And thus began my Supermodel in My Mind career. Which was a blessing, really, as it put a stop to a bizarre plan I’d hatched to cohabitate with the hens. Don’t ask what I was thinking. I was caught up in some misguided, Dian Fossey–ish, “Live with Livestock” thing. I guess I thought I’d get material to write about, but Hemingway said all I’d probably get was a spectacular case of scaly leg.89
In any case, I raced in from church, marked the calendar with the day of my big debut, and in that moment heralded the start of my own personal America’s Next Top Model mania. There was so much to do and so little time. For starters, I had to grow six inches and shed twenty-six years. Hmm. Not going to happen. But what could I do? What did I have control over? And then it hit me: I’d develop a good old-fashioned eating disorder! Hell, I could binge and purge with the best of them. I drew the line at smoking, though. I joke, but it would really screw with my Jazzercise addiction. And no drugs. It’s clear I’ve got crazy covered.
As I may have mentioned, I have always wanted to be a supermodel. Come on. Who doesn’t? The lights! The cameras! The magazine covers! The closest I ever came were some hair shows I did for Sebastian when I was in college. Not exactly the Paris collections, but still, a room at the Plaza and oodles of free professional styling products are nothing to split your ends over.
For those of you who don’t know, a hair show is like any other fashion show. There’s a runway involved, and lots of six-foot-tall women who look like they live on black coffee, cigarettes, and a wide variety of appetite suppres-sants strutting their stuff on it. The main difference is the focus. In fashion, it’s on clothes. In hair, it’s on cut, color, and style.
The audition was a hoot: I was like a wombat in the land of the willowy. I was the shortest woman in the room, the least beautiful—and that’s putting it mildly—and the only one carrying pictures in a portfolio not emblazoned with the Click, Ford, or Elite logo. In fact, the only reason I was there was because one of the Sebastian scouts saw me (or, more specifically, my hair) on a bus and suggested I come to the call. Call is short for cattle call. Appropriate, huh? By the time I’d reached the tender age of nineteen, it had already been preordained that I’d one day be stuck in the sticks. You’ve got to wonder whom I pissed off in a previous life.
In any case, the two Armani-suited, glasses-wearing, supremely well-coiffed Sebastian execs went down the line surveying the hopefuls. They selected six or so and dismissed the rest of us. I was walking out the door when the Pointer Sisters’ “I’m So Excited” came blaring through the speakers and I did what I always do. I started to dance.90 I was shimmying into my backpack when I heard someone shout, “Ladies! Loosen up, ladies! We need you to dance like . . . like . . . that!” I turned, saw them pointing at me, and ducked out the door.
“Wait! Wait!” shrieked the more stressed of the two Sebastianites as Anita, Ruth, and June kicked into the chorus. “Can you teach them that?” I wasn’t sure; it seemed to me we’d need a case of champagne and muscle relaxers to get those mannequins moving. I shrugged. “Screw it,” she continued, grabbing me by the elbow and dragging me back to the group. “We’ll stick you in front and they can follow you. You’re in.”
Exhibitionism: Madonna just thinks she’s cornered the market on it.
My desire to be a supermodel, or just plain gorgeous, goes back at least as far as sixth grade. And I really didn’t think it was beyond the realm of possibility (which shows you how far back my mental instability goes, too). I remember kneeling by my bed at night and saying, “Dear God, I’ve been good. I did my homework. I cleaned up after dinner. And I didn’t drown my brothers in the bathtub. Whaddaya say? Can you find it in your heart to give me Jacqueline Bisset’s breasts? I promise to take good care of them.”
Of course, it never happened, and to this day my collection of padded bras is second only to Victoria’s Secret’s. The Big Guy also never came through with Cheryl Tiegs’s height, or Farrah Fawcett’s face and hair. When I get to heaven, that stuff’s the first thing on my agenda for a “come to Jesus” meeting even the Blessed Mother wouldn’t miss.
But back to reality. Or at least the recent past.
