Confessions of a Counterfeit Farm Girl

by Susan McCorkindale

  Work Boots—The stilettos of the farm set (aka not something Suzy’s slipping into). Hemingway, on the other hand, has become the Imelda Marcos of the work boot world. He’s got a fancy “dress” pair with steel-reinforced toes (in case a waiter drops a drink on his foot), and at least a dozen others for every day. Waterproof. Slip resistant. Thermal insulated. Some cinch, some tie, some light up when he walks. Just kidding. They don’t make those in men’s sizes. But if they did he’d definitely own a pair.

  Acknowledgments

  I have a confession to make: There would be no book if there were no farm, and there would be no farm without my brother-in-law and sister-in-law, Doug and Nancy McCorkindale. Thank you both for making possible the country life I love to pooh-pooh.

  And speaking of poo-poo, I must take a moment to thank those who’ve been putting up with my bellyaching and BS longest: the Ridgewood Junior Football crew (the Benintendes, Biagis, Caramannas, DeVitas, Edelbergs, Egans, Grafs, Grundys, Krausses, Marchliks, Morminos, Rotas, and Wades); the stars I had the honor of working with at Family Circle (Barbara, Cory, Janine, Kim, Lisa, Rich, Ryan, and Whitney); and all my friends in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, California, and Australia. Please forgive me for not listing each of you here. I am blessed to be able to say that there’s simply not enough space.

  My deepest and most heartfelt thanks go also to the beautiful and talented Noel Cody, without whom I never would have met my wonderful agent, Abby Koons. Thank you, Abby, for embracing my “voice” (even if I do sound like Carmela Soprano) and working tirelessly to find the perfect publisher for Confessions. I swear never again to get tattooed during contract negotiations, but I can’t make any promises about body piercing.

  Kara Cesare, what can I say? You get me better than I get myself. Thank you for your on-the-mark editorial direction, unabashed enthusiasm, and willingness to teach me the ropes (and not let me hang myself with them). I hereby anoint you and Abby honorary LOBsters. Just let me know how you take your morning margarita.

  Special thanks to Lindsay Nouis for answering my six million silly questions, and to Anthony Ramondo, art director extraordinaire, for the cover of this book. You hit the high heel right on the head.

  I’d like also to take a moment to thank the Fauquier Times-Democrat for running my column (despite my penchant for writing about barnyard animals and breasts, but not barnyard animals with breasts), and the two talented women who gave me my break there: Robin Earl and Laura Lyster-Mensh. If I ever grow up, I want to be like both of you. That’s not likely to happen, but a girl can dream, can’t she?

  To all my new Southern gal pals, including but by no means limited to the Marshall Mafia, the LOB Squad, the Jazzercise chicks, and the crew at Claude Thompson Elementary School: Thank you for embracing this high-energy Jersey girl. I love you, too.

  If you laugh at my stuff, and Lord knows I hope you do, it’s because I was lucky enough to learn from the masters. To the funnymen I call family—my dad, Gene Costantino, and my brothers David, Nick, and Dan—thank you for your encouragement and faith. You are my humor heroes.

  And of course I can’t thank my dad without thanking my mom, Joan Costantino. You gave me my first notepad and pencil (anything to shut me up!), and I’ve been chasing you around demanding you read my drivel ever since. Thank you for believing in me and for all your emotional and financial support. (If I could get the next check before Neiman’s annual shoe sale, that would be super.)

  As I said before, there would be no book if there were no farm. But I could never have written (and written and rewritten) about the farm without the love, friendship, and five thousand daily phone calls and kicks in the butt from my best friend, Trisha Clark; my cousin and soul sister, Lisa Orban; and my patient, prescient therapist, Ellen Dolce. (Like you didn’t know I was nuts.) You three are the reason I lived through the past twelve months. I promise: next book, no nervous breakdowns. Unless Escada stops making my size.

  In closing, I’ve got to acknowledge my beautiful boys, Casey and Cuyler. For your patience with this whole process and your pride in me, you have all my love and most of my advance. (OK, all of my advance. Just remember: When you’re done with the video games, go milk the goats!) No book means more to me than the two of you do.

  And finally there’s the guy who’s been with me the whole way. I’ve loved you since I was seventeen, Stu. Only you know how counterfeit this farm girl really is, and yet you still love me. How did I get so lucky? If you’ll permit me one last confession, Farm Boy, I’ve got to tell you: I’d follow you anywhere. Now, I believe you were saying something about salmon?

  1 That’s magazine industry gobbledygook for “program with more than one component,” i.e., a Web site and a direct mail effort.

  2 Please note that if you’re considering a career in magazine publishing, the program development field is not for sissies. Or for those with an aversion to antacids.

  3 A spread is magazine lingo for an ad that runs on the left and right sides of the magazine. Way back in my salad days as a secretary I worked for a particularly funny salesman whose motto was “A spread for a spread.” QW, no wonder you always made your quota.

