Christmas with the Kranks

And within hours, with Blair Witch-like spookiness, Mom knows all. Has seen it in her crystal ball and is on her horse and riding (with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, no doubt.)

She rails against Charlotte like King Lear railed against the wind. Even as Charlotte boards a plane to leave the country for a family vacation while all of her boys take a break from school and career.

Of course, Mom has a predictable pattern. Bully Charlotte and make her feel like a Terrible Person. Also say outrageously insulting and horrifying things about me in the same breath to cast doubt as to why Charlotte would ever pay any attention at all to what her Wicked Sister has to say. And lie. Make up a fairy tale version of all that Charlotte has called her out on. As if saying it makes it so. Mom is the queen of gas lighting. If you listen long enough, you may even be convinced that you may have lived in someone else's house.

And as luck would have it, I am away for a weekend with my kids and some friends, enjoying a Winter wonderland in the little hamlet where Charlotte and Jack own a cottage. We've rented a ginormous one and are enjoying hot toddies as Mom hurls her incendiary texts and phone calls. Always so thoughtful, Mom is going to harass Charlotte until she is too miserable to enjoy her family vacation. So I step in.

And I let the hot toddy do the talking. Via text, where I can do all the yelling I want without interruption. Two can play that game, Estelle.

Of course I have to break up the 1000 word tome into 4 or 5 separate texts so they come through on her flip phone. I take a small measure of glee from the fact that she'll be billed by her phone service carrier for the individuals texts.

I remind her that she is doing exactly the manipulative, conniving, hateful things I accused her of several years back when she was, well, doing a lot of manipulative, conniving, hateful things.

I told her she'd ruined her last Christmas. I tell her, in case there is any ambiguity, that she is distinctly unwelcome in my home at Christmas. That she should spare herself the embarrassment of appearing at the door and being turned away. That there is nothing, and no one that would be on either side of the door that could pressure me to let her cross the threshold. I've watched enough vampire movies to know that inviting in the uninvited does nothing but suck the life right out of you.

Charlotte calls me within minutes. With unprecedented speed, Estelle has figured out that Charlotte and I are not only discussing, but have completely agreed on a plan of action. She is furious. Someone is supposed to side with her. Her success at getting invited to Christmas (a Christmas she will manipulate and interfere with to the point where it is charred and smouldering by day's end) depends upon her successfully dividing and conquering us. She needs one ally who will join her in thumbing her nose at the other of us. She wasn't prepared, evidently, for an uprising.

It is such a great parenting tactic. Create infighting to weaken resistance. She should have been a wartime general.

Charlotte is obviously very upset. Mom is chastising her and has accused us of bashing her. (Well, Estelle, if the shoe fits...) I tell Charlotte to put Mom out of her mind and not to respond to anything. Mom is winning the war by upsetting her. Let me rattle Mom's cage. I don't happen to give a hang if she's upset, and there isn't much she can say that will penetrate my armor at this point. I can block her. I can hang up. It's not like she is going to drive north to pull my hair.

It cracks me up that Mom accuses us of talking about her behind her back. Like we should be so ashamed. Of course we are, because we are no more ashamed than she is when she's trashing one of us to the other (OK, to be truthful, it is her trashing me to Charlotte 995 of the time.) Yet the pot reserves the right to call the kettle black, simply because she is the pot. A boiling, oozing, putrid pot of festering swill.

I text once again. I tell her not to dare contact Charlotte again. Her issue is with me. I accuse her of being a coward. I dare her to call and do battle with me. And I tell her that of course she's offended that Charlotte dished to me about all that she has said and done. Abusive people always want their victims to be silent.

Yep. I wrote it. I called her abusive.

Let the fur fly.

Joy? No. Hell.

I may have shared this before, but it is worth repeating: I remember when my mother was about 40 and she'd said, "I love being the age I am. I don't have to take any crap from anyone."

Let's be clear. Mom was never the type to take a lot of grief sitting down. Someone who chose to rattle her cage would only ever attempt it one time. Mom's obituary will not contain the words "shy and retiring." No shrinking violet, she.

Well, in her 40s, Mom was just revving her engines. In her 70s, Mom is a well-oiled machine.

Mom and I, if you remember, had exchanged little nasty-grams while I was off being a good citizen and serving on jury duty. My patience waning, I'd told her I had no interest in her particular brand of craziness and she should cease and desist any further contact. Especially the nasty variety. I can get my fill of nasty anywhere. Who needs it from my mother?

Pissed beyond redemption, she'd set her sites on Charlotte and had tried to turn her against me. Mom is a bully that way. I can almost hear her saying "I'll show you, you little pipsqueak. I'll ruin you. You may as well leave town."

And as they always do, while this verbal volleyball match of who said what to whom and why, and Who Shot John, and which person commmitted the worst foul against whom and is therefore most deserving of the gas chamber, the holidays roll around.

Joy of joys. Unprecedented awkward family togetherness on the horizon.

Or not.

Charlotte's intestines turn into a Jacob's Ladder of silly string at the mere mention of Christmas. She almost always hosts our Christmas Eve gathering. A carefully orchestrated collection of beloved family, family members we'd sooner choke than converse with, and friends to whom our family dynamics need no explaining and who will be holding a fresh drink and rolling their eyes with us at all the appropriate Kodak moments.

But this year is different. I am on Estelle's Shit List (which is longer than the Naughty List and the Nice List COMBINED)and she is on my Shoot On Sight list. Bill barely tolerates any of us on the best of days and within an hour of the commencement of the festivities will be ass-faced and slurring obscenities about me loudly enough for me to hear. Loudly enough for most of the residents of the Asian Pacific islands to hear. My brother Joe is persona non grata and has been for years. There may as well be an elephant in the room. Two elephants if he brings his shrew wife. Two elephants in coordinating corduroy Disney attire, most likely. And their unruly progeny. Get out the Clorox wipes.

But I have a solution.

What if I host Christmas Eve?

I have no moral or ethical issue with excluding my brother. The Blessed Mother herself could step from behind the ficus tree and petition my cooperation. I'd hold my ground.

Mom and I are not speaking. She's not even getting a Christmas card much less an invitation. And she won't give me the satisfaction of reaching out to say she'd like to come when she learns of the plan we've hatched. And it's not like Bill even wants to come. Excluding him plays right into his hands.

Charlotte's angst is in overdrive. What will Mom say? She'll know we are in collusion.

She'll know she's been outsmarted, that's what. That is the beauty of it.

I can practically hear Charlotte smile. Signed, sealed, delivered. Christmas Eve is at my house.

Writer's Block Unblocked

And so here it is, more than two weeks since my last entry - without a syllable in between. It will be interesting to see who may still be tuning.Re-reading. Composing a "Where the hell are you?" email in their heads.

I've been here. I just haven't been here.

The crime of it all is that I have so much to write and yet, with all this living going on, very little time to write it. Truly a Catch-22. A good one. I think.

My blog sprang to life just over 4 years ago. A PMS medication and chardonnay induced rant, memorialized in cyberspace on the advice of my constant supporter, my sister Charlotte, who thought my inflammatory, incendiary emails on every aspect of my life (which has a tendency to unravel at the most inopportune times) needed to be shared with the public.

I toyed with the idea. I needed one more commitment like I needed a frontal lobotomy. (No comments, smart asses!.) But there was something liberating about writing it all down and sending it out into the universe to be read or ignored. To inspire or deflate. To entertain or to annoy. Words have such power.

And now, all these years later...

Two jobs later.
Two villainous boyfriends later.
Two bad breakups later.
A bad haircut or two later.
An ill fated tattoo later.
A lot of bad dates later.
A lot of wonderful dates later.
A thousand miles on foot later.
Two middle school bullying issues, untold Lars conflicts, and a percolating family feud later.
Countless hilarious stories, outrageously fun Thelma and Louise road trips, bizarre encounters with society's outcasts, endless buffoonery, and a million moments that made me scratch my head (no matter what my hair color might be at the moment)later.

Here I am crying "Uncle!"

No, I am not abandoning Tang and Cigarettes. That would be nothing short of criminal. There aren't enough happy hours in the world to share all the stories that desperately scream to be retold. Someone needs to tell them.

But I do feel that Tang and Cigarettes will be stubbed out in the big orange plastic ashtray of Life if I don't do something.

So here is what I've decided.

I will write when I am inspired and only when I am inspired.

I will write when I should and not when I think I am expected to.

I will write with purpose, not for writing's sake.

And maybe, just maybe, if I let inspiration be my guide, this meandering story of my life will find itself going somewhere meaningful and the story will unfold before you. Wouldn't that be something to write about?

A Foot In The Door

I look around the house to make sure that it doesn’t look like we‘ve lived in squalor since Lars left. And we haven’t. It is just that sometimes I don’t vacuum as often as I’d like. And the cats think the world is their scratching post. Thank God I got rid of the leather furniture. The sofa looked like a carcass they’d clawed apart to avoid starvation.

And soon enough, Lars is in the doorway, awkwardly knocking on the door of the place he called his home for 7 years. I almost pity him. There are at least a thousand people I’ve never been married to and who have never lived here who would be perfectly comfortable just opening the door and walking in. And they’d be welcome to do so. I guess when you sue someone for divorce and try to take all of their money and destroy their happiness, all of that goes out the window.

He awkwardly steps into the foyer, barely inside the door. I can tell he’s uncomfortable and does not know what to do. He nervously pets the kitten and speaks to her even though he is morbidly allergic to cats of all kinds. Thankfully the kids come out to greet him. Or at least Hil does. Pat is more reluctant. I am not really clear on the reasons why.

“How’s your foot doing?” he says when Hil has picked up the kitten and walked out of toxic range.

“Well, it’s seen better days, that’s for sure,” I say, feeling a little awkward myself.

“Want me to look at it?” The question sounds so formal and estranged. You’d never imagine that we ever saw each other naked.

