My Crumbling Empire

Because my mother reads and responds negatively to my blogs, I have developed a complex around bitching about people. But guess what mom, I’m going for it today and I don’t even give a care.  I lived through the 80′s on nothing but powdered milk, mayonnaise, and guidance from Danny Tanner. I’ve paid my dues. Let the judging commence.

* Cracks neck * First of all, how fucking hard is it to not smoke while you’re pregnant? Jesus fucking christ. Sometimes I lie awake at night going over my failures as a mother: I didn’t read enough books with the kids tonight, I forgot to have Urah use the water flosser, I got mad and threatened to melt faces with hot spaghetti. Then I take the 43 bus and see pregnant ladies smoking and moms with thin crispy noodle hair blowing smoke into strollers while they dig through a diaper bag for their iphones and I think “I am the greatest mother ever”.

Speaking of the 43 bus, why is it that in every city everywhere there is someone brazenly displaying the most swollen ankles you have ever seen in the walkway of the bus? Get those shits out of my way!

Other things and people I dislike: The guy who plants himself outside my Mon/Wed class and loudly eats Doritos. It doesn’t matter how far away from the door I sit. Once he starts fondling that clattery bag of tortillas it’s all I can hear.

Clearly mother of the year, fat ankles and Doritos guy are all victims of my displaced anger.

Where was I going with this…

Did I mention I’ve been drinking?

Ethan and I went to see David Sedaris at the Hult Center. He is just as charming and enthusiastic about turds as he can be. After the show, we waited in line to meet him and have him sign our books.  He spent a few minutes talking with everyone he met, which made me nervous because I knew I had to think of something cool to say.

Luckily I was planted smack in front of the open bar and was able to have a few quick drinks before the molasses-paced line moved on. I planned on asking him how he manages to come across as cool and collected when speaking in public, but instead, when I finally got up to him, I asked him what he eats for breakfast and told him a joke he didn’t think was funny.

“What do you eat for breakfast?” What the hell, Ami? And I did that thing where I pull my lips up over my teeth when I asked. It looks threatening, like I am baring my canines and challenging an enemy: “I won’t ask you twice, David.”

Things got a little fuzzy for a minute, but I bounced back with my story of the time I tried to take a discrete dump in a friend’s shower because I didn’t want anyone to know what I was doing. It was topical, and the story was invited. It came on the heels of him telling a story about a friend who shits in her hand to avoid the splash in the toilet. He asked if it’s something I do and I said, “No, but I pretend to be showering.” He replied with, “Well a lot of people do that,” and I said, “Yes, but I actually shat in the shower.”

He looked horrified and delighted, pulled out his notebook and asked me what I did next. I thought, “What the hell do you think I did, David Sedaris?” and I told him how I had to smash it down the drain; that it crept between my toes. It was disgusting, but I didn’t know what else to do. I was young then and have learned a few tricks in my old age.

He looked at me and said, “The fact that you didn’t realize you could just run the shower and shit in the toilet— it’s solid gold.” “Thank you,” I said. As I turned aside, he repeated “Solid gold.”

I walked away, beaming from my comeback. Then two things hit me: 1. I just gave away some of my best material, and 2. David Sedaris now knows that I’m the kind of person who smashes turds down a friend’s shower drain.

I suddenly felt deflated. Whatever chance I had of being invited over for Sunday brunch was gone now. And if for some reason I do make my way into his home and feel the urge to defecate, he’ll know exactly what I’m doing when I jump up suddenly and announce that I “just need a quick afternoon shower.”

I’ll have to be creative with the disposal of my droppings. I’ll roam his halls looking for the perfect cover. He’ll get anxious and come looking, and there I’ll be, perched on the edge of a houseplant in the guest room. “Just admiring your lovely ficus,” I’ll say, while his boyfriend demands that David stop me; I am, after all, his guest.

I am amazed by my ability to annoy, irritate and be creepy. I’m also surprised by my inability to make and keep new friends. I think I’ve pinpointed the problem: I make inappropriate jokes to people I barely know and I get stalky when I learn that they are not, in fact, charmed by my antics.

