José Cuervo May Move In

Prozac Monday

José Cuervo May Move In

I received a notice from my cell phone company that I owed $376—last month's bill and this month's.  I sent a check last month, but they don't have a record of it, and my service is in grave danger of being disconnected.

My daughters would be inconsolable if they knew because their phones are connected to my account.  If one goes, they all go. With no communication method (using house phones = social suicide, unthinkable), my teenage girls would scream and run blind-bat crazy to the corner of Savage and Psychotic like they did when I lied and told them that Netflix wouldn’t be carrying Gossip Girl episodes anymore. They’d never know if Chuck Bass and his girlfriend would ever find a suitable third for their threesome.  That tall tale was sweet revenge on account of them wearing my nice boots to the muddy Corn Maze.   

I’d rather get a bikini wax from Phil on Duck Dynasty than call the phone company, but my husband wrote on the bill in all caps to “TAKE CARE OF THIS.”  I don’t know why he feels the need to yell.

While I waited on hold fifteen minutes, I imagined that all the operators were returning from their “Margarita Monday” lunch at Taco Loco. 

“Margarita Monday” was likely how my check disappeared in the first place.  Some peon with a company ID probably used it to buy rounds of queso and Corona at Accounting’s last “Kiss My Assets” conference.

Charlene, God’s gift to Customer Service, finally came on the phone.

“ThisIsCharlene,MayIHaveYourNameAndPhoneNumber,” she asked without listening, just like my kids, but with more José Cuervo.  “Thank you. What’s your problem?”

“I got a bill for $376 from you, which is last month’s bill plus this month’s.  I already sent a check for $190 for last month.  My bank says it cleared a while ago by your company.”

By the crunch, I could tell she was finishing her nacho basket. “We do not have record of the payment, ma’am, but I will credit your account the $190,” said Mr. Cuervo.

“Really?” I said.

“Of course not,” said Charlene. 

“Well, I’d like to speak to your manager,” I said.

“She’s ‘in-disposal.’  Can’t come to the phone right now.”  I might have detected a slight slur in her speech.  “There’s nothing I can do, ma’am. There’s no way I can tell if it was really our company that ‘posited your check, IF you sent one,” giggled Charlene.

  I reached for my corkscrew.  “I’ve never heard an attitude like that!”  I said.  "Even when my computer broke and I had to talk to those condescending Dell techno-nerds in India!  I’m going to call your supervisor about this. What is YOUR name again?”

“Brenda.” 

        I tried again, and this time I got a nice girl from Georgia.  She listened to my story and wrote up an official inquiry, like a polite southerner.  

After the cell phone ordeal, I realized I’m too impatient to be in a Complaint Department.  On Mondays Charlene may spend her lunch hour with José Cuervo.  But if I were answering calls from mo-rons all day, he’d definitely have to move into my cubicle.

Special K and Chardonnay

“Why I Need Happy Hour” Friday

Special K and Chardonnay

Thursday night I finished my dinner of left-over lasagna and searched for something sweet.  I poured a glass of chardonnay because I deserved it on account of I hadn't had any since yesterday.  

        Special K Bars lined my pantry, but they’re made of cardboard, and cardboard does not go with chardonnay.  Everyone knows that cardboard is chiefly paired with Mogen David Rosé or strong coffee in the morning.  That came out wrong—I would not suggest Mogen David in the morning.  I’d love to have a big, chocolate Krispy Kreme most mornings.  Or a few calorie-inflated granola bars, but granola gives me gas.  However, I digress. 

 

Anyhoo, as I was trying to find something to satisfy my insatiable chocolate monster, I read the side of the Special K Bar box for kicks.

“Drop a jean size in two weeks (double exclamation points)!!  The Special K Challenge.”  

           Really.  I couldn’t drop a jean size in two years.  They should have an asterisk beside that.  I’m 38 (woo hoo!  Chardonnay just came out of my nose) going on 68 and I’m fixin’ to drop a Size 8 trou to a Size 6?  After three kids and a metabolism that shut down in 1998, I could really rake in the ratings on The View if that actually worked.  

