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

It's the Easter Gummer, Lah-rie Marie!

   On Sunday mornings, I like to do a Theodore Roethke and take my waking slow. The Gummer usually feeds Jack breakfast, and the two of them have crazy conversations which remind me why we moved back here. Usually. Today, not so much:
   "Jack, there is an Easter Egg Hunt at my church. Do you want to go?"

   (Pause while Jack consults The Big Book of Duh) "Yes!"

  "Okay, then tell your mother to take you."

   What?! I was getting drafted to an Easter Egg Hunt. Sorry, Mr. Roethke, but I am going to have to shift to waking spastic. I have to go. I went upstairs. The Gummer was standing in front of the sink, as per usual. Considering how often she chooses to stand there and the gravitational pull (Grandmatational pull?) that apparently emanates from the sink, one would think this would be The Gummer's happy place. One would be wrong. More often than not, it is her crazy place.
   "I can't take him there, Mom. It's not a public Easter Egg Hunt."  I was picturing Vince Vaughn with an Easter basket. "We can't just crash an Easter Egg Hunt. It's trashy."
  "You just don't want to go." She was doing that ghetto-fab cobra thing with her head again.
   I could hear something beeping. It was my Gummer Decoder Ring. She was not really talking about an Easter Egg Hunt. She was talking about organized religion.  (The beeping of the Gummer Decoder Ring flipped my internal Mtv switch, and the words "subversive element" started flashing in my head like a concert backdrop from 1989. I was experiencing complications from JDS (Java Deficiency Syndrome))
   The Gummer is inclined to perceive her opinion as fact, thus she has decreed that I want nothing to do with anything that has anything to do with organized religion in any form at all ever. That isn't true. I've told her this a million times. I just don't like it when religious groups organize themselves into a flight formation and then turn into some kind of attack squadron. As long as things are positive and people stay in the "live and let live" range, it's fine. Good churches do good things.  Personally, I prefer a more disorganized approach to religion. Jack recently asked why The Gummer has a picture of Qui-Gon Jinn on her wall. "Um, Jack... that's Jesus." So, yeah, we aren't exactly churchy.
    The beeping continued. My Gummer Decoder Ring was picking up another signal: The organized religion issue was a cover-up. The Gummer didn't want to take Jack to the Easter Egg Hunt at her church because she was making deviled eggs.
    Oh, wait... no. I'm not making a joke about organized religion and deviled eggs. She was making deviled eggs to take to an Easter celebration at her friend's house. Case closed, Nancy Drew.
   One of The Gummer's friends hosts a dinner party on every holiday, presumably so that the widows in the group know that they are not alone. (Cue the Michael Jackson- "You Are Not Alone") (Ick! Make it stop. Cue Social Distortion's "Ball and Chain" instead. Yes.) These little celebrations are great, except The Gummer isn't even sorta-kinda alone. We moved back to Collinsville so Jack and The Gummer would have family. If we are going to live in The Horseradish Capital of the World, then let's do the damn thing.
   If the families portrayed in the board game commercials of the early 80s were based on actual familes, they certainly didn't include us in the focus group. Obviously, the Milton-Bradley family depicted in the commercial is an extreme, but we were definitely on the other end of the spectrum. There just wasn't a lot of conversation or connection. Our family vacation to DisneyWorld sort of explains everything: When we went to Epcot, my brother and I were told that we could go whereever we wanted and then meet back up at a certain time. We were going to spend our big family vacation in different parts of the world. (For the record, I did stay in Germany with my parents. My brother, on the other hand, went looking for the secret underground passageway to global subculture because he wanted to tour Fire Island, Bangkok, and Thailand.) 
   Yeah, I don't think so. These are different times. Jack and I might be a teeny-tiny family, but, damn it, we can both shout "You sank my battleship!" with the best of 'em. We laugh a lot and emote relentlessly. Despite her complaints about the chaos, The Gummer has gotten tangled up in the way we are. She loves it. When my father died, Jack continued to drag springtime into her house. Along with those Sunday morning conversations, she and Jack have lightsaber battles and their own little Ultimate Fighting Championship. He will tell her about Bakugan and Lego Star Wars on Wii, and the boy does not give a shit if she wants to hear it or not.  He has changed her. (Yes, this is the Renaissance Gummer.) Even her Easter card to me showed signs of growth: On the inside, she had written "I do love you--"
   We were going to this egg hunt.
   The three of us walked into the recreation hall at the Mother of Perpetual Help Catholic Church. There was a marble statue of Jesus in the entryway. Jack asked, "Who is that guy with the beard?' I laughed.
   The Gummer, who obviously didn't even hear Jack's question, responded, "Don't say anything dirty."
   There, in The Mother of Perpetual Help, was The Gummer of Perpetual "Lah-rie!" 
   Yeah.
   It's not like all life can be new.  That's not good for anybody. My lunatic mother, with her cryptic communication style and impossible, surgically-sterile definition of "clean" is here and healthy and as Gummery as ever. Life is good.
  Well, it's good enough.
  Usually.

