HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MY LITTLE PRALINE!

In honor of The Gummer's 74th birthday, she will be writing today's post.  Indirectly, anyway.

She just answered the phone with:

"Hello? Thank you...

Sweet 16, ain't never been kissed.

Been screwed a lot, but that was it."

Oh, Gummer, Under all that crunchy coating , you are just sweet little, caramelly, ice creamy goodness.

I should revise that sentence, but the other image that came to mind was a turtle. Now I can't stop thinking how much old people look like turtles.

Wait... if you combine those images, The Gummer is Turtle Tracks ice cream. That's good stuff.

(I love that little old lady. I really, really do.)

This is not her birthday cake. It is Jack's "Rocket to 2nd Grade" cake from May. The Gummer just looks cute here.

This is also not her birthday cake. It is a teeny plaster cake that Jack and I made and gave her as a gift. The Gummer's birthday cake is on the counter upstairs, and it's time for another slice.

Happy birthday, Mom!

Be a Fan

PEOPLE OF UKRAINE- THE GUMMER IS LATKA GRAVAS AND MULE

Dear People of the Ukraine,

        This website is getting a lot of visits from your country. (This week I did not post anything new, and I had as many Ukrainian readers as American readers.) Are you reading my blog or is this an accident?

        I have the website set for transliteration to Russian, but I do not think I am using it correctly. I will try to post this in Russian. If you like it, please click "Like" or post a comment. I would like to be loved by your people.

        If you comment, please know that I cannot read Russian. I do not know how to translate Russian into English online. I am American. I think the world speaks English. I studied French for two years and also Spanish for two years.  I could not hold a conversation with a French baby. I might be able to talk to a Spanish baby if there was a black cat under a table and a dog in a house and the baby wanted to know how old I was and, for the sake of the conversation, the baby was willing to accept that I might tango ocho anos (and not know how to type the thing over the "n".)
        Being American, I also do not know where anything is or when anything happened. I went to school for 22 years and I owe $44,000 for my education, but I do not have a good job. That is not so smart. I do have a laptop. I am pretty good at Angry Birds. Do you have Angry Birds in Ukraine? It is a game. It is not an Alfred Hitchcock movie based on a Daphne Du Maurier story. It  is fun and makes me think I am good at physics. I am not good at physics. I also failed College Algebra three times. I am very good at making up words that sound like what I am trying to say. That must make my blog confusing in Ukraine.


         I can see how The Gummer is like Latka Gravas (Andy Kaufman's character on "Taxi"). She is not confused like Latka. She is stubborn. Like mule. My dad was like Archie Bunker mixed with maybe Frank Sinatra or someone from that era. I do not know why I am talking about old TV shows. You probably have more channels than just TV Land. I hope you do, anyway. I like television a lot. Again, I am American. I know Kardashians and Real Housewives. I like to watch The Office, but I do not really like to work.

       Please let me know if you like The Gummer Chronicles and if the way I write makes sense. If you are not reading my blog, please let me know how you found my website. Then you should read my blog.  If you have facebook, please like The Gummer Chronicles. You can email me at heller101@yahoo.com if you can do it in English.

      This is when I normally make a joke about doing it.

      I hope you are reading The Gummer Chronicles. Mila Kunis is really hot, and I love Ukraine.                
 
                                                                                       Laura

دار پوپله اف وکراینه،


تهیس وابسته یس گتتینگ ا لوت اف ویسیتس فرم یور کنتری. اره یو رادیگ می بلوگ اف یس تهیس ان آکیدنت؟
            

 ی هاوتهه وابسته ست فر ترانسلیتراتیون تو روسی. ی ویل تری تو پست تهیس این روسی. یف یو لکه یت، پلاسه کلیک لپست ا کمانت. ی وولد لکه تو به لود بی یور پوپله.یف یو کمانت، پلاسه کنوو تحت ی کانت راد روسی. ی دو نوت کنوو هوو تو ترانسلاته روسی اینطو انگلیش. ی دو ات سپاک فرنچ ور سپنیش ایتهر اون تهوق ی ستودید بوته این کلگه.بینگ امریکن، ی دو نوت کنوو وهره انیتهینگ یس ور وهن انیتهینگ هاپپند این هیستوری. ی ام ات گود ات مته ایته. ی ام گود ات تهه گام انگری بردس. دو یو هاو تحت؟ دو یو هاو فکابوک؟ یف سو، پلاسه لکه "تهه گمر چرونیکلس" ون فکابوک.ی مکه اپ ا لوت اف وردس. یس تحت کونفسینگ فر یوی تهینک تهه گمر یس لکه لاتکا گروس ون تاکسی اکسکاپت شه یس ستوران لکه ا مله. ی watch ا لوت اف تلویسیون. لکه مانی آمریکانس، تهیس یس وحی ی دو نوت کنوو گئوگرافی ور هیستوری.ی دو کنوو ا لوت ابوت تهه کارداشیانس.

     پلاسه لت مه کنوو یف یو لکه تهه گمر چرونیکلس اند یف تهه وی I ورته مکس سانسه تو یو. هوو دید یو فند می بلوگ؟ یو کن ایمیل مه ات heller101@یاهو.کومیف یو کن دو یت این انگلیش.  ی هوپه یو اره ردینگ تهه گمر چرونیکلس. میله کیس یس حوت اند ی لو وکراینه.   

تهانکس،

     Laura

Be a Fan

EVERYONE JUST SAYS WHATEVER (PART II)

1. Jack was manhandling the pumpkin I bought for him to paint if we get to feelin' crafty. I responded with the usual comment.
 Jack: (from the kitchen) "Why do you always say 'Look with your eyes, not with your hands.'?"
Me: (from the living room and for The Gummer's entertainment): "It'll help you when you go to gentleman's clubs."

2. The Gummer informed me that a family friend died yesterday. Oddly, this family friend dated my father at some point during his bachelorium.
Me: "Oh no! Mom, she's up there with DAD!"
The Gummer: (after a slight, but perceptible pause) "Her husband is there, too."
Me: "Oh, COME ON! Dad is WAY better looking than that guy!."
Me: (after a slight, but perceptible pause during which I consider the Free-Range Brain error I made the day before) "I'm sure it's fine."