So... I read the scientific "spin" on the side of the box.

MEAL #1:

Kick-start your day with a serving of Special K Cereal (ANY flavor) (oh yay) with 2/3 cup skim milk.  ENJOY with fruit.

It didn’t say how much a serving of cereal was.  I couldn’t translate the hooo-hah on the side of the box because I couldn’t translate metric into American.  So, I poured my artificially flavored Chocolate Special K into my usual cereal bowl and poured the thimble of SKIM in.  Well, I was sure the Special K people would like to avoid a big ‘ol lawsuit because of me choking on dry cereal so I poured just a Biggie size Wendy’s cup tad more milk in.

Meal #2:

“Replace another meal with a delicious Special K Protein Meal Bar, Special K Protein Shake, or another serving of your favorite Special K Cereal (ANY flavor) with 2/3 cup of SKIM milk and fruit.  

Since I didn’t have any strawberries without fur on them, I used a can of strawberry pie filling from last Thanksgiving.  That’s when I stopped talking to Aunt Billie Rae because she was being hateful and brought her “blue-ribbon” (I wish I had a dime for every time I’ve heard that) strawberry pie to Mama’s for Thanksgiving when she KNEW that I had signed up to bring it.

Meal #3:

Eat your third meal as you normally would.

This was cool.  So, my husband was out of town.  Mac ‘n Cheese for dinner.  That would not be up for debate with my kids.  I thought I needed a little protein since I was on a strict diet, so the bacon added a nice touch.  Sipping my chardonnay and boiling my noodles, I thought this diet’s working out OK.  

I’ll let you know when I’m gonna be on The View.

Organizing Coach Doesn't Know MY Kids

Organizing Coach Doesn't Know MY Kids

Recently I laughed through a magazine article entitled “Coaching, Not Nagging, Motivates Teens,” written by a revered “organizing coach.”  Since nagging is my full-time job, I perused it while trying to guess who’s gonna get tossed off Redneck Island, which is my other full-time job.

The author reflected on the teenage stage with rosy nostalgia.  Studies actually show that ten out of ten moms agree raising teenagers feels like getting your eyes pecked out by a chicken.  Her kids may have been responsive to her “coaching,” or they were frightened to death of her, which in that case, gives me a new, profound respect for her.  

Her suggestions would never work in my house.  For example,

#1:  Clearly communicate to your teen what you expect.  

Oh wow.  Never thought of that.  If they don’t understand my expectations the first time I scream it, then they need to get the headphones out of their ears.

#2:  Teen won’t get up in the morning?  Put an annoying alarm clock as far from the bed as possible.   

Tried that.  He can’t even hear the fire alarm, but tinkling his car keys beside his ear and whispering, “Goodbye little Kia” usually works.  I’ll have to send that one to the “organizing coach.”

#3:  Place a laundry basket in the bedroom closet, cautioning your teen not to put damp items inside.  

For funsies, let’s assume my teen puts clothes in a hamper.  And I’m not sure anyone would even notice a mildew smell over the noxious soccer bag in the closet.  Or the hamster I suspect died in there.  At least he shouldn’t smell like mildew.

#4:  Keep bathroom time to a minimum.  Set a timer by the mirror.  

Um... really?  I would suggest doing a Facebook run into their bathroom at 7:15 every morning before school with a camera, shouting excitedly, “New profile pic!”   That could backfire though.  Their expertise in hi-tech treachery triumphs over age every time.

#5:  Help them clean out their clothes closet.  Make two piles: keep or donate.  

We need a lot more piles than that, like “friends’ clothes I am keeping,” “friends’ clothes I may give back after I try on,” “friends’ clothes I can’t wear around them because they don’t know I have them,” and “clothes I can only wear if parents leave the house before I do.”

#6:  Give encouragement by recognizing ways in which your teen is already organized.  

What???  Ok, let’s see.  

