One of my best friends is my age and still has Pantene commercial hair. It’s six miles long and a gorgeous shade of red and as thick as a horse’s tail and truly nauseating in its lusciousness. People stop her on the street to tell her how spectacular her hair is—as if she doesn’t know. I mean, it’s not like she’s got a bit of lettuce in her teeth or she sat in bird shit and can’t see it. She lives with this hair, all day every day! (Just once I want her to reply, “Wow, really? I have fabulous hair? Thanks for letting me know!” But I guess that could come off as bitchy.) I’ve known this woman since we were fourteen years old, and I envied her magnificent mane back then, but now I’d stand buck naked on a busy street corner at rush hour for the chance to rock those locks for even a single day. Because fat, lustrous hair screams I AM A YOUNG AND VIBRANT GODDESS, something that will get you crazy stares or an arrest warrant if your mouth is the part doing the screaming.
“I can’t even wear my hair up because it’s so heavy I get a headache after five minutes,” Pantene Girl tries to complain.
“Cry me a fucking river,” I reply sympathetically.
“It takes an hour and a half to blow it dry,” she pouts.
“You poor, unlucky soul,” I say. “How ever do you manage?”
“I have to pay extra for my highlights,” she protests.
“If you tell me your eyes burn from the constant, blinding reflection of your shiny, healthy hair in the mirror, I will sneak into your house and fill your conditioner bottle with Nair,” I tell her sweetly.
If you’re not convinced that hair continues to be a particularly big deal at any age, consider how much press FLOTUS Michelle Obama got last year after a simple haircut. (She got bangs! OMG!) Every major news network reported on it, along with outlets from the Huffington Post to the Daily Beast and E! Online. Naturally, the First Lady felt the need to respond to the raging hoopla. “This is my midlife crisis, the bangs,” she told Rachael Ray. “I couldn’t get a sports car. They won’t let me bungee jump. So instead, I cut my bangs.”
I have bangs already (on account of my “fivehead” and also the price of Botox), but I know how she feels. You just look in that mirror, and everything else is going south, and you want a change—something you can do quickly, this minute, before anyone can try to talk you out of it—to feel different, to look different, to be different. I’ve dabbled with peacock feathers and pink streaks, added more lowlights and brighter highlights and changed my base color. I’ve dyed the whole mess platinum and espresso and every shade in between. Finally I bought these human-hair clip-in extensions (I call them my Lee Press-On Hairs) that aren’t super comfortable but turn my hair from dull and scrawny to dazzling and substantial faster than you can say curl up and dye.
My husband once saw a chunk of my fake hair lying on the bathroom counter. He’d seen the things in my hair, of course, but apparently when I’m wearing them, they are a lot less terrifying.
“What the hell is that?” he screamed, pointing to the tangle of strands with a horrified look on his face.
“It’s my clip-in hair,” I chirped, picking it up and stroking it lovingly.
“Jesus, I thought it was a dead gerbil,” he said, shaking his head.
It actually really did look like a gerbil,* so now we call any fake hair a “gerbil.” This is great fun, because we’ll be at dinner, and he’ll lean forward and whisper “there’s a gerbil at four o’clock,” and then I’ll try to casually scope it out and see if he’s right. He’s getting really good at spotting them, too. At a wedding recently, sitting in the church—where I was too busy waiting for lightning to strike me dead just for being there to be checking out the ’dos—he leaned over and very seriously said, “I’m not positive, but I think I counted more than fifty gerbils in here.” (I actually wanted to name this book Fifty Gerbils in a Church, but some people thought that was too obscure.) The point of this story is that I am not the only gerbil buyer or wearer out there, so clearly, I’m not the only one trying to recapture—or at least hang on to—the vestiges of my fleeting youth by whatever artificial means I can get my hands on.
Did I really just admit all of that?
CHAPTER 4
Where Did All of This Shit Come From?