I extend my foot out a bit and hike up the pant leg just a little. He squats to take a better look.

“It actually doesn’t look too bad,” he says. “I mean there is no doubt that it is infected but I was expecting much worse. It doesn’t even look that swollen.”

I am somewhat relieved as he starts to stand again. But then he quickly squats again and says. “Let me see it next to your other foot.”

I put the two together, pleased that my pedicure is still looking fresh. I pull up both pant legs so the feet and ankles are in full view.

He sort of snorts a little chuckle. “Oh, yeah. It’s pretty swollen. I forgot how skinny your ankles are.”

Is it just a comment? An observation? An insult? Or is it a simple memory of familiarity that time and distance has allowed to be pleasant? Like when you look at your teenager and remember the night she projectile vomited and blew out diapers for 6 hours straight the night before your big interview, and can find the zany humor in it now that it is locked away in the corner of your mind?

I decide to look at it as a sign of peace. We’d each taken a step toward each other. Finally. I asked a question that gave him credibility and he demonstrated kindness that I’d not anticipated. And made a little inside joke in doing so. Perhaps my humbling experiences with my job and with Scott have made me less monster and more human than he once recognized. And maybe his life with Liza has finally filled him with enough joy that he doesn’t have to take away mine.

Maybe.

Game On

I have worked all day.

I have fretted for an hour at the doctors office.

I have had my pig-roasted-over-spit foot poked, drained, scraped, turned in every direction (hello, hip replacement) doused with God-only-knows-what and then bandaged. And jammed back into a fuzzy black sock and a shoe, thank you.

I look like Hell. I feel like I have just returned from Hell.

And now I get to see Lars. My nemesis. The man who would relish every minute I spend in pain and suffering. The man who privately rejoices my every bout with economic frailty, who turns a cartwheel every time a man exits my life, who plays the lottery every time the Homeownership Gremlins leave my basement filled with water, my toilet in disrepair or a gutter dangling at a right angle from the roof. Yippee.

I decide that I have had enough of my Limping Nun outfit. I take the stairs two at a time to go upstairs to change. I put on freshly laundered pajamas and a hoodie. No one needs to see me braless in my PJs. I sweep my hair into a clip, brush my teeth, freshen my face with a little powder and gloss, and then yes, wash the black fuzzies off my feet and put lotion on them so I don't actually appear to be disintegrating.

And why do I care what Lars thinks of my feet? Or how I look? I ran screaming from our marriage without a glance in the rear view mirror and have regretted nothing about leaving. Ever. For one second. Why on Earth would his impression of me now matter? Why is it important?

I guess it is this: As much as he has relished every successful attempt to destroy, belittle, marginalize and humiliate me, I have rallied to stand tall, succeed, take things in stride and to rise to every challenge.

Divorce at the age of 42? So what? Lose weight, get in shape, look like a million bucks and buy all new clothes that announce that I have returned to glory and I am bringing sexy back with me!

His friends take his side and turn their backs on me? I find new friends everywhere I look. Friends who would never be the kind of people who just walk away from a lifetime of friendship. And the tried and true friends have stepped up their game, too.

Boyfriend dumps me? Find a new one. A better looking one with a house at the beach and a body that won't quit. Who is younger than Lars.

Lose my job? Get a better one. A dream job. One that the kids are proud of.

So now, just because I am having a problem, I don't want to show my cards and look like I don't actually have my shit in a nice neat pile. I want to keep up appearances. I want to look like "Blister, schmister. I have better things to do than worry about a little old gangrene."

And here he comes up the stairs to my front door. Game time.

Who Is This, Please

Understand that for the past 7 years, while my marriage actively unraveled and my tenuous relationship with Lars deteriorated into full on belligerence toward one another, I have never given him the satisfaction of actually asking him a question.

I've consulted his opinion on something and promptly overridden it.

I've consulted his opinion on something and have experienced the powerlessness of shared custody with a bully.

I've asked for flexibility with our custody schedule and sometimes been granted it. I have never benefited in return from flexibility shown to Lars. Time I give him is just forfeited. Time he gives me has to be returned in kind. I swear he keeps a spreadsheet.

Mostly I just tell him things. In deadpan straightforward directness.

"I am traveling. That is all you need to know."

"I will be away that weekend." Omitting the details about where, who I'll be with and how and if I can be reached.'

"I am not paying for that." Trust me, I have my reasons. I can not begin to waste my breath explaining them to you.

"No. I do not agree." For reasons too numerous to text. "No" is all you need to know.

And I have certainly never given him the satisfaction of asking him a professional question.

First of all, I don't think he's all that smart when it really comes down to it. I think he's a good test taker. He could probably pass the NASA Space Flight Exam if he could get the physical clearance to sit for it. I struggle that he asked once if Hil's damaged kidney would grow back. I am sure the doctor was thinking, "Suuuuuurre! If we could figure out how to grow a kidney do you really think we'd need all these organ donors?"

But in this case, with an amputation to actively avoid, I have a simple medication question.

"Lars, I got a blah blah blah dose of whatever antibiotic. The label reads that I should take 2 doses a day. If you were me, would you take one now and then get the second dose in before bed?"

He seems delighted that I've asked, know-it-all that I am. "Definitely. Get the first dose started right away. That's a really high dose. Make sure you eat something. You may not feel all that great."

What? What is this thing that looks like kindness? I tell him I will and that the kids were nice enough to save me some pizza. "Are you worried?" he asks.

Concern for your children's mother? Where has THAT been hiding? "Maybe a little. I never expected this to be something so big. I almost choked when they wanted to admit me. I was thinking it was just a bad blister."

"I can imagine," he says. "Well, if you want me to look at it when I come get Pat, I can."

I thank him and tell him I'll see him in a minute.

And suddenly I feel weird about all of it.

Lars has not crossed the threshold to our marital dwelling since he left 7 years ago. Has stood outside in the wicked cold and all manner of elements rather than come inside. We've occupied the same car exactly one time in all that time. He has not physically touched me since shaking my hand during the ironically named "kiss of peace" at Mass during one of the kids' sacraments.

And now he's going to examine my foot?

Why am I in a flop sweat?

Pharmacy Follies

With my cartoonishly large caricature foot throbbing to the point of actually making sound, I get into the car and motor to the CVS to fill the prescription. While I wait, I eyeball the 4-point canes with the jazzy Lilly Pulitzer knock off handle covers. I seriously consider buying one. It will make a nice accessory to my prosthetic foot once this one shrivels up and falls off.

The pharmacist is a little concerned about my dose and calls the doctor. Perhaps that dose is reserved only for those in the acute stages of leprosy? The pharmacist looks at me curiously while she is on the phone. I can tell she is wondering where the outward signs of disease will appear. Will my ear fall off and land on the counter with a thud?

I self consciously wait while the prescription is dispensed and my name is bellowed from the loudspeaker (though I am standing right there, impatiently tapping my good foot). I want to strangle the pharmacy tech. Does everyone need to know I am getting a prescription? Does everyone get to imagine what hidden diseases I am harboring? Can't I just limp out anonymously?

Apparently not.

I run into a former co-worker. She wants to know all about my new job.

I run into a neighbor. She wants to know why my car was at the curb all Summer.

I run into an old babysitter. She wants to see pictures of Hil and Pat all grown into teenagers.

I am losing steam. I am running out of good will. I am fresh out of patience. I look like death warmed over. I am forcing an unconvincing smile to my miserable face.

Please leave me alone.

I drive the last two blocks home. I usually would make this trip on foot. Not tonight. Surely I'd be found dead on someone's lawn between my house and the CVS. I greet the kids while I multitask opening the prescription, which is sealed as though it may have to circumvent the moon in deep space.

"Two pills a day" it reads. It's 7:30.

I call Lars.

"Hey --- I am home. The kids have eaten. If you need to pick up Pat you can."

He is morbidly curious about my doctor's appointment. I secretly want to scramble his brainwaves and tell him it was an obstetrical visit. But I don't. I tell him the whole story now that I have been sprung from captivity.

He has loads of questions. He must be bored. I have never met a man more unnaturally lacking in curiosity than Lars.

But I go along with it. I need him for something. I have a question, too.

"Lars, can I ask you something?"

It is such a rare question for him that he is stunned into silence.

Let's Make A Deal

Since all bad news tends to land in one big shit pile, it makes perfect sense that it would be Lars on the other end of the phone. The Ladies in White leave to discuss my necrotic limb.

He needs to come over to get Pat for some project he's helping him with (Pat is 15. Unless he is building a model of the Space Shuttle to scale, I doubt that there is any parental input needed for any project the school can dream up as a method of torture.)

Can he come over and get him after dinner?

Well yes, but dinner is sort of up in the air at the moment, considering the Ladies in White are about to throw a net over my head.

I contemplate the loaded question.

"Well, you can...but we have not eaten dinner yet. I am not home."

He immediately assumes I am consumed with my new job and ignoring the children because I like the people at work better. It's his rallying cry. And how he justifies that he hasn't worked a full day since Jesus wore short pants.

As he sighs that sigh that suggests that I am a hopeless excuse for a parent, I tell him that I am at the doctors with a foot injury and that they are not sure I do not need to be admitted. I purposely leave out the details of said injury. Let him think that I mangled a limb with the lawn mower. A blister gone awry seems so pathetic and avoidable. He'd just heap on more blame.

He asks if he should pick up the children.

Of course he does. If I am discharged and sent home, it would be a most safe and caring thing to do to ensure that I suffer and die alone. Who needs company during times of pain and suffering anyway?

I tell him I need to call Pat and Hil and tell them to make a pizza for dinner and to please not argue over which one. And that I will call when I am on my way home, because darn it, I am not taking a spin in the ambulance to the ER to be admitted for a blister.

Hil reads me like a book when I call. Asks if I am coming home at all. She must share some DNA with Charlotte. Never misses a trick, even if I am doing my darndest to sound cheerful to the point of mania.