3. The Gummer is actually going to have the garage sale she has been putting off for at least 15 years. I was trying to put a positive spin on things, but I had skipped my second dose of Adderall. I didn't quite hit the target:
"Well, this might be your last garage sale."
(The Gummer's facial expression is clearly an error message. Aw...)
I try backpedaling with this whole "Well, you know, it's BEEN 15 years and you're in your seventies and..."
Aw...
Crap. Must take Adderall.

4. Jack informed me that he got in trouble for yelling on the bus, and the principal might be calling our house tonight. I have been teaching at the alternative school all day, and the last damn thing I want to do is discuss anyone's behavior with an administrator. (That's not the last thing. I feel like I should clarify that so I don't leave the door open to something horrible.) Though it hurts me WAY more than it hurts him, I declare a rest-of-the-day moratorium on television and video games. When this exacerbates Jack's turkey factor, I resort to CIA-caliber threats:
"If you don't act right, I'm going to make you cut Gummer's toenails."

 Jack's quick response: "I don't know how to use hedge clippers."

5. Though the child support situation has gotten better, Jack's D-A-D invariably doesn't pony up the sperm cabbage when we actually need it... or, like, when it's Christmas or Jack's birthday. It's almost like he is not only evil but also perceptive.
In light of this, I have personally revised our child support policy:
If Jack's D-A-D doesn't pay on  Friday, then on Monday, a Hispanic girl in a 1st Communion dress and soccer shoes comes running out of the alley next to the bar du jour and shouts "Buenos dias, pendejo! Me llamo 'Escuela'" Then, she kicks him in the balls while chanting "Chinga tu madre" until nickels fall out.
It's Tuesday now, so Escuela needs to head down to the GA Bar where he keeps his balls, and get to kickin'.
If my dad had answered my "Do we have any relatives in the mafia?" question with 'yes'... well, that's not AT ALL where he'd  be keeping his balls.

(Psst... Nickel, nickel, purple pickle.)

Please click "Like" if you like it, and send the link to someone new . It's like Gummer Appleseed.

Be a Fan

I HEART HEDBERG. YOU JUDGE JUDY.

I saw this wino. He was eating grapes. I was like, “Dude, you have to wait.”  -Mitch Hedberg

                

          Until recently, I did not know that I was Irish.  The background information from my adoption was more than a little vague on the paternal side, and I recently set about to… clarifying some things. (This little clarification situation is quite possibly going to result in a posting which I will privately refer to as “Oh Look, Now We Parade The Mean, Mean Man’s Head Through The Village on a Stick”.)  (Sometimes you just gotta have a parade.)

I’m pretty sure that I’m “Not Right” Irish. You know—the Alec Baldwin and Colin Farrell kind. I spend a lot of time tripping over a brambled up mess of lust and melancholy. I write pretentious sentences about myself (see above) and overanalyze things to the point that I actually end up DOING very little. Then, I make fun of myself.  I am Irish. That’s the first bit of background info.

The other thing that seems relevant here is that about ten years ago, I ate a white peach while I was uncharacteristically RAFTING with my friend, Andy. (Andy sometimes spells his name “Agndy”. I like that, and I like him.)

(Agndy and I were neighbors for a while. One day, he had a couple friends over and he was throwing pebbles at my window, because he apparently thought his friends would enjoy seeing him act like an ass. When I couldn’t get him to stop, I said, “Hey, Agndy… Catch!”  And he did… catch an egg which sort of blew up all over his face.  It was funny, but then…aww… poor Agndy and his eggy face sittin’ on the driveway with his girlfriend laughing at him! So sad.)

Anyway, um, this white peach that I ate ten years ago was amazing. It was a drippy, nectary mess on a beautiful, sunshiney day and that jacked up combination of sensory input…the sun and the sticky sweetness on my hands and chin and the smiling that seemed like it might actually become what my face does…if your life flashes before your eyes when you die, I’ll be all up in that peach. (Ahem.)

That is my nature.

                The Gummer… not so much.

A couple of weeks ago, I bought some champagne grapes at Wal-Mart. One of my theories is that Sam Walton and The Family increase the canyon-width of their profit margin by providing inferior produce to their devoted-by-default Wal-Martians. Not today. These teeny grapes were like that white peach on the river. I couldn’t begin to emote properly in the Mart, and I bought a box of those nummy little purple balls so I could take them home and love ‘em up right.

(Don’t get too attached to that paragraph. It’ll get revised when The Gum breaks and I go global mas mondo. I like the nummy balls part, though. Mmm… nummy.)

I digress.

The grapes were so delicious that I figured surely even The Gummer would swoon. I took them into the living room where The Gummer was watching “Judge Judy”. I held them up like it was my first day at my new bear feeding job.

“I bought champagne grapes.” I said it like it was a question.  What a dork I am! Sometimes it’s like I’m on “The Gong Show” and she’s up waving her gonger around (Eww…. Please revise) before I can get to the good part of my tap dance.

She scowled. Excessively. Another face from her repertoire of only child facial expressions.

                I rolled my eyes. A duel.

              “They’re sweet. They’ll cancel out that sour expression you’re making.”

                She took one. The clouds parted.  Even The Gummer couldn’t resist these succulent balls of numness.

                (No, MICROSOFT. They are not “balls of numbness”.  Use the context clues.)

                Now I needed her to acknowledge my victory: “Do you like them?”

                “Yes, but they’re too small.”

“Too small FOR WHAT?”

She scowled and bobbled her head around. “It would take you half an hour to eat them.”

I cavalierly plucked several of them and blooped them into my mouth. “Eat them five at a time.”

She wanted to argue. About grapes. Delicious, delicious grapes. “Yeah, but how many of them have STEMS?”

“I will destem them for you.” I made exasperated Mom-eyes at her.

She resumed her Judying.

                As I walked toward the kitchen to destem the queen’s grapes, I expressed my love for her in the language of my people: “YOU are a pain in the ass.”