Anyone who knows me well (or has spent a few minutes standing behind me in line at the market) knows that I am afraid to sleep naked because a fire might start, and I could end up outside without any clothes on. A few weeks ago, I decided to throw caution to the wind and just before getting into bed, said to myself, “Screw it, Ami!” and stripped down.

At 3:00 a.m. I woke up to a fire truck parked outside our house. Sirens blazing, lights flashing…

” I knew it!”  I thought, “I fucking knew it! I’m not crazy—everyone else is crazy!”

Someone had lit our trash cans on fire, and though I didn’t have to run outside nude this time, the evening put an end to any remaining inclination toward a carefree existence.

Because I have low self-esteem, I demand recognition when I do things that most people consider to be ordinary activities of daily living and just plain civilized behavior. I expect to receive a compliment whenever I  put my dirty dishes in the sink or wash both of my hands after using the bathroom.

I’ll ask Ethan, “Did you notice I’ve been putting my dental floss in the garbage?” So you can imagine my disappointment when I was not chosen as Volunteer of the Month at work today and went home with nothing more than a breakfast burrito and a deflated ego.

Instead, Megan was awarded the prestigious title, the 8×10 certificate and the movie vouchers: Megan. I like to pronounce her name Meegan because that’s what I do when I’m threatened by someone — I mispronounce their name.

Though she’s six years younger than I am, Meegan is a senior at the university, while I’m only a junior. Meegan is also competing in a beauty pageant, and she’s a finalist.

One day she came to work without the avalanche of beautiful hair that usually escorts her head around town. When I asked her about it, she let me know that she had cut it all off to donate to cancer patients.

Touché, Meegan.

Immediately I started thinking of ways to one-up Meegan. I could come into work with my legs tucked beneath me in a wheelchair. I would act casual, and when she asked me about it, I would nonchalantly reply, “Oh, it’s nothing. I donated them to diabetic amputees.”

I could show up with bandages over my eyes and explain that I had given them to a blind homeless man so that he might have a chance at a full life.  Or best yet, I’ll tell her good luck and goodbye; I’m donating my heart to a sick puppy because I just can’t stand to see any living thing suffer.

Meegan loves Dutch Brothers for the very same reason I hate them. She seems to be constantly posing and she baby-talks — all reasons I should have been awarded the Volunteer of the Month award.

Ethan says I’m too critical. He says I complain often and that it gets tedious to hear me be so negative about people all the time.

I had thought that he was exaggerating, and if anything, that this was one of my most endearing qualities. But today I found out, through the genius of computer spyware, that my most frequently used word when communicating with friends is stab.

How can one fancy oneself worthy of respect and adoration as a pillar of one’s community when one’s most frequently used word is stab?

I suppose I need to do a better job of pointing out when I am not being maladaptive, negative or threatening.

“Hey, you notice how I didn’t tell Tracy I was going to stalk her? Pretty good, huh?”

“You  see that? I didn’t punch or kick just now. Boo-ya!”

“Guess who didn’t smell your dirty laundry while you were out?”

Then maybe I’ll finally get the recognition and the certificates I deserve.

One of the most ridiculous things I have ever seen in my life was my stepdad chasing two ponies down the freeway. The ponies, Shadow and Blackie, were bequeathed to us from a couple my parents used to do drug deals with, so I can only assume they came to live in our walnut orchard as the result of a deal gone awry.

Ordinarily, any preteen girl would be thrilled to have not one, but two ponies of her very own. But there was something surreal and depressing about seeing the creatures amid the remains of other desperate payments from deals gone bad: the broken-down go-cart, the mini motorcycle, the crossbow and target. Our walnut orchard was the final resting place of a bounty of ill-gotten treasures.

The ponies lived there until the day they moseyed on up our driveway and found themselves smack in the middle of Interstate 5. Oddly, they ran a few laps around our house before my stepdad realized what they were up to. He then started to chase them. Just him. No backup. One man—two ponies.

I remember watching from the porch and thinking, “What the hell is he going to do when he catches them?” and wondering how you’d catch not one, but two ponies. Around the neck? Sleeper hold? He was yelling a lot, but that wasn’t working. You just haven’t lived until you’ve seen a screaming man galloping down the freeway after two ponies.