The Ladies In White return. I immediately launch into a diatribe about my new job and kids at home. Play the single mother card. I have cats. One is blind!!!!

They are shaking their heads. I am frantically devising an escape plan, even though my pants remain slung over a pleather chair.

Thankfully, they are Let's Make A Deal gals. They will write a sky-high dose of an antibiotic if I promise and swear to keep an appointment they are making for me to return on Saturday afternoon.

I raise my hand, Girl Scout style, and swear on everything I know to be holy.

I snatch the script, put on my pants, grab my purse and run out the door. I hand my business card to the rude job seeker and disappear into the night.

I am running so fast I do not even realize that my foot is throbbing and feels like I just ran across hot coals.

I hesitate at the car door.

Am I making a huge mistake?

One Foot Out The Door

Not that I am a mind reader, but Charlotte clearly meant business. If she did not already have her Spidey senses on high alert, she would have just said she was checking in. This was a specific question. Her way of simply beginning to scratch the surface.

Channeling Florence Nightingale, for sure, she had heard me mention the foot at least a dozen times, seen me wince in uncharacteristic pain a few more times, and had mentally filed through her 3 by 5 cards of nursing school notes to assess the situation. She doesn't need to diagnose. She just needs to know it falls outside the range of normal.

Please. I spend two thirds of every day outside the range of normal. This should shock no one.

I call her. I can hear her figuratively tapping the toe of her white-shoed foot on the kitchen tiles.

I downplay the situation.

She's odnto me in a minute. I am like the diabetic who ate the Twinkie and is standing there holding the cellophane wrapper claiming to have no idea why their sugars would be off the charts.

Can you send me a picture?

Eeeeewwww. I don't even want to look at it much less take an police photo of the crime scene. Yuck.

She asks me if it is hot.

Hot, well, no. Hotter than the foot that is not propped up on the trash can, yes. But hot is a relative word. What do you mean by "hot" exactly? How hot is too hot. Feelin' hot, hot hot!

She takes that "Don't make me call you an idiot" tone I can recognize in the lowest of volumes. "Liza....."

OK OK OK. I will find an urgent care facility on the way home. I will drive there with my 2-pounds-of-ground-chuck foot and let them grimace and quickly write a barely legible script just to get me to put my sock back on and leave. They are unaccustomed to such gore at the Urgent Care. They are more the Strep Throat culture threshold for grossness.

Charlotte is not convinced. Calls me on the way to make sure my car doesn't accidentally just take me home.

I check in. I give the lady at the desk my information. She asks for a job with my company. Off to a great start. No one cares about my foot but Charlotte.

I limp to the pleather chairs area and sit down. Suze Orman is yakking about financial stability in that preachy voice of hers. I find a magazine and engross myself in a 3 month old article about Matthew McConaughey.

I get called in just when the article begins to get interesting. It is the way the world works. Walk away from the elevator to take the stairs and suddenly the elevator will appear.

I am asked all the usual questions. Am measured for height and weight and get my blood pressure and temperature taken. Nothing to write home about.

The Medical Assistant asks me what I am there for and then asks me to remove my sock. And then my other sock.

Practically fainting from the sight, she leaves the room and returns with the Nurse Practitioner. She looks at my foot. I look at my foot. It is even looking more spiffy now that it has spent the day in black wool socks. A little black lint does a lot to improve the appearance of an inflamed body part, in case you ever need to know that.

She pokes and squeezes and pricks the heel with all manner of instruments. I look away secretly wishing I'd brought the Matthew McConaughey article into the exam room (with all its germs.)

Once the NP is happy with the volume of goo she's been able to render from my ailing limb, she leaves the room.

A few minutes later a doctor comes in. She goes through largely the same exam with a little less emphasis on getting blood from the stone my foot is rapidly becoming. She looks at my good foot. She looks at my face and my eyes. She checks all my glands, which against all logic, requires me to take off my pants. I am sure I am in some kind of alien experiment.

She leaves. Both ladies come back in after what seems like an hour.

They look at each other and then to me. I am sure I am about to be told I have gangrene and there is an amputation in my near future.

One decides it is her responsibility to speak.

"We are on the fence. We think we may need to admit you for IV antibiotics."

As I swoon, my phone begins to ring.

Playing Footsie

Thank God for offices with a Casual Attire dress code. Most places are too afraid to do that. Most employers have such a lack of confidence in their employees that they demand a more formal appearance, expecting that most people will fall woefully below the bar. If they lower the bar, it would be fashion anarchy. Tube tops. Daisy Dukes. Flip flops. Heaving cleavage. Muffin tops spilling out over the waistbands of too-tight jeans matched with belly shirts worn by people who have no business owning belly shirts, given the conditions of their bellies.

But my new employer has no such reservations. One of my Chiefs interviewed me in jeans. They were snazzy jeans he no doubt picked up on Rodeo but jeans nonetheless. These folks are given credit for knowing how to walk around in public and rarely disappoint. Don't get me wrong, most people are not forging new standards of fashion and churning out the hype on grooming, but everyone is generally neat and clean, reasonably pressed, matching and wearing shoes that were purchased in the current decade. (There is that one chick who is always dressed for a yoga class, but at least she rocks the look instead of looking like the yoga pants were the only ones she could manage to yank across her ass without splitting.) Yes, our only rules for dress code are about flip flops and ripped jeans. As in "Don't wear them." Pretty easy. My work wardrobe has expanded exponentially with that little bit of clarification. Time to burn the suits.

but even so, on Day 2, with my left foot now looking alarmingly like a bone-in spiral cut glazed ham, I stand in the gaping yaw of my closet and stare blankly and defeatedly at the tonnage of clothing. Nothing, and I do mean nothing, leaps into my arms begging to be worn.

I hobble to the window to survey the weather. It is cloudy and gray and a little bit chilly. Very helpful. We'll rule out the sleeveless items. Next!

I start with shoes. Anything that won't send my nerve endings into a tailspin is too casual. Except perhaps the tragic mules I wore to lunch the week before. Ugh. I had hoped to establish myself as an office fashion icon, not a matronly, frowzy, elastic waist-banded Mom Jean owner. How will anyone know I am a snappy dresser if they avert their eyes from this day forward because I disappointed on Day 2. Day 2! I didn't even keep up the momentum for a week!

But I have no choice. I must build yet another outfit around Les Chaussures Horrible. Damn it.

Let's continue the process of elimination with the pants. Cross anything that needs ironing off the list. I can't walk ALL THE WAY OVER THERE to iron anything. The ironing board is on the opposite corner of the house. I am not crossing the Prime Meridian until my foot shrivels up and falls off.

Anything that with a length or color that does not align with the tragic footwear is out. I have exactly 2 pair.

Onto blouses and sweaters. Eliminating those that need ironing once again, and those that don't match with the scant selection of pants, proves to be quite effective at whittling things down to a manageable selection. Exactly 4.

One I hate.
One needs a particular undergarment that is currently drying on the line in the cellar.
One has a very dangly, loose button that will surely fall off as soon as I step into the elevator where it will conveniently roll down the shaft.

I guess I am a Woman in Black. Black wool turtleneck and black slacks and plain black shoes. All I need is a wimple and a big, giant, iron crucifix for around my neck. I am The Limping Nun.

Slowly, slowly, slowly I get the kids to the car and off to school. Drive with my good foot to work. Limp into the building. Fire up my laptop at my desk. Turn my trash can over and take off my left shoe. I prop the ham up on the can. My phone dings.

Charlotte.

What is going on with your foot?

A New Day Dawns

Starting a new job, no matter how exciting, is exhausting. Even more so if you have been at home keeping your own calendar, coming and going as you please, sleeping til whenever, going to bed at O-dark-thirty, and generally living the life of a dog. No regimentation. Just the basics. I sleep when and where I want to, eat when I feel like it, and the rest of the day is determined by when I get to go out and what I find to play with in the yard.

So throbbing, swollen, misshapen foot aside, I am just plain old tired at the end of Day 1. I have met dozens of shiny new people who are all anxious to meet me and who can remember my name. I have no idea who any of them are and why they should be important to me.

My brain is cranking. I am trying to remember where the ladies room is, where I need a badge to get through the door, the locations of conference rooms, the names of people who report to me and what they are supposed to do in a day's time, and all manner of other details, to say nothing of having to figure out who everyone is talking about when they only use first names and I am not even sure I know enough to care if "Mike went ballistic and chucked a gift mug filled with mints through his monitor and shorted out the entire right side of the network."

I limp. I wince. I walk on just the toes of my left foot. I give myself Charlie horses and cramps. I look like a spaz. No one notices the cool boots I am sure because of all the distractions I was causing with my prancercizing about the office pretending not to be in searing pain.

But the day ends soon enough. My head is full of new names and new information. Most of it will fly out the back of my head by the time I am home thanks to the brain-scrambling focus on the desire to rip the cool boots of my burning left foot.

In a synaptic misfire that only those at death's door experience, I briefly think, "I should watch the movie My Left Foot" just so my actual left foot can see what it is missing by being incapacitated. "If you'd hurry up and heal, maybe I'd let you play with paints, too."

I hobble to the door of my house at a glacial pace. I am tired. I am injured. I am a shadow of my former self.

I am greeted at the door by an adoring Hil and Pat, who have taken it upon themselves to start warming one of the dinners I've prepared in advance. I am grateful. Not only for the help but for the ability to refrain from standing at the stove.

I literally sit down on the door mat and begin to pry off my boots. Right one first because it is easy.

Then the left. I half expect the foot to come off in the boot and remain behind.

I won't go into detail. Let's just say, it was hard to look at.

And yet I still think I should throw on my running shoes and head to the track. Somehow the poisons of infection have pickled my brain.

Instead, I run warm water into a bucket. I pour a few tablespoons of baking soda into it. I stand in the bucket at the sink in my work dress. And I pour myself a martini.