Be a Fan

The Wrath of Gummer: Bob Evans = BS

    This is not the next post on the agenda, and it isn't going to be very long. It's happening right now, so I wanted to post before I run upstairs and spy on her.
    The Gummer just came home from an evening of fine dining. She is a wrath monkey. And I quote:
     "I am never going to Bob Evans again. A senior pancake and bacon costs $4.99. They upgraded it to the waffle for $2.59 or $2.89. That's bullshit."

     I read the quote back to her. She would like me to not say that she said "bullshit" on the Internet. Sorry, Gummycakes-- that's the nature of quotations. That's what you said, Bunny Bread.
    The Gummer has the Bob Evans Consumer Relations number and is going to call and tell them that she will NEVER go to Bob Evans again. 

    I briefly worked at gas station in college. I was in the cooler with the manager, and he.... remarked postively on the aesthetics of my posterior. He looked like the Dunkin' Donuts guy in a really felonious way. I was very young and very just-trying-to-stock-the-Shasta. (That sounds like a euphemism. Yeah, maybe he was just trying to stock the Shasta, too.) Anyway, so The Gummer told me not to go in the cooler with The Dunkin' Douchebag. Shortly after that, I was fired. Everyone was fired (except Dunkin'), because there was a cigarette stealing ring. ("Huh?" you may ask. Well, apparently people were going around stealing cartons of cigarettes in an organized manner which was indicative of a concurrently-running Jolt Cola ring.) When I told The Gummer that I had been fired, she demanded that I call Exxon

                                   yes, EXXON

                                  (Just call 'em up: "Hello. I would like to speak to Ex, please.")

and tell them that my parents were never, ever, EVER again, going to purchase gasoline from an Exxon station.  It was very sweet. I did not call.
    Start filing those bankruptcy papers, Bob Evans. She's angry. She's gone Gummercore.

    (I just went upstairs to check on the progress of The Great Gummercott of 2011. She said. "It's nighttime. No one is there." Good eye, Batter Batter! "Well, tell me before you call. I want to film it.")

Be a Fan

Conversation Stopper

(This post is a little bit dirty. It's just a little bit, but I feel better if that's clear from the get go.)

     It took about 39 years to figure out how much voltage was necessary to get The Gummer to flinch. Now, before I get into this, let me sprinkle a caveat or three:  1.If I lie on the floor and pretend to be dead (including rolly-rolly eyes) for ten minutes, The Gummer does not react. 2. The Gummer does not engage in normal conversation. 3. The following exchange is the result of years and years of our strange but somehow "it is what it is" communication style:

    We are standing iin front of the refrigerator. It is open. Throughout the exchange, the kid version of me keeps hearing "Lah-rie, shut the goddamn refrigerator door" even though The Gummer is the one with the door open this time.
    "What did you do all day yesterday?"
     She doesn't get any of the online stuff. She doesn't understand that I've been applying for jobs and writing and networking. The importance of researching child support law and improving my Zuma Blitz score mean nothing to her.
    "Huh... What DID you do?"
     She is making Only Child face. If she had siblings, this facial expression would have resulted in her getting jacked in the face. It's a crazy combination of lemon sucker and ghetto-fab head spinning. She's 76. This is not the time.
    "What did you DO all day?'
    My brain does not do this. I cannot itemize. Besides, it's an absurd question.  I am not in her employ.
    "What did you do all day? Huh? Huh? What did you do?" She is still doing Crazy Ghetto Fab Thing with her head. What is wrong with her neck? She's like a cobra.
    "What did..."
     And that's enough. It's time to stop standing here.
     "Heh? Tell me: What did you DO all day?"
     "I masturbated for four hours."