Ultimately, the ponies ended up in the pound, and my sister and I missed them, along with our happy days sneaking out to take turns at the salt lick. But the memory of the two carefree animals trotting down the interstate as a wild-eyed, red-faced man ran after them, cursing and screaming, is worth all the salt licks in China.

I don’t know who the hell Ethan thinks he is. He walks around with this sense of entitlement: falling asleep, farting, leaving dirty underwear balled up behind the rhododendron at work. He sashays down halls full of people, stinking up the place like there’s no one around, while I am left to carry the burden of shame.

He also falls asleep at totally inappropriate times, like when we’re talking to doctors or negotiating with professionals. One time he fell asleep driving and crashed into a cement slab. Since then, when we take long trips I watch his eyes like a hawk. Every time he blinks, I panic, screeching, “Are you falling asleep?”

Secretly, I am envious of his ability to act as if societal rules are beneath him. He takes his pants sans crotch, thank you very much, and will announce to people that he’s going to the bathroom.

The other day at parent-teacher night, he left me standing in the eye of the storm, in a cloud of what I first mistook for a dog fart. There I was, surrounded by parents, red faced and guilty, not because I had issued the foul thing, but because I knew who had.

He’s just so infuriatingly relaxed about everything. Meanwhile, I can’t even get into bed without my pants on because I’m afraid the house will catch on fire and I’ll end up outside in my underwear.

Here’s the dialogue in my head just before I retire:

“Oh, I love these sheets! It would feel great to sleep without my pants on tonight…”

“Don’t be a fool, Ami. What if there’s a fire? What if you can’t get into your pants in time? You know what could happen! Now—pants on!”

And there’s Ethan. Spreadeagle, snoring and naked as he came.

Recently I was taken aback when a random woman apologized to me. “I hope you don’t mind my missing teeth,” she said. Actually, she wasn’t that random. The Texan mother of a gal I hired from Craigslist to paint our trim, she had come to take pictures of her daughter painting and decided to snap a few of the kids. “I lost my teeth somewhere and I need new ones, but I’m saving up,” she reassured me.

“No problem at all,” I replied. “It could happen to anyone.” Once my stepmom lost her teeth in the lake and everyone spent a good two hours looking for her keys as she moaned, “I lost my keeth! My goddamn keeth aren’t here!”

When did I start to look like the type of person who needs an apology for a few missing teeth? Missing teeth are a pivotal element of the Jerome dynasty. Not only are they usually missing in my family, but once they’re out of the skull, we do unseemly things with them: threaten, harass, smoke. If it can be done with a tooth, a Jerome has done it.

But of course I couldn’t explain all this to her. I was just coming in from work, dressed in my best, and here she was in floppy, torn dungarees, naked as a jaybird without her teeth.

Perhaps I am exempt from the family curse that dictates, “No Jerome shall walk among them unnoticed.” Maybe I blend in as a regular person; the kind of person who deserves—no, demands an apology when faced with a toothless mouth.

My work trousers get the credit for the unwarranted self-consciousness. Had she arrived at any other time, I most assuredly would have been in my going-nowhere clothes, hair all greasy. She would have taken one look at me and gotten the impression that I’d cut her for a chimichanga.

Ethan and I recently had our first few counseling sessions to help find appropriate ways of dealing with stress (me) and improving our communication skills (him). For weeks I have been envisioning the kind of therapist we would end up with. In my mind she would be just like Barbra Streisand circa 1991 in The Prince of Tides, with simple navy blue or beige suits and classic pumps. She would hold her finger to her temple and not speak very often. She would emanate knowledge and authority. Instead, we got culottes and  knee problems.

Unfortunate shorts aside, I rather like this gal. She goes by Regina and comes across as the kind of lady whose home always has the sweet smell of blueberry muffins. Also, she noticed my eagerness to look in all of the closets and behind all of the doors in her office and obliged without judgment.