God only knows what I am going to do tomorrow.

But I do know this.

I am not going to call the doctor.

Leap of Faith

My first day of work at my new job is looming.

My left foot has taken on the size, shape and texture of a 3 pound ring baloney.

My first day outfit is in jeopardy. I can not bear to imagine jamming the ring baloney into a sassy pair of new boots with a 3 inch heel. The idea that shoes that have not been sufficiently broken in would touch the exposed nerve endings of my foot sends me sailing over the edge of reason. The thought of anything except bedroom slippers actually does exactly the same thing. I wonder if it is too late to get those hideous pumps they used to advertise by showing a bunch of women playing basketball in them?

I simply can not part with the dress. It is too cool. But the boots are what make it so fabulous. Without the boots, it's just a dress. A cute dress, but dainty, little ho-hum pumps would not do it justice. Kick ass boots seem more like justice.

Even as my foot throbs and sends shooting pain into my calf, I am indecisive.

I am sure there is a name for this. I am sure it is a name in a big, fat volume full of names of diagnosable mental disorders. I swear I'd wear shoes that felt like razor blades if they made my legs look great and pulled a look together flawlessly. So what if I am wincing and the circulation to my toes has been violently pinched off?

The morning comes. I have a choice to make. I have paperdolls with different combinations in my head. I can not decide.

I tap on Hil's door. She's thrilled to see me up and looking presentable from the shoulders up before school (I'd relaxed a little with the hair and makeup routine to be honest. Why waste a blob of anti-frizz creme when the only exciting thing you'll be doing is hiking in the woods? The squirrels wouldn't notice if I showed up naked.)

I tell her my dilemma. I pull out an alternative outfit. She knits her brow and glares up at me in pure disbelief. "You'd wear THAT on your first day?"

I pull out the original dress. As I pull out the pumps she tells me not to bother. "You are sooooo not wearing those things."

I pull out a different pair of boots. A tall black pair I've had for years. Italian. Stylish. Broken in like a favorite pair of sneakers. But black. And ordinary. And they don't pick subtly pick up the little swipes of color in the fabric the way the other boots do.

And then I tell her my original plan. Hang the dress on the door and pull out The Boots.

Hil has a visceral reaction. Can't avert her gaze. Has to touch them. She's stammering.

They are really cool.

When Hil regains her ability to speak, she gushes that she HAS to see the whole outfit on me.

I was afraid she'd say that. I go into my room and hang up my robe carefully. And slowly unbutton the dress on its hanger. I am dragging my feet. Literally and figuratively.

I put on the dress.

I put on the right boot. It is on the foot that does not look like it was roasted over a spit the night before.

Now the left.

Oh.
My.
Gawd!

It is so excrutiating that I nearly do not go through with it. If I get the boot on, I am not sure I'll have the nerve to get it off. Scraping the back of the boot across my leperous heel is about as appealing as home dentistry.

I hobble out to show Hil.

She beams. "Mom! That HAS to be what you wear! You look like you're in charge. You know, but nice. And fun."

Yes. In charge. And nice. And fun. And a good candidate for conscious sedation.

But the outfit is on me. And so it shall stay. And even though I wince with every step, I am stepping out into a brand new life today. And where my foot causes me to hesitate and look before I leap, my heart is ready for whatever lies on the horizon.

Shame and the Shameless

Meanwhile, as my foot was decaying conveniently in advance of my actual death, my support hearing with Lars was looming.

I'd been unemployed for nearly five months and Lars had deftly avoided paying me so much as one thin dime, all the while insisting that that he really, really, really didn't want things to be difficult for me. (Well okay, then, asswipe. Stop letting your lawyer continue the hearings and start paying up. Here's an idea: negotiate. And open your friggin' check book for once, Bargain Basement Bonehead.)

But his lawyer, Randeeee took the attitude that it was I who was causing the hardship. Lars was truly suffering without his monthly pile of free cash. All I had to do was live at the poverty level. Easy, peasy, lemon squeezey. Poor Lars was probably struggling to pay his bar tab. Such a pity. Randeeee regularly called my lawyer to grouse that I was not looking hard enough for a job. And probably billed Lars in 6 minute increments to make the call.

It is so easy to envision raking your fingernails down some people's faces.

And me, being a model citizen (when I try) delayed my start date at my fabulous new job just to avoid having to interrupt my first week with a road trip to the courthouse.

And yet, Randeeee had the unbridled nerve to continue the hearing again. Gave some bogus excuse and followed it with "Is she working YET????" in a voice that could only have resulted from gargling with Drain-O.

Well played, douchebag. You win. I get back to work and Lars never has to part with anything but a few dollars in arrears. And it will just be netted out of the payments I'll eventually owe to him in tiny little increments stretched out over months since he was not technically a deadbeat. Just a weasel. Nothing illegal about being a weasel. He better sleep with one eye open. Karma casts a long shadow.

I am twisted with rage over this last continuation. I know the plan that Randeeee and Lars have hatched is perfectly legal. It can not be found to be contemptuous. But it flies in the face of everything I know about being a parent and being a human being.

It was more important to them to keep all of Lars money in the bank than to provide for my children. They both pretend to have only the loftiest of intentions. Lars only asks for support so he can properly care for the children. But all that logic goes out the window when my caring for them in the manner to whihc they've become accustomed has become financially impossible for me.

They both pretend that I would prefer to take food from my children's mouths and deprive them of essential needs than to part with a portion of my paycheck. When really, it is simply that Lars is a taker. He earns a fine living. He could earn a better living, but he's just lazy. He'd rather have me work hard and sponge off of me like a barnacle. It's not like he works at a car wash. He's a licensed medical professional. With a decent paycheck. He just thinks he's entitled to part of mine. It's despicable. I don't know how he looks at himself in the mirror without wincing. I suppose shame is nothing knew to him.

And Randeeee is the worst kind of lawyer. She's the type of lawyer that gives lawyers a bad name. She creates an intense sense of confusion and insecurity and suspicion so Lars will never make a move without her. He won't make a decision and won't agree to anything. Won't collaborate, won't cooperate, won't do the right thing. And she bills him for every phone call, note and document. Holding him hostage with her sense of superiority. And holding his wallet hostage too. So he feels like he has to reach into mine. That he's ENTITLED to reach into mine.

OK, Miss Grabbypants. You won this round. I hope you enjoy the moment. The truth of the matter is that your need to win has overshadowed your sense of purpose as counsel in a divorce proceeding. Your preoccupation with destroying your opponent has rendered you blind to the carnage in your wake.

And Hil and Pat are the latest victims. How dare you deprive them of the very "equality of lifestyle" that the concept of Child Support is based upon. Shame on you, Randeeee, for insisting that this happen. And more shame on you, Lars, for letting it.

Playing Footsie

The next day is no better. Hungover and hobbled. Truly a vision of loveliness.

But I have lunch plans with a lovely woman who chairs a board I sat on for three years and who had given me a wonderful reference for the job I was about to start. I have to get my act together.

I desperately want to wear flip flops but shower shoes would surely be shunned in the Ladies Who Lunch circle. And it has begun to get cold. I'd look like an ass no matter what. And sandals are no better an option in the brisk weather. Even if I did have a pair that matched well with a fall outfit.

Limping up the stairs to the finished attic where my ridiculously large cedar closet can be found, I set about my mission for Fall Shoes That Do Not Cause Excruciating Pain and Mental Suffering By Their Mere Placement on One's Feet. You'd think this would be easy. I am sure I'd find Jimmy Hoffa's carcass sooner.

Then, in a cast off pile of Things I Morbidly Regret Buying and a bin of Items I May Have Purchased Whilst Stoned on Cold Medicine, I spot them. Black leather mules. Sensible heel. Cheap Leather. Square toe that gets lazy and rounds its edges. Truly hideous. But backless and low enough that I can actually drag my foot behind me (again, like Quasimodo) without waving my arms like an acrobat. The picture of I'm Injured But I Won't Admit It Discretion.

I build a reasonable outfit around the tragic footwear. I am camouflaging genius. Now if I could only refrain from wincing.

Walking is painful.
Driving is painful.
The hem of my pants scraping like a metal file across the tender skin of my heel is painful.

I have wine with lunch. I nearly dunk the foot into the wine, I am so desperate.

But do I pick up the phone and call the doctor? No. I let the weekend come so that it is nearly impossible to get an appointment unless there is an actual limb in some late stage of being severed from one's body. I consider doing the hacking myself.

I convince myself that the weekend will bring a miracle recovery. It is just a deeply bruised wound that began as a blister.

A festering, hot, angry-looking blister that has become the size of Billings, Montana.

I convince myself that those gummy-looking bandages that are designed to pamper your every blister and a tube of Neosporin are all I need.

Even as I hop on one foot through the pharmacy aisles of Target in search of these items. And a jumbo bottle of Tylenol.

I go home and peel my sock from my gross, oozing foot. It is practically a zombie foot. Only then does the word "gangrene" scamper across my synapses. I swear to myself as cheerfully as possible to push the thought from my head.

I wash my foot with antibacterial soap that smells like peaches. It does nothing to improve the foul mood I'm in.

I carefully dry my whole foot and then vow to burn the towel in the fireplace lest I spread disease throughout the house.

I smear Neosporin generously on what now looks like a foot formed out of partially cooked bacon.

I carefully glue on one of those awkward blister bandages. I actually need two.

And as I look down to admire my handiwork, I think for just a moment that my foot looks like one of those cartoon feet upon which someone has dropped an anvil.

From a cliff.

One Foot In Front Of The Other

While I was busy flying, I was also developing quite a nice blister on my foot. New shoes, many miles. Not always a great combination.

But my older shoes were damp from a recent walk that had begun in sunshine and had ended in rain, so they had not been an option.