      I stood there watching her brain twitch. She didn't know what to do.

      A faint smile rose up. Sometimes I think The Gummer is a completely normal, cognizant person who just has a weird, Old Country way about her. It's fine, I guess. I mean, if she's going to act like that, then I'm going to act like this.  That's how it is with family.
      "I'm kidding. I just wanted you to stop talking."
       She smiled. It was an actual smile.
       I won again.
      

Be a Fan

Undercover Gummer

     The Gummer sure does like to clean a lot:

What is her secret?

     "Whoa, Mom! It is 1980 in here! You need to get your driver's license and chop that shit up."

     (Yes, she knows I am posting this. She's fine with it. Nothing phases her. I just have to keep turning up the voltage to see what makes her tic.)

Be a Fan

Spring Cleaning with Grandma

     Spring Cleanup was this week. Twice a year, the residents of The Horseradish Capital of The World turn into Ty Pennington’s apathetic cousin and make a valiant attempt to “Pack That Landfill!” while hoarders drive around with pickup trucks loaded up with everything but Granny in a rocking chair. It’s a festival of mental illness with a boring name. (I prefer “Spring Fling” and “Fall Haul”.) This year, I was totally into it. I had finally reached maximum crapacity.

     For the last two years, half of my stuff has been in boxes in the yard barn. The other half has been sort-of in but mostly out of boxes in the basement.  When I left Athens, I didn’t exactly pack.

I just shoved random shit in boxes and jammed in all into the car:

March 17, 2009, 8:29 PM:  “The Jordache Project has failed. 135 pounds of junk will not fit into a 90 pound bag, Start time delayed for purging.”

     This arrangement has been a point of contention in Gummerland. She has offered to help me organize. This is not an option. The combination of my ADHD and her undiagnosed-but-um-duh OCD produces toxic fumes. It’s like ammonia and bleach. (Note: “Bleach” is pronounced “bleeyatch”. Yes, Microsoft, add that shit to the dictionary.) In my defense, I did spend a weekend completely organizing the basement. At the unveiling ceremony, she glanced around the room and said, “I can still see your books.” The Gummer is an oppressive regime.

    Anyway,
I’m turning forty next month, so I’m spastically trying to deverkaktify (i.e., unfuck) my thirties before the clock runs out.  I was totally taking advantage of Super Trash Fun Day and had been in the basement fenging my shui like a wild woman for the last week. It was crunch time. There was a zone, and I was IN IT. I went to the 'MART to get more trash bags. When I returned, she was standing next to a ladder in the garage.

     “Lah-rie, have you been in the attic?”

     “No, I haven’t been anywhere near the attic.”  

     “You didn’t put anything in the attic?”

      Clear face of all expression. Do not engage. Put the lid on the crazy gravy  and let it simmer for a while.  I feigned breezy amnesia. “Weren’t we just talking about this?”

     She decided that the wind had opened the attic door and put one of her SAS shoes on the first rung. She's 76.

    "Stop it. You are made out of chalk." I climbed the ladder and maneuvered the wooded door back into the frame while simultaneously having a mild "Was she pushed or did she fall?" anxiety attack. I informed her that I had not eaten and was both crabby and hungry.

     
“Lah-rie, help me lift this cahn-crete statue.”

     ‘What? Why?”

     “It’s broken. Help me lift it into this wagon so I can put it with the trash.”

      “No, I’ll just do it myself.”

      “It’s cahn-crete, Lah-rie. It’s heavy.”

       It was time for another session of “Physics with Grandma”.  The statue has a circular base. Welcome to the wheel.

       After that, she
started going on about the mythical garage sale. She was pointing at things and talking, but I was just sort of watching her and listening to this WAH-WAH-WAH-WAH sound. It was like locust in the summertime or a carnival ride. I looked at my hands. I was not holding a nitrous balloon. (But then, when the WAH-WAHs hit, I was never holding the balloon. There was always some less-than-hipster reaching toward me and mumbling, “Dude, you let go of your balloon.”)

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

   
“Okay, but help me lift that trash can first.”

     (Yes, Gordon Gano, the third verse is the same as the first.)

    

     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
.

