Category Archives: hell (other people)

Our monkey butler made me do it

I was out at the local coffeeshop not caulking the bathtub in our guest bathroom when I ran into a friend who asked me why I wasn’t at home re-caulking the bathtub like I said I was going to be.

I’ve been avoiding re-caulking that bathtub for 6 weeks. I’ve spent more time talking about re-caulking the bathtub than any human ever spent actually re-caulking a bathtub.

All the messy stuff – the cleaning and scraping – has been done for ages. I just have to squoosh the caulk onto the places where you have to have caulk to, um, keep the bad things from happening. (Still not Martha Stewart, in case you were under the delusion I was actually getting the hang of this shit).

I told my friend I was off the home improvement hook because I’d taught our monkey butler how to caulk.

The woman at the next table flipped out, because caulk is toxic and I shouldn’t be letting an animal handle it without supervision.

I think any animal cruelty issues here would begin and end with the words “monkey butler,” but she left in a furious huff before I could explain that our monkey butler is, to the best of my knowledge, a complete figment of our imagination.

I think I should maybe try to remember to let Husband know that some of the neighbors may think we’re terrible people who have a monkey butler.

I’m starting to think that Popemania is making people a little crazier than usual. Soon after, while I was still at the coffee shop and still not caulking the bathtub, a person I’ve never laid eyes on before marched up to our table and accused me of breaking into a warehouse and stealing a copy of Jenny Lawson’s new book, because it’s not being released until tomorrow but I clearly had a copy right there in my non-caulking hands. (Wait…Was she suggesting that The Bloggess has her own warehouse? I really need to read more of her blog, don’t I?)


furiouslyImage: a not-stolen copy of Jenny Lawson’s
“Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things.”

I also think it would be awesome to have a monkey butler, even though Jungle Pete has been berating me about how this is a terrible idea since we were 12 years old. And he’s absolutely right, but I hate admitting he’s right.

I don’t actually hate admitting Jungle Pete is right, but originally there was a punchline that depended on a setup wherein I admitted to hating to admit I’m right to Jungle Pete. It wasn’t funny so I scrapped it. I don’t know why I left this part in the post. What can I say? I’ve spent the better part of the year desperately ill and then impatiently trying to recover and I may have broken the part of my brain that remembered how to blog.

I do, however, hate how much I secretly wish we had a monkey butler. Even though I think keeping captive primates in your home is a terrible thing.

(But…monkey butler).

In other news, I still haven’t cracked open The Bloggess’s new book, but it took less than 20 minutes to re-caulk the bathtub. It probably would have only taken 10 minutes, but I had to go upstairs to retrieve the paper towels and I procrastinated for a few more minutes by emptying the dishwasher.

Plus, I couldn’t avoid re-caulking any longer because we have a guest arriving on Wednesday (who isn’t the Pope) who will probably want to take a shower or two sometime over the next week and probably wouldn’t be too keen on my caulk-avoiding alternate plan, which was to spray her with the hose in the backyard.

With our luck, that would be the moment animal control shows up to investigate monkey butler allegations.

I'm going to hell, I hope they serve tater tots

You know who annoys me more than newly converted Jesus freaks? Newly converted dieters. Today I was just trying to go to CVS to get some Tylenol when I was pounced on by “nutritional consultants” handing out samples of some new pom-soy-who knows what “nutrition” bar.

I declined and said, “I’d rather just eat the actual unprocessed fruit.”

I know this usually provokes a fracas, and I must admit I was a little feverish and I was looking to rumble.

Much to my contrarian chagrin, the perkier of the two woman didn’t take the bait! She actually agreed with me. I wondered if her corporate overlords know she’s saying such things?

At first.

Then she started yakking about the importance of eating a fruit or vegetable from as many colors of the rainbow as possible every day and how hard that can be and how her product can help fill those gaps when you just can’t find so much variety.

I’m not one to lose so easily, so I tried derailing her by asking whether bananas counted as white or yellow. I actually wonder about this, so it wasn’t completely combative of me. Then I brought up peaches. Pink? Yellow? What about the one I had with breakfast? It was pretty whitish inside, more of a cream than a true canary.

I started to feel guilty for being obnoxious and sounding self-righteous so I told them I’d spent the weekend subsisting on Guinness, tater tots, and chocolate. They giggled at my joke; they thought I was kidding. I wasn’t.