And the only other shoes I own for this purpose are those "tone up" shoes. The ones that promise to make you flex all the right muscles and achieve perfectly toned pairs of thighs, calves and butt cheeks just by walking around. The calves, thighs and butt cheeks of the girl in the commercial make a decent argument. She looks gorgeous yet avoids looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger's twin sister.

Perhaps normal walking around would achieve such things. Athletic waling around does nothing of the kind. The last time I put those implements of torture on my feet I had hiked eleven miles. My ass still hasn't forgiven me.

But I pushed onward in the new shoes, against my better judgment. Blister, schmister. I've had at least a thousand of them.

This one however, was different. Right out of the gate it was different.

First of all, it was huge. At least the size of a silver dollar.

And it was deep. I felt like if I poked it I could touch a bone, which frankly, skeeved me a whole lot to think about.

And it hurt. A lot. I was limping like Quasimodo within hours.

And then it popped. Well, more like exploded. I will spare you the gory details. Let's just say it was not my finest moment as a squeamish person.

I felt like an invalid. I have walked nearly 1,000 miles this summer, in all manner of weather and terrain, and days before starting a new job, I hobble myself with a completely preventable injury. WTF?

And I feel like a two year old. Am I really whining about a blister? (and in my head, my mother's melodious voice threatens to give me something to really whine about.)

But I have things to do, so I ignore it. I put on a cute outfit and sandals with no backs and join Charlotte and a few cousins who are gathering at a pub to celebrate my new job. I will just wash down a few Tylenol caplets with my beer. I won't have a throbbing foot and I will deftly avoid a hangover. I am so clever making the Tylenol pull double duty.

But at some point in the evening, in one of my less graceful moments, I am certain, I prang my heel on the rung of the bar stool. At the same precise moment, my cousin whacks her knee on the table leg. We both yelp in pain. She is sure that her knee cap has split in two and I am convinced that some portion of my foot is lying on the floor, loose from its moorings.

Charlotte looks at us like we've gone mad, but the knee cap whacking is universally understood and she assumes that we've both sustained the same injury, so I don't immediately need to explain the real source of pain.

Even as I sit there, foot throbbing and unaffected by the magic of Tylenol and alcohol, I wonder if I should say something to Charlotte.

But I am not quite ready to face the reality that will inevitably follow when she decides to pin that nursing cap on her head and have a look at what used to pass as a human foot. If I close my eyes and ignore it, it will surely go away.

Right?

I Believe I Can Fly

I hesitate to listen to the voicemail. I know it is going to be explosive and wretched to listen to.

How very clever Mom has become.

She'd sent one more text to me after my last, and I'd sent a message back -- tricking her into thinking that I'd blocked her on my phone, because when you block someone they are not notified. I want her to KNOW that she is blocked (even if she has no idea what that entails, technically. It just sounds good. "You have been blocked." It should be accompanied by the sound of a door slamming.)

I'd gotten her little quip and had replied Your message has been blocked by this recipient and can not be seen. ATT Msg #7784 And then I actually blocked her.

Official looking enough. And Mom being clever, but not exactly a techowizard, fell for it. Hence, a voicemail to my land line date stamped moments after the message I'd sent about being blocked. I can just hear her saying through gritted teeth, "You think you are so smart? I'll show you!" and gleefully dialing my number and formulating her pissy little rant in her head.

I decide not to let the voicemail just fester like a rotting egg in my phone. I pick up the receiver, dial into the system and patiently scroll through all the sales pitches and political calls and other nuisance messages I have deftly avoided until now. Wouldn't it have been poetic justice if my voicemail had been full? You'd have heard her head flying into a million jagged shards from here.

In a voice only horror movie producers dream of, she rants.

More insults. More commentary on my character. More nastiness in general. And again, she floats the notion that I was high on something.

Well Mom, the sound of your voice does suck all the oxygen from my brain. I suppose I am high. Sort of. In a most unpleasant, painful, please-let-this-kill-me quickly kind of way.

I am a disappointment. She's ashamed of me. I am selfish. I have turned into a witch.

Statements few mothers make to their children and even fewer actually mean.

But Mom is cut from a different crop of mothers. Thankfully a small, wilted crop from which very few survive. No interest in doing anything remotely motherly. Yet demanding of the honors and privileges and rewards that are the hallmarks of motherhood.

Let someone else honor her. Let someone else say they owe it all to their mother. Let someone else credit their mother with laying the foundation for their remarkable life.

My remarkable life, with all its adventures, and misadventures, and blessings, and disasters, and chaos and comedy, is mine to own. And mine to take credit for. If there is anyone I can say helped pour the foundation, it was Dad. And if there was anyone whose wings beat strongly enough to keep me afloat when surely I'd otherwise crash, it is Charlotte. Mom not only doesn't get top billing. She is absent from the scroll of credits entirely. The other supporting actors and actresses are my friends. They are the ensemble cast in my lively, worthwhile life.

And as I hold the phone in my hand, wondering why I even keep a land line at all, I also wonder why I allow my mother in my life at all. She clearly gets nothing she wants or needs from me, no matter what I do or what I achieve or what I accept. And it is patently clear that there is nothing to gain on my end, or my children's either. I don't need her approval. Dad thought I was great. I don't even care what she thinks.

So, my choice is, I can continue this chaotic, disturbing relationship, or I can let it fall from my hands. To hold on is to accept it. To let go is to finally say, "No more." I can let go, or be dragged.

I let go.

And I lace up. Dress in my shorts and sports tank and head to the woods for a long hike, alone with Mother Nature.

I believe I can fly. The weight of nearly 50 years has been lifted from my shoulders.

Let's Just Dispense With The Usual Courtesies, Shall We?

I am shaking with fury as I unlock my phone. The man who smells like Icy Hot is looking at me as though I have just pulled a grenade out of my purse. I suppose he has never seen a mobile phone of any kind. He may still have a party line and a rental phone from Bell Telephone plugged into the wall of his avocado green kitchen. I give him the hairy eyeball until he looks away. I don't want him whipping out his readers to read my nasty-gram as I text it.

I have to re-read her last message before I reply. It will ignite all of my engines. The accusation that I (abbreviated in text-speak to "U" because Mom is a hipster technogeek now) took every valuable thing from my father's house and offered Joe nothing. And then, the candles on the cake, the accusation that I plotted to keep the $2 bills that Dad got for each of us. If I had them, I'd shred them and send them to her in little pieces simply to send her sailing into the outer limits.

I want to scream at her. (Wouldn't Icy Hot love that?) I want to write a courtroom-quality defensive position statement that sets her little Aqua-Netted hair on fire. I want to swear like a sailor so that the "Authorities" she is so paranoid about come and take her phone away. I want to grab a fist full of her hair and slap her (in exactly the way she immobilized our heads in order to slap us when we were kids. But not Joe. He had a crew cut.)

But I don't. The biggest bruise of all will come from dismissing her. From swatting her away like a fly at the picnic.

I simply text, "Please do not bother me with this crap and Joe's. No interest in discussing."

She fires off an even more inventive retort. Character assassination. Criticism for everything I've done since I exited the womb. What a disappointment I am.

Gloves off. Better shield your face, Icy Hot. This one will make your eyeballs bleed.

"How dare you even pretend to think you are qualified to sit in judgment of me? You are a completely selfish, unreasonable, narcissistic monster and I want nothing to do with you. You have shown everyone your true colors and deserve nothing from me. Please do not contact me again. PS - Everyone who has ever gotten to know you has exited your life. YOU are the problem, regardless of what you have convinced yourself of. You can live your small miserable life without the benefit of me or my children in it. You have never been trustworthy or respectable. No future correspondence will be opened or read."

She wastes no time responding.

"The feeling is mutual. Narcissistic describes u. The way u went on yesterday about how wonderful things are. U sounded like you were high on something. U have turned into a total witch. U and Obama are total losers."

Oooh. Good one, Mom. Well if President Obama and I are losers what in Christ's name does that make you (U?) and my idiot brother? I am not sure there is a term for that level of loserdom. Please just go to Hell and stay there.

When we are dismissed for a (luke warm coffee) break, I call Charlotte and tell her everything that has gone on between Estelle and me in the last hour of Jury Duty Follies. She is flabbergasted. Wonders where all the venom and hatred comes from (Not that Mom hasn't always been a wellspring of such things). My best guess is that she percolated and fumed over the conversation we had yesterday, hopped on her Miz Gulch bicycle and rode a few laps around the county plotting her revenge and then took to the phone after a few cups of jet fuel strength coffee (which never mixes well with mood stabilizers).

Just as Kelly and Michael are mercifully signing off for the day, the judge comes in to dismiss us. The three defendants plea bargained their way out of a jury trial and I am off the proverbial hook for 365 days.

I drive home thinking about what I will do with my unexpected freedom.

That is, until I realize I have a voice mail from Mom on my home phone. Oy.

Flotsam and Jetsam

My mind is racing. Which frankly is not all that welcome an alternative to Kelly and Michael making cutesy remarks and dressing up for Halloween like Kim Kardashian and Kanye West. Kelly had to wear a wig and prosthetic ass and Michael had to force himself to scowl. Genius.

My mother's isolation has taken its toll in many ways. When she stopped working, she lost what few remaining shreds of decorum she ever had. No pressure to conform to office etiquette. No reason to take a collaborative approach to anything. Any collegial notions were replaced with a full on scorched earth solution to each and every situation. God help the cop that tries to give her a speeding ticket.

Worse, she spends too much time alone with her selectively hard of hearing spouse who essentially tunes her out when she's ranting on and on about something that's gotten stuck far too long and far too deep in her craw. She watches a lot of right wing TV. She's formed some pretty harsh and pretty extreme opinions. She somehow feels the need to be armed. There is going to be an uprising. She'll have to protect what is rightfully hers. Pity the poor schlub who tries to make off with her gas grill.

And she has far too much time to ruminate and muse on topics that no one needs to spend a single crumb of gray matter on ever again so long as they live.