A week before the fashion show, I found myself at a fitting at Lou Lou. “Tara said this screamed, ‘Susan!’” exclaimed Toni, the shop’s manager, as she shoved the most gorgeous beige, brown, cream, and white jumbo-check wool suit I’ve ever seen in my life in my face. “She picked it out especially for you. Don’t you just love it? Oh! And she picked this, too.” Toni took off for the back of the store while I stood there caressing the hip-length, double-breasted jacket and matching skirt. It was just the kind of thing I wore in my marketing-director days. I held it up to myself in the mirror; I didn’t even have it on yet, and I wanted it. And I wanted a job to go with it. I felt so at home just hugging it. So comfortable. So ready to run to a meeting and instead get a manicure. But, of course, I don’t have a job, my role as farm Realtor/maid service notwithstanding, and the chances of my needing a killer suit to perform either of those tasks were pretty slim.
About as slim as the Kay Unger cocktail dress Toni suddenly dangled before me. It was breathtaking. Rose colored, with a pleated sweetheart neckline that hung off the shoulders, it screamed, “Wine me, dine me, make me wear Harry Winston’s discards!” In short, it brought me right back to the fact that I didn’t really want a job. I wanted Hemingway’s job to require that we socialize, press the flesh, hobnob with something other than cows and hens.
I got my chance the day of the fashion show. It was held at Sheila Johnson’s91 Salamander Farm, and my fellow models (as well as the hundred-plus guests) were comprised of the horsey set I so enjoy ribbing. If the eleven lovely ladies I shared the runway with thought about snapping my heels and hiding my accessories in retalia-tion for my bratty riding-pants barbs, they didn’t act on it. They were loads of fun, gracious, and absolutely gorgeous in their Lou Lou, B. Jolee, and Finicky Filly fashions.
To be honest, I felt pretty gorgeous, too. So what if I hadn’t managed to get any taller or younger; sixteen-year-old skyscrapers are so overrated. I prefer my women petite and pushing fifty. And more important, so does Hemingway. He wasn’t there, of course. He had a pasture to plow and a couple of bulls to de-ball. I’m hoping he’ll come next year, though. Yeah, Tara asked me to model again. And this time I simply said, “Yes. Absolutely. Count me in. Thank you.” And then I took off for my car before Needy Suzy could surface.
You know, for me, that’s a pretty adult response. So maybe, after all these years, God’s finally answering my prayers. Not exactly what I had in mind, but then, I never asked which version of Roget’s Thesaurus He refers to. The moral of the story? Be specific. Pray for great hair, and you might find you can plait your armpits. Pray for boobs, and you might find yourself married to one. Pray to grow, and you just might turn out mature. Like me.
A Note from Suzy,
Princess of the Pastures
You’ve heard of the Horse Whisperer and the Dog Whisperer, right? Well, they’ve got nothing on the Chicken Whisperer.
Back in the days when I lived a slick, stressed, but well-dressed professional-gal-about-the–Big Apple life, I got e-mails that made my little clotheshorse /haute couture/bling-loving heart skip a beat. Notes like, “Sue, meet me at the Carolina Herrera sample sale at noon!” and “Sue, Paloma Picasso trunk show. Today! Tiffany! Twelve!”
These days I get e-mails like, “Sue, check out this guy’s radio show at noon. He’s called the Chicken Whisperer. Why? Because he talks to chickens. And he got a two-book deal!”
Like I don’t consider throwing myself from the grain silo frequently enough.
I have to hand it to the Chicken Whisperer, though. His book titles, Chicks are Easy and Peep Show, are really funny. And I could use a laugh. I just Googled “local sample sales” and was directed to the farmers’ market in Warrenton. I want Prada, but I get produce. Which is, of course, better than pullets. That, after all, is the Chicken Whisp
erer’s job.
My job at this particular juncture is to stop daydreaming about meal delivery services and prancing around in beautiful clothes (even if it’s for a good cause). It’s time to focus on being the wife, mom, and maid, cook, dog demuddier, and homework directress. It’s time to make a new pitch for pigs, figure out how else I might be able to help around here, and reacquaint myself with my computer.
In short, it’s time to resume my position as Princess of the Pastures and my role as Ranter in Residence. After all, that’s pretty much what the good people at my local paper pay me for. As far as I know, they’re still running a column I contribute, so it might be nice if I wrote one.