A few minutes later, she took a break from her legal seminar and shuffled into the kitchen where I was determinedly plucking away at the champagne grapes in the sink.  She buried one of her talons in a Rubbermaid container on the counter and squawked: “Well, did you wash these green ones?”

Be a Fan

DIXIELAND

     Yet again, this isn't the post that is supposed to be posted here. It's written, but I can't find it. It's about grapes, and it is funny.
      I keep making this logical plan for how these posts fit together, but then my life gets in the way and revises my Diabolical Master Plan (DMP). Some version of this DMP disruption has been going on ever since The Gummer stopped micromanaging me like a babbling little yellow-headed puppet. I'm generally fine with it, but it weirds me out when there are witnesses to my slapdash factor. Yet I continue to invite them in.
    So....
    I have some weird lump in my abdomen that people are sick of hearing about on facebook. I'm going to write about it here.

    Actually, there's just something I want to explain:

    WHY I SHAVED MY PUBES BEFORE I WENT TO THE EMERGENCY ROOM TODAY

    When I was in seventh grade, I had a hernia. To clarify, I had a hernia for ALL of seventh grade. It would poof out...
   
     (Okay, wait.  This post has a seventh grade girl in it. Girls have bodies. If that bothers you, please stop reading, unfriend me on facebook, and seek some Really Big Helpy-Help. Do not watch Nancy Grace or the Kardashians. Just play Angry Birds or something until your appointment. Thank you.)

 ... when I went to the bathroom and it was an effin abnormality. The Gummer was once a nurse anesthetist. The Gummer looked at Effie and said, "Damn it, Lah-rie! You're such a hypochondriac!"      When I had my physical, The Gummer said in extra-nasally, only-child-'cause-somebody-woulda-smacked-that-voice-outta-your-head voice: "Oh, would you just humor her and look at this?"
     And the doctor looked at her like "WTF?" before "WTF?" ever was, and said,"Um, Cookie? That's a HERNIA."
    (The Gummer is Cookie is Betty is Betty Jean. Her dad used to call her "Tootsie" but my Grandma said it made her sound like a prostitute and so a Cookie was born.)
    I bring this hernia incident up every time I can. If I fart funny, we're gonna talk about the hernia incident. If I see a star and she doesn't, we're gonna talk about how she almost destroyed my ovaries before I ever transferred to that Big 10 school. We are competitive people, and that is one of my trump cards.

   So I had surgery. My dad went to the hospital, and we ended up hanging out by ourselves for a while and just kind of chatting. It was weird to be in a hospital with my dad. He didn't do the office-type parenting gigs. My dad did "store" and "car" and "yard" and "baseball diamond".
I was enjoying the novelty of the situation. We were chatting. It was cool. The kitten was conversating.
  Then a nurse came in and said, "I'm here to prepare your daughter for the surgery."
  My dad was like "Okay, yeah" in whatever polite way he would have indicated indifference.
  Then she was like "Um, no... PREPARE her for the SURGERY."
   My dad's eyes went all freaked out and panicky (and he wasn't a freaked out and panicky kind of man EVER) and he started walking backwards really fast and then he was gone.
  I was left with Dixie and her razor...  and her fucking wandering eye.
  It's a strabismus. I just looked it up. It's an Andy Cohen. It's a drifter. It's a childhood memory that you never forget.
   I spent twelve years growing those pubes, Dixie. You need to focus.


 

Be a Fan

KID FEARS

     In high school, Casey always walked on the balls of his feet. He bounced as a means of locomotion. This bouncing was coupled with seemingly constant smiling.  The combined effect was exactly what it sounds like.
   In high school, my best friend was Casey's best friend. I was some complicated girl who showed up and disrupted their conversations about music during our high school lunch break. The combined effect was exactly what it sounds like.

    It was kid shit, and you know what I mean.

    We aren't kids anymore.

   "What would you give for your kid fears?"
                                                           
     Fuck.

     Casey has rectal cancer. He has mantle cell lymphoma. He has a second grader. He has a preschooler. He has a wife.

     When you're a kid, you don't know any of this stuff. You don't know how things turn on a dime and how careful you have to be with people. You have no clue about the stakes or about how you will actually feel when someone who you used to have some petty, kid thing with ends up being sick in a really grown up way.

    They're taking donations of items for a silent auction at Big Daddy's in Soulard on October 8. I don't have much more than a fiber optic Christmas tree, an awesome pair of leather pants, and some pretty cool Duran Duran 12" remixes. I do, however, have this forum. I have your attention.  (Well, I had it until I said that...)

    My friend, Casey, is really sick. He has two little kids.

   My friend, Robin, said I'm a bulldog when I want something. I get all Irish on it. What I want right now is to do something to help Casey out.

   Well, not just that.

   What I want is to not have things like this happening to kids. In my mind, we're still kids. It was easy to get mad when Casey bounced out of the cafeteria to tell Ed something about a guitar when I was busy lounging around and being all fifteen and eyelinery. It was easy to be jealous of their friendship. It was dumb, and it was easy.

  You have to enjoy being dumb and easy while you can. It doesn't last.


If you would like to make a donation to Casey or if you have something you could donate to the auction, please contact Ed at eorlet@sbcglobal.net  
If you are afraid of Ed, you can email me at heller101@yahoo.com


 Thanks.

Be a Fan

Everyone Just Says Whatever (post 1)

      Alright, imagine that the readers of "The Gummer Chronicles" (including especially you) have been forwarding the link to other people, and that those people have been forwarding the link to other other people and that the link has gotten into the right hands and is now an actual book. In this book, the longer essays of "The Gummer Chronicles" are mixed with blurbier mini-thangs called "Everyone Just Says Whatever". The blurbier mini-thangs are quotes of the unfiltered crap that gets said in this house. 
    I was going to make a separate page on this site for these blurby thangs, but I have other things that I can overcomplicate if need be. (It's like a nesting instinct. Sometimes I just need to mess something up. That's usually when I decide I would look better with bangs.)
   Anyway, so the "Everyone Just Says Whatever" posts are going to be mixed in with the TGC posts. They are more likely to include profanity and innuendo. If that is a problem, skip 'em:

That said:

       Last week, I was going to the gynecologist and then to yet another board of education office to submit yet another document which will have no effect on my employment status since educated and experienced special ed teachers who don't coach football apparently aren't in any district's budget.      
      As I was leaving the house, I said goodbye to The Gummer. I made sure that I was making eye contact and smiling my girliest "Girl Who Goes to the Mall to Buy Handbags at Macy's" smile:
               "Bye, Mom.  I'm going to go let a pretty girl look at my vagina and then
                do some education-related stuff. It'll be like being at U of I again."
      She giggled.

