Fiddler on the Spoof

As a followup to my last post, I'm adding some more Fiddler on the Roof material here that I had forgotten I had.

For those of you who have seen the film or the play, or have ever been in a theatrical production or have been forced to attend your favorite drama geek's plays, then you will truly get a kick out of the following stories. Plus, you guys responded so well to the story about my dad that I figured it would be okay to post another family member's antics.

[DISCLAIMER: If you snort coffee out of your nose, wet your pants, accidentally swallow your chewing gum or wake the baby from laughing, I warned you right now... this is some seriously funny stuff.]

***

My sister is one of those people who knew what her true calling was from about the age of five years old. She always has been, and still remains, a very talented actress (and I’m not just saying this because she’s my sister. I have actually spied on perfect strangers in the ladies’ room and on the mezzanine at intermission during her performances and have heard other people say very nice things about her.) She even gets paid to act, so I guess that fact says something in itself.

When my sister got the part of Chava in her repertory company’s production of Fiddler on the Roof, it was the absolute best thing that could have happened to my grandmother all year. She had won a coveted role in the most Jewish of all stage productions; my sister was representing Her People. My grandma made telephone calls to people she hadn’t spoken to in years just to let them know about our family’s rising star. I don’t know if this pre-show hooplah was as bad as saying “Macbeth” backstage, but this production turned out to be one of my sister’s more challenging performances.

What you are about to read is a running account of Fiddler’s preview for a regional professional repertory company, performed during a summer season in an outdoor theatre. Forget rehearsals, these are real shows, with real audiences. My sister e-mailed these tell-alls to me after each fateful night.

***

“Fiddler on the Spoof is what last night's performance should have been called because it was actually more of a take-off on the original Broadway hit, as opposed to a true representation. If Dad had been there, we would be planning his funeral now. He would have laughed so hard that we would not have been able to resuscitate him. I told you that the only thing that didn't happen was the two-story set crashing down on our heads and I meant it.

First, as I'm parking my car, I see my friend Kent pull up. Kent's blond, as is most of this Hitler Youth cast, and they all have to dye their hair brown for the show. Kent dyed his yesterday, and I almost lost all of my marbles when I saw him. He had screaming fuschia hair. He babbled, ‘The color was called Chestnut—I mean, I read the box! I have no idea what happened. It'll wash out in a week.’ It was actually more red than purple really, and so we all kept rubbing his head last night and speaking in Irish accents. We called him Lucky the Leprechaun, and when he walked by I'd whisper, ‘Green clovers, blue diamonds...’ you know, like from the cereal commercial?

And Kent’s hair certainly didn't match his fake beard, which all of the men have to glue on, except that there was only one bottle of glue and someone spilled it all over the table, so they had to scrape out what was left and use it, but there wasn't enough left. So as soon as everyone opened their mouths to sing the first note of "Tradition," all the beards and mustaches came loose and hung off of their faces.

During the beard fiasco, I tripped over the set (a new piece had been added since yesterday), and fell against the back wall, taking down the two little girls on either side of me. After the song was over, I waited for my entrance into the next scene where I have to come in from the barn, through the front door, and kiss the mezzuzah, ("She's in the barn milking" is my cue line), and when my line came up, I walked in from the bedroom on accident (another new set change), realized that I was already in the house, said "OH!", backed up and walked around the back of the set, and then came through the front door.

Um, can anyone say professional actor?

Can anyone say out-of-work actor?

But Lucky reassured me and reminded me that it was just a preview, and I felt better.

But then we came out in our next scene to sing “Matchmaker” where we dance with these mops, and it was really wet from the fog, and the set people had finished painting the stage really late the night before, so the floor was kind of tacky and our mops stuck to the floor and so we spent the entire song trying to get them unstuck. We would tug and pull on the mops and pretend like it was part of the dance, and a couple of times we pulled too hard, and the mops slipped out of our hands and crashed to the floor. We would try to grab them before they crashed to the floor and killed the floor mikes and that didn't look very much like a dance.

In the next scene, my sister Hodel had a spider on her face. I tried to tell her and brushed my own face, but she didn't get it. So in the part of the scene where we're supposed to be quietly talking, I whispered to her, "There's a spider on your face." She totally screamed and started smacking her own face, trying to get it off. ("This is Tevye's mentally challenged daughter—even she gets married.")

Then there was the Sabbath, when we light the candles and sing the Sabbath song and it's very beautiful. Except for last night. After Hodel freaked about the spider, we all gathered around Golde who had the candles and the "Strike Anywhere" matches. "Strike anywhere" except for when it's not foggy and wet, I should say. She went through about fifteen matches, all of which broke, blew out, or never lit, and the audience roared. What a sacred moment.

Another tragedy was the bottle dance in the wedding scene. The costumer had set a foundation of hot glue on the top of the men's hats, and right before they were to go on, she hit their bottles with hot glue so that when they went on stage with the bottle and placed it on their head, the bottle would stick but it would look like they were really doing to dance (you see, the dance hasn't gone particularly well so far.) Anyway, the glue dried before the dancers could stick the bottle to the glue base on the hat, and because there was a big chunk of glue there now instead of a flat surface, the bottles wouldn’t stay on at all, and the dance ended up being about catching falling bottles. The audience laughed a lot, and so did we. The audience was very forgiving about a lot of things last night.

But soon, we'll be a little more polished, I hope. The set isn't finished and neither are the costumes. Rabbi's son, Mendel, wore his prayer shawl last night with jeans and hiking boots.”

***

“Opening night was a great show, and so was Sunday, although the energy level was a bit lower, it was still really strong. Friday, however, is Fiddler on the Spoof: the Sequel. It's entitled Fiddler Off the Roof, or Dead Fiddler.

Yes, that's right, folks, our littler fiddler almost bit it hard! Teetering on the edge of our two-story set, we thought for sure it was the end of her, but she recovered her balance and went right on fiddling. That would definitely have been a very tragic, and very abrupt, ending to Fiddler on the Roof.

The play also could have been entitled Dead Sister Hodel. As we were walking onstage for the Sabbath prayer, Hodel was in front of me, walking forward with her head turned back and talking to me ("la la la") and then SLAM! Walked right into the huge wooden pillar that holds up the second story of our set. She wavered a bit, and then I came from behind and led her over to the Sabbath table. Laughing hysterically, of course, but mutely also. You know, just silently convulsing?

So, after the scene, we are backstage, and everyone is really having a good laugh riot back there at poor Hodel's expense, and she's laughing too, now that she's got her vision back. She starts to focus for the next scene by touching up her makeup. I said to her, "Holly, that's a really pretty lipstick. What color is that?" and she says to me, "Why thank you. It's called ‘Blue Shed’."

"Blue Shed!" I say. "What a weird name for a lipstick! Who makes it?"

"L’Oreal," she says. "It is kind of a strange name... Blue Shed." So then Victoria grabs the lipstick and looks at the sticker on the bottom, and says "Um, you mean Blushed?! It's called Blushed, for Chrissakes." Uproarious laughter once again.

I get up from my chair and start walking away, turn back to Holly and the others and say, "Why thank you. It's called Blue Shed" and ram myself into the wooden pillar in our dressing room and then we were off!! There was no stopping the torrent of torment! Holly took it well, but we were all in such a silly mood that anything would start us laughing hysterically. You know how sometimes you get in those moods? When Tzeitel was told that she had to marry the butcher Lazar Wolf, we laughed. When the pogrom ruined the wedding, we laughed. When Hodel went to Siberia, we laughed. When Dad excommunicated me, we laughed. And when Hodel crossed the stage, slipped on a wet patch, slid the rest of the stage, landed on her bum and kicked a tin milk bucket out into the audience, boy, did we laugh.

I can't remember much else happening but that was definitely enough for me. The Fiddler’s mustache was hanging by a hair, literally a hair, during the whole wedding scene.”

***

“Fiddler on the Goof was definitely Sunday's rendition of the Broadway original. The first two numbers were sung and danced to without any music at all. Well, the music was playing, but the monitors weren't hooked up correctly, so the microphones amplifying our voices were working but the monitors that amplified the music of the orchestra weren’t. So everyone danced around, thudding loud feet on the floor, and it looked absolutely ridiculous. The cast could hear a slight whisper of music when we were very quiet, but the audience couldn't at all. At one point, as we were singing and dancing around to nothing, we got off beat on the song, and everyone stopped singing and dancing and just looked at each other. Some tried to go on, some remained silent and frozen. We all looked at each other, and everyone got real quiet and listened to the music. When we got a listen to where we were in the song, we all finished off the number and ran for our lives.

