Head in the Sand ... and other unpopular positions (7 page)

Part of one diet group I
recently signed up for involved a periodic two-day “cleansing” that
severely limited my caloric intake and flushed my system by forcing
me to drink their pre-made fruity-juicy stuff and eating some
veggies and lean protein. At the time, this seemed like a good idea
for jumpstarting a diet that had plateaued. And, aside from the
pulse-pounding headaches and mind-blackening nausea I developed
midway through Day One, it worked. Oh sure, I could have done
without the flop-sweats and the LSD-like hallucinations, but you
can’t have everything. In fact, on this diet, you can’t have
anything
.

Plus, I have a feeling
that any day now they’re going to modify that two-day cleansing
plan into something like this: “Drink 45 glasses of water today and
breathe only our bottled, purified air, available for $49.95.
Breathing regular air may result in bloating, weight gain,
indigestion, insomnia, and copious amounts of hair loss—but not
necessarily from your head.”

Be afraid. Be very
afraid.

And pass the
Twinkies.

I helped my mother in the house,

It gave me such delight!

Until I found out soon enough

I could do nothing right.

We first cleaned up the living room

And watched the vacuum clog

Because I turned it up on “high”

And then sucked up the dog.

Next we cleaned the bathroom up,

And, boy, I surely blushed

‘
Cause Mother’s arm was
still inside

When I the toilet flushed.

Next we ironed the wrinkled clothes,

Which started out just grand,

Until I set the iron down

And burned my mother’s hand.

I never do those household chores,

Not since that day back then.

Mom said she’d do those
things to
me

If I ever “helped” again!

October 17, 2000

Today is a great day if you find yourself bored at
five-thirty p.m. Eastern time, have Internet access, and want
something unique to do online.

Come to the wedding chapel’s Web site and click on
the LIVE webcast! There you’ll see Wayne and me renewing our
wedding vows with Elvis!

What better way to wind down a whirlwind and
wonderful vacation than to experience something Vegas is known for?
(No, not the buffets—we’ve been hitting those all week!)

It is T-minus two hours till the limousine arrives to
take us to the Elvis wedding chapel, and Wayne still doesn’t have a
clue what’s about to happen. (That’s probably just as well. If he
did, he’d have taken a cab to Arizona by now.)

LATER:

And look, I’m posting a picture of us in our nuptial
re-wedded bliss . . . .

Continued . . .

I had been sick with The World’s Worst Head
Cold
^®
(which was so bad I trademarked it) for over two
weeks, which truly changed my outlook from
I Love Life
cheeriness to
Let Me Please Just Die Overnight, Okay? Anything
But This Incessant Coughing and Wheezing.
Really, quite a
change in personality for me, often talkative to a fault. In fact,
when my throat hurt its worst, I sat next to Wayne, who was asking
me something innocuous (as is his habit).

I squeaked out quietly, “Throat . . . hurts . . . too
. . . much. . . . I . . . can’t . . . talk.” In his usual droll
fashion, he continued to stare at the TV, now playing another old
episode of
Alias Smith and Jones
, and said simply,
“Finally.”

A few days later, just as I was getting better, he
started sneaking the thermometer out of the medicine cabinet and
getting up in the middle of the night to hit the Chloraseptic
bottle. He obviously had a problem and needed an intervention.
Unlike regular people, Wayne unscrews the spritzy top of the spray
bottle and just chugs the stuff like a shot of cheap bourbon,
gargling it loudly right outside our bedroom door—awakening even
the mice in the basement—and then swallows it. The sound is more
effective than the trays of mousey poison we put down near the
fridge. (The trays have this blue crunchy stuff in them and look
like little pet food dishes—almost cruel, really, except when you
consider the alternative of mice crunching on the Cap’n Crunch in
our pantry.)

Where was I? Head colds. Wayne was now fighting off
the cold I probably gave him. Probably? Considering I was sleeping
in his recliner and preparing his dinner and doing his laundry for
the two weeks I was sick, yeah, I’d say he got it from me. Anyway,
he must know what a turn-on the mixed aroma of Nyquil and hand
sanitizer is because he started dousing himself in both things like
they were cheap cologne on a gigolo. I swear he uses the
pump-bottle of hand sanitizer like body wash in the shower. Reminds
me fondly of when we were first dating and he’d wedge a quart-sized
pump-bottle of the stuff between the bucket seats of his car and
use it before kissing me at the drive-in—back when we were
middle-aged and foolish!

Maybe I should let him suffer with that cold. He’s
earned it.

By the time I was
thirty-eight, I had still lived a relatively sheltered life. I’d
never gone streaking, never given blood (on purpose), and never
slept in a waterbed. Then I married a man who owns a king-sized
waterbed—and since then it’s been sink or swim.

Getting
into
the bed is easy.
Let’s just say “stop, drop and roll” works for more than just fire
safety. But climbing
out
is a different matter. No amount of unladylike
gymnastics or contortions can get me out of that bed gracefully.
And the padded side rails aren’t good for anything except moral
support. Or a rather unseemly dismount. Mary Lou Retton, I’m
not.

My husband’s quite used to sailing the seven
seas at bedtime and doesn’t need to take Dramamine before docking
himself at night. Plus, he’s fourteen inches taller than I am
and—unlike me—doesn’t need a pool ladder and a life guard to get in
and out of the bed. Meanwhile, on my side of the bed, falling
asleep with loud sloshing noises in my ears does nothing for my
bladder. So I wake up in the middle of the night and sway back and
forth, trying to hoist myself over the side and onto the floor. The
mattress, which is filled with more water than the Hoover Dam sees
in a year, lurches to and fro and wakes him up.

