Premature Eulogies

A beloved member of our former church died this past week, and my mom went to his memorial service on Monday.  The parking lot and church were at capacity with people who loved him and wanted to share their memories of him.  His family members told stories that were a beautiful tribute to the caring, loving person he was. Thinking about his service, I realized that the real tragedy is that people have to wait until they're dead to hear about how much they mean to others and what memories are the strongest.  Considering that people should be honored and highlighted before they die, I'd like to tell you all little about my parents. Don't worry, though my parents likely to game the senior citizen discount at the movie theater, they aren't going anywhere for at least 30 years.  

To say the least, I have incredibly cool parents, and not in the "my parents bought us beer in high school" or the "my mom roams Georgetown in Juicy track suits " try-hard kind of way, but in that enduring, real way.  I've been in awe of my mother for as long as I can remember.  For example, back in the 80s, my parents were freaking fabulous. My mom looked straight out of Dallas or Dynasty with her wardrobe, jewels, and fur coat.  My dad was always whisking her off to fancy dinners and lovely evenings. I would sit at home with my babysitter Nancy, making her listen to my play-by-play recap of mom getting ready to go out, with all of her make up, clothes, jewelry, and tray of perfumes. My mom has a no-nonsense way of handling things, so not only was she glamorous, but she was strong and in control at all times too.

It took me longer to realize that my dad was cool.  All of my friends thought he was the best, but since he was my dad, I obviously thought he was embarrassing since kids rarely see the value of their own "funny" dad. He did things like cause an error on his car phone (yeah, car phone, it was the 80s) that made it go "wee ooh wee ooh" to turn on the pee siren when someone in the car had a pee emergency. He also brought home green bread and dyed my milk green on St. Patrick's Day because, you know, why not?

The truth is, I wish I could go back in time and appreciate my dad like I do now. My dear ol' dad is wild, creative, and a genius. He knows everyone in a 15 mile radius of their house--he's even been invited over for dinner by the guy working at his 7-11. He's manly enough to demolish an entire bathroom (never admitting it was a bad idea) and awesome enough to openly admit that his favorite color is purple.

After I went to college, my parents became reality show worthy with their antics.  Honestly, my family is nutty as all get out now. Since I left home, my mother flew off the back of the treadmill and got her foot stuck in the wall; my dad has made big-ticket purchases in the middle of the night while on Ambien; and my parents went exploring one night, only to drive their car halfway off of a cliff and have to call the police and a tow truck for help (they were fine, but the car almost went over with Dad in it)--and that is just a small sampling of what they've been up to.

Despite their recent tomfoolery, there's no two ways about it--I grew up privileged. My parents anticipated my needs and wants before I even knew what they could possibly be. Everything I have now and have had for all of these years is a direct result of my dad's hard work and my mom's saint-like patience. As a semi-adult, I now understand what effort they went to to make my life absolutely trouble-free and perfect. My parents will continue to be two of the most important people in my life and my best friends.

I Took Muscle Relaxers Before Writing This, So No Guarantees

Normally, I'm deliberate and put together in a way that borders on rigid obsession. I value being on time, prepared, and composed.  And that's all well and good when I'm not stressed or on horse-tranquilizer-grade muscle relaxers, or in the current situation, both of those.

Stress alone makes me do weird things, like wake up in the middle of the night and cold cock Eric with a pretty sweet right hook for something he did in my dream, or leave my car (a manual) without putting on the parking brake. But the combination of stress and muscle relaxers is pretty epic. Especially when my medicated sleep is interrupted and I get all out of whack. Eric tends to talk in his sleep, and while he usually tells me important things like how "Batman doesn't need to work out because he fights bad guys all day," sometimes it's just incoherent Shamu-like "woooo woooo woooooo"-ing that almost sounds like English. So, then I sit there half awake trying to figure out what he's saying until I shove him and he stops. My sleep pattern is then interrupted completely because I try to insert logic into the whole episode, and I end up waking up all the way.

This is all a shame because I have vivid, LSD-like dreams when I take my medicine and am allowed to sleep all night.  For example, I had a dream where I was riding to Six Flags in a limo with Snoop Dogg. We were braiding each others' hair and I was arguing that the explicit version of "Gin 'N Juice" is more poetic than the radio edit. Even if it was in my own imagination, that was one of the top ten nights of my life.

Last night, my beautiful muscle relaxer dreams were interrupted by a creeping, extreme heat. I woke up yelling, "OH MY GOD, ERIC. Why is it so hot in here?!" only to find that he had gone to sleep in the other room because I was acting out my dreams again. There also was an incessant beeping that I couldn't find the source of. Still in dream/waking hazy limbo, I made my way to Eric's office and shook his futon until he could wake up and find the beeping to make it stop and make it cooler. I was already a little tense worrying that I wouldn't get up in time to get to a super early morning customer meeting, but when we discovered the power (and my alarm clock) had gone out, I spent the rest of the night hot and worried that my cell phone clock I set after the outage wasn't on.

So extremely long story short, after a day full of odd behavior, forgetfulness, an outfit that barely worked, and hair that poked out in all directions, I hit my breaking point.  There I was tonight, driving to Wendy's barefoot, braless, and in sweats like some kind of DC Britney Spears to get a Frosty and giant Diet Coke for dinner when I decided that I'm not fit to be in public like this. Not just the immediate barefoot, braless "this," but in this overall state. My filters are completely gone, I look like a homeless person, and I'm rather aggressive. Clearly one needs to prioritize stress management, break the medication habit, and get it together...but my muscle relaxers...are kicking in...and I've stopped caring about being someone who...can be seen in public, fully dressed, without embarrassing my husband.

The Dumpster Scooter, or The Night My Dreams Came True

When Eric and I lived in an apartment, we had the most magical thing ever happen to us.  One of the reasons we got married was that we share the same hopes and dreams, one of those dreams being to own a Hoveround scooter.  We came home from dinner one evening and took a different way into the complex.  This was fortunate, because if we had gone the regular path, we wouldn't have seen the scooter someone left by the dumpster.  We both whispered, "Hoveround..." and practically abandoned the car to go see if our eyes were deceiving us. The scooter was actually not a genuine Hoveround, but rather a Zip'r Roo, which was a little disappointing.  E and I looked around to see if it was a joke, and then carried the scooter all the way across the parking lot and up the stairs to our 3rd floor apartment.

We circled the scooter in quiet awe, trying to decide what to wear when we tested it out.  We settled on knee socks, shorts, and (car) racing helmets.  Unfortunately, the battery was drained, but we found that we could buy an extra charger to get it all juiced up.  Before buying the charger, Eric made the stupid decision to call the leasing office to ask if anyone had reported the scooter missing, since we couldn't believe someone would actually throw it away when there were so many scooter adventures to be had.

It turns out that one of our handicapped neighbors had been tooling around in the scooter and had run out of power...right in front of the dumpster.  It's assumed in an apartment that anything left by the dumpster is fair game, if you're creepy enough to take things from the dumpster.  Which we are.  We worked through the ethical dilemma of "finders keepers" vs. "that guy is handicapped," and after much debate, decided to carry the scooter to his apartment and give it back.

I guess it was the right thing to do, but you only get one opportunity to find a dumpster scooter.  Upon further analysis, having scootered and lost was probably a karmic reaction to us filling the box from our enormous new TV with a 30-year-old crooked fake Christmas tree, sealing it up, putting it by the dumpster and writing "Free!!!" on it.

The good news in all of this is that we made the handicapped neighbor wait to get his scooter back until we had taken enough pictures to take our own trip to the Grand Canyon:

Why I Will Be a Terrible Mother

I'm approaching 30, and Eric and I are almost out of the newlywed grace period before people start to ask us when we're having children.  In fact, Big E is already speculating what the child may look like (the answer is very blond, pale, athletic, and blind).  Further, Eric is giving me the creeps because he's recently started smiling at other people's children and calling them cute.  Here are some things I'd like to remind him of:

• I consider a 100 calorie bag of popcorn and grapes a balanced dinner
• I name my [animal] children ridiculous things (e.g., Snippy, Googles, Googles Jr., Nugget, Tater, Tot, Niblet, Pee Wee, Jean-Bunnay)
• Kidz Bop gives me a visceral reaction
  
• I'm extremely susceptible to kid germs
• I'm a social scientist and believe it is my disciplinary and academic right to have both a control and a test child to run social experiments on, like teaching them the alphabet backwards or denying the existence of certain colors
• I prefer nighttime muscle relaxers to responsibility
• I'm the worst cutter ever
• My daddy still fixes my problems
• I allowed a hamster to fall down the stairs and get head trauma
• I kill plants and just about anything else in my care
• I've run out of gas on the highway twice
• I believe the difference between a playpen and a dog crate is purely semantic
• I have a history of attacking our house with my car and laughing afterward

Exhibit A:

Is there any hope for me?