I was freakin' after this, saying how I was not going to go out there and sing "Matchmaker" a capella because it's hard enough for me to even sing with the music. I might sing all the wrong notes and then I would have a nervous breakdown in front of all those people who paid money to take their minds off of having their own nervous breakdowns. As we sisters came out to sing our number, it was tense. You could cut the air with a knife. Our lines came out reading "dread, dread, dread," and as the song began, I bit my lip and told myself this was a sign that I should not be doing musical theatre! However, the moment I opened my mouth to sing my first solo note, there was a pop, and the music swelled through theatre, loud and delicious, more beautiful than the singing of angels, or those chicks from the Iliad, or the Odyssey, or whatever. You know, the sirens.

The little girl who plays my sister was being so loud and obnoxious before the show was to start that the props manager tied her to the prop table for a half an hour. She cried, but it was very funny and we laughed behind her back.

So, back to the show. At intermission, someone brought the actors a huge fruit platter to enjoy, and there was a swarm of people around it. One of the really big, fat, disgusting men in our show volunteered that there was also the Sabbath Challah to eat, the prop loaf of bread that we use in our show. I saw that he had already almost gone through half of the bread, and I said, "That's LACQUERED! You can't eat that—it's toxic...poison...bad." He looked at it, his mouth open, drool falling from the left corner of his mouth, shrugged and said "tastes OK to me" and finished off the chunk in his hand. Unfortunately, nothing bad happened to him, but he did seem to cough a few times, teeter when he walked, and make a few gagging retching noises. He does that anyway, but in this particular instance, it sent all of us who knew he ate the decoupage loaf into absolute hysterics.

The Fiddler's mustache fell off yet again, only this time it did not land in the hole in her violin. Too bad.

I've got to do a bit of work now, but there's another show tonight and I'm sure it was be chock full of humiliating things for me to entertain you with tomorrow.”

***

"Fiddler on the Doof: Well, unfortunately for my readers, the show doesn't stink like it used to. Actually, it only stinks in short spurts and then it goes back to being mediocre. Last night, however, it was both a full moon and the beginning of mating season for the dogs in the neighborhood of the outdoor Forest theatre. We actually had to stop at one point and wait for the dogs to finish. Not only could we not be heard above that racket, but we were certainly not the focus of the audience's attention either. I'd be pissed if I spent 15 bucks to see a play, and the only thing I heard were a bunch of dogs makin' it on the side of the theatre. Anyway, this happened three times. It was really like a part of the show after the third time, and we tried to get the canines to come and take a bow with us at curtain call, but they were shy.

During the wedding scene, this huge white moth (let's call it a bat for descriptive purposes) kept swooping down onto the stage and up into the lights and causing a general distraction (not like the dogs weren't bad enough). Well, at one point, the moth dive-bombed Tzeitel, the bride. The moth fell to the floor, staggered a bit, and then flew up her dress. I should have truly just left the stage at this point, but I persevered. As she started to shift and wiggle, I stared straight ahead and thought of dead puppies.

Then, as Tevye started to sing his solo in “Sunrise, Sunset,” I noticed him get really stiff and tense. Now, let me preface this by telling you that before the show, when Tevye was putting on his makeup we heard him say "Oh WOW!" and he came out to tell us what an amazingly huge spider there was in his dressing room. We could really call it a bat, too, except it doesn't fly, so we'll just call it a cat for descriptive purposes. Anyway, he held tours and took admission, and we all filed in one-by-one to see this monstrous “cat.” It was on the wall, right next to the black robe he wears in the wedding scene (the plot becomes clear now, yes?) So back to the song... Tevye was singing, he later recalled to us, when he felt a tremendous bead of sweat roll down the back of his neck and into his shirt. He thought, "Wow, I'm really sweating."

"But then," he said, "the sweat started to go back up my neck and I thought sweat rolls down, not up!!!" He pondered this freak of nature for a moment and then fear just slapped him in the face. "Oh my God! It's that nasty spider! I'm going to die!" He continued with his song, but truly freaked out and stripped down at intermission. What a professional.

In spite of the hopes and dreams of the entire cast, the lecherous twisted man who ate the lacquered Challah bread did not die. He didn't even get sick. However, he did give such a terrible performance last night he didn't stay for curtain call, which is the most wonderful thing that's ever happened to me because it was the one night where I didn't have to hear the sound of his zipper as we all undress after the show. I didn't have to try to stop myself from picturing him standing in his nasty underwear behind me and feeling the tickle of his crusty leg hair as he got as close to me as possible while he was changing. It was a banner evening.

Okay, there's the brief (speaking of underwear) and now I've got to go!”

***

You don't know how much money I would have paid to see these shows, but even laughing about it here, years later, is almost as good as being there. I hope you enjoyed these too.

Right now my baby sister is a mommy with two little babies of her own (Little Curly Girl and Princess Chubness) but perhaps when they get a little older, someone in that house will make it back onto the stage (LCG is looking promising) and then I'll have more theatre stories to share with you.

Tagalicious Redux

Ahhh, the Getting to Know You meme. (Now I have that song playing in my head.)
I've been tagged by Mari at maybeinutah for that meme where you wonder "how much do I divulge without alternately boring or scaring people?"

I think last time I did it, I played it safe. Colored inside the lines.

Now I'm going to blow this meme out of the water. I know you guys can take it.

***

But, like how the accounting and consulting firm Price Waterhouse must explain their practices before the Academy Awards, I must first list the rules of this meme:

1. Link to the person who tagged you. (See, I've done it twice, just to be safe.)
2. Post the rules on your blog. (Here they are.)
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let each person know they've been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

And with that, here are six random things about me that have nothing to do with the other seven random things I gave you last time. I hope these six things are more randomer and more interesting. If not, you can also read the old list and decide. Then you will have a total of 13 Random Things about me for general educational purposes.

***

1. There are two times in my life when I have won a dollar. One time was when I won the "Bone Bee" in physiology class in 11th grade. It was like a spelling bee, except for that Mr. Church held up pieces of a skeleton and then you had to say what bone it was. So I knew more bones than anyone else in my class, and won a silver dollar. My dad still calls me Bone Girl. (But you know all about my dad now, don't you.)

The other time I won a dollar was when some kids on the block dared me to write the F-word in colored chalk on our driveway. Which I did in big, bold letters. And then immediately afterwards, my dad came home from work and drove right over my word. I got in trouble and had to give the dollar back. (In case you were wondering, this wasn't when I was in the 1th grade.)

2. I have two degrees. Actually one is a degree and one is a piece of paper-- you decide which one is which. One is a Bachelor of Sciences in Industrial Technology. The other one is from beauty school.

I always have to explain the Industrial Technology degree because no one's ever heard of that area of study. I tell people it's like an engineering degree for people who couldn't get into engineering school, or hate math, or both.

I don't have to explain the beauty school stint, except to explain why I went there after I got my four-year degree. And then have to listen to people sing "Beauty School Dropout," from Grease.
I just want you to know that I graduated at the top of my class in BOTH areas of study.

I can tell you about the crystalline structures of certain metals OR do your eyebrows to movie star perfection, depending on my mood.

3. I have only accepted a ride with a total stranger once in my life. But it was in Paris, so to me that doesn't count as dangerous or stupid. Also, he had a Mercedes convertible. (To be fair, so you don't think I'm totally shallow, I accepted the ride before I knew what kind of car he had.)

4. Things that annoy me, in no particular order, are: sappy movies (generally chick flicks but anything that hits you over the head to make you cry or laugh), Great Lash mascara (the biggest beauty marketing fraud foisted upon the mascara buying populace), Julie Andrews (I'm sure she's a very nice lady but I can't stand her films), people who can't write an intelligent sentence but have more money than God, and there's probably more here but this is all I can come up with right now without sounding angry or scary.

5. I read one book at least once a year and have been reading it ever since I was nine years old: A Wrinkle in Time. I am so sad I never met Madeleine L'Engle. I grew up to read her other books, her wonderful journals-- The Crosswicks Journals especially, but A Wrinkle in Time is a book that probably shaped my young personality and imagination more than any other.