Why on Earth would she be wondering about my Dad's possessions? Why would she care where the flotsam and jetsam from his house finally came to rest? Dad moved out of that house 10 years ago and has been dead for eight of them. Why think about the spoils now?

Because she can. And damn it, no one is going to stop her.

Sure I have things from my Dad's house. We all do. She famously took his hunting rifle (Fired once, probably only for affect, but still a gun in working order. Of course she HAD to have it. See paragraph 3).

I remember when Charlotte and I (mostly Charlotte) were cleaning out the house to sell it. There was a full dumpster and a half (mashed down to fit in one) of crap that was hauled away. Old clothes. Dozens of empty detergent bottles. Pounds of old newspaper. Toys. Magazines. Dry rotted sporting equipment. Prom dresses. Moth eaten coats and hats and mittens. Cleaning out the Addams Family house would have been easier.

We'd had a yard sale. Anything Dad wasn't taking with him and was in great shape was on the lawn. Tools, appliances, linens, curtains, bed frames, area rugs. All of it.

Except for the things we each thought were special. I remember putting together piles of pictures and fondly remembered items for each of us. Trophies and golf pictures for Joe. Swimming medals and High School yearbooks for Charlotte. Knick knacks and Navy photos for me. Joe had made some choices himself, as well. He had some clothes of Dad's. And his chair. He took the golf clubs that my Dad held in his hands every Saturday for decades. He took the antique wagon from my Dad's newspaper days. He took the Nativity set that my parents picked out at Gimbels as a present to themselves. He took the television Lars had gotten my Dad when his big console TV could not make the trip to the nursing home.

And what he may have missed out on was his own fault. He avoided anything that looked like work when it came to cleaning out and cleaning up the house to be placed on the market. And the few times he did show up under duress to "help", he barely lifted a finger, brought his children (who then needed to be watched), and was consumed the entire time with when we might be ordering lunch. He was just north of useless on all occassions. And so if he missed out on the contents of Dad's jewelry box or the green hobnail iced tea glasses because Charlotte and I found them and decided I should keep them, and he wasn't there to argue, piss on him. Snooze, lose. Charlotte and I were the picture of fair play when it came to dividing the contents of Dad's house.

And then, when Dad went from Assisted Living to a Nursing Home, and Lars and his buddies moved all of his stuff to my house one night to avoid another month of rent, I called Charlotte and Joe and asked for them to come and take anything they might want. I had a basement full of stuff and it needed to go.

Charlotte wanted nothing but did offer to take away and shred all of Dad's old tax records and payroll stubs and other things that he'd wanted to keep and needed to go. Dust mites and all.

Joe did nothing. Asked for nothing. Offered no help. Showed no interest. So yes, I got the hutch. It's in my dining room and it will remain there. So will the desk that my Dad made in woodshop in high school. I'd asked once. I'd asked twice. Three times. Sold to the lady with room in her basement.

And now, eight years later, this is what Estelle wants to face off about? Drop the puck!

I may not be able to call her from the Jury Assembly Room, but the funny thing about texting is, it works both ways.

If someone sends you a digital letter bomb, nothing says you can't lob one back.

The Morning After

Mom has been very industrious since our last conversation. She has made some calls, formed some opinions, thought up a few zingers.

And may I simply repeat that I think it is the end of civilazation as we know it now that my mother has learned to text. It is her chosed medium. What better way for her to make her point (insipid as they can be) without interruption (because who can resist?) and without the threat of being hung up on before finishing the last incendiary statement? She is the mistress of her domain, at least if you ask her.

One of the topics she'd covered the day before, prior to taking a match to the powder keg, was about some of my Dad's belongings. She wanted to know where his wedding ring was (because God knows he wasn't wearing it!) and what happened to the gold Italian horn necklace she'd gotten him when she got him the Earth shoes he never wore and tried to convince him to grow out his crew cut and get a curly perm). I dodge the Italian horn question. I used to wear it (like every Irish girl would) but lost track of it in college. For all I know it went down the drain in the showers of third floor Stine Hall or fell off in a mosh pit dance party at Phi Delta Theta's Spring Blow Out never to be recovered from the beer mud.

I answer the question about his wedding ring with absolute candor and honesty. I had offered it to my brother Joe when Dad had died, but his first reaction was not one of sentimentality. It was of greed. He said, in that big, dumb guy voice "Wonder what I could get for dis if I sell it?"

And I had plucked it from where he gripped it between his grubby finger and double-jointed thumb and taken it from him. I did not dare tell Mom where it is stashed, fearing a smash and grab break in. We all know from the Open Door/XBox/Cat Poop debacle that my brother has no boundaries, natural or otherwise.

So her first text (with an imposed character limit, courtesy of her Trac-fon) concerned the wedding ring. She says she'd spoken to Joe and he doesn't remember it being offered to him (because he has the long term memory of a sand flea) and that if he had it, he'd cherish it. (Clearly not his words. My brother doesn't know what "cherish" means. Not to say he doesn't cherish things. He just never got to that vocabulary list in high school).

My intention is to ignore her text. Hello, I have day time television to watch, and a novel to read, and people watching to do.

But she sends another one. A weapons grade doozy.

She blathers on and one for several texts about what horrible people Charlotte and I have become. We "stole everything" from Dad's house and Joe didn't get anything. We are selfish, self centered bitches who think of no one but ourselves.

I have so many things to say I want to call her and rail against her in a voice that sounds like God's mother and let her know what a misguided lunatic broom-riding witch she is to even think those things.

But I can't. I am in the Jury Assemby Room with 2,000 registered voters and their various and sundry grooming issues.

Jury Doody

The next day, I get out of bed to the sound of my alarm for the first time in months. I have the dubious honor of attending jury duty. I can think of nothing more mind numbing and skeevy than waiting in the Assembly Room with hundreds of other dutiful, miserable people who will demonstrate defiance by not bathing for days in advance.

I dry my hair. I apply makeup. I put on an outfit befitting of a court appearance. If a murderer is going to be hauled off to the electric chair because of my contribution to the verdict, the least I can do is look like I took the whole thing seriously. I schlep with all of humanity at rush hour to the court house parking garage. I am overwhelmed with dread about the endlessly boring day I am sure to have.

Walk across the campus. I pass all the food trucks and long for bacon. I notice there is a "food truck" that doesn't sell food at all. It is instead a roving bail bond business on wheels. I secretly decide that the bail bondsman must be armed and look like a lunatic. How else could he safely and handle bail money in a 3 foot by 4 foot cart with a window? A couple of industrious thugs could literally roll his cart onto the back of a flat bed and leave with it. If he happened to come along for the ride, it would not be for long.

I go through the metal detector 3 times. My keys. My belt buckle. My big artsy necklace. Culprits all. My fault for not knowing to remove them before walking through. While one officer "wanded" me, the other had his hand poised on his service revolver. Seriously? Have you seen the other people coming through these doors? It is hard to separate the jurists from the defendants. Clearly, I am one of the good guys, in spite of my weapons-concealing accessories.

After what seems like reams of paperwork stating and restating my name and address and date of birth and occupation (blank) and emergency contact (in case some madman slips by with a machete and decides to hack us all to collops) and all of my addresses for the past seven years, I find a seat next to an older man who smells like Icy Hot and denture adhesive. And is a mouth breather.

I almost get up and move, but it is hard to see if going deeper into the room would yield a better seating selection. The far end of the room is like the back of the bus. Nothing good ever happens there. I don't see an obvious opening and hesitate to forfeit the seat I've claimed. The only thing that could make this day worse would be having to stand for the duration.

Or so I think.

The big flat screen TV is tuned to Kelly and Michael. As in Kelly Ripa and Michael Strahan. She is as supremely annoying as anyone I've ever seen. And all the little forced cutesiness that she pretends she has no idea is cute could not be more grating. I want to scream. She also made some crack about being fat. She's practically invisible. I look feverishly about for the clicker.

I sit down and open my book, willing myself to ignore the daytime television drivel.

I get a text,

Oh, no. It's Mom.

War Zone

I brace myself for what will follow the cheerful call back introduction. I am not sure I am breathing. I guess if I turn blue we'll know for sure.

I want to derail the conversation before it starts but Mom has a way of running the railroad.

She starts off by saying that she's heard that I've become very friendly with a few of my cousins and that she can't stand them. She thinks they killed her brother.

Before you clutch the pearls and reach for the glycerin pills, let me assure you that no one took an ax and gave her brother forty whacks. He died of heart disease. She thinks his children caused it. And no, they weren't cooking for him.

She thinks that the infighting in their family (and the family business) gave him heart disease and killed him. His heart was broken. They broke it. By putting a heart disease whammy on him. She thinks they are no less responsible for his death than they would be if they had put ground glass in his turkey tetrazzini. A direct correlation. Blood on their hands. Out, out damn spot.

Now, any reasonable person would know that this is just a tin bucket brimming with bullshit, but Mom has a way of convincing herself that she is scarily, psychically right all the time. Even as she quotes old wives tales. She truly believed that my fertility woes in my 30s were a direct result of swimming practice in my teens. (And trust me, I was not killing myself in the pool like an Olympic contender. I swam on the local swim team. Cleaning my house is more rigorous exercise.) And once Mom has convinced herself that she's cracked the case, there is nothing that reason or logic can do to pry her cockamamie theory from where it's wedged between her brain hemispheres.

But like a friggin' Pollyanna, I try to reason with her. I tell her that heart disease can't be given to you (well unless someone is force feeding you duck fat and bacon grease sandwiches) and that her brother had a disease that would have killed him had he been blissfully happy and turning cartwheels with joy.

"THEY ABSOLUTELY KILLED HIM!" she screeches in a voice that could split an atom. "WHAT THEY DID TO HIM BROKE HIS HEART!"