“
Do you need a
little
push
or
something?” he mumbles from the inlet on his side of the
bed.

“
No.”

“
Life
preserver?”

“
No. Now go back to
sleep.”

“
Wet suit? Rubber ducky? A
copy of
Moby Dick
?”

I ignore him and create a small tsunami
trying to get out of the bed.

“
What are you
doing
over there?” he
mumbles.

“
The breast
stroke.”

“
Need any help?”

“
Very funny.
No!”

I don’t know whether to kiss him or drown
him.

“
How can you get
comfortable in this contraption every night?” I ask.

“
Easy,” he says. “You’re
good ballast.”

Drown him. Definitely
drown him.

I’m sitting on a bench at
the busway, minding my own business, trying to act like I
instinctively know the bus schedule by heart and do this all the
time. But, I know better. I know my Honda is in the shop and this
is the first time I’ve taken the bus in decades. And now I need to
maneuver my way via bus schedule and self-induced panic across town
to the shop to pick up the car.

While others around me are nonchalantly
chatting or doing other things, I’m worried I’ll get on the wrong
bus, or get on the right bus but get off at the wrong stop. I
secretly remind myself to buy a better car, as soon as I find
several thousand dollars in loose change in the couch cushions.

In the distance, still
blocks away, a bus that will probably stop here rounds the corner
and pops into view. For the umpteenth time, my hand dives into my
purse and finds the zippered inside pocket where I keep quarters
and dimes. Going in this direction, out of town, I pay the fare
when I get
off
the bus—I think. I check again to see if I have enough
change, worried that I have inexplicably forgotten how to count
money and will get on the bus without enough money to pay for the
trip. I have no clue what they do to people who get on the bus
without the proper fare. Does the driver make an added stop at the
next police station so the cops can cuff them when they make a
break for it? Could a person end up with a police record for this?
I shake myself awake and pay more attention.

As I ponder these deep truths, the bus gets
within a block of where I’m standing. I look up just in time to see
it stop right in front of me. What if I’m wrong and they now
collect fares upon entering the bus? The pressure is too great. I’m
not ready.

I step aside to let others get on the bus
ahead of me so I can watch what they do. I’ve become a mindless bus
sheep. An older lady—clearly a senior citizen who rides free
anyway—gets on first, which doesn’t help me determine at what point
fares are paid. The second person in line is the middle-aged man I
saw spitting on the ground when I first got to the bus stop. He
walks right past the bus driver and the fare box without dropping
in any money or showing any sort of bus pass, so I figure we’re
paying upon exit, as I suspected. My heartbeat slows to a rate that
might not need a pacemaker after all.

My hand slowly slides back out of my purse
as I take my turn and step onto the bus, where my next worry
assaults me: Is there an appropriate seat left for me? I’ve been so
busy worrying about the method and timing of bus fare payment that
I neglected to allow enough angst-time to deal with the
implications of having nowhere to sit, or having to sit with people
who make me nervous or scared or who just creep me out. I’m
suddenly aware of all the issues I still have. I realize I am a
pathetic blob of fear and self-loathing.

I look around me as I settle into an empty
seat on the aisle halfway to the back. Before I have time to
chastise myself for being such a panic-stricken idiot about
something so simple, the bus turns left at the next intersection
and heads south.

But the mechanic’s shop is
north.

My beloved husband has to tinker with every
electrical object within a fifty-mile radius of his toolbox. It’s
his nature. But for some reason this doesn’t include our four
ceiling fans. He avoids them like the plague. And I’m pretty sure
he routinely avoids the plague.

At some point during the Mezzazoic Era the chain on
the living room fan broke and now we can’t turn it off. In the
summer Wayne says, “It provides good circulation.” In the winter he
says, “It brings warm air off the ceiling.” (And whooshes it out
the front door at breakneck speed, I might add.)

The whole contraption wiggles around in an electronic
belly-dance. Wayne says, “I should balance that thing” and spends
half a weekend at Walmart buying a balancing kit, which he puts on
the coffee table and promptly forgets.

One time he shut off the electric to fix
something—and the fan finally stopped. The dust gunk on the paddles
was a foot thick. I thought I might be able to use it to stuff
pillows for the couch but hosed it off with a power washer
instead.

The ceiling fan in our home office tries to shear off
the top of my head whenever I get too close. It’s a good thing I’m
only five-foot-two, or by now I’d be, well, probably five-foot-one.
When this fan goes into its own little belly-dance, Wayne says, “I
gotta balance that thing” and disappears on a field trip to Home
Depot to buy another balancing kit, which he puts on the coffee
table alongside the first one. I make a mental note to get a bigger
coffee table.

The ceiling fan for the kitchen has been in the box
since 1997. When the coffee table fills up with gadgets, faucet
parts, and balancing kits, we start using the kitchen fan box as an
auxiliary coffee table.

Finally Wayne finds time to install that fan.
(He has no excuses this time. It came with its own balancing kit.)
This one does only a
tiny
belly-dance. I feel strangely blessed.

The bedroom ceiling fan—which hangs directly
over our waterbed—is a mystery to me. One of the paddles is bent
and hangs at an awkward angle. In hushed tones, Wayne cautions
me
never
to turn it
on.
Never.
Whenever I enter
the room, my fingers are drawn to the switch out of morbid
curiosity. But I resist the urge, because ever since he said that
I’ve had nightmares of burning helicopters spinning out of control
and crashing into Lake Erie.

October 18, 2000

We’re hours away from leaving for the airport to come
home. We’ll probably be on Pacific Time till at least February.
Beyond that, we’ll have no excuse for our behavior, I guess.