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My Profile
Gift from Hil Part 2 - 2014-12-30
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6:24 p.m. - 2012-10-10
Am I glad to see the sun? Oh for certain, but I still have the cheese to be a little honked because for days it's been drizzling and chilly and this morning I decided to make a big pot of chili and made a special trip to Shoprite in the %$#@ rain to buy all the stuff and called Mick and bragged on the chili and what a good wifey I am to be cooking such a satisfying yummy dinner for my sweet man who'd been out in the cold damp almost all day and how his chilled bones will be warmed with yet another perfect love token from my stove and then after saut�ing the beef and putting all the beans and spices and carefully minced chili peppers and onions and tomato sauce into my big pot and stirring together this wonderfully redolent mixture and setting it to simmer while doing the happy dance because the house will smell sooo good and won't that be a lovely thing for Mick to come home to on such a grim dreary afternoon?...the goddamn sun came out, the temperature shot up 15 degrees and it's like late June out there. Suddenly it's the kind of day when you want a tuna sandwich and big frosty glass of sun tea. My chili is irrelevant. Dopey, even. Bah. The best laid plans of mice and chefs... I finally joined the cult of 'Freaks and Geeks'. Completely understand why this show is so beloved. Probably the truest TV show I've ever seen about high school. Having been in high school in 1980 I can speak with authority that while the music is dead on- the fashions, slang and cultural references miss by miles. No matter, the characters and their stories are timeless. At first I was grieved something so wonderful had such a brief run. Only 18 episodes? Well, crap! But upon further reflection I see the show's brevity as part of its charm. If it had stuck around longer I'm sure NBC would have found many ways to screw it up. As it is the characters are note perfect and the story arcs didn't have time to curdle and go sideways as bean-counting network execs insisted on cramming in their soul crushing 'improvements' ie: profitable product placements, hokey crossover guest stars and politically expedient bowdlerizing to placate the ever-offended Focus on Family types. The slim chapter of 'Freaks and Geeks' is glorious as is. My favorite character? Bill. If you're a fan of the show you'll probably know why and if you're not it'd take too long to explain. Despite my sour view in the above paragraph I have my own product endorsement to make- Too Faced Lip Injection Extreme is the bomb! If you use lip plumpers this stuff is THE stuff to use. Mind you it stings like a sumbitch for a while. But it does such a good job that the sting is a small price to pay. Available at Sephora. Around $28.00. The vial looks tiny but it'll last a good long time. At the rate I'm going this one vial will last at least 6 months. With the changing and chancy weather lately my sinuses are in chaos and I've been doing a lot of mouth breathing while I'm sleeping. (Ask Mick, my snoring is wall shaking.) Yet thanks to regular use of the lip plumper I haven't had chapped lips even once this season. I put it on in the morning after washing my face. No stupid looking trout pout, no duck lips, just my former mouth back in its youthful state and my lips stay smooth all day and night. This has NOT been a paid endorsement, dammit all. Though if anyone from Too Faced cosmetics or Sephora wants to throw some freebies or coupons or a check my way I am delighted to accept. It dawned on me the other day that one of the reasons my FB and blog posts have been so cheerful for the last few months is because I am (glory be!) finally shaking off the bitch mistress estrogen. This is me when I'm not being held hostage by my ovaries. I like it. No. I love it. Sure, I still have my blue days and times when the world is pissing me off, but this simply means I'm human. For the most part I am in charge of how I feel and more importantly how I respond to things. No more yelling at innocent old ladies at Shoprite. No more wanting to crawl away and die all the time. My night world is still gruesome sometimes, but going to sleep isn't the ugly constant it's been since ever. The relief! Yeah, menopause muddle still grabs me occasionally and I find myself lost and confused in the middle of running errands or doing chores here at home and I get angry at myself that it happened again. I'm less than delighted my sex drive has taken a nosedive and once a week does me just fine these days. But mostly I am grateful. How could I not be? Since the onset of menarche at the tender age of 11 and the subsequent whoopsie-doodle hell ride I've been on, jousting against my own body for Pete's sake! And the deep down knowledge that if I could only shake my mind clear of all these cloudy hormones that I'd be a decent, relatively even-keeled, kindly sort whose reactions to Life's vagaries wasn't met, matched and overtopped by my own and I'd be okay I've been waiting. And I am okay these days. Never penitent nor pleasant enough to please some, but show me the person without critics and detractors. I seem to remember an Op-Ed piece in the NYT by the Dalai Lama and a few of the comments being along the lines of, "You're full of shit, old bald dude." And ain't nobody handing me any Nobel Peace Prizes or asking me to lead a billion faithful toward nirvana. The child bought himself a ticket to this Saturday's Homecoming dance. He doesn't have a date but he's still looking forward to going. I know a lot about Wolf's life outside this house, exponentially more than my parents knew about mine when I was Wolf's age, but I'm not entirely sure what draws him to and what he does at these events. I picture him hanging around the refreshment table and chatting with the chaperones. I see him wandering around alone and surreptitiously sidling up to convivial groups on the edge of the dance floor and standing close enough to look like he's part of them but far enough away not to be challenged by the group itself. But, hell, for all I know he's macking on random girls and smoking clove cigarettes out back in the shadows behind the building where the security lights don't reach. He might be huddling beneath the bleachers just waiting out his time until we pick him up and then giving us cheerful lies about what he did and what a good time he had. Of all the scenarios the one which haunts me most is my awkward kid bustling into some gang and joining the conversation in his Aspie clueless way and being responded to politely by kids too decent to be rude to his face and then Wolf going off to get a soda and the kids rolling their eyes and mocking him behind his back. I know, I know, mom love in its doofy extreme. Wolf is making his own way through the rapids of high school social doings and that I haven't yet been introduced to (any!) school friends doesn't mean he doesn't have some. But when I press him for names and details he goes vague and sketchy. Drawing boundaries between Wolf the son and Wolf the guy at PHS? Or is my kid really as much of an outsider as I fear he is? Or is this just autistic vagueness much the same as his father's? Mike didn't even remember my name until halfway through the semester this though we were lab partners in biology and he'd sat with me at lunch 3 days out of every 4 since the second day of classes. GAH! It's just that Wolf worked so, so hard to get back into district school and along with being in 'regular' classes I want him to have a 'regular' high school social life. Have some buddies. Maybe a girlfriend or two. Know enough people so the signatures in his yearbook aren't just the ones from teachers and the custodians. Sigh...the hardest mom job of all: doing nothing. Well, it's getting on time to serve my irrelevant chili. Raise a glass for my kid and that he has a good time at the Homecoming dance, won't you?
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