I’d like to write about Cluckster and what that damn bird did to my window boxes. But then I might have to mention that I killed her. Unintentionally, of course, but still. And, as there are bound to be people who don’t believe me, who could even conclude that root-balls (of geraniums, pansies, any kind of perennial) should be registered with the police, and who might possibly get so incensed they protest and carry picket signs that say, HAVE YOU HUGGED YOUR HEN TODAY? and, CLUCKSTER, WE HARDLY KNEW YOU, and, IT’S A CHICKEN. NOT A CHOICE, my best bet? Would be to skip the subject altogether.
At least until after I tune into the Chicken Whisperer. Who knows? Today’s topic could be “Letting Go of Guilt after Accidentally Exterminating an Egg Layer.” I’m relatively certain it won’t be, but if it is? And I hear just one other listener confess to harming a hen?
Column, here I come.
Part Two
THE COUNTERFEIT FARM GIRL GETS REAL
(COUNTERFEIT FARM GIRL STYLE, OF COURSE)
“How many kids does it take to close the one and only gate that keeps the cattle in the pasture? Two. One to say, ‘What gate?’ and the second one to say, ‘I didn’t open it.’ ”
—SUSAN MCCORKINDALE
Chapter Thirteen
CALVES’ HEADS AND BLACK SNAKES AND GROUNDHOGS. OH, MY!
How do you know when spring’s come to the sticks? Forget the tractors and the Bush Hogs and the hay making and the cows enjoying a population explosion over what seems like every inch of pasture. As far as I’m concerned, spring’s come to the sticks when the dogs bring home groundhog carcasses and calf heads, and the cats smack snakes around on the kitchen floor.
Back when I lived a nice, safe, suburban existence, I gauged the arrival of the green season the same as everyone else. I watched the trees bud, the forsythia bloom, and the common sense of every child in town take a hike. And I include my own in that statement. Why, just because the calendar says it’s spring, do they ditch their jeans and sweatshirts for shorts and T-shirts? Do they actually think surfer gear will suffice in the snow?
What was that song Whitney Houston sang? “I believe the children are our future. . . .” God help us all.
Here in the hinterland, it’s a little different. Yes, the trees bud, the forsythia blooms, and my psycho seventeen-year-old puts on shorts,92 but there are several telltale signs unique to the bucolic cow country that I’d never been treated to in the ’burbs. Including, but not limited to, the aforementioned cattle giving birth in my backyard.
For starters, there are the groundhogs Grundy kills, carts to the porch, and leaves for Pete, our ever-expanding pup, to consume. Then there are the calves’ heads that Tug exhumes, brings home, and proudly bats around with his paws, as if to remind me he’s a bones and raw food diet dog. This, as you might recall, is also called BARF. Which is what I’d like to do every time I see this stuff.
Grundy, Tug, and Pete have no such response to their entrées. They dig in and digest them just fine every time.
Now if I could only get them to do the same with the third unique-to-the-sticks sign of spring: the snakes.
Six-inch snakes. Six-foot snakes. Snakes in the tulip beds and in the grass around the goat pen. Snakes in the streams and the springhouse93 and catching rays in the middle of the road. Snakes hanging from the gutters and giving me the evil eye. Snakes lounging along the porch rail and reclining, camouflaged, atop the wrought-iron picnic table. Not the most appetizing find at dinnertime, but damn good if you’re on a diet, don’t you think?
The worst are the slick, black, oversize kielbasas committed to creeping into the basement. I discovered two of them once while changing the litter box, a chore that’s really Casey’s, but since he was in bed with a cold94 and the cats wouldn’t hold it in, I had to do it. The snakes were coiled up in what looked like piles next to the stinking, huge gray container, and honestly? I thought they were poop that missed the pan.
Not only am I nearsighted, I’m proof of that popular adage “You can only be young once, but you can be immature forever.”
It’s probably a combination of my being a maturity impaired individual (a phrase I totally stole from Dave Barry, a man I am someday going to marry, right after I divorce Robert Downey Jr.) and my growing resignation to having reptiles around that stopped me from screaming blue bloody murder when I discovered our cat Coca95 playing with a good-size garter snake on the kitchen floor this morning. In fact, my exact reaction was, “Stay right there. I’m getting the camera!” And he waited. Oh, yeah. Just call me the Cat Whisperer.
Five seconds later, I’d snapped five pictures. Five minutes later, they were all up on Facebook. And five minutes after that? All my friends started freaking out.
Just the reaction I used to have.