So I ask her how she knows what she thinks she knows about the situation. I ask her if she ever spoke to the cousins she blames. It's not like she's afraid of confrontation. Did she ever pick up the phone and accuse them and see what they had to say for themselves? How they explained away their conduct? What motivated them to make the decisions they did about the business they co-owned?

Poking the bear rarely gets you anywhere good. I need to learn this.

Again, in a voice that could change the course of the tide, she bellows, "I DON'T NEED TO ASK THEM!!! I TALKED TO MY BROTHER!!!!"

Recognizing that she has never embraced the "there are two sides to every story" philosophy, I punt. "Mom, we are not going to agree about this. I'd just as soon agree to disagree...""

I'd had more to say but I had a better shot at an audience with the Pope than speaking my mind that day. She continued to rant about how I could dare spend time with those people and God being her witness and blah-dee-blah-dee-blah-dee-blah. She was still ranting when I said I needed to hang up. And she was reaching a fever pitch when I clicked my phone to silence.

Somehow, I was sure I had not heard the last word on this topic. And somehow, a thousand other sins would be heaped upon me when we touched down in the war zone again.

What's The Buzz?

Maybe she really did have to pee. A 75 year old bladder can't be what it used to be.

Or maybe she felt she needed to take a deep breath after my good news before firing the cannon of bad news.

Or maybe she really did forget to mention something. Something that had been festering like so many other tidbits of woe she'd been squirreling away for a rainy day.

My rainy day had evidently arrived.

Her issue? My play dates. Yes, as if I were 5 years old.

Let me explain.

Estelle came from a huge family. She had three sisters. And seven brothers. I would have shot myself had I had more than one. Each sib had a bunch of kids eventually. That is where the relationship with the socioeconomic norms begins and ends.

They all grew up (miraculously). They had the normal beefs and hostilities and alliances and two-against-ones any family has. Only in greater volume.

And then the next generation was no different. Charlotte and Joe and I grew up flying by the seat of our collective pants and had kids and beefs and hostilities and two-against-ones. So Charlotte and I not speaking to Joe was certainly not an anomaly in our family. Many a feud had come and gone in the generations we knew of.

We were a big boisterous feuding family on the best of days but for many years saw each other on holidays and most Sundays. It made for some memorable arguments and some very laughable insults. But matters deteriorated when my grandmother passed away. There was no central force of nature willing us together. I don't think anyone took it as a license to defect. I think we all naturally slipped away from each other when the reigns that bound the family slipped from my grandmother's hands.

And years later, a bunch of cousins from my generation decided our kids were missing out on the gifts and blessings we had benefited from by having been born into a big, loud, raucous, hilarious high spirited family. And we decided to do something about it. Several somethings, actually.

We planned parties.
We hosted reunions.
We reached across boundaries to disenfranchised cousins.
We exchanged addresses.
We swapped phone numbers.
We friended each other on Facebook.
We got to know each other. And each other's partners. And each other's spouses. And each other's kids.

And quite naturally, some of the children of feuding siblings in the prior generation cross-pollinated and began to enjoy truly wonderful friendships. Again.

And this, apparently, was a bee that got stuck buzzing around in Estelle's tightly-drawn bonnet.

She was mad as a hornet. And the hornet had come looking for me.

All The News That's Fit To Print

My new boss and I decide on a start date. Probably best to do it after my court date with Lars (since I will more than likely be in a mood so foul I'll be unfit for public consumption and therefore harm my chances of winning friends and influencing people in my new job) and my obligation to go to jury duty. (With my luck it will be the murder trial of the century and I'll be sequestered for weeks with a jury of people someone else decided are my peers, despite their disastrous fashion sensibilities and their alarming lack of adequate hygiene and the obvious need for additional education of some sort, beginning with Charm School.)

So, I have about 10 days to have fun before I start. I can hardly wait to get started. These 10 days will be entirely different from the rest of the summer. They will lack the worry and uncertainty of the 120 days that went before them. They will be bright and optimistic and brimming with hope. There is nothing but sunshine and blue skies ahead. I even have clearance to take a trip out West with the girls. With pay. Life is good. Damn good.

But before I do anything, I have people to contact.

Of course I have been squealing with joy to Charlotte. And Craig was bursting with happiness for me. And my buddy Rick, an old friend from college who pumped me up all summer was over the moon. I still had to call Tom, an unflinching, faithful supporter who had sent me books and prayers and good vibes all through out the journey. And my best girlfriends. And my references. Some of them gave me references I could not have scripted myself. I had a lot of thanking to do. I had landed my dream job and it had taken a village. For the second time in a year I had been shown the power of friendship. My sister and her family and a wide circle of friends had kept me afloat, as opposed to adrift. I needed to tell each of them personally how much it had meant to me.

And then I had to face the unavoidable. I had to tell Mom. Not that she had shown the slightest concern for me over the summer. No, she'd not once checked in to see how I was doing. To see how I was fairing financially. To offer a kind word or an encouraging note. No, I was going to sink or swim unnoticed by Estelle. I no longer registered on her radar. And her blip had disappeared from mine for the last time months prior.

But I bit the bullet. Sat on the floor one day (to minimize the chance of injury from fainting if she actually showed the slightest enthusiasm) and dialed her number. Thank God for contact lists. I would never had known the number from rote memory.

I dial and wait. She picks up eventually. She probably had to turn down the TV a few decibels and yell and Bill to stop coughing up a lung so she could hear herself think and whoever the hell it is on the phone. Either that or she was eeny-meeny-miney-mo-ing her decision to answer my call at all.

She sounds happy enough to hear from me. I am suspicious, though. She's like a snake who sits very still all coiled up and then pounces. I am breathless. But I get right to the big news and to my surprise, she seems overjoyed. Genuinely happy. It's fun to say you've landed a job with a company everyone has heard of. Most of what I am happy about she'd have little appreciation for so I gloss over a lot and stick to the details she'll be interested in. She tries to get me to tell her my salary. I gracefully tap dance around that and stick to things like free coffee and great discounts. I tell her it has been a long journey but worth the wait. I have used the time wisely. I have gotten myself into great shape. I feel healthy and look healthy. I have spent a lot of time outdoors. I have let my hair grow. I've given my skin a long break from makeup and it has paid off. Everyone should get the chance to do what I've done.

She seems anxious to change the subject, so I let her. We make mindless small talk about all kinds of bullshit she ruminates about because of the alarming lack of purpose in her life. It's a shame. She seems to dwell on topics that have not been important in years. Long resolved issues and memories that I can barely retrieve. But it's either that or politics. And politics is one can of worms that I'd sooner toss into the incinerator than open. It defines the shortest distance between here and the looney bin.

But without politics we have very little to talk about, and she eventually makes the "I have to run to the bathroom" excuse she usually makes when she's gotten bored and has pontificated sufficiently to feel like she's gotten her way.

I let her go. And go and get a beer. It's 4 pm and I've earned one.

Three sips in, Estelle calls back.

"Liza, there is something I forgot to mention to you..."

And with that, I am sure I can hear the approaching hooves of the Four Horses of the Apocalypse.

A Long Day's Journey

It was such a freakishly exciting time --- getting the offer for my dream job. I felt as though I played my cards exactly right. I never feel that way. Somehow I avoided verbal incontinence. I remained focused. I remained articulate. Circled back to things I was not sure I'd answered thoroughly enough. I stopped feeling like I'd be lucky to get the job and made them feel like they'd be lucky to be the company I chose. I dropped all the interview advice I'd ever been given and interviewed like I work. I could hardly wait to get started. Even as I waited for the day of my final interview to arrive I was emailing the person who would be my boss to offer ideas about resolving some of the problems they'd been experiencing. I was that sure of myself. I envisioned myself in the job. There were no reservations. Not a single thing that made me go, "Hmmmm." There was no stopping me. That's usually where I get myself into trouble.

But apparently that was the right thing to do, ballsy as it was. Ballsy was apparently what they were looking for. It's a shame you can't advertise for that. "We'd like a take-no-prisoners bad ass with a brain and good business etiquette. You should look like someone who deserves respect and speak like a scholar but at the end of the day you must have the heart of a warrior and be ferocious as a shark. Just don't lose your cool or bitch slap anyone. That wouldn't be good. We like nice people here. We like our nice people to get a lot of shit accomplished, however, so the faint of heart need not get too comfy in their office chairs." My boss not only liked that I had reached out on a weekend with an idea, she liked the idea. So much so that she said that I'd leave of the last interview with an offer. It certainly made it something to look forward to. But also a little nerve wracking. What if let my confidence get the best of me and I didn't nail it and I walked out empty handed? I was afraid to say anything to anyone. I was afraid I'd jinx it. Wouldn't that be just my luck. Dream job up in smoke because the VP was in a competing sorority or the Chief has a niece vying for the same gig. It's happened before.

On the day of the interview, at the appointed hour, without speaking to anyone except a couple of constant cheerleaders, I carefully dressed in the only outfit I had left that 1) I had not already worn to interview with them, and 2) still fit. I have a closet full of business clothes that look like they were purchased to wear over hockey pads.

I spent time with a few of the same people I'd met before, and a couple of new ones (including a VP from a competing sorority! I must be psychic!) and then my potential boss. Everything had gone beautifully but I was a total wreck as I walked into her office. Would she give me the offer or not? What had she been able to learn about me as she discreetly followed up on my meetings moments after I left them? I could hear my heart beating. I was like an Edgar Allen Poe short horror story. I was sure it could be heard in the next room.

We made small talk (which frankly scared the shit out of me) and then got into the meat of things. She asked me a lot about my opinions at this point. I was cool and collected for a time and then I just stopped, looked at her and said, "To be completely transparent, I could not be more excited about this job. There is nothing that scares me about anything that you've told me and in fact to the contrary, I am dying to get my hands around some of the problems you've described. It is what I like to do."