I also wasn’t kidding about eating actual fruit instead of pre-packaged snacks and this was making the Nutrition Specialists pouty and combative because I still wouldn’t try the snack sample.

The more she tried to make me eat the Soylent Pom, the more resistant I got.

Then the whole thing got derailed because someone else pointed out that you should never let your kids eat peaches because they’re a stone fruit and everyone knows that stone fruits cause ADHD. Or maybe Autism. Or maybe they just make them worse. Or maybe eating them makes the symptoms better.

Best not to take the chance. Make sure your children are terrified of peaches and apricots and cherries. One bite and their brains will implode. Or maybe explode. Just don’t take the chance.

Everyone seems to know this, with great certainty, even if they aren’t certain what they know. Everyone agreed it was something that started with “a” and that it was very, very bad. Apparently, giving little Jayden or Avery or Eithne stone fruits is now more dangerous than feeding them sugary breakfast cereals or letting them take a bath without water wings before they’re 18.

It always disturbs me when people are so adamant about eliminating a specific food or consuming a food based on vague health claims, even more so when they aren’t even sure why they’re doing it in the first place. Perhaps there’s a connection, I’m not an expert.

I wanted to shout a few disease names that started with “a” but I saw an opening and I took it, so I sprinted to my car and went home. They aren’t my kids and it isn’t my business, but the medical anthropologist in me still likes to stay aware of these wacky trends and the social and cultural implications of them.

Once I got home, I sat down with my macbook and tried to suss out the genesis of the stone fruit/ADHD or autism connection but quickly got distracted by Monsters Cereal, an entire blog devoted to Count Chocula, Franken Berry and Boo-Berry. Then I got sucked into the YouTube.

Then I got distracted by Breakfast of the Gods.

God bless the Internet. I feel better already.

Keeping up with the Yogis

disclaimer: I swear this post isn’t directed at any of our friends who teach Yoga. I point this out explicitly since I think 90% of our friends teach Yoga.

Having said that, last month’s Self magazine had an article, “Keeping up with the Yogis” that certainly reminded me of some people I’ve met.

More and more, I’ve noticed that people who practice yoga—which literally means “union”—are anything but united. They’re divisive and persnickety. Take one yogic experience I had in New York City several years ago. I was new to town and decided to check out a class offered a few blocks from my home. I walked in and headed for the studio when a guy snapped, “Excuse me,” in a tone of voice that clearly suggested I was the one who needed an excuse. Staring pointedly at my sneaker-clad feet, he said, “We don’t disrespect the earth by walking on it in our shoes.” I whipped mine off, but inside I was thinking, How the hell was I supposed to know?! Then I thought, Jeez, is it yogic to be so snooty to a newcomer? And disrespecting the earth? Puh-leeze. It’s linoleum.

Why would an activity that’s supposed to be noncompetitive and inward-focused turn people into such judgmental loons? My theory is that our culture has gotten so cutthroat that even spirituality has become competitive. And because many of us don’t belong to a tight-knit religious community, yoga has become a substitute for spirituality, a word thrown around like a medicine ball. Feeling spiritual used to mean more than simply treating one’s body like a temple; it suggested a call to social action, the determination to be a better person and, in some cases, to be closer to God.

Now there is only the body. And we persist in kicking each other’s asanas because we’ve convinced ourselves that exercise, which is not about fixing the world but about fixing one’s abs and thighs, is a higher form of truth.

And before you tell us in the comments that you only talk about exercise form X because it’s the best and you think everyone should know, do think about this:

More innocently, perhaps, when we natter on about the revelations of yoga, or any exercise fad, guess what? Everyone wants us to shut up. Because when you imply that there’s one correct way to do something (or when your husband goes on about the only way to clean one’s keyboard, not that I’m naming names) or you boast endlessly about a personal discovery (the way Tom Cruise raves about the virtues of Scientology), listeners cannot help but get hostile.

I’m not certain how long content stays up on the Self website and I didn’t want to lose those bits so I probably pulled out about a third of the article. Hopefully it will stay up in the free archives, it’s worth the read.

Travels with Chandler

Cocktail hour. Watching a Friends rerun with Mom (Chandler and Joey get a chicken). Remembering how boring Friends got. Remembering my scrawled notes from our flight down, which I decipher for you now, because it’s better than watching television and dinner isn’t ready:

“I don’t hate many people. 2. Maybe 3. But I can tell, by the end of this flight, that I am going to hate Chandler. Chandler is sitting directly behind me. Chandler has to go potty. Chandler needs a tissue. Chandler needs to kick the back of my chair. Chandler needs his ipod. Chandler needs a tissue.

