Archive | Friends & Life RSS feed for this section

That’s ok – you guys can do the parenting.

30 Mar

Anyone who knows me, knows that kids are not part of my life plan. Friends used to doubt me, admonishing, “You’ll change your mind! Just wait…” as I shook my head with certainty.

In recent years, however, they’ve started hold back those comments. I would blame their shift on my nearing approach to 40, but I actually think it probably has more to do with Alan practically handing out business cards for the doctor who performed his vasectomy.

Whatever the case, I’m glad people no longer try to talk me into a baby. They’re just not my thing. (I know. This probably means I have no soul. But I do have grown-up meals, a clean house, a travel budget and the ability to soak in the bathtub with a good book whenever I want. I’ll take the trade-off.)

That doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy other people’s kids – at least in small doses. Take last weekend…

In Atlanta, I got some quality bonding time with Liz’s son Jackson, who is two. He was friendly and snuggly and adorable. And also generally half-naked, wearing only a shirt, in a style known (for obvious reasons) as Porky Piggin’.

The naked bit is because he’s potty training and Liz is having to get creative about learning his signals. Apparently when he wears a diaper, he doesn’t think about what he’s doing and just fills it. But if he doesn’t have pants on, he has just enough awareness to shout “Go pee pee!” before running at full tilt toward the bathroom.

So I was sprawled on Liz’s couch Sunday morning, drinking my coffee, when all of a sudden we heard Jackson come tear-assing down the hallway toward us from the bathroom, clapping wildly and yelling, “Yay Jackson! Jackson go potty!”

Liz, eager to reward him for using the toilet, quickly grabbed a sticker for his chart and said, “Good job! Show me!” and started to follow him back down the hall. From the couch I heard her excitement quickly morph into horror.

“Oh no! Jackson! What happened?!” she implored. Then, “Alison! Do not come out here!”

Of course those are just the words to make me scramble to my feet with curiosity, so I trotted through the kitchen in a flash. And found myself staring down a long hallway dotted with turds.

Apparently Jackson had been so excited to have used the toilet that as soon as he finished peeing, he jumped up and ran to tell us about it – forgetting that he had more business to attend to – and took a running dump the entire length of the 20′ long hallway.

Liz looked at me and shook her head, starting to laugh. “I don’t even know where to begin!”

When we had the situation under control, I sent Alan a text. “Never a dull moment. My Sunday morning started by helping Liz clean up poop in the the hallway. How’s YOUR day going?”

His response?  “My day is great – I almost never poop in the hallway!” Amen.

Tags: , , , ,

Exactly how old am I? Twenty?

26 Mar

I’ve long suspected I’m not Junior League material, but this past weekend, I confirmed it.  I was in Atlanta, visiting my friend Liz. Friday we went out for dinner, hit an art opening, then people watched at the bar of the St. Regis. It was a nice, chill evening, with only one problem: the drinks.

We had a mojito with dinner, then wine at the art opening. Then, at the St. Regis, we ordered a glass of wine and the bartender presented us with some kind of coffee drink with whipped cream vodka. It’s been a long time since I’ve had an evening that involves anything more than splitting a bottle of wine, and I can’t remember when I last drank liquor, so this definitely constituted a wild night.

And man was I feeling it the next morning when we pulled out of Liz’s driveway, heading out on a home tour organized by the Junior League of Atlanta. I slumped in the passenger seat, wearing sunglasses and pounding water. On our way to pick up her friend Erin, who was joining us for the tour, Liz pointed to a garbage can on the sidewalk in Buckhead and said, “See that? That’s where Erin threw up last year before the house tour.”

I sized it up. “Maybe I should do the same thing,” I told her. “Then when we grab her, you can introduce me as someone who has something unique in common with her.” I was only half-joking.

But then as we drove the tour route, the roads turned twisty and hilly, a combination that would induce car-sickness on a good day. Definitely not what you want to combine with a hangover.

Outside each home, perfectly made-up southern girls sat at a table, smiling as they checked our tickets and gave us blue booties to slip over our shoes so we wouldn’t scuff the floor. “Y’all enjoy yourselves,” they’d urge and I’d wince.

Inside the second house, staring at the kitchen’s flawless marble counters and admiring its chilled under-counter beverage drawer, I felt a wave of nausea wash over me. I looked around in a slight panic, wondering if anyone had ever soiled a home on the tour.

It has been years since I’ve thrown up for any reason, but when my mouth started salivating as I left the home, I knew what was coming. Without missing a beat, I walked down the driveway, crossed the street into a small park next to a set of occupied tennis courts, and knelt – Tebow-style – before silently barfing in a cluster of liriope.

To anyone watching, it would’ve looked like I was simply tying my shoe. Until you noticed I was wearing flipflops.

Liz and Erin had wisely hung back on the sidewalk, and questioningly flashed me thumbs-ups as I walked back to them. I simply nodded, trying to be discreet as I passed a woman walking two small white dogs past me into the park.

As we climbed into the car, Erin piped up from the backseat. “Gee Liz – we’re going 2/2 on this home tour. Guess next year it will be your turn!”  We both shuddered; Liz, undoubtedly at the thought of being the one to toss her cookies in public.

And me? Well, I’d just seen the two white dogs discover their next meal.