6. I am pathologically on time and avoid being late to any event or occasion, not just because I want to get a good seat (if necessary), but also to avoid any chance of an embarassing situation or being rude. However I habitually pay my bills late and never seem to be able to send out a present before an occasion. I say this because I still have Christmas presents sitting here that need to go out. Luckily the people who are receiving these gifts still love me.

And here is a bonus Random Thing: 7. I was once dragged by a horse by my right ankle. Let's just say that the horse and I are no longer on speaking terms.

And with that, I have filled your coffers with Random Things and now pass the torch to Char, mrs. sarah ott, NamasteNancy, Heartbreak Tango, Cynthia/Oasis Writing Link, and Blissfully Unaware Lounge Singer.

Those of you I have not tagged, do not despair. It was either because 1. I think you might have been meme'd out already, or 2. you might be shy. However, if I'm off base on either one of these suppositions, by all means consider yourself tagged and do play along. Just be sure to let me know.

Now I am off to consider breakfast. xoxo

My Dad Is SO Not Joe the Plumber

Some of you guys have really been so kind and complimentary lately about my writing. Thank you! And I did write some comments back about writing about what you know and writing from the heart and writing often because the more you write, the better you get...

And all that's true and I totally believe it. But the real deal about the history of my writing efforts became clearer to me tonight when I called my parents to say a quick hello. They were both hysterical on the phone and had a hard time talking to me.

They were laughing.

They had found a box of old papers, cartoons and photographs of my sister and me. Apparently, the old papers and cartoons were works that I had created, basically skewering one family member or another. So the truth about my love of writing really stems from me making fun of my family, and I must have done it so well that some pieces are pretty damn timeless, at least as far as my mom and dad are concerned.

What I learned from re-reading the story below explains why: 1. I truly appreciate a guy who knows his way around a toolbox, 2. where I learned to swear like a sailor, and 3. that my parents are totally cool--especially my dad-- in that they will let me go all David Sedaris on them publicly and tell humiliating stories about our family when I feel like it. (Tonight I told my dad that this family tale would make him famous and he was all for it.)

I wrote this little story when I was either a freshman or sophomore in college. I have only edited it a tiny bit to protect one innocent (my sister, and also because you won't be able to pronounce her name). I probably shouldn't call this a story because it's all true, every last word of it. You can even call my mom or dad to check... if they've stopped laughing.

ps.: Neither one of these guys are my dad.

***

Water Music

I believe that everyone has an area of expertise, a subject or hobby in which they excel above the average Joe. And then there are the instances where it’s just better to call in a professional. Take plumbing, for example. If our suburban ranch-style house could talk, I’m sure it would have pleaded mercy with my father on many occasions. My mother tried to intercede on the house’s behalf, but my father was always steadfast in his assessment of the home repair job to be done. “We don’t need to hire anyone. I can fix it myself.”

I grew up in a house where you had to explain the variety of toilet handle positions to newly arrived guests, lest they become embroiled in an embarrassing bathroom predicament by trying to flush the toilet by pressing the handle down (a situation normal to most homes) instead of the more exotic upward flush movement common only to toilets in our house. Our interest in our guests’ bathroom habits probably seemed strange and out of place at first, but I’m sure they were grateful for the advance information once they were on their own in the lavatory.

Although we didn’t live anywhere near a bayou, our house’s windows steamed every winter from the small lake that accumulated under the floors with each rain. My sister and I whiled away the evening hours drawing amusing faces, alphabets, and tic-tac-toe games in the condensation on the bay window in the living room. We didn’t need to draw the drapes in the winter at our house; our family was cleverly concealed by the inner fog that bloomed from beneath our floorboards.

A slight downside to the underground lake was that the moisture warped our front doors, making them very hard to close, and each year was a little worse than the previous one. It got to the point where it was easier to let guests in through the garage rather than slam the door with the force required to propel a cannonball, and that the slam made almost the same noise as that aforementioned cannonball. The booming crashes (it always took several tries before the door stayed shut) became so horribly embarassing one year that my father ended up tying the door handles together (from the inside, of course) with a strong piece of rope. At first, I had delusions of knife-wielding attackers sawing their way into our domicile through the one-inch gap between the doors, but as the weeks passed, I realized the attackers probably felt sorry for us and I slept much more soundly.