To which I would add: Chandler needs to chill the fuck out because we haven’t even pushed back from the gate yet.

Then I put my notebook away because my agitated scribbling was worrying the woman next to me, so the rest is vague reconstruction of the flight.

To be fair, I didn’t start out hating Chandler. I felt bad for the kid. I knew all of these things about him (knees to me vertebrae notwithstanding) because the woman he was travelling with made pronouncements about his welfare non-stop. I was willing to cut Chandler some slack. Until, that is, I turned around to give him The Death Stare for the kicking and realized that Chandler wasn’t a child. And he was reading the Wall Street Journal, so I doubt he was mentally incapacitated.

Chandler was a pussy-whipped, Dockers-wearing Yuppie.

That’s when I started to feel the hate.

This all went on a bit longer and then: Death Stare #2.

The second Death Stare was the charm and he seemed to develop a touch of self-awareness about where he was placing his knees. At least for 20 minutes.

The woman even lowered her voice, although that may have been coincidental. Soon I realized to my horror that we were seated in front of Chandlers Sr and Jr. And Jr was merely unconscious.

Somewhere over North Carolina, I decided I might not actually have to kill the Chandlers. I would instead pity the Chandlers, I decided somewhere over North Carolina. The fate of Mother of Chandler Jr/Wife of Chandler Sr was still on the table. But the Chandlers, they would be spared, I decided somewhere over North Carolina. Somewhere over North Carolina was also when the second valium kicked in.

Somewhere over South Carolina, Chandler Jr revived, there was a seat rodeo and Chandler, Jr ended up seated behind me.

That little bastard had on cleats, there’s no other explanation for how one human could be that annoying kicking the back of a seat.

On the upside, the prodigious amounts of gobby mucous issuing from his nose ended up in the hair of the woman next to me. She was travelling with a toddler so I figured she didn’t care. Woman with Chandlers didn’t seem to care, which perplexed me a bit, because it wasn’t like he did it once and stopped. Or that he sneezed quietly. It was a profound quantity of phlegm. It glimmered like gossamer in the woman’s frosted blonde updo (that may have also been the valium talking).

Despite the snotting and the horking and the smearing, Woman With Chandlers never stopped nagging. I’ve never heard anything like it.

Somewhere over Northern Florida I believe I was possessed by the disembodied spirit of a trucker. A steady stream of silent obscenities thrummed through my brain.

I wasn’t sure how much longer I was going to be able to keep from turning around and disemboweling one or all of them.

That’s when we hit massive turbulence of the kind that makes people shut up and make peace with their god. I love that kind of turbulence. It gets nice and quiet on the plane. People seem to be largely incapable of praying and pissing me off at the same time, and I’m good with that.

home and garden tour season

Home and garden tours are great fundraisers, but boy howdy can they bring bubbling to the surface all manner of class and racial tension. I bet if I bothered to research it I’d turn up all manner of interesting articles on the subject.

Through the years I’ve watched many private kerfluffles and behind the scenes skirmishes over a few of the local tours, but I always manage to stay out of it. That’s sort of easy, actually, since we’re The Wrong Kind of People.

I’m sure the people running the home and garden tour are very nice and decent people, but in recent years I’ve encountered some real ugliness amongst those who want to or are on the tour. My favorite are the neighbors who want to keep Jews from applying to be on the tour because, and I quote, “You know how cheap they are, they never take good care of their homes.” It’s sad when adults say it, but I had a runin with some neighborhood kids who, when caught wrecking something in our yard, repeated the same basic line.

Ironically, despite our (or, rather, Husband’s) cheap jewish ways, we have one of the nicer gardens in the neighborhood. Or so I’m told.

I mention this not to vent about anti-semitism, but because it’s time for the home and garden tour.

I probably shouldn’t have been encouraging hundreds of drunk and adventurous artists to feel free to campout out on our lawn…

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postscript: I was at Costco today with the Bar Manager and saw a neighbor, who looked positively sick when she saw us buying 10 cases of beer and many cases of wine. I would have told her we weren’t really having a huge party but she ran off in a panic. Priceless. Almost made wading into the hell of costco on a weekend worthwhile.