These days I’m cool with the unique signs of spring in the sticks. The body parts of long-dead barnyard beasts dug up and deposited on the porch by the pups. The goats grazing on my dainty but now dearly departed daffodils and butterfly bushes. And, of course, the snakes: the big ones, the little ones, the ones on the windowsills, in the cellar, under the sink, and in the backseat of the Mustang.96 Even the ones the cats choose to use as chew toys. They’re not my favorite sign of spring, but they sure beat the skater-dude stuff my son freezes his ass off in.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Dr. Suzy, Princess of the Pastures
Tel: 555-555-5555
Cell: 555-555-5556
E-mail: [email protected]
CHILDREN OF THE CHEETOS
Country’s Foremost Fake
(And We Mean Totally Pretend) Parenting Expert
Has Good News and Bad News for New Moms
(UPPERVILLE, VA)—In a press conference earlier today, Dr. Suzy, president of Dr. Suzy’s Fantasy Pharmaceuticals and bestselling author of That’ll Teach ’Em: Change the Locks on Your Latchkey Kid, and The Girlfriend’s Guide to Motherhood by Intimidation (or, Why Threats Like “Wet Your Bed One More Time and I’m Tweeting It!” Should Be Part of Any Parenting Arsenal), announced the results of her latest research study, this time on the eating habits of the human male.97 Speaking at Molly’s Irish Pub during the monthly breakfast meeting of her fellow moms and loyal followers, many of whom wore SCREW THE WHALES. SAVE THE WINE, GOTTA RUN. THE KIDS HAVE GOTTEN INTO THE CUERVO, and MY CUP RUNNETH OVER AND IT’S SCREWING UP ALL THE SALT T-shirts from Dr. Suzy’s signature line of overpriced, questionably captioned apparel, she said, and we quote,
“After years of careful observation and stepping in stuff, I’ve got good news and bad news for new moms.
“The bad news is that your kids will never outgrow the two a.m. feeding. The good news is that eventually they’ll ditch the breast for the bag. You’ll no longer need to get up. But you will need to keep them stocked up.
“On what, you ask? Cheetos. Tostitos. Doritos. Fritos. And all manner of fat-filled, sodium-infused snacks.
“Of course, I’d never assume it’s exactly this way in other people’s homes, and based upon my research I’m relatively certain boys are guiltier of this than girls. But it’s been my experience, thanks to my sons, the eldest of whom I’ve studied for the past seventeen years, that not only does the two a.m. feeding persist, but at some point the human male adds ten p.m., midnight, and four a.m. kitchen raids to the roster.
; “Case in point: Every morning I go in to awaken my oldest so he doesn’t miss the school bus, and every morning I step on a bag of whatever he inhaled the night before. Sometimes it’s sour-cream-andonion potato chips, also known as the birthplace of morning breath; other times it’s Fritos. And every now and again he ditches salty for sweet and I’m crunching a half-eaten sleeve of Chips Ahoy! beneath my feet.
“Of course, I don’t like the junk he ingests, but I buy it, so I’m the one to blame. But I also can’t blame him. He’s six-foot-four, still growing, and hungry’round the clock.
“He’s also skinny as a Bachman pretzel stick. Oh, how I wish there were medication that could give me that metabolism.
“Up until recently I thought it was just my big guy who did the late-night noshing. But in the wee dark hours two days ago, I stepped in an unfinished bowl of chocolate pudding by my younger son’s bed. As we have three dogs, two cats, and two goats with a knack for getting in the house, you can see why it’s possible the people in Fairbanks heard me freak.
“You’re right if you’re thinking I could turn on a light and see where I’m going. But why blind my boys when I can deafen them with the ‘What the hell was that?’ scream I’ve got down to a science?
“Mornings in our house are pretty loud affairs, with laughter, back rubs, conversation, and, occasionally, the brazen consumption of whatever snack food I’ve played footsie with. Trust me when I tell you, there’s nothing like starting the day with a handful of stale Cheez-Its and half a can of lukewarm Yoo-hoo. It’s more than the breakfast of champions. It’s the fastest-acting colon cleanse in the country.
“And yes, in case you’re wondering, I hope to release the results of that study within the next six months, or at least as soon as I’m able to spend more time at my laptop, and less time in the ladies’ room.
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