      A few days later, I was scheduled for an ultrasound to check out the giganticus blob o' probable hernia in my abdomen. The night before, I told The Gummer that I was going to ask for the big, black probe. (I did. The radiology medium giggled cooperatively and became very interested in pushing buttons on the ultrathing.) (That bit should have gone much better.)
      Later, I told The Gummer about the results of the ultrasound. The focal point was supposed to be the radiology medium's opinion that my gall bladder, kidneys, and liver all appeared to be fine. The possibility that my liver could have survived 15 years of commitment to Athens, GA is stunning. Even with The Gummer's partial information, the liver comment alone should have cued a "Quoi?"
      She was also supposed to hone in on the radiology medium's hernia notion. WITHOUT GIVING THE IMPRESSION OF ANY OFFICIAL DIAGNOSIS (I liked the radiology medium and my gyno said she'd check out "The Chronicles"), she said that Blobbo's failure to appear on screen was typical of a hernia. Hernias are on  the acceptable end of the diagnostic spectrum.
      The Gummer apparently needs to go back and do some of that color-coded (with weird brown and turquoise and magenta and peach and seafoam... and, yes, I scored high on the facebook autism quiz)  SRA crap we did in elementary school. Someone needs to work on identifying the main idea by repeatedly completing the sentence:"A good title for this essay would be...."
      When I told her that I made the probe comment and that the probe was the size of a giganticus curling iron, she said  "Well, you asked for it."











 

Be a Fan

Polyester is Forever

On September 5^th of last year, I posted a facebook status in five parts. I titled it “Polyester is Forever with Grandma”:

Polyester is Forever w/ Grandma: The Gummer still has the beige and green pantsuit she was wearing when she met my dad at Piccato's Tavern. He'd been in a bowling tournament (read: drinking beer) all day. Her friends let her leave w/ him. They went to a bowling alley in the basement of a hotel on St. Louis Rd.

            The Piccatos’ daughter-in-law, Amy, teaches piano to some of the kids in the hood. She is charming and gracious and wonderfully genuine and I will give a shout-out to her travel agency here if she tells me what to write. At the end of the school year, the mini-virtuosos gave a recital. We looked like this:

           

 (Yes, my “Waitress in the Sky” look was intentional. Do not ask why. “Ours is not to reason why/ you ain’t nothin’ but a waitress in the sky.”)             

When the recital was over, Amy invited The Gummer to go into the basement. There, like some kind of dream sequence transition, was the bar from Picatto’s tavern, cash register and all.

        

I filmed The Gummer talking about it, but she’s not the only one talking. This isn’t some kind of tmz, long-lens, tell-all arrangement here.

(That said… my brother was once jogging through the neighborhood. (This story suddenly seems implausible, not because of the way it ends, but because it begins with ‘My brother was once jogging”. There is no way he was jogging in an athletic or health-conscious way. He’s just not that guy. It is more likely that he was jogging as a mode of transportation because walking was taking too long. This makes much more sense when you consider what he was wearing.) He was wearing cutoff Levi’s. These shorts were SHORT. They were…I don’t know…Billy Squier meets Daisy Duke in a cloud of weed and Polo. These shorts were Ozzy and Camaros, Marlboro Reds and “I Grew This Moustache Because I Can”. (Yuck.) Anyway, as he was jogging past the Piccato’s house, he waved at them. When he looked down, he realized he wasn’t the only one waving.  (Maybe I should delete this. But then, it’s not like it’s embarrassing. It’s just like “Wow” and “Ick” at the same time. Alas, I must speak my icky truth.)

Polyester is Forever w/ Grandma Pt. II: Soon after that, he invited her to a picnic. She said no--she had plans to go on a trip with her friends. Bob Heller was not used to hearing no from the ladies. "To this day, I still don't know if he took another girl to that picnic." She has kept an angry 24 yr old girlfriend with the pantsuit.

            I like to think that not attending this picnic is how she got him. I don’t mean that declining his invitation was a tactical decision designed to get him to chase her. She’s not someone who would follow “The Rules” or wear some Jonas Brothers Smothered and Covered ring.  She doesn’t give anything up easily. I’ve played cards with her. She just doesn’t like to lose. She’s not going to set herself up by chasing some boy and then end up looking like a dumbass.

                Way to pass the torch there, Mom. Way to pass the torch.

Polyester is Forever w/ Grandma Pt. III: After they got married, they moved into that tan brick apt bldg on St. Louis Rd, then proceeded to spend enough money at the Horseshoe Lounge to pay for the addition to the building. When my father died, I invited some of the waitresses from the Horseshoe to his wake. They attended.

I invited his barber, too. I buried my dad with Oreo cookies, toothpicks, and a bottle of Tanqueray. We stopped going to the Horseshoe after that. It closed.

This is one of the things I would like to tell him.

That’s one of the shittiest things about death. It’s not the big emotional stuff that you should have said. Not for me, anyway. It’s the little stuff that I want to say. The news and trivia,

“They got Bin Laden.”

Polyester is Forever w/ Grandma Pt. IV: I suggested we go to Piccato's and take pictures of her in her beige & green pantsuit to memorialize my dad (who died 5 yrs ago this morning). She declined. We could've gone to all their places. We could have done a lot of things. (That thought stays in my mind. Polyester.)

        It has been six years now. It doesn’t bother me like I thought it would. Perhaps my feelings are more of a poly-cotton blend. Perhaps memory has a kindness to it and files things away like bags of little bags of photographs. My memory is more like photographs strewn all over the floor. I get used to them being around and forget they are there until something catches my eye and I spend a day on the floor going through it all.

