Mutual Weirdness = Love

“We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.”

Quote from Unknown Author read at my second wedding by my Budget Notary.

Today is my three year wedding anniversary. Two days from now is my six year first hook-up anniversary with my husband. I remember them both as if they were recent. And they are very sentimental dates to me. And I feel that they should be celebrated because they both marked new beginnings. Crazy and wild beginnings accompanied by a lot of love, friendship and sex, just not necessarily in that order.

Six years ago, I had a tremendous crush on my current husband. I’m not even sure crush is the proper word to use to describe my attraction to him. It seems too delicate. I had known him for a while, been in and out of his restaurant many times. As his version of our hook-up story goes, I was the initiator of the events that evening, November 20, 2003. This is not how I remember it because unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, I was drunk. His apartment was just down the street from our neighborhood bar but he was going to give me a ride to my house a few miles away. You’ve all probably heard this story before. Drunk girl needs a ride home but first has to go to the bathroom. Drunk girl enters boy’s apartment to pee. Then, (I’m skipping over the next few hours so as not to embarrass my parents or brother) drunk girl is sober when she wakes up in boy’s bed the next morning. Out of nervousness, no-longer-drunk girl talks incessantly until guy puts something in her mouth to make her stop talking.

And we’ve been together ever since. The fairy tale that every mother wants for her daughter. A match made, if not in heaven, then somewhere else where someone has our same sick sense of humor.

Three years ago, we got married. The perfect ceremony, in the perfect setting in my parents’ backyard with our good friends and family. And of course, our children. My two and his one. And the past three years have been, if not blissful, well then great. Even when the children were having stomachaches and nightmares and grownups were experiencing the kind of angst that comes when you are blending two families: having different upbringings and experiences, involving two former spouses, and trying to make sure that you’re doing the best for everybody involved. But we’ve done it. We’ve made it work with lots of patience, being supportive of each other and having kid-free Thursday nights. And after three years, I know that whatever else comes our way, we can handle it.

The biggest change over the last three years is that our marriage has become more kid-centric. We have melded in to more of a family unit, just one that is non-traditional. As he has become more of a parent to mine and I have become more of a parent to his. And the three children have become a bigger part of who we are and what our relationship is.

And if you ask our children, any of the three of them, if they are weird they will say yes and then proceed to tell you what a good thing that is. So, I guess, by our compatible weirdness, we have all come to love each other. And that makes for a very happy me.

Happy 3rd/6th Anniversary! I love you!

Halloween Humbug?

Today is Halloween. And, it’s also Saturday. A rare cosmic coincidence. And to round out the trifecta, it’s also the end of Daylight Saving Time.

So this means everyone is going to stay up extra late because there is no school or work tomorrow and because we gain an extra hour of sleep. In our neighborhood, the kids will be running around totally fueled by sugar, begging for just a few more minutes outside. And more houses than usual will be serving grown-up treats like wine and jello shots. What’s not to like? How about chaos, candy wrappers and amped up children unable to go to bed. And a Sunday morning hangover.

This year, my son is going as a New York Yankee. And not just because they are in the World Series. He was born in Manhattan and, even though he only lived there until the ripe old age of 14 months, he feels a strong kinship with all New York sports teams. Last year, he was the “Ultimate Jets Fan”. I imagine, since most everybody in our neighborhood is originally from another part of the country, and since the Yankees seem to provoke strong emotions of either love or hate, he will be both cheered and booed.

My daughter has changed her mind a few times. At first, she was going to dress up as a mummy. Then I think she wanted to reprise her last year’s costume which was a fluorescent yellow highlighter. She then decided she just wanted to be a person. No one in specific. Just someone who was not her. So she picked out a long blonde wig from the costume store and a pair of big black-rimmed glasses. She came home and pulled a few clothing items together including a sweater that was too small for her and a pair of skinny leg jeans. And she looks perfect. Kind of like a nerdy, but crazy, librarian. I love her sense of style.

Halloween is not my favorite holiday. But I would never tell anyone that, especially in my neighborhood. But I get into it. If you live here, it is almost a requirement. And I have to admit, it is fun to look at everybody’s decorations. Some people, and you know who you are, go all out and deserve to win a “Best Halloween House” prize.

But I’m from the school of thought that you have to pick a Halloween theme and stick with it. No mixing and matching the different genres of decorating. Nasty or nice. Not both. We decorate our house with a severed head with a hanging eyeball, a ghoul hanging from the roof and a few other ghastly items. No nice, smiling pumpkins or pretty autumnal displays of hay, corn and scarecrows for us. And my kids like it this way. The more gruesome, the better.