“Hon, I love the way you organize your argument when you’re trying to persuade me to buy you another shirt from Allotamoney & Fitch.”  Case in point:

Teen logic:  (Premise #1):  “You always give us kids money to buy
                                                    presents for each other at Christmas.”

                   (Premise #2):  “I remembered Sis didn’t get me anything
                                                for Christmas.”  

                              (Action):  “So I bought this cute shirt for myself 
                                                 with my own money."  

                      (Conclusion):  “You owe me $35.”

     

My kids effortlessly ignore my nagging, but I rather enjoy it.  It perpetuates my fantasy that I’m actually someone’s boss.  You know, I bet I’d be the first one to get voted off Redneck Island.  

Do I Still Have the Receipt? You're Kidding . . . Right?

Do I Still Have the Receipt?  You’re Kidding....Right?

Years ago while shopping, I noticed my 18-month-old was barefoot.  She hated shoes, and somewhere among the aisles she had shed her Barney sandals, bought at the same store a month before.

Granted, Velcro is the greatest invention of the 21st century—how else would one secure the fly of men’s swim trunks?  However, Velcro on kids’ footwear was the bane of my existence.  Easy on, easy off.  

We could’t find the sandals, and we were late meeting friends at the zoo.  So we hit the shoe department to buy something cheap.

I saw a pair of Barney sandals just like my daughter’s.  Same size.  They even had my dog’s teeth marks on the sole.  An employee must have put them back on the shelf, thinking they were new.  

I could’ve walked out with the shoes, but a blue-haired clerk was watching me like Lindsey Lohan in a jewelry store.  She resembled Maxine, the grumpy old lady on greeting cards.  Since she’d raised children before the miracle of hook-and-loop technology, she didn’t understand my frustration at a toddler unstrapping her Velcro shoes 83 times a day.  

Chuckling, I recounted the incident to Maxine.  Frowning, she asked me for the receipt.

“I’m pretty sure I lost it,” I said.

She assessed my baggy sweatpants and yesterday’s mascara and shot me a “that’s-what-they-all-say” look.  If I had a dime for every time I’ve seen that condescending look, I’d slap a For Sale sign on the kids, board a plane incognito, and relinquish my muscles to the capable hands of some Italian masseuse.

After I'd originally bought the shoes, I remembered the receipt falling out of my purse in the store’s bathroom.  My three-year-old got on her knees and sucked it up with her lips like a vacuum cleaner.  My expression of sheer horror didn’t scare her.  She’d seen that look on my face a million times when the grocery store was out of my favorite crullers.  She crammed the dirty ticket back in my purse. 

                                                          

During my conversation with Maxine, my preschoolers ran amok pointing at all the sales associates, like Donald Trump from The Apprentice, and yelling, “You’re fired!”  

Maxine, judging me mercilessly over her reading glasses, told me to take the shoes off my daughter and take my children outside where they belong. 

Really?  With that comment, Maxine was officially up in my bizness, seriously underestimating my “back-in-your-face” skills.  

“Oh, wait, I think I do have the receipt,” I said, gingerly pulling it out of my purse along with the hand sanitizer.  “My daughter sucked it up off the store’s bathroom floor.”  I added nonchalantly, “She says it has brown spots on it because she’d been eating from the Nutella jar that we’d just bought.  But I can’t be sure.” 

I pushed the receipt into her hand where it stuck like Velcro.  My crew and our Barney sandals swaggered away.

  

.

I thought I delivered a pretty clever payback, if I do say so myself.  I bet Donald Trump would love me on The Apprentice.

Is a Lack of Gray Matter That Hysterical?

Is a Lack of Gray Matter That Hysterical?

  My friend, Angela, has three kids and is continuously frazzled. Last spring, she dropped off her second-grader, Marcus, at his Catholic school for May Crowning, a religious ceremony dedicated to Mary. She dressed him in a suit and purchased the requisite bouquet of flowers to take to class.   

Angela’s memory is “over the hill,” but she remembered May Crowning, and she felt pretty darn “mother superior” about it.  She silently gloated, I have got it goin’ on! I’m sorry you other moms aren’t as organized as me. I’ve come a long way since all that Show and Tell business from September.  

The previous fall Angela forgot about Show and Tell so, of course, she gave Marcus an eyelash curler from her purse. A girl in his class used it and pulled out all her eyelashes because they stuck to the mascara caked on it. His teacher, Mrs. Uppington, who overblows everything like Stephen Spielberg, flew into an unnecessary panic. Angela thought, What’s the big deal? I mean, eyelashes grow back.

Then there was that incident on Career Day. Little Doogie Howser swiped a bottle of blue pills from his parents’ bedroom nightstand as a visual-aid for his presentation. 

The next day, he announced to his class, “Ladies and Gentlemen, this “scripshun” is for Vy-ag-rah.” 

Mrs. Uppington overplayed a case of trauma, and Angela’s husband can’t show his face at parent/teacher meetings anymore. 

After dropping Marcus at school, Angela enjoyed a latté to celebrate her alpha female dominance over the other loser moms. Shortly, Mrs. Uppington phoned.    

“Mrs. Peterson, are you aware that today is April 27th?”

“So??” she said. Here comes Spielberg.

“Well, I just wanted to inform you that you sent Marcus to school today dressed up and with flowers . . . ”

“Yeah??” Angela said, annoyed that her latté was getting cold. 

“And as a rule, Mrs. Peterson, May Crowning occurs in, ahem, MAY.”

A few hours later, Angela slinked through the lobby with Marcus’ school uniform, past the PTA Taliban moms who were at a school meeting and had heard about her memory malfunction. She also needed to check her fourth-grade daughter out of school for an appointment.

“Ha! I guess I thought they moved May Crowning to April,” Angela joked as she greeted the grinning moms. “It’s SO Friday! Ready for the weekend, ya know? Wow, what a hoot! Soooo, I’m mostly here to pick up Claire for an orthodontist appointment.” 

They laughed together a little longer, and Angela headed home. Great. I had to face Miss Uppity AND those Super Sally’s Gift Wrap groupies.  A few miles away, she worried she’d forgotten something. The orthodontist. She forgot to pick up Claire.

Angela slipped back into school and the PTA extremists were still in the lobby doubled over, laughing hysterically at her lack of gray matter.

I bet those Taliban moms experience their fair share of brain cramps. So they should watch out. Angela might devise a radical plan of her own and drop an undisclosed number of little blue pills into their husbands’ sweet tea glasses at the next school auction.  

When Age Sneaks Up

When Age Sneaks Up

I used to have a friend, Penelope, who had four kids and always seemed perfectly pulled together, like June Cleaver in size zero rhinestone-studded jeans and stilettos. She was typically the team mom, and she’d cook breakfast for the whole class on the first day of school. She also competed in triathlons and made charming scarecrows from milk jugs. I bet she didn’t have any moldy vegetables in her refrigerator either.

                                                           

     “Perfect Penny,” as I’d sneer in a nice way, consistently kept her composure and never threatened to run away like I did. She never yelled at her kids and always remembered to throw away the  Halloween pumpkins on her front porch before they caved in. That’s because she was much younger than me. In my thirties, I did it all, but lost my sanity and memory in the process. Back when I had a four-year-old, a two-year-old, and a newborn, I could’ve medaled in Olympic multitasking. I was Flo-Jo in baggy sweatpants running the race of my life every day. Except for the running part. 

I could put a toddler in time-out in the supermarket, estimate the cost of my groceries, soothe a sick baby, and decide which AP classes my two-year-old needed to take to get into Vanderbilt, all without forgetting when the dryer would finish so my clothes wouldn’t sit and wrinkle.  Now I can’t even contemplate about how my thighs rub together without overflowing my coffee cup. 

                                                           

I used to rock at reading maps as well, but age has stolen my geographic intuition.  Sometimes I rely on Sasha, our evil GPS home wrecker with the sexy voice. She lurks in my dashboard and leads me down dark roads that end with 500-foot drops. My husband says I just misunderstand Sasha. He’s enamored with her because on trips she doesn’t wake up and scream at him when he veers slightly onto the rumble strips fringing the interstate. Just the opposite. No matter what happens, Sasha always sounds like she’s leaning on a barstool in Mexico, exhaling a ribbon of smoke from a Marlboro Light. I’m sure she is much younger than me too.

Through the years I also lost any coolness I had. When I snap “self-takes” on my phone, my kids immediately tweet to their friends about how weird I am and how they’d go live with Amber if it wasn’t for the fact that I buy them stuff. I guess I am pretty cool at the mall—especially in my track suit when I do my early-morning power-walking.

My kids don’t realize that they are the ones who made me old. When they eventually move out of my house, I’ll exude my old vibrance. I’ll have hobbies and watch R-rated movies. I'll go on girls' trips and do the Macarena with my friends. I’ll be Flo-Jo again, making up for lost time. Except, of course, for the running part. 

I Might Like Prozac Barbie After All

I Might Like Prozac Barbie After All

I often shop at the upscale, Just Plucked Market in my suburb, but I stick out like Peg Bundy in Tiffany’s.  All the ladies wear tennis outfits or dark, rhinestone-studded jeans with stilettos.  I’m convinced everyone is looking at my hair and assuming I can’t afford to get my roots done.  I always feel a little nervous, like Aimee on My Big Redneck Vacation when all the rednecks visited London and discovered they were having spotted dick for dinner.  

Recently while shopping at Just Plucked, I noticed Prozac Barbie with her preschoolers, Babs and Ken Jr.  I saw her lips cart coming around the corner first, and she looked like Lisa Rinna/Daisy Duck perturbed with the children.  I didn’t know she was mad at them at first because she was botoxicated trying to stay calm.  But when I got closer I heard her hiss something to her son about the cookie he was eating and his expensive Polo shirt.

             

While standing at the meat counter, little K used his fingers to wipe chocolate from his mouth.  Aghast, at least I think, Barbie pulled baby wipes out of her Louis Vuitton and shoved them toward Kenny’s face.  By that time he’d already used the back of his hand, and wiped the fudginess on his shirt.  Barb was mortified.  She leaned down in her stilettos and went anti-bacterial on his cookie mess.

What’s strange about this scene?  First, I wouldn’t be organized enough to have baby wipes in my purse.  Second, my kid would’ve worn a Star Wars t-shirt instead of a Polo.  And third, I would’ve expected him to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand and rub it on his shirt, like a normal boy.  If not, he would’ve put his arms around me and wiped his mouth on my butt.

Speaking of my butt and lard, I saw something freakish in the dairy section at Just Plucked—containers of Duck Fat—to buy!  Of course, I keep my bacon grease in a coffee cup in the fridge like regular people, but what do you possibly do with Duck Fat?  Maybe deep-fry some Oreos.  I’d love to ask a manager what it’s used for, but I figure he’d be real snooty like the saleslady at Glamour Shots when I only bought one slutty picture from my photo session back in ’83.

One day I’d love to yell across the aisle to the smug Regional Director of Just Plucked Inc. 

“Could you tell me where ya’lls vie-enny sausages are?  Wooo, I sure do love them thangs.  That’s some good shit right there.  They’re better’n crap on a cracker.”  

That’s going on my bucket list.

I picked up a bag of organic Cheeto balls and waited for Prozac Barbie to herd her clan through the checkout.  I felt a tad sorry for her because her make-up was running down her face in the Memphis heat.  She must’ve moved here from the Hamptons or something.  Just as I walked out, she shoved her offspring into a clown-car sized Mercedes, melted into the driver’s seat, and took a cleansing deep breath.  

Then, as I watched PB’s life unfold in her little cocoon of a car, I realized we’re all alike.  

She gave her four-year-old his Nintendo and her two-year-old her sippy cup, and untucked a bottle of Chardonnay from the hidden compartment of her suburban mom-mobile, and didn’t even worry about a glass. 

I hear ya’ sister.  We have more in common than you know.