Polyester is Forever w/ Grandma Pt. 5 (Conclusion): The Gummer has suggested that I memorialize my father by cleaning the damn garage. We all grieve in our own way, Gummer. My preferred means of self-expression does not involve Pine-Sol.

             (On second thought, that story about my brother does belong here. Sometimes you just need to look away.)

Be a Fan

When the World Was Sepia

            The Gummer loves to shred things. Loves it. Every day, she opens the mail next to the shredder and goes to town. BWAAAH! BWAAAH! It has become a regular part of my day. It is how I know that it is 10:45 and half of my “Mommy!”-free day is over.

A few weeks ago, she was BWAAAH! BWAAAH!-ing off-schedule. I walked into the computer room to find her shredding family photos. Were they selections from the endless stash of unfortunate holiday photos taken before I realized my hair cannot-should not-must not be permed? No. They were from the “Photos Were Really Thick in the Early 70s” collection and the “When the World Was Sepia” collection. (I used to think this was true, by the way. Surely, all those frowning, fresh off the boat from the Old Country, relatives were living in a brownish-hued world. Look at ‘em. ) (Alright, on some level, I probably still think that the color in the world evolved at the same pace as the color on television. The 70s, for example, had color, but things were blurry. The 80’s looked like “The Facts of Life” and “Fantasy Island” and so on. I generally do not like superdigital, hi-def, whatever you call that new-fangled shit, TV, because it looks unrealistic. I am skeptical and cannot focus on shows with birds gracefully hovering over landscapes that don’t look like any birds or landscapes or hovering maneuvers that I’ve ever seen. )

I digress.

I began to completely flip out.

I did not know that the photos she was shredding were doubles, triples, and miscellaneous photos of thumbs and the ground. I wasn’t expecting anything logical. This is a woman who threw away her wedding veil a few years ago because "it had holes in it”.  If A&E decides to build on the success of “Hoarders”, I know where there is a camera-ready little old lady purging like Karen Carpenter. (Ipecac-ac-ac-ac-ac-ac-ac-ac…You oughta know by now.)

Lovely, um, so anyway, I started freaking out. The content of said freak out is best left within the walls of the Gummerplex. It did end with me saying, “You are the least sentimental person I have ever met” or something like that and her looking just stunned, bewildered, by my accusation. 

An hour or so later, she handed me a plastic bag full of plastic bags. (This is an arrangement I am quite familiar with. “Must. Compartmentalize. Everything.” is her mantra.)  The bags in this bag of bags were photos which had been subdivided by time period. I will explain the significance of this photo collection in the next post. For right now, what matters is that there were photos of my parents which had been taken in the late 50s and early 60s. At this time, much in the same way that the world was once basted in a sepia haze, there were two bizarro alternate versions of my parents who appear to have spent a lot of time laughing casually while riding bicycles and walking around being slender and well-dressed. The people in these photos are not wearing polyester pants while they watch me open my birthday presents. The people in these photographs are attractive. These people are kids, and they are falling in love. This is a love story. Her life, the way these clusters of photos fit together, is a love story.

Forty-eight years ago today, on August 31, 1963, my parents were married. They bought polyester pants and wrapped birthday gifts for their kids. They kept their love story safe, protected it, and put it away until it was time to be told. This, of course, was always intended to happen on the day the bitchy younger kid accused the woman of not being sentimental.

“Once upon a time, long before the world ever revolved around you, there was a tavern. In that tavern, a beautiful girl and a man who had been at a bowling tournament all day found themselves lost in a magical sprinkling of uma…”

(You know: “This doesn't sound like the usual mindless, boring, getting-to-know you chit-chat...") 

Dating- Football Game

                                                                Grand Avenue in St. Louis. 
                                                       

Be a Fan

Christina Crawford Doesn't Live Here

     The Gummer and I got into an argument today. It escalated to the point that I used the two words which indicate that things have gone too far: Christina Crawford.  I stormed out. She stormed out. Fifteen minutes later, we ran into each other at the grocery store. That's how love is.
     One of the reasons that she and I argue so much is that we are simply not compatible personality types. I get mad that she isn't more like me, and she gets jealous that she can't be more like me. (Okay, no. She gets mad that I am not more like her.) Another reason that she and I argue so much is that she cannot follow the basic rules of debate. She just kind of hi-YAs all over the place, and I end up losing debates that should totally have been in my pocket. It is very much like dealing with a toddler who has missed naptime or a special ed student who has gone off the rails. I keep saying that I should I get a bracelet with "DNE" engraved in it: "Do Not Engage". As the saying goes "I do not have to attend every argument I'm invited to".  As my track record shows, I do not know when to throw in the towel.
     So, fifteen minutes after we made our dramatic "Exit Stage Left"s, she was pulling a shopping cart out of the corral (or whatever the hell it is) at our local Schnuck's supermarket while I was shouting, "I know YOU!" She replied, "I do not know you." False, Gummitor! I just cashed in the lottery ticket my son got you to buy me for Mother's Day. I've got $2 that says our Kevin Bacon has a common biscuit. (What?)
    Anyway, so the Schnuck's thing was cute. I also keep reminding myself that, after 40 years, I am familiar with the product. I am the dumbass who gets in the ring with Ginsu Gummitor despite a clearly established list of warning signs and hot topics. (Not Hot Pockets. Hot Pockets are yummy. (But then, maybe they turn on you, too.)) "Why does this room smell like piss and vinegar? Oh, yes... let's discuss The Mythical Garage Sale That Has So Many Issues Attached To It." Yes, Billy Joel. I oughtta know by now. I oughtta do more cardio, too. Whatever.
   While I was waiting for The Boy to arrive via autobus (post-Schnuck's encounter), I decided to stop seething and focus on good things about The Gummer. Here are five memories that make me happy:

1. For Halloween in pre-school, she dressed me up like the Carol Burnett cleaning lady. (Yeah, there's the cleaning thing again. Ignore it.) I had a little bucket, a broom, and a hairnet. I like the idea of her being a young, goofy parent. I like the idea of her being more like me. (It's my blog, and I am saying that I'm young. Leave it alone.)