I’ll go out with the kids tonight to Trick or Treat. We’ll see a lot of friends and neighbors, have some laughs and marvel at the few really ingenious costumes. And I’ll try not to let the chaos, or the amount of candy eating my children do, stress me out. I think that the few glasses of wine I drink and the jello shots that I do will help me with that. I think I may even put on a wig and enjoy myself. I just hope I don’t forget to remind the kids to brush their teeth before they go to bed.

My Visit With Gaggy

I went to visit my 93 year-old grandmother last weekend. Gaggy, as my brother named her 45 years ago, lives in Fayetteville, NC, where my mom was born and raised. I hadn’t seen her in a long time. Over a year. My mom and my brother went also, the three of us leaving behind two husbands, a wife and a total of 6 children. I can’t remember another time that the three of us had done this except when I was thirteen and my parents had decided to separate. My mom, brother and I took the Amtrak train from Miami to Fayetteville and were picked up by my grandparents. I didn’t know it at the time but one of the purposes of that trip was for my mom to tell her parents that she and my dad were getting divorced.

So, here we were. Thirty years later. Just the three of us in Fayetteville again.

My grandfather died 3 years ago, at the age of 91. Since then, Gaggy has stayed in their house but with around the clock caretakers. In the last few months, it has become apparent that her mind is changing. On a grocery store outing with one of her caretakers, Gaggy saw her sister who lives a few minutes from her. And she asked for her sister’s help because she said that she had been kidnapped.

And the change was apparent to me within the first 10 minutes after we walked in to her house. And at first this change made me incredibly sad. She was not the same Gaggy I had last seen. I was also nervous. Nervous that she might forget who I was and call me by another name. Or that she would put me down, calling me dumb, like she did to others. But she didn’t. And at times, her memory was fine, even better than fine. Remembering my husband and what he does for a living and how he had cooked shrimp for her at the beach two years ago.

Throughout the weekend, she told the most outrageous and entertaining stories. About being trapped on an island filled with criminals in New Zealand, a place she had been to with my grandfather earlier in her life. Eating fruit there and then escaping to Honolulu via a plane flown by my grandfather. She laughed this full body laugh that I did not know she had before now. She was having fun and she seemed happy.

There is really nothing physically wrong with Gaggy, except for the increasing frailty you would expect a 93 year-old woman to have. My mom and her brother have talked to her about moving to an assisted living facility. And she says she wants to go. She talks about it being more social. About having more than one person around to talk to. Having people to play Scrabble with.

Over the weekend, we went to visit the facility with her, have a tour and eat some lunch. It is a nice place, but it is the first one I have ever visited and seeing all of those old people together is depressing. I haven’t known too much of old age and I don’t like what I see. Wheelchairs and walkers everywhere. People needing help with their meals. The sanitary smell. But, within the context of being old and needing around the clock care, the place seems comfortable. The staff was kind and patient. The residents seemed well cared for and happy. They were up and out of their rooms, on their way to one activity or another.

A table was set up for us in the Solarium, a sunny area separate from the regular dining room. We were given a menu with some choices on it and the head dietician came out and talked to us. But I wasn’t very hungry. There are two situations in which I lose my appetite. One is where I have recently seen, or even thought about, a cockroach. The other is being around a lot of old people. I didn’t want to be rude, what with this being the South, so I ordered the white bean chicken chili and the tuna plate (dark meat tuna with relish served with Ritz crackers) and macaroni salad. My brother looked at me like I was crazy. He just ordered a salad. And a lemonade. And we all ordered the pineapple upside down cake. It quickly became apparent that we weren’t going to finish our meals so we cancelled the dessert order. Gaggy was getting tired, her behavior was not at its best and we still had cousins to visit before we took my brother to the airport.

The rest of the weekend went well. We looked at old pictures, had dinner with our cousins at Gaggy’s favorite Chinese restaurant and spent time, my mom, Gaggy and me, sitting on her bed Saturday night just talking. Or at least trying too. She kept seeing a man with long legs walking out in the hallway and then in her closet and under the bed. She told me he was going to get me. And I got a little spooked. After that, I said goodnight, took a sleeping pill and slept until my alarm sounded the next morning. It was early, my grandmother was not up yet, and my mom took me to the airport.

I was ready to go home. I knew going in to it that the weekend was going to be emotionally tough for me. And it was. But it was also special. And fun. Especially the time with my mom and my brother. We all slept in the same room on our first night there. My mom and I sharing the bed. My brother next to me, on the floor, on a makeshift bed of old blankets. Throwing pillows at each other, making fun of each other, laughing. Doing the kinds of things that makes our spouses marvel at our combined immaturity.