My maternal grandparents lived forever in a tiny, tidy house. Hoarders they were not. When my grandma died at ninety-three, I helped my mom go through her stuff and decide who would get what. I remember sliding open a dresser drawer and marveling at how light it was and how there was all of this room, this air, in that drawer. With a soft swish of your hand, you could easily see all three nightgowns and the two identical slips she owned. Her closet was the same: a smattering of hangers, each inches apart, that moved and swayed freely when you pulled open the doors. Everywhere we went in that house, closets and cabinets held only the barest of essentials.
To this day, I cannot fathom how she did it. My house is three times the size hers was, and we are bursting at the seams over here. My bedroom closet is a converted former bathroom—big enough so that I can stretch out on the floor and hide from my kids when I am on the phone*—and still there’s so much shit crammed in there that I find things “hanging” that aren’t even on hangers but merely being suspended by the helpful army of garments on either side. I have seven kitchen drawers—my grandma had one—each packed so tightly, so meticulously, that a homeless paperclip would be hard-pressed to find a sliver of real estate in any one of them.
We live in a different world than my grandmother did, though, namely one that has enticing infomercials and As Seen on TV stores where you can shop for all of the world’s must-have inventions in one convenient place. Throw in modern conveniences like eBay and Groupon and free shipping on orders over $25, and multiply it by a few kids who collect acorns and sea glass and bottle tops and erasers, and compound it all with the reality that there’s a gadget or gizmo to solve our every unknown problem and unrecognized need, and it’s no wonder that here I am in my life’s back nine,* gravely at risk of being overtaken by stuff.
The bottom line is that while our grandparents knew how to get by with mere necessities, we are a generation of consumers. If they make it, we buy it.* We trade in our hard-earned cash for Slankets (They’re blankets! With sleeves! What a concept!) and Rechargeable Heated Slippers and Wineglass Holder Necklaces—which incidentally are all things you can purchase right now, even if you are reading this book on an airplane, from the SkyMall catalog.
I hear a lot of talk from friends lately about simplifying. This is a big buzzword now, but as far as I can tell, it’s just another way of saying “getting rid of crap you don’t need,” which I think we can all agree is really fucking hard. Because as you probably know, the world is filled with very tempting, often darling, and sometimes even useful things that we may not technically need but really rather enjoy.
Take the majority of your kitchen tools, for example. The jobs performed by your cheese slicer, vegetable peeler, apple corer, hot dog dicer, mini chopper, melon baller, garlic press, mezzaluna, mandoline, zester, grater, and poultry shears could all pretty much be performed by one decent knife. Yes, it would be painstaking to carve out tiny, uniform orbs of melon—but it could be done. Or you could have yourself some nice melon squares and call it a day.
If you’re not fully convinced of our collective consumerism, I present to you the Hutzler 571 Banana Slicer. Yes, folks, there is a gadget that will assume that tricky task of hacking an unwieldy banana into identical, manageable pieces. The Amazon reviews—and there are currently 4,760 of them—are priceless.
Mrs. Toledo from Greeley, Ohio, gives the Hutzler 571 five stars, writing:
What can I say about the 571B Banana Slicer that hasn’t already been said about the wheel, penicillin, or the iPhone . . . this is one of the greatest inventions of all time. My husband and I would argue constantly over who had to cut the day’s banana slices. It’s one of those chores NO ONE wants t
o do! You know, the old “I spent the entire day rearing OUR children, maybe YOU can pitch in a little and cut these bananas?” and of course, “You think I have the energy to slave over your damn bananas? I worked a 12 hour shift just to come home to THIS?!” These are the things that can destroy an entire relationship. It got to the point where our children could sense the tension. The minute I heard our 6-year-old girl in her bedroom, re-enacting our daily banana fight with her Barbie dolls, I knew we had to make a change. That’s when I found the 571B Banana Slicer. Our marriage has never been healthier, AND we’ve even incorporated it into our lovemaking. THANKS 571B BANANA SLICER!