2. When I started college, she sent me anonymous notes to wish me good luck. They were on floral note paper, and she disguised her handwriting. She denied writing the notes until I told her I was writing about them tonight.

3. She attended the videotaped poetry reading in my Women's Studies class. (Disclaimer: It was not poetry that I had written. My poetry is AWESOME. This was some Vagina Monologue knockoff. It was like The Fauxgina Dialogues.) In the video, she is watching us read these goofy, womyny poems like it's the most enlightening arrangement of vowels and consonants and vaginas ever. She continues to make this "Oh, how interesting!" face as I float across the stage and say some hippy-dippy vaginal-babbling crap about orgasms. (Again, I didn't write the poetry.) What a good sport! Taking one for the vag.

4. (Backgroud info:  1. It is a 10 - 12 hour drive from Athens (where I used to live) to Collinsville. I almost always drove straight through. 2. I have ADHD. When I don't take Adderall, I say stuff. That's why I take the Adderall.)  Once after I arrived home from Athens, The Gummer was showing me what they had that I might want for a snack: bologna, leftover peas, something in a styrofoam container... She held up a bag of Poppycock, and I impulsively announced: "Cock!" The face she made was awesome. She was shocked and amused, but not upset at all. What a good sport! Taking one for the...

5. On the first night that I brought Jack to Collinsville, he slept in a playpen-type thing in my room. I woke up in the middle of the night and The Gummer was there, standing over the playpen like an apparition. She was just looking at Jack and smiling. There was a sweetness about her that... Well, I was not familiar with this version of her. Apparently, we had met before. She has said that she checked on us all night long when we were little. This Gummer is the one who dressed me up like Carol Burnett. Maybe it was easier for her when I was little, and now she's kind of like "Gummer, Interrupted".  Put those clothes back, Winona. There's nothing to hide.

 So there's that. Maybe I should save my money and forget about the "Do Not Engage" bracelet. I mean, she's family. How can I say no?

Be a Fan

TomatoGate: An Appendix

This is GAYB the God-Awful Yard Barn.

This is the toy box that my dad built. My parents wrote that "foxy" crap on there. My parents. Weird.

 This is me after gardening with my dad. I don't know why she had on hobo shoes. For street cred, maybe.



Happy Mother's Day to The Gummer...May she never read my blog.

Be a Fan

Part Five:She Ain't Joan Crawford, She's My Gummer

     She had felled the entire garden. She had then abandoned the scene of the crime.

   

     I flipped out. And I flipped. And flipped. And I kept right on flipping. I’m Irish and Scottish and German. It happens.

     I don’t remember the flipping part. It’s not like I DID anything. I was just pissed and ranting on the phone and being a little wrath monkey.

  

  The Gummer came home from visiting my brother. Her friend was with her. It was not a good time to discuss the family farm. Oh well. I started flippin' around in the front yard. The Gummer's friend made a hasty exit.

   

     The Gummer looked confused. No, she said, she had not committed tomatocide. 23 baby tomatoes and a kazillion blossoms, I reported. Flip, flip.

   “Oh, bullshit!” She left. She never wins by throwing the bullshit card. She never knows when to throw it.

     In retrospect, I think maybe she was trying to fuck with me, but she didn’t mean to fuck me over. She just meant to trim the tomatoes a little (and, though she would never admit it, to sort of keep me in check and exert her dominance in the Gummer Kingdom). She didn’t realize it had gotten out of control. It’s not like she can see through a black trash bag.

    Whatever. All this flipping was exhausting. It was too late for the damn tomatoes and too much of an investment to believe that I couldn’t trust her.  I pulled my garden out of the trash can and plucked 23 little tomatoes off of the vines. They looked like those little round balls of bait that remind me of rubbery balls of bread. I set twenty-three little, teeny-tiny tomato fetuses on the kitchen window sill as though just a little more time in the sun could undo the travesty which had been committed unto them.

    And then I laughed.

     Louis CK does a little stand-up bit about family and how to make it work. At the bottom line, he says, the secret to making it work is a simple philosophy: “Fuck it. Just…fuck it.”

    
So this brings us back to last month’s spring cleaning crusade:

  

      "Mom, you've been complaining about the basement and the yard barn for two years, You might want to let me focus on the basement and the yard barn. I'm really hungry and really crabby."

     "Ok, but help be lift that trash can first."

      “This is potting soil. Why are you throwing away soil?”

      “You aren’t going to be able to lift that”.

        I roll the trash can closer to the 7 x 2 + 1 sq. ft.  area that was my garden.  “I'm going to do it the same way I do everything: with “Fuck it. This is what I’m doing.”  I scoop little piles into The Garden That Was, carefully avoiding the few errant sprouts that have risen like foolish little phoenixes. The rain would level the soil out gradually, anyway. I went inside.

        I wasn't inside for long before I got that weird "Where's the baby?" feeling. I went back outside..

       The Gummer was in the “garden” with a shovel  levelling out my little soil piles. She looked like she had been caught in the cookie jar.  Interesting.

      “Mom, what are you doing?”

     
 Imbedded in the three words of her response was a dog whistle of an apology, a  nod of acknowledgement  of my endless effort to connect with her, a font of gratitude for that grandbaby, and all the affection that I see normal mothers expressing with, like, words and stuff.

     “Mom, what are you doing?”

    

      “Killing your garden.”

Be a Fan

Part Four

Okay, so back to TomatoGate:

Um, “Spring Cleaning” was the first part, then “TomatoGate: An Introduction”, then “Freerangin’, Freeballin; and Flopsy-Flurvy”.  So, this is, um, part four:

      When I last felt like writing about tomatoes, I was talking about my crazy ADHD garden in which I decided to grow everything only to find out I had been allotted the following farmscape:

   

     In this fifteen square foot Wonderland, I planted big tomatoes, little tomatoes, spring peas, pole beans, yellow squash, zucchini squash, carrots, spinach, mixed greens, cucumber, watermelon, strawberries, and, I think, a pumpkin. I figured I would maximize the vertical space.