One morning I awakened to the sound of a very long, very loud shower being taken in the bathroom next to my room. Which was kind of strange in that no one ever took a shower in that particular bathroom (it had nothing to do with plumbing anomalies in this instance). The water was absolutely pelting whoever it was hitting, and after a moment, I heard other noises besides the water: someone running, and muffled voices with an hysterical edge. Someone was crying. I should have stayed in bed, but then I would have missed the only geyser I know of in our neighborhood.

I stood in the doorway of the bathroom, and watched in gap-jawed amazement as an eruption of hot, steamy water from one of the sinks was smacking the ceiling with surprising intensity. My sister was perched on top of the counter, trying to stem the geyser with a pile of sodden towels. Her hair was plastered around her face in clumps and her eye makeup looked like Tammy Faye Baker’s Great Lash mascara on a particularly tearful day. My sister’s school outfit clung to her teenage body like Saran Wrap. She was crying. “Dad, I’m going to be late. They [the school administrators] are going to send me to Broadway.” (An explanation: My sister suffers from C.T.S., otherwise known as Chronic Tardiness Syndrome. Because of her condition, she was always on the verge of being sent to our high school’s version of a correctional facility. The mere mention of Broadway struck terror into the hearts and minds of kids and parents alike; therefore, my sister got a ride to school from my father every morning. This morning, however, she was definitely going to miss first period.)

Before I could comprehend exactly what was happening, an ominous thud crashed behind me. I whirled around to see my father, having just run in from the garage, wearing soggy flannel pajama pants so heavy with water that he was in grave danger of exposing his private parts to his children. His sopping rust-colored suede booties had left bright footprints on the beige carpet in the hallway, and his glasses were fogged up like pieces of Lalique glass. His expression was tragically frantic. He was holding a hammer.

I got out of his way.

My father dashed under the sink with the hammer, striking the frozen knobs under the porcelain bowl in an attempt to shut off the source of our newest attraction. The knobs didn’t budge. (We now know that you’re supposed to turn those knobs once in a while to keep them from freezing up.) My mother stood in the door to her bedroom, mirroring my expression on her face. She knew how to handle certain people (namely my father) in crisis situations. In the most restrained voice she could muster, Mom asked, “Don’t you think we should call a plumber? I bet Frank knows what to do.”

The fury from under the sink was palpable. “We don’t need a plumber!” Dad raged. (If this wasn’t an instance for a professional, then I am at a loss to ever think when a more appropriate time would be.) “These goddamn knobs are frozen! Son of a bitch!” With lightning speed, my father dashed back down the hall to the garage. My mother made a run for the phone, and called Frank the plumber anyway. My sister, frightened that she would never be allowed to leave her scalding perch, looked at me with enormous eyes. I went back to my room and shut the door, where I immediately burst into silent convulsive laughter (any giggle from me at that moment might have been my last). When I felt I could return to the scene, I put on my straightest face and reopened the door.

Dad had run back from the garage and into the fray. “Where’s my fucking hammer?!” he demanded of the gods. “Where is it?! Goddamn it!” My mother replied evenly, but with a tinge of iciness, “Sid, the hammer is in your hand.” Wild-eyed, my father looked confusedly at the hand tool he was clutching so tightly. His crazed glare softened and he seemed to understand English once again. My mother quietly repeated the instructions she had received over the phone, and like a somnambulist, my father glided into the garage, turning off the hot water heater as he was told. The geyser quickly stopped. The house was very silent, except for the sound of water dripping from the lip of the sink onto the three inches of standing water on the floor. My mother opened one of the bathroom drawers. My father’s watch, wallet, and other odds and ends were suspended in the miniature pool like vegetables in aspic. She closed the drawer again without comment.