  4 It was also simply wonderful of her. Thank you, M!

  5 In case you’re wondering, the day after budget day was typically “exercise in the office” day.

  6 When I was really bored, I’d book a full day of meetings with public relations firms. Nobody knows the hot restaurants, clubs, nail polish colors, local movie shoots, up-and-coming fashion designers, and chic boutiques like the chain-smoking JAPs, sorority sisters, and social X-rays who run these outfits. A few hours with them is worth more than a month of New York magazine.

  7 Don’t get excited. We’re talking The Brothers Grimm, not The Godfather.

  8 In my own, personal microwave. OK, so it was cushy to be the queen.

  9 Sure, a break from heels would’ve helped, but nothing says “Out of my way! That big office with the full bath is mine!” like stilettos and a skirt.

  10 I mean, anyone who comes up with a list of the top ten ways to pass the workday and not one of them is work isn’t exactly normal.

  11 I swear, I’ll stop with the old expressions. . . . Soon.

  12 If you’re too young to remember Name That Tune, put this book down. Now. Go turn on Total Request Live, or better yet, take a CosmoGirl “Battle of the Boys” survey and let me know how Drake Bell does.

  13 Some of my all-time favorite taglines that I didn’t write include: Nike’s “Just Do It,” Motrin IB’s “We’ve Got Your Back,” and Cotton Incorporated’s “The Fabric of Our Lives.”

  14 Named for Casey Stengel, Hall of Fame baseball player and former Yankees manager.

  15 Named for Hazen “Kiki” Cuyler (pronounced Kyler), the Hall of Fame baseball player who hit the winning home run for the Pirates in the 1925 World Series. Just call me Saint Susan.

  16 Note to auto manufacturers: Now, this is a little something to make standard.

  17 I have a confession to make: I’m a pouter. Not all the time, of course. Just when it suits my purpose. And when kicking my four-inch heels and cursing is overkill.

  18 Right before I launched my writing business I held the top spot at Popular Mechanics . Laugh if you want, but I loved that job. A half-dozen good-looking sales guys, annual meetings in Miami Beach, and monthly features on THE NEW FLYING PORSCHE! REALLY! COMING SOON TO A SKYWAY NEAR YOU! Serious fun and a six-figure paycheck. What’s not to like?

  19 Frankly, “OK” schools would have been fine, but there was no way I was going without my morning mocha.

  20 Only ninety acres. Boo hoo.

  21 That’s French for “farmhouse in the middle of fucking nowhere.”

  22 At this point, I feel it imperative to bring to your attention the fact that, around here, all the homes have names. Things like Seven Chin Grove and Old Maid Manse. Maybe it’s my marketing mind working overtime, but I have to wonder if the people who own these places selected t
hese particular names as some type of passive-aggressive promotion ploy. I mean, does an old maid actually live in the aforementioned manse? Do seven people named Chin—or one person with seven chins—live at Seven Chin Grove? And what am I to make of homes named Gold Hill Farm and Silver Mountain Manor? That Bronze Run is somewhere nearby, or just that each of these hundred-plus-acre estates is owned by spectacularly affluent former Olympians?

  23 That’s Yiddish for sweating. Of course no one down here speaks Yiddish, and every time I say schvitzing they think I’ve said shitting, and I end up having to apologize and explain myself, and wind up once again wondering where the hell I am and how do I get home?

  24 Ankles exposed and so high at the waist you can rest your boobs on your belt. You know, for a little added support.

  25 It’s freaky how many women are walking around with pictures of their million-dollar mounts and rescued mongrels on their shoes, belts, and handbags. You’ve got to wonder if Seventh Avenue is aware of what’s happening below the Mason-Dixon Line, and if there’s anything they can do to stop it before it spreads.

  26 The equestrian capital of the country and favorite haunt of Jackie O., one of the few women in the world who looked primo in jodhpurs.

  27 Calling Dr. Freud! This business of needing to fit in began when I was a kid. I had really, really, really light blond hair, and I took a ton of abuse for it. The popular girls, all nine-year-old brunet babes wearing bell bottoms and belly shirts and wielding watermelon-flavored Bonne Bell Lip Smackers, called me Suzy Claus and Whitey and occasionally Albino. This completely flipped me out, as I didn’t know what an albino was. I ran home, looked it up, and promptly convinced myself they were right and I was going to spend the rest of my wretched light-blond life indoors. I didn’t, of course, but I did use every cent of my allowance to buy scarves and hats to hide my freak-of-nature head. By the time I hit middle school, my collection was so extensive the local hospital called and asked if I’d donate it to their oncology department. I did, but only after my mom threatened to send me to self-esteem camp if I didn’t.

  28 You thought I’d say bras, right? I’m a buff girl (buff colored, that is, not flapping-in-the-breeze free; you need actual breasts for that). White bras bother me. And women who wear them under peek-a-boo black tops should have their Harper’s Bazaar subscriptions rescinded.

  29 We don’t have any friends of our own yet, so Nancy and Doug drag us around to social events they’ve been invited to. This particular shindig, at a cozy little twenty-thousand-square-foot “weekend cottage” called Prosper Hill, was actually a Super Bowl party. Only none of the guys wore torn rock concert T-shirts or team jerseys with jeans (pastel yellow sweaters paired with dark-colored cords and loafers without socks were the preferred look), kept personal-size coolers at their feet, or even watched the game. In fact, they eventually ditched it in favor of golf. I don’t get it. Sure, Tiger Woods is cute. But he’s no Tom Brady.