I was thinking we would be in and out of therapy with a note scrawled on a prescription pad that read “Ethan suffering from Iceman syndrome; must validate Ami’s feelings” or something to that effect. But it turns out that we have a lot to talk about.

I’m guessing Regina is going to want to discuss in depth all of the rules I make for Ethan: no touching my butt or stomach while I am doing the dishes, no looking at me while I eat a sandwich, no wearing only a shirt, no talking to me through the bathroom door, no ceramic roosters in the house, no touching my face, especially no running his finger across my eyebrow opposite the way the hair grows, no falling asleep in public, no smelling me without permission, no talking about the movie we just saw before we have exited the theater and entered our car.  And finally, I like a warning before he sneezes (otherwise it startles me).

Our second visit got a little spicy when Regina unwittingly made two poop jokes. The first was a simple “You need to think about what you do do,” to which Ethan and I both started cracking up, then got embarrassed that we were both laughing so hard because our therapist said “do do.” Regina realized she had said “do do,” gave a little giggle, then followed that up with “What I mean is you seem to be under a heavy load.”

During the third visit, Regina had the two of us participate in a talking exercise that involved us holding a pen (the talking stick) in turn while we made statements about our feelings without being interrupted. My talking stick almost found a new home in the socket of Ethan’s eye when he convinced Regina that I, at times, can be unreasonable.

Regina wants us to keep practicing this exercise until I can listen without puffing out my cheeks, rolling my eyes, grunting, sneezing “Bullshit!” or pantomiming slitting my throat with my talking stick. I suppose that’s reasonable.

I never learn my lesson when dealing with Craigslist people. Last week I hired a woman to help me get the house clean enough every other week so I can fall asleep without spending an hour thinking about everything I didn’t have time to clean and how my children’s quality of life is going to suffer because of it.

She showed up an hour late, and right away I knew she was crazy. She had those wild, staring eyes that crazy people get after being crazy for a long time. She didn’t bring any supplies and after she spilled the Italian soda she asked that I make her, she sat staring at the stain forming on the counter, marveling at how quickly it was setting.

“Wow,” she said. “Look at that—look at how the syrup is staining. Isn’t that something?”

So what do I do? Pay her for two weeks in advance, of course.

The next time she’s due to come and clean my house, she calls the night before to let me know that she is retiring and has decided to open a tea shop. A tea shop? How lovely. There’s nothing a person likes better than to have a crazy-eyed lunatic serving them their chamomile. “Here’s your tea, miss. May I offer you a screwdriver in the neck with that?

I assumed she was going to work off the money I had given her and expected to see her Monday morning. Well, Monday morning came and went with no Clean Celine. That is what she calls herself—or, rather, used to, now that she is ostensibly trying to break into the hot beverage business.

I started calling her, insisting, politely and firmly, that she return my money. She sent me a text message claiming that she is broke, has to get a free food box and hopes I understand. Furthermore she will pay me on the third of the month.

By that evening I was convinced I had been swindled, so I changed my tactic. Since she wouldn’t pick up my calls, I started texting her messages: “Where’s the money, Lebowski?” and “I want the money, Lebowski.” She did not respond.

Today I was prepared to up the ante and move on to the bit about what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass, but to my surprise she called my cell phone. When I picked up she said “Hello, this is Celine. Someone called from this number. Who is this?”

“This is Ami, Celine.”

“Oh, oh, oh. Hi, Ami. I was meaning to call you. I lost my cell phone.”

“Yes?”

“Look, my dad is gonna die if I don’t get him these meds. I’m really broke. I’ll pay you on the third.”

“OK.”

“You see, I’m in AA and MA; you know MA? It’s Marijuana Anonymous. Actually it’s my anniversary! I’m clean two months and three days today.”

“Congratulations.”

“Well, I live on disability so it’s just hard right now, but I’m writing a note to drop off the money with you on the third. I’ll be there then.”

“OK, Celine.”

Marijuana Anonymous? Who the hell goes to those meetings?

The only thing that I can take from this situation and feel good about is this: Judging from her character and failure to mention it, I am certain she has never seen the film to which I made reference in my text messages. She may have made off with my money, but she will die never understanding why I kept calling her Lebowski.