She could not have smiled more broadly as she began to describe the little known highlights of working for one of the coolest companies on the planet. It just kept getting better. And at the end of several seemingly endless run on sentences, she pulled an offer letter out of a file on her desk and presented me with a verbal offer as she went through each paragraph showing me where each item was confirmed in print.

I looked up at her, somehow keeping my grip on my excitement. "I know it's not cool to accept an offer on the spot and I am supposed to say I need to take a night to think this over and compare it to my other burning offers and discuss it with my family, but the truth is that I don't know a single person that could talk me out of this. I'd be thrilled to accept and think we should just start talking about a start date."

I have no recollection about anything that happened in the next 15 minutes except that we nailed down a start date and copied my letter (suitable for framing). My feet barely touched the ground as I made my way out, and she hugged me at the door. All the fragments of the world were falling into place at once and forming a masterpiece mosaic. I could hardly wait to get out to my car and turn on my phone. A call to Charlotte. A call to Terry. A text to Craig.

And when I arrived at home and walked in the back door, the kids came around the corner to greet me, cautiously asking how my interview had gone. Bracing themselves for bad news. I told them it had gone well and that I was a little tired. And then I suggested we go out to dinner BECAUSE I GOT THE JOB!

You would have thought I'd said we'd won the lottery and were going to Disney to spend money like sailors. Hil and Pat were jumping up and down and screaming and hugging me and hugging each other and scaring the cats (who frankly were wondering what was taking me so long to open the tuna can...) Hil took immediately to Facebook to post in all caps that her awesome Mom just landed the coolest job in the world.

We went to a favorite haunt. Pat put on a nice shirt. Hil wore a dress. Dinner never tasted so good. And for the first time in months, pulling out my credit card didn't give me the vapors.

Time After Time

I feel pretty good about the weekend. I feel like I've gotten somewhere with Craig. Am seeing what I think I am supposed to see. Sure I still have doubts. My life is a great big doubt fest.

But the really good news is that even better news was lying right around the corner on the employment scene. Finally my biorhythms (remember them?) settled to a dull roar and things began to align in my favor. Perhaps the Earth veered off course and was no longer doomed to crash into the sun. Maybe in some cosmic sense I had sufficiently paid my dues or had drunk from the Cup of Humility or had adequately adjusted my attitude in such a way that the Employment Fairies deemed me worthy of a good job.

And not just a good job. A fabulous, Oh My God Pinch Me job. A sexy, fun, electrifying dream job. Cool company everyone has heard about. A West Coast mystique. One of those jobs that when people at a cocktail party or the orthodontist office half-heartedly ask what you do for a living not really caring whether you say "I work for the IRS" or "I dance at a strip club near the airport" and I respond, they actually suddenly really are interested. Curious. Fascinated. It's kind of cool.

And I wonder if it isn't the Employment Fairies at all, but a guardian angel of another sort. Perhaps it is really just one more miracle performed by my Dad and delivered to me with the beat of his downy angel wings. Maybe this was all his scheming from the start. Maybe he'd decided it was time.

Dad and I had a good relationship. Not always easy; I did actually become a teenager at some point and become the worst version of myself for a few snarky, eye-rolling, how-did-I-get-stuck-in-this-family? years. But I've said it before: We GOT each other. Our flaws. Our peculiarities. Our senses of humor. Our hurts. Our pride. All understood.

What bugged him most, I think, was that I didn't need him enough. Didn't ask for anything. Needed no help figuring out the myriad social crises and professional mazes and misogynistic bosses, and bad boyfriends (saving one...) and financial pressures and the usual challenges of youth. Good thing. My idiot brother was so completely hapless and lacking in common sense that Dad would have been stretched pretty thin had I demanded the slightest bit of search and rescue effort.

And maybe now, as the summer has tried me and forced me to evaluate all that I know and all that I am, he's seen his chance. The miracle shot. All that Help banked away for decades cashed in Big Time. I spent the summer turning a corner with Hil that had sent me into the guardrail when I'd been her age. I'd spent my time and my money and my effort wisely. And Dad perhaps saw the time to cash in the chips and give me the jackpot.

True or not it feels right. Whether I earned this myself or it landed in my lap from heaven with a big blue bow on top, it is mine. And I could not be happier. It is a job that feels like it was designed for me personally. Like someone took all the personality tests and aptitude tests and What Kind of Tree Are You quizzes and went into a lab and whipped up a perfect chemical match for my DNA. And then surrounded me with people I don't actually want to set on fire when we're forced to work together. People to whom I say "Good morning" and actually hope they are having one. Even my commute is good. A scenic ride. Not a lot of traffic. My road rage is on hiatus. I don't need to take deep breaths and think pleasant thoughts about birds in flight while hoping to return to a resting heart rate before getting out of my car in the parking lot.

And maybe this is the start of a really good year.

Or the end of a beautiful transformational one?

Scott left and catalyzed so much. If not for that I would not have started seeing Craig. Or spent so much time with friends I never knew I had. Or had the guts to take the changes at work and turn the lemons into lemonade. Or had the time to walk 1,000 miles. Or spent so much meaningful time with my children. Or launched a job search that eventually ended in career bliss.

I feel like it is all a beginning. But I can't help looking back and thinking, "Wow!" What an amazing year it has been, and hoping it is not the end.

And as always, I know in my heart that only time will tell. But what is different this time is that I am not as inclined to simply see which way the wind will blow and which way it will take me.

This time I am at the helm.

Pool and Whoopie Goldberg

We walk across the street to the diviest, coolest bar in the world. We've been here twice before. Each time I've had a blast. We've met some cool people. We've played some very bad pool. We've had some hilarious moments.

We walk to bar, get drinks and get in the game of pool. Craig puts quarters up on the edge of the table. We're in next.

Of course, being a man and a woman of a certain age, as we settle in with the pool playing crowd, someone always asks "How long have you guys been married?" And Craig always answers,"We're not married. We went to school together." A non answer. It leaves a lot to be assumed. Most people assume the full answer is "We're not married. Not ot each other or anyone else. We're just friends with nothing better to do tonight, so we came here."

I understand the question. Again, we are that couple. Totally having a ball together and completely absent that look of overwhelming boredom that often comes with 20 years of marriage and the vicissitudes of married life. The demands, joys and heartbreaks of children. Career highs and lows.The constant harangue of home ownership. The constant swirl of keeping a relationship from flying into the side of a mountain. On the contrary, we walk in holding hands, smiling, and totally in sync about what is going to happen next. The young couples whose pool game we are about to join want to know what magic fairy dust was sprinkled on our heads and when.

Craig gets beers and we get into the game. He and I eventually meet everyone in the pool hall end of the bar. It's a friendly crowd. (This would never happen in my neighborhood.)

Craig takes the lead when it's our turn to play. I've played pool before but not so much that I could ever pretend to know what I am doing. I know the basic agenda. Hit the little white ball with the end of your stick and hit another ball or two with the hopes of putting a particular ball in a particular hole in the table. That is where my knowledge of the game begins and ends. I have no idea how to rack the balls to break. And if I ever did I've sufficiently pickled that portion of my brain so as to render the memory inert. I'll leave the racking to Craig. And the breaking. I don't have the coordination for that either.

I spend my "non-shooting" time socializing with all manner of people. Craig does the same. We meet at either end of the table occasionally to discuss more drinks or to flirt a little. I am having a marvy time. Even at this hour. It has to be the wee hours by now. I have drank, bocce'd and shot pool all night. I decide to sit with some people for a minute. I have worn sandals that are not designed for playing pool.

I pull up a chair next to two young, heavy set people. One has a gorgeous manicure with fancy nail art and is wearing a very cool dress. The other is in shorts and a T-shirt, has braids and no eyebrows. Bears a striking resemblance to Whoopie Goldberg. I am not at all sure whether it is a man or a woman. It's the boobs that throw me. And the somewhat falsetto voice. I have had too much to drink to be completely confident about the gender roulette wheel.

Whoopie leans over to me and asks me my name and Craig's. I tell him. He asks how long we've known each other and I tell him that we met in school but really only began to spend time together in the last few years.

"He loves you," Whoopie says.

I touch Whoopie's hand (Another confusing matter. Whoopie has very smooth hands. Not at all like a man's) and look into his or her eyes. "What makes you say that?"

The truth is, we have been to this divey bar 3 times, and this is the third time that someone has spent a few minutes with Craig and me and has felt compelled to tell me that in spite of Craig's answer about who we are to each other, that they feel that he loves me.

Whoopie does not hesitate. "A guy knows when a guy is in love." (Thank you for answering the gender question...)

Curious and skeptical, I ask him what the hallmarks are. What has tipped him off? Because clearly I am in the dark about anything remotely resembling Craig's deepest emotions.

Without missing a beat, Whoopie rattles off his observations. "You should see the way you look together! You are something to see! So happy. You really dig each other. And don't you see the way he looks at you, girl? My God, he smiles from ear to ear the minute you start talking to him. It's like he can't believe his luck. And when it's your turn to shoot, he takes care of you and roots for you. When you made that last shot he was beaming. All proud like a peacock."

The girlfriend chimes in. "He's looking at you now. Don't look. His face says everything. He thinks he's the luckiest guy in the world tonight."

Whoopie senses my curiosity. "You didn't know all this?" I shake my head no.

Girlfriend has made a few observations herself. "He touches you a lot. When you walk by, his hand is on your hip. When you went to the restroom he took your beer and then held your hand for a bit as you walked away. He never misses a chance."

"Is that gross?" I ask. I have no idea what people think. I barely know what I think on a good day.

"No," she says. "It's sweet. It's not like he's manhandling you. They are sweet gestures."

I tell them both about the other two men who have essentially said the same thing. I'd never asked them to elaborate. I'm glad I have asked them to.

Girlfriend says, "Don't you think that he loves you? Don't you feel it?"

I say that I think I do, but he's not saying it.

Whoopie has one more bit of wisdom.

"Yes, he is."