  30 I try to remember to refer to Hemingway by his real name whenever I meet new people. This works well early in a party when I’m still sober, but later on it’s often “Stu who?”

  31 Industry speak for magazine, because “magazine” simply takes too long to say. Thanks, MTV.

  32 You know: death, destruction, and really bad news like they might close Bergdorf Goodman.

  33 Go, newsprint! Go, newsprint! If my kids destroy one more thing in this pristine decorator show house we’re calling home, I’m going to drown myself in one of the four lap pools masquerading as tubs.

  34 That they probably bought at Cabela’s.

  35 A baby hen. Hemingway wants to raise his own poultry. I’m sticking with Perdue.

  36 A bovine multitasker that can “service” the heifers and cows, and cut grass, too. Sounds like the poor boy’s going to be beat. For a definition of heifer, see cow in the Impractical Girl’s Guide to Farm Speak glossary.

  37 Stuff like soil pulverizers, dirt scoops, and bale spears, but not a single pair of stilettos.

  38 So I guess he’s planting one.

  39 A fancy phrase for “moving cattle from one field to another.”

  40 The Bloomie’s of the boonies. Again, see the glossary.

  41 A withering glance that conveys “Knock off the sarcasm” and “Don’t be stupid” in a split second; as natural to the McBoys as breathing.

  42 Wish you were here! And we weren’t!

  43 Because where else are you going to keep garbage?

  44 So that accounts for what looks like creamed peas packed in the kid’s nose.

  45 In my book, a sinus infection does not equal a sick day.

  46 You’d love my costume; purple parachute pants and black leather bustier. Kind of a Ronald McDonald meets Cat Woman combo; sexy but accommodating.

  47 This not only gets the job done, but guarantees there’ll be no further thermometer chomping in my child’s future.

  48 See? I don’t always call him Hemingway or hon, or any of those mean-spirited pee-pee monikers I mentioned earlier. Sometimes, like when the kids are sick or I’m giving birth to one, he’s simply Super Stu. Because really, he’s super. Love you, hon!

  49 I’m not being sarcastic here—well, not too much. I’d want my family member’s skull sewn up before little Charlie got his chest X-ray, too.

  50 Note to file: Sexy black Bandolino boots will not work for the Olympic Ice Skating Team trials.

  51 Because Nate’s Place, natch, is still uninhabitable.

  52 Not quite as beautiful a sight as the twice-annual Neiman Marcus clearance sale signs I used to be able to see from the bus while sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic en route to the Lincoln Tunnel, but almost.

  53 I turned twenty-nine again last month and I’ll tell you, the ten years between twenty-nine and thirty have been some of the happiest of my life.

  54 Of course it does. He worked at home. He had time to run to our local DMV, stand in line, smile for the camera, and obtain a license that frees him from suspicion of being a terrorist. I, on the other hand, had the big job in the big city where I worried big time about being killed by terrorists, and never once realized that I was carrying an ID that defined me in a big way as being one of them.

  55 At least until I kill him for snickering to himself. And then I’ll be his widow. Won’t that be wonderful?

  56 Can anyone blame me for wanting to slap Suzy Chapstick at this second?

  57 In 2009.

  58 OK, I am. Anybody who suggests their bank use a quill pen and parchment paper is more than a bit of a brat.

  59 It typically takes a senior stylist forty-five minutes to blow me out. This guy took two hours. “You’re not doing it my way so I’m taking my time” time or country time? You make the call.

  60 We’ve now been at Oakfield for three months. That’s two months and three weeks longer than planned, and the kids are working hard to give my sister-in-law’s multimillion-dollar home that frat house feel. They’ve broken two tables and a DVD player, streaked the wall along the spiral staircase with handprints, and perfected the art of dismantling the window treatments in the dining room and draping them over the table to make an exorbitantly expensive tent. And you wonder why I’m drinking before daybreak.

  61 Yeah, our contractor is also our decorator. It’s a long, sordid story, one I’m certain to get sued for if I relay it here. Suffice it to say that in the future, I’ll keep the two functions separate. And you should, too.

  62 Not to mention my personal favorite, a half-eaten peanut butter and jelly sandwich on moldy whole wheat pressed into service as an ashtray. Sort of redefines recycling, doesn’t it?

  63 I think I’ve yet to mention that Hemingway was a Marine. He’s still got those finely tuned senses they beat into him. He can read and react to a situation in a nanosecond, and hear a cricket fart from forty feet. Really, his hearing is amazing. Though he’s deaf to my begging him not to encourage the boys to belch for company.

  64 OK, two things, but we’re talking house stuff here
.

  65 Ah, country time.

  66 The miracle being that we did it in under four months.

  67 Take it from me, kids: strong and sensitive pales in comparison to olfactory dysfunctional and fearless when faced with a full diaper.