Tags: , , , ,

Warning: Not very pithy, served with a dose of politics. Sorry.

31 Jan

The other weekend I had a quintessential DC moment. It was a Sunday afternoon and I was out for a walk. I’d ventured down to the MLK library and walked back past Franklin Square, where homeless people were huddled around eating food that had been distributed by So Others Might Eat.

This is NOT the S.O.M.E van. But wouldn't it be awesome if it were? "Oh hells yeah! I'm gonna get me some wildlife from this van!"

Whenever I see the white S.O.M.E. van, it reminds me of my first winter in DC, when my college friends Brent and Marcus (my then-roommates on Capitol Hill) volunteered to help deliver food. I remember Marcus’s eyes, wide like saucers, recounting the experience after their first time out.

“It was crazy, man,” he said, and I swear his voice had a slight tremble. “We pulled up and it was like a bank heist – we’d be all organized and spring out and start handing out the food as fast as possible. Someone would stay at the wheel in case things got violent and we needed to leave fast.”

Another casualty of delivering food? “People get sick. If it’s the first thing they’ve eaten for a while, it just doesn’t sit well,” Marcus explained.

Apparently Marcus wasn’t exaggerating, because last weekend when I was walking, just after passing the group of people who were eating their S.O.M.E. meals, I looked up and accidentally locked eyes with a man standing with one hand on sign post, projectile vomiting. If you’ve never made eye contact with a stranger puking, I don’t advise it.

The thing that made this experience weird (other than the eye contact bit) was that he was just very matter of fact about it. So calm that I actually found myself scrutinizing the pile of vomit as I walked past it to make sure my eyes hadn’t deceived me. (Confirmed!)

And once he’d finished tossing his cookies (or – more accurately – clam chowder, by the steamy looks of it), he turned around and successfully hailed a bus and disappeared. HAILED A BUS. I didn’t even know a person could do that.

Dude. Only in Canada. They have KITS for this.

Estimates of DC’s homeless population range from 6,000 – 12,000 people. To put that in perspective: my hometown in Michigan has a population of 5,800.

There’s something wrong with this picture. Even with high unemployment rates, we live in a country where most homes have multiple televisions, cars and an extra bedroom. And yet we leave people to sleep without shelter, to scrounge their next meal, while we argue over tax rates for those of us fortunate enough to have a job.

I swear, I’ll get back to the pith (and vinegar) in my next post. I just figured this might be a good reminder – right when we’re in the throes of filing taxes and acutely feeling how much money we didn’t get to hang onto this year – of exactly what we have.

To quote a friend: Love your neighbor, not your wallet.

UPDATED: Unless your wallet looks like this. In which case, you totally should love it:

Tags: , , , ,

I think we’re starting to sound like old ladies.

22 Jan

When I arrived at my friend’s house for dinner this week, she opened the door clutching a remote and looking frazzled. She was trying to get music from their cable provider to play through the stereo without the television being on. “I know it’s ridiculous to let this stress me out,” she said, “But it’s completely annoying. When did it become so difficult to do something simple?”

I looked at her remote and could see the problem: it was like the Ferrari of remotes. “What all does this control?” I asked her, intimidated by its eight bazillion buttons.

“Everything,” she said. “My husband has programmed it so that everything is driven by this one remote. It probably controls me, for all I know!”

I cracked up, imagining a “Power Down Spouse” button. And then realized that most people would probably like a remote like that – something to pause their children or mute their partners.

You know technology has jumped the shark when your friend, an IT professional, is shaking a remote, saying, “When did it all get so complicated?”

HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey

Did you know? The French version of Hal was named Carl.

“I mean,” she continued, “the other day I was thinking about phones. The new iPhone has a feature that will read text messages to you. How crazy is that? We went from leaving voicemails for each other, to sending text messages to each other, to having computers read these text messages to us. It just seems like we’re ADDING steps instead of removing them.”

So true.

That has been kicking around in my head this week as more than one friend has apologized for being slow responding to me because their new year’s resolutions include technology fasts. I like it – the idea of completely unplugging one day a week to regain our power over the devices that increasingly control us.

Otherwise, we might as well start naming our children Hal. Or Carl.

Tags: , ,

I have *just* the gift for you.

30 Dec

What? It's just a foot spa.

Backstory: I live below an otherwise nice guy (Matthew) who makes a ridiculous amount of noise. I’m convinced he and his partner (Jack) actually stable a horse and lead it from room to room with bowling balls dragging behind it periodically. Did I mention that they have hard wood floors?

The following is a transcript from my chat with Alan this morning.

Alan:  hi there! how was yoga this morning?

me:  great! matthew helped ensure i made it by firing up the stomping machine around 5am.

Alan:  i guess he’s good for something once in a while

Alan: maybe we should have gotten him and Jack christmas presents – like weight loss videos?

me:  or amputatations  😀

Alan: do they have gift certificates for that? or would we just offer to do an amateur job for them?

me:  give them a wood chipper

Alan:  nice

me:  and tell them it’s a foot spa!

Alan:  maybe we should have gotten them really big, fluffy slippers with super-padded soles

me:  filled with razor blades!

Alan:  okay. we’re not going the compromise route this morning. I get it. 

Tags: , , ,

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →