WOMAN FOUND DROWNED ON KITCHEN FLOOR

That’s the headline I’m expecting will appear in the newspapers this weekend documenting my loss.

See, I’m trying to work up my courage to use a netti pot. My coworkers swear by this miniature teapot used to pour saltwater in one nostril, through the sinus cavity, and out the other nostril. “Trish, it clears out your sinuses!” “Trish, it’s the best thing for allergies!” “Trish, it makes me breathe so much better!” They claim that the netti pot has amazing powers. There is only so much netti pot talk one can hear before one starts to wonder.

Still, I can’t help but feel as though I am opening myself up to voluntary drowning.

Is this my coworkers’ twisted way of getting me to water board myself?

Probably.

Sappy? No Question: Yes.

But I am compelled by something outside of myself to write this.

What is it about spring that triggers the memory center of my cerebral cortex? It’s probably the physical representation of rebirth occurring in nature. The splash of new rain on my cheeks and the tip of my nose brings me back to my first kiss. (A sloppy one, apparently.) The sun warming my shoulders after a long winter reminds me of the arms of the child-men whose touch felt similarly tender. The green scent of damp earth on the breeze becomes the heady, bitter-sweet scent of first intimacy.

The rain whispers these memories back to me, and they aren’t entirely unwelcome. Like visiting with old friends, it is nice to reminisce and part ways smiling. As I head home with my window part way down and the heat still part way up, enjoying the long-awaited change in season, these memories tickle the backs of my eyelids and slip along my brows.

And as I pack them away to be unearthed in later years, I think how lucky I am to have these sweet reminders to warm my future springs. I hope we all have such beautiful memories.

Who's a Bad Mommy Now?

Why do I need a new dryer?

So I don’t get arrested for child neglect, that’s why.

Allow me to explain:

My dryer has been doing strange things lately. It rattles. It rumbles. It sucks my clothes into the space between the rotating drum and the back of the dryer and leaves big black smudges or, worse, holes. Dryers aren’t particularly difficult pieces of machinery to understand-- or so my husband tells me-- so he keeps fiddling with the dryer parts until the drum is back in place, and the clunking sound emanating from its innards is only mildly irritating. Plus, the dryer is in the basement, so the sound doesn’t grate on me too terribly. More importantly, I can appreciate a man who’s not afraid to get his hands dirty, and I like the way Scott looks when he’s sweaty and carrying tools-- so I’ve lived with the deafening thunder of my dryer for months. Until last Sunday….

I had a big pile of clothes and sheets that weren’t ironing themselves. (Yes, I iron some sheets. Don’t judge me.) It was one of those Sundays where one spends the whole day sweating in pajamas and fuzzy slippers, cleaning. Scott was playing with the boys, so I thought I’d get busy wrestling wrinkles with my Osterman 3000 and a can of spray starch. I was just getting in a groove when Scott came downstairs to tell me Noah was asleep in his crib and Josh was working on some algebra problems at the kitchen table. (Okay, okay, he watching cartoons and eating popcorn.) Scott felt that this was a good time for him to run out and get a hair cut while I finished up the ironing. I waved him off and threw some wet clothes in the dryer while I continued my de-wrinkling labors.

I must have been really into my mindless chore because I suddenly had a whole pile of ironed sheets and clothing. Sweaty, pajama-clad, make-up-less, huge pimple in the middle of my forehead (Say hello to my little friend….) me walks out of the basement to find my neighbors sitting in my living room. I arrive just in time to hear, “Well, Josh, mommy might just be in the basement. Did you look in the basement?”

Apparently, Scott told me what Josh was doing, but didn’t tell Josh what I was doing before he left to have his tresses trimmed. Josh, upon hitting the bottom of the popcorn bowl, decided to look for mommy. He called for her. No one came. He got the bright idea to ring the doorbell, but the thunderous dryer sounds drowned out the doorbell. Finally, in desperation, my poor little guy saw our neighbor shoveling snow, opened the door, and called to him to come over because “I’m not allowed to cross the street, and my mommy is missing.”

Gulp. Not only was I the worst mommy in the world, but I dressed for the part, too. All I needed were a few wire hangers and the Mommy Dearest look would have been complete.

I think Home Depot will be happy to see me grace their home appliances section.

Of Mice and Men...and Metaphors

I heard something encouraging while working out in our school’s weight room. I was sharing the weights with the wrestling team, and was fairly unnoticed due to the superfluity of weight lifting apparatus in the crowded facility. (I tend to hide my novice weight-lifting self behind the leg extension machine. For obvious reasons.)

Wrestler Number One glances at Wrestler Number Two, poses in the mirror, and scoffs, “Dude, check out my big, hard piece of steel!”

“What are you talking about?” queries Wrestler Number Two.

“Dude. I was making a metaphor. Forget it,” sighs Wrestler Number One before going back to bicep curls.

While there are many, many jokes we could make about Wrestler Number One’s “big, hard piece of steel,” I think it is notable that he used the correct literary terminology when opening himself up to mockery.

Score one for the English Department!

(As Kuj wrote in a previous post, I am patting myself on the back and fist-punching the air ala’ Anthony Michael Hall in The Breakfast Club. Take THAT No Child Left Behind!)

Catholic+Withdrawl= LENT

I am doing something that only the insane and the Lenten Catholics do: giving up soft drinks.

Here’s how the genesis of this idea came about. One of my coworkers (a stunningly gorgeous miniature version of a Greek goddess) has been “getting healthy.” I believe I have mentioned this bitty-Barbie in the past. This is the same uber-healthy blond who has me eating lots of vegetables—but I digress. This gorgeous bombshell has been making all of these healthy changes in her life and, yes, she is glowing.

(I doubled checked, no pregnancy is involved. This is a shame because if pregnancy was responsible for her dynamic change I would want no part of that animal and simply continue doing what I am doing, which is lolling about in general unhealthiness, a place in which I am familiar. Instead, I am left with a decision to either lumber along in her glowing direction or hang back here in dull skin-ville. I can’t allow my skin to grow more lackluster, so you know which choice I have to make.)

Thus, I have given up soft drinks in lieu of water and begun my own healthy regime.

Again.

True, I tried this back in the fall and fell back into my strict Dove Chocolate and McDonald’s diet fairly quickly. This time, however, I have made my intentions public. Now I have lots of people asking me about my progress, which should help keep me motivated.

Of course, “should” was the operative word in the last sentence. I’ll likely need something more concrete to keep me motivated. Shoes, maybe? Clothing? A massage? Hmmm…my wonderful, kind, gorgeous, generous husband gave me a gift card for a hot stone massage for Christmas. While my first thought was that hot stones ostensibly indicate some sort of medieval branding ritual Queen Mary used on her non-Catholic countrymen in the late 1500’s, my friends assure me that a hot stone massage is a very pleasant experience. This may be just the time to try this out....

Having a Bad Day?

There's a list of stunningly bad similes floating around our English Department. One of them descibes a man falling from a building and "hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup." Now there's a bit of imagery for you.

This simile is the first thing I thought of when a friend of mine emailed me an amazing story about a repairman who fell sixty feet from a cell tower. The doctors and nurses thought they'd never be able to "put the peas back in the pea soup," if I may. Yet, after many surgeries, steel rods in his back, and months and months of intensive therapy, he pulled through. When asked about his amazing recovery, he responded, "I knew I could choose to live or choose to die. I chose to live. I approach every day that way: I can choose to have a good day or choose to have a bad day. I find it's always best to opt for the positive."

You have to admit, though, no one would fault the guy if he was a little less than cheerful after a fall like that. (I get weepy just thinking about chipping my pedicure or passing gas in public. If I did both at the same time, I'd likely be hospitalized and on oxygen.)

Yet, cheerful he was! When he was rushed into the ER, doctors and nurses were huddled around him. One asked whether he was allergic to anything. His raspy response?? "Gravity."

Okay, if Hefty Humpty can crack jokes in the midst of crisis, you'd think it would be a no-brainer for us ALL to see the positive in our lives and choose to have a good day, right? After all, when we choose to have a bad day or to look at things in a negative light, it is really only ourselves who suffer. Right? Right?

All of this brings me to the subject of seasonal blues. About this time every year, I get all fidgetty and grumpy and tend to see more negative and less positive. There's something of a let down immediately following January 1st and the months of Chicago's cold darkness that follows. The snow and cold --which were magical during the holidays-- now just seem like dirty slush through which we must wade. Warm sunshine? It's a distant memory. And don't even get me started on the January and February credit card bills. Oy.

You know these feelings?

Then, you know how you tell yourself how you should count your blessings, things could be worse, you're lucky you aren't a nose-diving Hefty bag full of minestrone, blah, blah, blah?

Still, seeing the positive is easier said than done. It may help to hear about an ACTUAL BAD DAY. It's always better to have some sort of specific contrast, right? Thus, I offer for you a DAY YOU ARE GLAD IS NOT YOURS. This may help you to see how lucky you are...even when the temperature is hovering in the teens and you haven't seen sunlight in weeks.

Actual Bad Day: (You might want to grab a tissue...and your favorite hair product.) A foreign exchange student visiting our school from Spain (picture Fez from That 70's Show) was in America for exactly one day. He took a morning shower in his host family's bathroom, probably excited to meet students from a new country. He grabs the shampoo and lathers up. Virtually everything in America is written in English and Spanish. Everything except Nair. The poor kid depilatoried his head. He said he thought the "shampoo" smelled unusual, but he just chalked it up to a new American scent. His hair melted to his scalp. Want to know how to fix a head of long, thick, black hair Naired into a frizzled pouf? You can't. You have to shave it all off. The poor kid wanted to fly back home to Spain but, after thinking about parading his sudden baldness in front of strangers in a foreign land or in front of his friends back home, he opted to spend the next six weeks wearing a ski hat amongst strangers and completing his foreign exchange.

I know, I know...I am petting my hair and crying, too.... But doesn't your day seem better??

Even Sigourney Got Bit...

...by the alien. You know how alligators lock their jaws on their prey, rolling their struggling victims along the water's bottom until dinner gives up and ceases to fight? Well, if the flu was an alligator, I was the prey caught in its death roll.

Luckily, I smoked it with my increased fluids, hours of bed rest, and antibacterial cleansers.

Suck it, flu.