  I planted whatever had sprouted and tried to...

     (Oh, and corn. I planted corn.)

         arrange things in sort of a high/ low sort of way and then I threw everything that hadn't sprouted in like Jackson Pollock's Optimistic Garden Filler.

        Everything was fine until it...wasn't. Plants were rising from the dead. Peas were coming up grody, and corn was coming up tougher than a kid from the Marcy Projects. Mixed greens were mixed in with everything else, and, you know, the pictures on those seed packets are illogically water-soluble. Like life in the Gummerdome, things were just too crowded.

      The little tomatoes, on the other hand, were nuts. ("Nuts" like crazy nuts, not like nutty nuts... I don't know. You're just going to have to work through that yourself.) Anyway, so the baby toms were thriving. (Yes, Katy Perry, it was a lycopene dream.) They were all vining up the fence, and every few days, I would go outside and weavy-windy the vines into the fence and pretend it was a vineyard.

     At that time, I was doing a little freelance special ed work. I had been asked to go out of town and provide respite care for about 24 hours, I knew The Gummer was going to her bad place. It's not OCD, per say. Not officially, anyway. She just gets really edgy before she has one of her Joan Crawford jags. It's like how some animals go apeshit before a storm. I could see it coming. I left.  

     When I pulled back into the driveway twenty-four hours later, my garden was gone.

    

    

Be a Fan

Ya Gotta Be Sweet, Pickle

"So there's this guy named Freud, and..."
___

       I'm turning forty in a few weeks. Yesterday, while The Gummer and I were discussing my life insurance policy and plans for Jack in the event of my untimely demise, she suddenly announced, "If I go into a nursing home, this house is going to be sold!"
      I stared at her. She was making Lemon-Sucking Only-Child Face again. How very productive.
      "Mom, don't go throwing shit onto the fire if it isn't going to burn."
      "That doesn't even make any sense!"
      "Of course, it doesn't." I paused and pictured her heaving a microwave onto a bonfire.
      "Okay, so my student loans would be forgiven. That's a plus..."

___

       "Is it raining yet? I need it to rain within the next thirty minutes."
       "You're the one who wanted him to play baseball." She makes a face like a pig backing away from a bad smell. I wonder if they teach that as a debate tactic in law school.
       "Were you 'Sunshine' in the arrangement?" My parents had called each other 'Sunshine' and 'Moonbeam'.
       "Yes."
       "How did you get to be 'Sunshine'?"
       "Because someone loved me." She glittered.
        I did not:
       "And I guess 'DoomCloud' would have made a weird pet name."

___

      "Mom, why is the sea salt grinder sitting out?"
      "It turns, but nothing comes out."
      "I don't know what it is that you find so vexing about that sea salt grinder."

      I go into the kitchen and investigate. There is nothing wrong with the grinder...if you take the lid off.  I go back into the living room.

      "I think it's my arthritis."
      "Look, Mom. You just hold this part and twist this part. It's like giving a really lame hand job. You know."

_____

      It can't all be snarky. You have to add a little sugar to the vinegar if you want to be sweet, pickle:

      Last night, I went to kiss my sleeping kid, and he said something about being at a party. His eyes flickered. I asked him who was there, and he sat up a little bit and answered me in whatever language he speaks in his dreams. I sat there for a while and talked to him about it even though he was asleep, his little eyes flickering with the work of it all. The Gummer came by, too, and, for a minute, we were all there at a little party in Jack's mind.

Be a Fan

Live Gummer Update

"Mom, why do people keep calling?"

      "Oh, I was trying to call the insurance company, and I called a porn number by mistake."

"Well, what did they say?"

      "It wasn't nice."

"What kind of porn isn't nice?"

 She just shakes her head, as I flip through the phone book.

Be a Fan

Freerangin', Freeballin', and Flopsy Flurvy

This is the second part of TomatoGate. Go back and read "TomatoGate: An Introduction" if you haven't read that part yet.
The Topsy Turvy Tomatapocolyspe

     Last year, I received a Topsy Turvy Tomato Planter as a gift from my sibling who lives in a Very Gated Community. The TTTP The T3P is, in my opinion, a piece of crap which is significantly crappier in person than it appears to be on television.  Not only is the planter itself flimsy, but you also have to find a place to hang the damn thing that’s strong enough to support a million pounds (plus or minus) of hypothetical tomatoes.

    The only place I had to hang the planter was the W.C. Fields lamp on the patio. If this thing produced like it does in the commercial, there was no way that lamp was going to be strong enough.  I decided to go with a more laidback “Flopsy Flurvy Tomato Lounger” approach. Translation: I was going to let the thing sit around on the patio until it figured out what it wanted to do with its life.

   I may have overestimated the tomato plant’s inherent desire to go forth and be fruitful.  I may have continued to believe long after all signs of life had subsided. (I’m that girlfriend, and thus, I do not date. It's too hard to give up the ghost.) It is quite likely that the residents of the Flopsy Flurvy Tomato Lounger (née Topsy Turvy Tomato Planter) left this world while I was busy trying to find a teaching position in a state which apparently just wants children to run around all free range because everyone knows that that is a reputable teaching method. When I finally got around to checking on my little lycopeney friends, they were gone.

Facebook Status, April 25, 2010 at 5:36 pm:

Throwing Out the Baby with Grandma: When categorizing items as “Trash” or “Not Trash”, The Gummer cannot distinguish between a dead tomato plant and a Topsy Turvy Tomato Planter filled with perfectly good potting soil.

“Mom, why did you throw it away?”

“The tomato plant was dead.”

“The PLANTER wasn’t dead.”

“I had it in a black trash bag in the garage for a week before I threw it away. You should have seen it.”

“I cannot see through a black plastic bag.”

TomatoGate had begun.