I don’t think I ever got to see Gaggy’s true self that weekend, the one I remember growing up with. The one I remember from 20 years ago or even two years ago. She is lost to me – the smart, savvy advice giving grandmother. In her place is a 93 year-old woman who is happy. Who has a maniacal laugh and a wonderful imagination combining real memories with fiction to create outrageous tales. Once I got over the fact that this was not the Gaggy I grew up with, the one who had been the artist, the politician, the community activist, I was able to enjoy the current Gaggy. Happy, a little crazy and good company.

I don’t know when my next visit to Fayetteville will be. I hope to go in the spring. Who knows what state of mind my grandmother will be in at that time but I’ll take whatever Gaggy I can get. And be happy that I still have her.

Inertia

Inertia – noun

1. inertness, esp. with regard to effort, motion, action, and the like; inactivity; sluggishness.

I am in a state of writing inertia. This happens to me from time to time. I have so much to say and so much to write about that I can’t write anything. I don’t know where to begin.

As a novice writer, I am still learning how to deal with this. Today, my day to write, I’ve exercised, been to the grocery store, done the laundry and just plain procrastinated on the internet. Now, I’m just waiting for my daughter to get out of school so I can stop feeling guilty about not having posted to my blog in almost two weeks.

To be truthful, it’s been a busy two weeks. First, my cousin from Atlanta came to visit for a long weekend so the days leading up to that visit were full of house cleaning, mulching, bathroom redecorating and planning and shopping for the food for her welcome dinner party with 8 of our closest friends. The whole weekend was a huge success and included a block party, a morning at the beach, a few walks, fabulous food and one extremely hot soccer game.

After she left, and I caught up on my laundry, bills, children etc., it was time for me to get ready to go on a trip to see my 93 year old grandmother in North Carolina. Leaving town requires planning and packing for the kids to be with their dad and for every last little piece of dirty laundry to be washed and put away. I’m a little compulsive about that. Throw in a few soccer and baseball practices and games, some half days of school and a visit to the orthodontist and you see where the time goes.

Imagine if I worked more than 8 hours a week outside of the home. I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I only work that much. I used to work more hours than that but then I wasn’t trying to be a writer. And I think that the more hours you work, the better you are at managing your time because you have to be. I don’t really need to devote a whole hour to unloading my dishwasher or reading the New York Times cover to cover.

So, I got back from North Carolina yesterday. I had a great visit with my grandmother. And my mother and brother who were there too. And I even got to see my cousin from Atlanta there. That visit is the subject of my next post.

But for now, I just have to run out with my husband to drop one of our cars off for servicing. Then pick up the kids at school, come home and make dinner. But I have no more trips planned, at least not until Thanksgiving. The next few weeks are free and clear. And I can feel my inertia lifting with this post. I’ll have to remember this the next time I’m stuck. Doing it beats thinking about it.

Domestic Affections

It’s been a decade since I moved in to my house. I was 33, 8 months pregnant with my second child and still married to my first husband. Now, I’m 43, have been divorced and re-married, am a mother of two and stepmother of one. Along with just getting older, that’s a lot of change. For both me and the house.

When I moved in to the house, in 1999, it had just been built. Clean, fresh, new. It was exactly the house I wanted: the layout, the location, everything. I was where I thought I wanted to be. But things change. Carpet gets stained and needs to be replaced by Pergo. Lives change and divorce becomes a reality. Clothes expand to fill up the now-empty extra closet in the master bedroom.

After the divorce, the house felt smaller to me. I know that seems contrary to what you would think but, being single with two young children, I just didn’t use all of the rooms, not the formal dining room and not the den. But it still felt comfortable to me. And I was happy. Just me, my kids, the house.

After four years of being single, I re-married. (I got an awning off the back of the house for an engagement ring.) And the house suddenly seemed larger because we started using all of the rooms. The den became my new husband’s lair. He put a nice HD flat screen TV on the wall, moved in a computer and his filing cabinet. It is technically “his” space and he can close the French doors anytime he wants to. Though he doesn’t very often.

We now use the formal dining room frequently because my husband enjoys cooking for our friends and family. A few weeks ago, we had a dinner party for 12 and we all sat around the table with both leaves extended, eating and drinking for hours. Using the china and sterling flatware that I got for my first wedding and never used until this one.

And the guest room became my stepdaughter’s room. We changed it around some to make it feel homier to her and put in some pictures of her and her mom and of her and her dad. She keeps a Hello Kitty pillow on the bed and sleeps with it when she stays with us.