I will have you know that I do not own a banana slicer. Because obviously that is a ridiculous invention. But I have all of those other kitchen gadgets I mentioned (plus an avocado slicer, which I am calling out in particular because it is a very different and necessary tool, and if you eat avocados with any regularity, it will change your life). I can’t seem to help it. I buy stuff I like only marginally because it’s on sale at a price that’s too impossible for me to resist, a compulsion I inherited from my mom. If a three-dollar item is marked ten for ten bucks, I’ll grab ten, even though I know that you get the $1/item price no matter how many you buy. I stockpile things that seem handy or revolutionary—like empty bottles with sponge tips you can fill with touch-up paint and long-handled brushes designed for the singular purpose of cleaning the lint trap in your dryer, and avocado slicers, which I believe has been established are both handy and revolutionary.
Compounding my little shopping compulsion that we’re not going to talk about is the reality that I am not one of those heartless people who can stuff my children’s macaroni necklaces and ALL ABOUT ME posters immediately into the trash. I also have a hell of a time parting with the eleven-pound Restoration Hardware catalog they send every three months, because I feel personally responsible for the hectare of trees that sacrificed their lives to produce its glossy pages. I hang on to the stack of gossip magazines I bought for the plane because there’s a Sticky Thai Cod in Peanut Sauce recipe I want in this one and an ad for some new lash-extending mascara in another one and an article about the far-younger-than-me new female Yahoo! CEO in yet another that I plan to send to my sister, and someday, when I have more time, I have every intention of cooking/buying/sending these things.*
Because I do not want to be one of those people you read about in the news who dies in a tragic house fire because the firefighters can’t get through all of my crap to save me, my only choice is to be organized. I might have a shit-ton of stuff, but every single item is categorically sorted and stowed. My medicine closet has separate bins for adult and kid formulas, first aid paraphernalia, and personal grooming supplies. My daughters’ toys are separated into individual, labeled boxes for dress-up clothes and accessories, baby dolls, Barbies, stuffed animals, board games, sports gear, Legos, electronics, musical instruments, and my personal favorite “Miscellaneous Hard Toys.” (This is where we store Slinkys, marbles, plastic pirate money, key chains, fake phones, super-bouncy balls, and other not-plush toys that aren’t copious enough to warrant their own bin. And yes, my kids refer to it as Miscellaneous Hard Toys, as in “Mom! Come look! There’s a stuffed animal in Miscellaneous Hard Toys! Isn’t that silly?”) Since we have enough art supplies to open our own Michaels, the crafty crap is further sorted (stickers, cutting implements, paper, adhesive products, paint supplies, crayons, chalk, charcoal, etc.) in a plastic “art tower” with removable drawers. Our garage walls are lined with containers neatly packed with camping equipment, ski gear, beach supplies, electrical miscellany, pet necessities, and extraneous hardware. Even my sock drawer is subdivided by type (athletic, dress, ugly but soft and good for boots). Before you decide I am certifiable, please consider that we have not had a single epic meltdown in my house when a pint-size person desperately needs to find her “red plastic Little Bunny Foo Foo finger puppet” (true story), because she knows with utter certainty that the only possible place it could be, of course, is right there in Miscellaneous Hard Toys where it belongs.
As both a borderline hoarder and also a compulsive neat freak, another handy solution I’ve come up with is something I call “purgatory.” If you went to Catholic school like me, you probably learned all about purgatory, which also was sometimes called “limbo,” even though it’s not nearly as fun as the dance with the same name. Purgatory/limbo was the middle ground between heaven and hell—not a bright and glorious paradise beyond comprehension but not a flaming pit of evil and suffering either—where babies went if they died before they were baptized. (Because of purgatory, when I was born more than a month premature and had to be rushed into emergency surgery, my mother put the lifesaving medical services on pause until she could enlist a priest to purge me of that pesky original sin I’d been born with. You know, so I could go to heaven. I am pretty sure I have undone her efforts by this point, but it was nice of her to try.)