In This Part, I Talk About Balls For a While, But It's Really About Gardening

      Around that same time, I decided to plant a garden. In this garden, I would grow everything. (To quote Katt Williams: “Everything?” “Everything.”) I am absolutely not in any way exaggerating, in fact, I am probably leaving things out with this list. I planted: big tomatoes, little tomatoes, spring peas, pole beans, yellow squash, zucchini squash, carrots, spinach, mixed greens, cucumber, watermelon, strawberries, and, I think, a pumpkin.

    “That’s a lot,” you are probably thinking. You are right. “Well, yeah, but how big is your yard?” Good question. Thank you for that show of support. The yard is big, yes. “Well, do you have a PLOW?” Ah, no. The choice for me is plow free. The plow factor wouldn’t be an issue, anyway. I’ll get to that in a minute. I need to deal with all of these seeds first.

    I started the seeds in those little Pop Secret soil pucks and then transferred them to little Styrofoam cups. (Word is making me capitalize “Styrofoam”.  I thought we had a more casual relationship than that. Cardboard and I do not have a need for such formalities, Styrofoam. Get over yourself.) I kept the little unproductive pucks, because I am an optimist and I love the underdog. I combined fertile soil with futile soil like a deranged geneticist who was hell-bent on getting something to stick the landing. I transferred the seedlings to breeding trays which were sort-of divided by type until it rained, and my plant farm turned into Freeballin’ Plant Soup.  While that may not be an ideal gardening situation for some people, I generally prefer things to fall in more of a freeballin’ construct. (The Gummer is more of a “Balls in a Vice” kind of girl. If we are judged according to our (metaphorical) ball policies, I think most men would prefer my perspective even if is a little slapdash. Ooh, “slapdash” is not a good word for this. Um, loose, unstructured, free. I would say “chaotic”, but that reminds me of how I learned that “free” does not translate to “can be exchanged freely from right to left”. My sincere apologies, Innocent Victim of One of My Less Successful Experiments. I’m sure there were other things in the lab that buffered your trauma.)

    I digress…and I am talking about my mother and balls. Delete. Delete. Delete.

   Anyway, so I had all these seedlings and potential seedlings that needed to spread out. I asked The Gummer if I could have a little bit of yard to chew up and turn into farmscape. (How is “farmscape” not a word, Word? Add it.) There was a logical little plot next to GAYB (God-Awful Yard Barn). The Gummer begrudgingly said I could use the space between the patio and the fence. Yes, between. Two feet wide and seven feet long with one extra square foot sort of sticking out. I think the yard is a quarter-acre or maybe half an acre. Hell, maybe it’s an acre. I don’t know. It’s bigger than 15 square feet jammed between a 3 ft. high wall of concrete blocks and a fence. That is the sort of crap farmland that people give adopted children.

  So, I had all these plants or potential plants, and I was mad that she was limiting my potential. I, like Miley Cyrus, can’t be tamed. That is a problem when you live with someone who can’t stop micromanaging. The Gummer was getting more agitated with all the little Pop Secret carcasses and Styrofoam pods on the patio. But that wasn’t really the problem. The problem was that we were being reminded why I had moved out the minute I turned 18. Jack and I had been in Collinsville long enough for The Gummer to start waxing nostalgic about the glorious days when she had the entire house to herself. I was in a constant subterraneous state of freaked out, because it appeared that I had educated myself into unemployability.  I was unemployed but I wasn’t unpacked. Everything was stuck.

     Nobody likes a holding pattern. The Gummer and I were on the cusp of apeshit. What was brewing was an absolute, perfect storm of gung go, balls-to-the-wall, officially-diagnosed Attention Deficit Disorder with A Scorching Side-Order of Hyperactivity versus bat shit, Joan Crawford, undiagnosed-but-oh-come-on Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

     Hang on, little tomato. It's going to get ugly.

  

Be a Fan

TomatoGate, An Introduction

We almost lost The Gummer today.  She isn't sick or anything. There was just a moment when the Gummer and I stood on a precipice, and I wanted to whack the crap out of her like on that fencing game in Wii Resort.  As you can see from the transcripts, I was completely justified:

Setting: Living room around 9:30 pm. Jack is telling The Gummer goodnight. She has just awakened from "The Snooze During the News".
    Jack: Grandma, I want to take you out to eat at Olga's for Mother's Day. I will wear a tie but not a tuxedo.
   (The Gummer pauses. She looks at me and begins to speak TO ME, as though it was some sort of aside that was inaudible to the small child who was right in front of her FACE.)
   Gummer: I am going to my friend's house.
   Laura: (I don't actually have any lines. I just had lazer eyes and an internal monologue which included the word "no" and some...accessories.  What, is she sixteen and wants to go hang out with her friends? More lazer eyes. I'm getting so much practice in, and Jack is only six.)

    The problem was solved very quickly. She just clicked into her Zen state and, by the power of "Damn it, Lah-rie!", the need to prioritize was made evident. She is only acting like she is mad at me now, because it's much easier to blame me than it is to go apologize to a small child (especially when "Everybody Loves Raymond" is on.)

Okay, so now back to the Chronicles:

    On April 14, I posted "Spring Cleaning with Grandma". It ended like this:  

     "On the side of the house, there is a metal trash can which has not been moved since last summer. We walk to the trash can, and I remove the lid. “This is potting soil.”

     The Gummer and I both know it’s more than just potting soil. It’s a crime scene.  What happened with that trash can is a story for another day."

      The story of TomatoGate takes places over a three month period from April to June of 2010. During that time, the pressure between us was building up, and, inevitably, it exploded that June. (And, hell yeah, it exploded like a little tomato. This story has tomatoes coming out of the woodwork.)
     Anyway, so, if you were reading this in book form, you would read "Spring Cleaning with Grandma" and then it would flash back into the three events that make up TomatoGate and then some weird posh children would find a secret passageway through a wardrobe and then run around in an attic and have giant heads and all. (That's from "Flowers in the Attic and the Wardrobe and the Rye". It has nothing to do with TomatoGate. I digress.)
    TomatoGate will be posted in, I don't know, slices 
    TomatoGate will be posted in parts on Friday.  It's too long for one post.

    Next: TomatoGate, Part I: The Topsy Turvy Tomatapocolypse
   

Be a Fan