Glitter, Glue, and Shame

I'm a huge champion of (non-court-appointed) community service, and especially service to those who will benefit from my time spent with them. Let's take a moment to reflect on how incredibly elitist that is. Okay, that's enough. So, considering the volunteer shifts I had taken over the last year included: attending and "working" at an American Girl doll fashion show in Potomac, smiling and eating mini cupcakes at the National Capital Area Cake Show in Fairfax, and collecting question cards for speakers at the Women's Conference in Tysons, I figured it was time to roll up my sleeves and go a little deeper into the volunteering wild.

I volunteered for a shift at the Capital Area Food Bank, which is in Northeast DC. While there, I  witnessed someone getting arrested for stealing a car (I pretended to get something out of my trunk for 10 minutes so I could observe this) and saw the immediate aftermath of either a shooting or stabbing at a gas station on the way home. After that experience, though it was rewarding to do actual service, I decided maybe I should do something less pearl-clutchingly frightening.

That all led me to an opportunity to help out at a local group's Christmas party for mentally handicapped adults. I started the evening thinking how delighted these people will be that I'm sharing my crafting talents with them and that I'm taking time to be there after work. I'm pretty self-centered, you know. While helping a small group make ornaments, one woman asked me to draw an angel. I finished, thinking it looked pretty good. She looked at it, then at me with a horrified look she shouted, "That's a terrible angel!" It totally stung, but I brushed the loud comment off and drew angels until she was able to choose the least terrible. She said she wasn't allowed to use scissors, so she wanted me to cut the backing for the angel ornament. Apparently I failed at that too because she turned to me, pointed accusingly, and bellowed, "You're the worst cutter EVER!"

So there I was, covered in glitter, glue, and shame, having been told what's up by someone who isn't allowed to use scissors. But I did make a terrible angel and I am the worst cutter ever, so can I really blame her for a little honesty? As I attempted to get glitter out of my hair and ears later that night, I realized that social interactions--whether they are with friends or with those you are attempting to serve--are really all about give, take, and mutual respect and love. Perhaps the idea of service is far less one-sided than I had previously assumed, and the real gift is in being able to have those interactions...no matter how humbling they may be.

Some Girls Wanted to be Ballerinas...

When I was little, my career aspirations were simple: I wanted to work at T.J. Maxx. No one is really sure where I got that, since my family was not one of T.J. Maxxing, but I was adamant about it. I mostly wanted to use a scanner, so my mom tried to twist that around into a more illustrious career. We compromised at me wanting to work at Hallmark, because then I could use a scanner and wrap things in tissue paper. I spent day after day in my room providing excellent customer service to Teddy, going "boop" as I scanned each of his items, and wrapping all of his purchases in tissue paper. He, of course, then came back to return the items because I had a limited number of tissue-paper-worthy possessions to play with. He was a pretty indecisive bear, so the process repeated itself over and over until Thundercats came on.

Everything was so simple when we were little and made life decisions based on what was fun. My first job out of college was decidedly not fun, and it didn't involve a scanner at all. I chose that job because it was a prestigious place to work and it had a sensible, clear, (eventually) lucrative career path associated with it. Each day I sat in terrible traffic, praying that the office building would implode before I got there so I would be spared a day at that job.

Finally, I listened to what remained of happy, little girl Kelly who just wanted to do something fun, and I found a job that is a joy to go to each day. Remembering that it is possible to make big life decisions based on what is fun changed my career path and attitude entirely. You know what? I even get to us a scanner every so often.

Letters from My Exes

Once upon a time, I was single and I only dated men who said ridiculous things. Being sentimental, I wrote some of these things down in case I ever got too big for my proverbial britches.

“I thought you were the one, but you’re not.”
“I was on the beach, talking to God, and He told me that you’re not good enough for me.”
“You’re a goddess, and I want to shield you in my embrace.”
“I hate you, but, on the other hand, you’re a cheerleader. I’m drunk.”
“If you don't hate me too much, I’d like to see you. I'm not going to bring my gun.”
“Did you just use me to help you move? I have feelings, bitch.”
“I know you said to stay away forever, but a call from you once in the last few days would have been nice.”
“I’m taking this girl to her semi-formal, so, rain check on your birthday?”
“Oh, you wanted to go to a bar on your 21st birthday?”
“By the way, I hope you had a wonderful 24th birthday. Sorry I stood you up.”
“Maybe I’d like to be the girl in the relationship sometimes.”
“[James] and I are moving to San Francisco...to, you know, be together.”
“The whole deal with the pregnant girlfriend I never knew about was all made up.”
“You’re a gem of an individual.”
“I can’t believe you’re dumping me while I’m on the toilet.”
“You grind my hopes into dust.”