Anyway, while Catholic purgatory was supposedly forever, my purgatory is only temporary. When I weed out a drawer or closet, there are always things I have no problem getting rid of. (Nyquil that expired in 2002? Buh-bye! Crevice attachment to the vacuum cleaner I replaced three years ago? See ya!) But the stuff that I’m on the fence about—like the platform boots that are super comfy and woefully out of style but might be useful for a costume party or killing a baseball-size spider—goes into a box, which I then seal with duct tape. I write the date and a list of the contents on the outside, should I actually get invited to that costume party (even though we both know I’ll go out and buy or rent something cuter if I do) and then stuff it in my basement. If I haven’t opened or thought about that box in a year, it goes to the first charity that will come and pick it up. Unopened. That last bit is critical, because if I take off the tape and go through it, invariably I’ll get all nostalgic and try to sneak some of that shit right back into my closet. So the box remains unopened. Period.
Living in California, I have frequent opportunities to assess which of my possessions is indeed essential. These opportunities generally come in the form of massive out-of-control wildfires that like to race in the general direction of my house. Because our house sits at the tippy edge of some seriously rugged and undeveloped terrain that’s prone to combusting, at least once a year we are under an evacuation watch or warning. When we get the call, my husband and I calmly go about the business of photographing any recent purchases or home improvements, locating our many animals, and readying our things to be loaded into our cars.
The first time this happened, we went a little bit apeshit. We gathered not just our priceless photos and important personal documents, but our computers and printers and the rest of our electronics. We took pictures from the walls and toys for the kids and, of course, our beloved pillows. I packed a year’s worth of clothes I don’t even necessarily like and toiletries for an army. When there was still some room in my SUV (because we packed both cars plus a trailer), I threw in a few more hampers full of clothes and shoes and DVDs and basically anything else that wasn’t nailed down.
When the fire finally was contained and we were allowed back home, I looked at some of the crap I had packed. My computer, really? It’s backed up remotely every night, and it’s old and annoyingly slow and covered by my homeowners insurance and reconnecting it was a total nightmare, so that never got packed again. Ditto the wall art—except the originals painted by our friends and kids—and my old scuffed shoes. A very small part of me even fantasized about having to replace my wardrobe, because next time around I would go for quality over quantity, and I would stock my new closet with a handful of fabulous pieces—not just a bunch of shit that was on sale—and lots and lots of air.*
In Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, the brilliant Anna Quindlen speaks of a friend who has completely “forgone the entire era of crazed consumerism.” Everything in this woman Susan’s house, Quindlen writes, has a purpose, a point, or some profound meaning. She te
lls a particularly poignant story of one holiday when Susan and her husband allowed their children to open one gift each on Christmas Eve. The next morning, when the youngest saw his stack of presents beneath the tree, he responded with words I am certain I’ve never heard escape my own children’s lips on Christmas morning (or my own, for that matter): “But I already have one.”
The thing is, I’ve read copious research that’s found that stuff, in fact, does not make us happy—at least for long. The theory in technical terms is called hedonic adaptation, and essentially what it says is that after we get the things we yearn for the very most in this world, we revert to our pre-Jaguar/job/sexy-lover level of happiness within three measly months. It seems so improbable, and you are probably sitting there going, “Nope, not me! I’d be happy FOREVER if I had that stainless steel Viking under-counter wine refrigerator with the glass door!” But think about a time in your life when you were so miserably hot you thought you might pass out or die—and then how it felt when you hopped into that air-conditioned car or plunged into that icy pool. It was heavenly, right? And it continued to feel life-alteringly amazing for maybe three or four whole minutes before you got used to it and forgot all about your recent sticky, steamy misery. You adapted, you little hedonist, you. You didn’t consciously set out to adapt or even give it a fleeting moment’s thought while it was happening; it’s just what you were hardwired to do.
According to this theory of hedonic adaptation, that huge raise you fantasize about getting, the one you’re positive would completely change your life? If you landed that salary bump today and could fast-forward ninety days into the future, you might be disappointed to find that your mood and overall sense of well-being would be exactly zero percent greater than they are right this very minute. Ditto the mansion pinned to your vision board, the designer purse you’re watching on eBay, and the tennis court you’d kill to build in the backyard. (If you win the lottery, you get a whole year to enjoy your ecstasy before going back to being just as giddy or miserable as you were before.)
I've Still Got It...I Just Can't Remember Where I Put It: Awkwardly True Tales from the Far Side of Forty Page 5