she was “psychologically distressed.”
As it turns out, the problem was largely physical. The “distression” was caused by troublesome teeth. The vet handed me a brochure that outlined, in great detail, exactly how to brush her teeth every day.
“Have you been sniffing too much flea dip?” I snorted. “I can’t brush my cat’s teeth.”
“You have to,” he said. A few minutes later, I was thanking him for a helpful how-to brochure, which in retrospect is a little like the guy in the electric chair saying “thanky” to whoever’s stepping up to throw the switch.
When Tiny Puss and I returned home, I read the brochure aloud so she’d have some sense of what was coming. She didn’t seem interested and sat on her favorite pillow—mine—and watched Wimbledon on TV.
“It says here, Tiny Puss, that for optimum effectiveness I should brush your teeth daily,” I
began. She yawned widely, revealing her few remaining teeth.
The more I read, the more I realized that whoever wrote the brochure had (a) never even seen a cat, and (b) was crazy in the head.
The first instruction was to “brush your pet’s teeth at a time when you are both relaxed.”
What am I supposed to do? Mix us a pitcher of margaritas? I can’t really envision Tiny Puss squeezing the lime and licking the salt off her paw. But then again…maybe the only way this would work was to get her drunk.
I continued reading aloud:
“Start by handling your pet’s mouth for several minutes a day.”
Right. There’s nothing I’d rather do than massage the inflamed gums of a testy senior citizen cat with claws as sharp as the point on Jesse Ventura’s head.
Next, I would “gently hold the mouth closed with one hand, lift the lip on one side of the mouth and brush the outside of the teeth in a circular motion UNTIL YOUR PET ACCEPTS THE ROUTINE WILLINGLY.”
The next stop sounded like litter boxes of fun: “Clean the inside surfaces of the teeth by placing your hand over the nose and mouth area, gently squeezing and pushing the lips on one side between the back teeth. At the same time, pull the head back firmly but gently and brush the inside of the teeth on the opposite side.”
The instructions assumed the average pet owner possessed twenty-eight pairs of hands because that’s precisely how many it would take to subdue a cat during all this pushing and squeezing.
The brochure continued, “The whole process should take only a minute or two.” There was a final caveat: “If your pet is a struggler, restrain by wrapping in a large bath towel with just the head protruding, keeping a safe distance.”
Absolutely. I’m thinking Jersey.
Box Queen
Starting around mid-August every year, and continuing to Christmas, I am crowned “box queen.”
Bless Your Heart, Tramp Page 5