My father reappeared from the kitchen holding a turkey baster. With that same sleepwalking gait, he moved silently into the bathroom and sat on the floor-cum-wading pool, mindfully sucking water into the turkey baster and squirting it into the bathtub. This was the scariest thing we had yet seen this morning; it appeared that his mind had completely snapped. My sister, my mother, and I looked at each other with furtive glances. My mother spoke again, with compassion, but also as if she was approaching a mad dog. “Sid, why don’t you get dressed for work? Your youngest daughter has to get to school. Don’t worry about the water; Julie and I will take care of it.”

He looked up at her like a three-year old who had been given a cookie. “Okay,” he said placidly. He dressed, and took my damp-haired, re-outfitted sister to school. After a few minutes, the shock wore off, and doubled over in laughter, my mother and I got down to the business of disaster recovery, minus the turkey baster.

***

I think this story might also explain where I got my sense of humor.

Now don't forget to turn those knobs under the sink! It's very important! Otherwise your children might write embarrassing stories about you someday and then put them on the internet for their own amusement.

A Question for All You Moms Out There

Honestly, how long do you have to have a fever before you call the cops? Raise the alarum? Punch someone?

It's 2am (well, you could have figured that out for yourself, I guess) and my fever came back again and woke me up. That is so. freaking. rude.

WTF?!!

So not happy about this at all. But I have decided this is a swear-free zone on tangobaby today so I'll leave the cussing out.

It's a good thing I haven't read The Stand in a long time or I'd be totally paranoid right now.

I'm in such a bad mood. Just ignore me.

***

ps. The only thing that is making me smile right now is reading this post on mackin ink. Karey m., kiss those girls for me.

pss. Oh, there is another thing that made me smile and that was remembering when my dad took his temperature with the thermometer that my mom used to stick in our cat's derrière when she got sick. But that's my dad. He just does things like that.

***

UPDATE, 2:54am: This is actually a very good time of the day for catching up on your blog reading. And eating Ben & Jerry's New York Super Fudge Chunk, which I find to be a fantastic fever reducer, and even if it's not, I feel cooler.

But we are almost out of this ice cream medicine. Must send The Boy out to restock when he wakes up. I think I will mix it up this time and have him throw in a pint of Cherry Garcia.

Finally, a photo I did not take: february 4. [fever in the morning, fever all through the night.]
Originally uploaded by misscaro

My Dad Took My Car

Really, he did.

***

No, I am not grounded.

***

The car has become... an article of dress without which we feel uncertain, unclad, and incomplete. ~ Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964

I've been mentally working towards this state of car-less-ness for a while now. It occurred to me several months ago that I don't really need a car as long as I'm living and working where I am. But when it came time to act on this realization, I kept chickening out. The idea of not having a car reminds me of those bad dreams you had about high school when you showed up for class without any pants on. The idea of not having a car was scarier than the actuality of not having a car, especially since I've had a car pretty much from the day I learned to drive.

I was afraid I would be rendered helpless.

Car sickness is the feeling you get when the monthly payment is due. ~ Author Unknown

I've been paying hundreds of dollars every month for my beloved Passat to sit in the garage. Ever since I moved to the city, I've been getting around and enjoying San Francisco primarily via Muni, taxis and walking. This is quite a change from my former life, where no car = no life. But spending all that money for the possibility of needing a car, it just didn't make sense no matter how my imaginary fears tried to convince me how real they were. Plus, there are car share programs I can participate in, as well as renting a car, if I get in a bind and really need some wheels (for what, I cannot imagine now). And even then, it will still be more economical than more years of car payments.

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My dad needs a reliable car and I don't. So we're helping each other out and I think it's really the best of both worlds.

Saturday was the big day. I took a deep breath, handed over both sets of car keys to my dad (with a tiny lump in my throat, I will admit) and The Boy and I took CalTrain and Muni back home. And you know what, it was fun. The pressure was off. We read, had some snacks, looked out the windows.

I came back down to San Jose on Monday, to see my grandma who is in the hospital. Same drill: Muni to CalTrain and same thing back home. I really felt something I can only call relief at not having to drive. It was an odd and pleasant feeling, and certainly not one I had expected to have.
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Something about the act of travel made me slow down and enjoy the journey itself. I think I am so driven all of the time. I am always in the driver's seat. It took a long train ride to make me realize that it's okay to just go along for the ride, too. You don't always have to be the one in charge...and you'll still get where you need to go.