And, of course, I had to give up the extra closet in my bedroom, the one in which I put all my old, out-of-date clothes. I worked in retail in NYC in the late 80’s and had some jackets with really big shoulder pads. Also in the closet were all of my fat clothes, the clothes that fit me before I went through the stress of divorce. Stress is a natural weight loss tool for me. Though it could have been all the cigarettes that I was smoking. Before and after I would go for a run. I quit that at the end of 2003.

Not all of these changes were easy. Not getting rid of my old Rooms-To-Go plaid sofas. A few months before I re-married, my fiancé was going to move some of his furniture in and we were going to get rid of the old sofas, the ones I had bought when I first moved in to the house. One of which had an incredibly gross, yet incredibly sentimental, stain at one end where my son had been resting his head for seven years. My fiancé called me at work and told me the sofas were gone and I started to cry. My co-workers teased me about my reaction. But my tears came because the departure of the sofas marked the finality of leaving my old life behind, and the grief and sorrow associated with that. But it was time to move on.

And now it is all good, even when it is not. So, while I know that I shouldn’t be in love with inanimate objects, Pyrex measuring cup and iPhone not withstanding, I am in love with my house. The center of my domestic affections. And sure I’d like for it to continue to change, just like I am. French Doors to replace the sliding glass ones, a really nice outdoor kitchen. But we’ve been through a lot together, me and my house, in the last ten years and the house doesn’t feel inanimate. It is a part of me. It is my home, my non-traditional home, filled with lots of laughter, tears and struggles, but most importantly love, a lot of it. And I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.

Klatsch Hund No More

My name is Dewlaps and I am a recovering online tabloid gossip addict.

It’s been over two months since I last looked at my three tabloid gossip web sites. (Note that I am still using the possessive “my”.) The three sites I used to look at every day. Multiple times a day. To make sure that I was caught up on who was screwing who, what they were wearing while they were doing it and who was watching. Making sure that I stayed on top of breaking news, like when Mel Gibson yelled anti-semitic slurs at a cop while he was being arrested for a DUI. Or Britney Spears forgot to wear underwear while pumping her gas.

Kicking this gossip habit was one of my New Year’s resolutions posted on my blog on December 31, 2008. It took me half of 2009 to kick it but I really didn’t try until I was on vacation over the summer and realized that it had been a few days since I had checked the sites because I was too busy living life. And I haven’t looked back since. I wonder if People.com, PerezHilton.com and TMZ.com noticed a drop in their site visits over the summer.

I don’t really have an addictive personality but I have learned from past experience that the best way for me to quit anything (potato chips, gummy worms, mindless internet surfing etc.) is cold turkey. One day, just stop and don’t look back.

That’s how I quit smoking. I was never a big smoker, only a social one, until my first marriage started falling apart. Then I became one. I never smoked in front of my kids but I would sneak out onto the back patio to smoke while they were playing inside or watching TV. I would also wake up in the morning, take the kids to school, then come home and go for a 3-4 mile run. When I was finished, I would pour myself a big cup of coffee and sit out back and smoke. That’s kind of gross.

In December, it will be almost 6 years since I quit. It was a year and a half after my first husband and I separated. And I was about one month into my new relationship with the guy who would become my current husband. I already knew that he hated the fact that I smoked. His mother had been diagnosed with lung cancer years prior and she had been a heavy smoker. I knew that if I wanted to be with him, which I did, I would have to quit. And I had been thinking of doing it as a New Year’s resolution. But a few weeks before the New Year, I got sick, with a kidney infection, and ended up in the hospital for 4 days. I felt so awful in the few days before I was admitted that I hadn’t been smoking. So by the time I got out of the hospital, it had been a week without a cigarette. The hard part was over and I just decided to stop then.

I had one or two after that. But they didn’t taste right. And I felt tremendous guilt. And now, when I see and smell someone smoking, I feel a little disgusted. Kind of how I feel when I think about my old tabloid web sites. And I’ve even taken my no-gossip resolution a step further. The old me would allow myself to purchase tabloid magazines when I went on a trip. I don’t do that now either. I just make sure I pack all of The New Yorkers I haven’t read yet plus a few new books. It just makes me feel better. Kind of like carpooling, recycling or riding my bike to the library. Or not drinking sake anymore. (Sake hangovers are the worst, plus the calorie and carb counts are extremely high.)

Now if I could just spend less time on the Public Records web site. Do I really need to know which of my neighbors hasn’t paid their property tax or has defaulted on their mortgages? But I’m not ready to give that one up yet. If I ever become a private investigator, that knowledge will come in handy.

P.S. Tomorrow marks the one year anniversary of Life’s Dewlaps. 72 posts in one year. I hope I haven’t offended, shocked, alienated or just plain pissed anyone off too much. Thanks for being a part of it.