Be a Fan

The Kitten Wants A Cheeseburger

This Joy Kampia dress made me laugh my buns off.

http://www.joykampia.com/fashion/hamburgerdress.html

Be a Fan

Biology with Grandma

     When I was about ten or eleven, my parents bought my brother and me a pair of silver ten-speeds at Sears. With few exceptions, everything they bought came from Sears. Those orange sherbet-colored pants embroidered with an opossum on one leg and “Hang in There” on the other? Sears. That outfit with the Kermit green painter’s pants and the yellow golf shirt that I wore in seventh grade?  Sears, again—The Lesbian Couture Collection. Those navy blue pull-on polyester pants with the attached brass elephant belt buckle that were later transformed into Fire Island shorts for my “Kitten” summer? Thank you, Sears.  I have attached the bill from my shrink. I found something you don’t sell.

     I was fine with my bike for a while, even though it looked a little wimpy compared to my brother’s.  The bikes weren’t really the same.  His was the standard grown-up size with the seat as high as it could go.   My bike was only slightly larger than a German shepherd.  So one day, I decided to take his bike out for a quick spin around the grid. (Part of my neighborhood is very matchy-matchy, cookie cutter, driveway-and-three-trees-one-of-which-will-eventually-have-to-be-removed.) I was doing well, despite having to stand up and completely shift my weight from one leg to the other in order to pedal. I was doing well, but then I stopped.  I stopped suddenly and landed on the crossbar.

     This was bad. My brain went into problem-solving mode: If I just sort of fell the rest of the way over, I would be able to get my other leg away from the bike without bending it. (The model for this technique would include one of those wooden clothes pins that look like little people without arms.) I could then roll into someone’s yard and go to sleep. Brilliant. Thank you, brain. I was going to have to walk home. (A similar clothes pin is used in the model for this technique, but it has pipe cleaner arms and a frowny face.)

     I made it home. Sometimes making it home just makes things worse.

     “Mom, I’m bleeding.”          

     She and my grandmother were standing in the kitchen. They were joined by a choir of angels.

     “No, I fell off a bike. I landed on the bar.”  It was too late. The Gummer and The Babushka were herding me back into the bathroom. No one in this family ever listened to me.  I needed an ice pack and some ibuprofen. I did not need an impromptu performance of “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon”.

    When it actually happened, the Gummer said very little. She is not good at that stuff.  She showed up at my door with a coat-sized avocado-green box with the words “So You’re A Woman Now…” written in ornate, finishing school script next to a pencil sketch of two happy Gidget-y girls entering a building which was probably a school and not a Planned Parenthood outpost. 

   “Here. I ordered this.” She tossed the box onto my bed like she was feeding a walrus at Sea World. Then she left. She had emoted. We had bonded.  Carry on, carry on.  Nothing to see here.  I opened the box.

    My memory of this moment has been edited. It is not likely that there were 1000 pieces of 15 different kinds of external-use feminine hygiene products which I then threw into the air like autumn leaves while I danced and spun around in celebration of my womanhood. I’m pretty sure that my reaction included the dumbfounded “What the hell?” that appeared in almost all of my Gummer encounters during those years. She had already confiscated my copy of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, and it took her at least six months to actually hand me the training bra which she purchased all by herself (There may have been a sale at Sears that she just couldn’t pass up.)  I had been allowed to read Why Was I Adopted? which included a traumatizing illustration of a baby coming out of a gumball machine, but she had a death grip on that copy of Where Did I Come From?  which included those kid-friendly illustrations of the caveman from The Joy of Sex. 

  Like most people, there are some things that I think I can do better than my parents did.  I told Jack about the winkie /vagina combo when he was about four. Granted, I get all kinds of verklempt whenever I realize he’s doing things like growing and thriving, but I didn’t want this weird stigma attached to something that wasn’t really that big of a deal.  I’m pretty sure Jack agrees, but then four-year old Jack had his own opinion: “Boys have winkies.  All girls have is stupid ‘ginas!”

    Take your time, kid. Take your time.

(After writing this, I found the following note in my ”journal”/ hamster pile of paper scraps :

“8/19/10 3:28 PM  Watching TV. Gummer reading, waiting for Jeopardy to come on. Penguins getting ready to mate on TV.  I said,  'See Jack. That’s how penguins make babies. The boy gets on the girl and just jumps up and down.' Gummer rolls her eyes and shakes her head." )

Be a Fan

What's the Frequency, Gwyneth?

    Despite twenty years of trying to avoid anything viral, I was up until 4 AM yesterday posting Gummer links to the fan pages of various folks in the entertainment industry. After witnessing my mad series of posts on facebook, my friend, Barbi, emailed the link for my SNL Digital Short to Gwyneth Paltrow's site "GOOP".

    Advertising and self-promotion are not my thing. But then, even though the spatial and mathematical departments in my head are staffed with uncooperative hooligans who mostly just run around in the hall, I managed to tweak the html stuff on the site and make that “Gummer: Revolutionary War or Westward Expansion” banner head.  I’m sure I’ll evolve a little bit, but at the core, I am a noisy introvert. Maybe “noisy” isn’t the right word, but “zesty” sounds like cheap salad dressing and “robust” sounds like I went up two cup sizes. “What noisy cats are we.”  (No, Microsoft, that sentence is not a question.)  Anyway, it takes introverts and extroverts to makes a whole…vert.  Yes, Super Grover, this is a job for an extrovert.

    So, thanks, Barbi, for your help and enthusiasm, and thanks to everyone who has supported the project. I’ve made enough money now to buy each and every one of you a bowl of white rice. (That’s current domestic market value rice purchased in bulk, not whatever rice they were buying with the nickels we put in those cardboard rice bowl banks at my Catholic grade school. My big $50 would make me a rice baller by cardboard bank standards. Yeah, bitch! What’s my name?)

    If there’s a possibility of Gwyneth Paltrow coming over, I guess I should pretty the place up a bit. Oh look, here’s a photo of Margot Tenenbaum. Gotta give it up for snarky little girls in white gloves. Show me some love, Gwyneth. Show me some love.

If my son and Gwyneth's daughter were a couple, the media would call them "Apple Jack".

Be a Fan

The Gumbo (Lah-rie, that smells hahr-ible!) - Letters from Readers

  As things evolve, I will be adding some features to The Chronicles. One idea is "Getting the Gum Out", which will be a series of profiles of creative people and the businesses which feed them. I am also fairly certain that I need to have a "Blue Monday" here and there to sort of put pylons around the slightly more offensive material. The first feature starts today. I got a letter from my friend, Jason:

Dear Laura,
    I love the chronicles. I love the ads even better. I love how the ads refer vaguely to the subject of the installment. This latest installment's ads are all about water treatment systems. Would you mention the killing of moles several times in the next one? I really want that bastard tearing up the yard dead, and I'm finally willing to take a contract out on his life, but am too lazy to google it on my own.
                                                                                     Thanks,
                                                                                        Jason

Dear Jason,
    Your letter about killing moles brought back some of my most cherished childhood memories. I remember how my dad would arm himself with dynamite's more cavalier cousin, the flare, and some random hoe. Oh, and a bag. I forgot about the bag. Anyway, he'd make his "Dad on a Mission" face and go marching off to the north end of the front yard where the moles invariably chose to build their mini-Boca condominium underworld. He'd put flares in and tromp all over their little mole construction site while I followed him around and analyzed his technique like a little mole apprentice. He would step and stomp and then make a face which, in retrospect, looked like something out of Beaner the Cat's repetoire. As soon as my dad pounced, The Gummer would appear out of nowhere. My apprenticeship would come to a sudden conclusion. 
   I'm trying to picture the next part of the process, but I can't. One minute, I would be Gozilla in Boca Raton trying to escape the evil Gummitor. The next minute, my dad would be triumphantly carrying a hoe back up to the garage. He'd Copperfield the bag into the trash can and never reveal how he made the mole disappear.
   I'm pretty sure what happened. Nothing good can come from a hoe in Boca.
                                                                                                                 Laura