Junior Prom 1982

I went home last weekend for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, to celebrate with my family and my friends that are like my family. And, as usually happens, we ended up talking about the old days, mainly our high school days, and sharing news about the people we knew back then. So and so is divorced and has moved back in to his parents’ house. This person is on TV selling a weight loss product. Do you think it works? And did you hear, she re-married, has a husband who can cook and has put on a few pounds? Oh wait, that’s me.

My best friend from growing up, the one whose parents are best friends with mine, whose family is truly like family, and I started reminiscing about our junior prom. Sharing some of the details with our parents and our children as we sat around the dining room table on Saturday night.

I was not real popular in high school. Sure, I had a good group of friends but I was second tier. I didn’t have a boyfriend. Didn’t really have one until college. So something like the prom was a big deal. I had no idea who I would go with. But then, I was asked by someone I had known since first grade. He was the first boy I had ever French kissed, during a sixth grade game of “Seven Minutes in Heaven”. (My son is in seventh grade and doesn’t like this story. Happily, I think he is still afraid of girls. My daughter, in fifth grade, is extremely interested.).

I said yes to him, but with some disappointment. He was a nice guy but having already gone to first base with him years before, I knew there would be no spark, no butterflies. Just someone to hang out with. Maybe not such a bad thing since I was scared of boys at that point. There was the question of transportation though. We were juniors so we could drive ourselves. But his mother’s car was an old-fashioned (even back then) station wagon with faux wood paneling on the outside. A Woody. That would be my chariot.

A few days after B asked me to the prom, one of my brother’s friends called. D, like my brother, was a senior. I was a junior. He was a nice Jewish boy from Miami Beach. I didn’t know him very well but he drove a really sporty car. It was yellow and I think it was a Mazda RX7. Imagine pulling up to the valet stand at a fancy hotel on Miami Beach in that. Now imagine pulling up in an old panel station wagon. We’d probably have to self-park. But my mother raised me right and I had to decline the nice Jewish boy with the nice ride.

The day of the prom, I got all dressed up and fixed my hair and put on some make-up. I wore a gorgeous black lace dress of my mom’s. It looked great, it had a slip underneath and a sheer lace overlay. The week before the prom, my mom took me to the mall and bought me a pair of high heeled strappy sandals. My first ever. They were absolutely gorgeous. I was ready.

Sidebar: My brother’s date to that year’s prom was a friend in my grade. A girl who 5 years later would become my stepsister. Who, many years later, married a man that my brother and I had both known in our teens from sleep-away camp. I never found out for sure, but the story goes that my brother didn’t make a move on his future stepsister the night of the prom. If he had, we could have had our very own episode on the Jerry Springer show.

So the night of the prom, B picked me up from my parents’ house. He had brought me a corsage. My mom took the requisite pictures of us and it was time to go. Outside, B opened the door to the panel wagon for me. And I thought, okay, this isn’t so bad. But it was May in South Florida. Hot and humid. And of course we had to have the air conditioner on. I didn’t want my hair to frizz (hah!) or my make-up to melt. But within a few minutes, I felt it. Drip drip drip. From underneath the dashboard, where the air conditioner was. Drip drip drip on my gorgeous, new, strappy sandals. I was mortified. I remember thinking that a Mazda RX7 wouldn’t have a leaky air conditioner. Ugh, I hated that I had done the right thing. I had to sit with my legs folded under me.

And my poor date. He felt bad and kept apologizing. It was a long drive to the hotel and by the time we got there, there was a little puddle of water where my feet should have been. I got out gingerly, helped by the valet. Once inside, we danced and ate and had a really good time. A friend’s brother was getting married that night in the same hotel, a few floors from where our prom was. So, my best friend and I made a few trips to the wedding to drink wine out of glasses sitting abandoned on the tables, and to say hi to our friend. My date didn’t seem to mind my absence. The pairing that seemed apparent when we walked in to the prom had given way to group dancing, group seating and group hugs.

By the end of the evening, I was a little drunk. And for the ride home, I took my shoes off and didn’t care if my feet got wet. B walked me to the front door. I unlocked it, thanked him and very sweetly told him I had had a great time, which was true. I then proceeded to shut the door, which was made from a very large and very heavy piece of wood, and lock it. I think he tried to stop it from closing in order to say something or perhaps he wanted to re-live our sixth grade experience. But I’ll never know. I went upstairs, exhausted and buzzed, and fell asleep in my dress with all of my makeup on. Something I am still known to do after a Thursday night out, only to wake up on Friday morning looking like a clown. At least I am true to myself. And I like to think that, the majority of the time, I do the right thing.