Email your questions, ideas, and suggestions to thegummerchronicles@gmail.com  

Be a Fan

Personalizing Journalism with Grandma

   Apparently, the folks in city hall are reading my blog: For the next two days, the water treatment plant in Collinsville will be closed while they perform "routine repairs" to the water treatment system. During this time, residents of the 'ville will be subject to a city-wide boil order. (Everything I've read refers to a City Wide Boil Order from the Water Treatment Plant, but since there's no ketchup bottle water tower in the Hundred Acre Wood, I think we can get by without the Excessive Capitalization for Dramatic Effect.)
   The Gummer told me about the boil order a couple of days ago, but, despite the almost 40 years that she and I have been stationed in Communication Swamp, she seems to be oblivious to even the most rudimentary components of my sender-receiver combo. (Not that it's easy: I have ADHD (the actual kind, not the kind people diagnose themselves with when they realize they can't magically will themselves into a stupor in order to sit through something that is just BORING)). The Gummer told me about the boil order right after I woke up without securing my attention and without warning me that she was going to say a bunch of shit that I wouldn't remember and that she was going to say it all REALLY FAST. While trying to pour goldfish crackers into one of those... (I can't remember if they're nickel bags or dime bags. That's never been my thing.)... smaller-sized sandwich bags, I was hit with a  fusillade of what I could do with water and when I could do it. Cue the spaz hands, and please stop the talking. I can't process that much information without marking it up with colored pencils. Buzz words only, woman. Buzz. Words. Only.
   So today, when I wanted to take a bath, I decided to inquire about the guck quotient of water the 'ville. The Gummer whirled around with a Super Soaker filled with the exact same unedited information. I was holding a towel and a bottle of conditioner. It seemed pretty clear that I was not going to be making pasta in the next few minutes.
   "Can I take a bath?"
   "You can't wash your hands, but you can take a bath."
   "I can't get the water on my hands, but I can put my vagina in it?"
   "That's what the newspaper said."

   So, thank you,  Local Newspaper Which Shall Remain Nameless. Even though you consistently provide recklessly sensationalized coverage of tragic events with no apparent regard for the people connected to the stories, you still care enough to really personalize this Boil Water Order.
  P.S. My vagina says hey. It also wants me to tell you that if it went to five colleges, then surely your staff should be able to sneak into a course or two.

Be a Fan

Zen and the Art of Gummer Maintenance

Meditation 101 with Jack is now on youtube

Be a Fan

Music for the Masses

"Big Night with Big Time Rush and Jack" is now on youtube

Be a Fan

An SNL Digital Short: Is That Gummer Crazy?

     When “The Gummer Chronicles” becomes a global powerhouse, there will inevitably be an SNL digital short with Kristen Wiig’s Aunt Linda character playing The Gummer in a video for Cee Lo Green’s “Crazy”. At first, the lyrics would be “Is that Gummer crazy? Possibly”, but by the end of the song, the “probably” would be totally obvious.  Initially, Gwyneth Paltrow would be cast as me since she knows Cee Lo and has straight blonde hair, but then, during their monthly street meat crawl, Lorne Michaels would tell Tina Fey about the clip and mention that I was adopted. Tina would insist that adoption is a gold mine of hilarity. She would convince Lorne Michaels to cast Rihanna in the clip. I agree that this is a great decision. I have seen some photos of Rihanna, and we have very similar physiques. Jack would be played by Justin Bieber because Justin Bieber equals ratings. Toonces the Driving Cat would make a surprise appearance as Beaner the Ninja Cat.  (When we first moved here, The Gummer was afraid that Beaner would randomly attack her. She devised a plan to save herself by seducing the cat with people food.)

     “Is That Gummer Crazy?” will turn the Digital Short trifecta (Lazy Sunday, Dick in a Box, and Natalie Raps) into a quadfecta (yes, Windows, add “quadfecta” to my dictionary). After joining the quadfecta, Jack and I will get an apartment in Tribeca. Jack will flirt with Beyoncé while I make Jay-Z laugh. That’s the plan.

    The Gummer’s version of Aunt Linda has submitted her first official review of “The Gummer Chronicles”. I had already explained the advertising aspect (“I don’t understand any of that!”) and then explained it again with some special ed modifications (“Lah-rie, I just don’t understand any of that.”) I had also told her that the site was doing well and that I even had a reader from Singapore. When she, again, didn’t understand any of that, I again modified my presentation: “SING-A-PORE! It’s a country…with people…and they can read…and they read stuff I wrote.” GAH!

    I read her the post about Costanstar the Randy Plumber (minus a few sentences here and there). Her review was as follows:

     “You’re lying.”

     “No, I’m not! What are you talking about?”

     “You aren’t telling the whole story.”

      I was scrunching my eyes up in so many ways that it was starting to hurt. I pressed the palms of my hands on either side of my skull and started squishing as hard as I could. (Deep pressure—it isn’t just for autism anymore.)

      I rolled my eyes, so that I could speak, “What does that mean?”

    “You don’t tell them how messy the basement is.”

     Whatever. Sometimes all you can do is hug yourself, rock back and forth, and make little sounds like, “Uhhhhh….”

Be a Fan

Michael Stipe Versus A Preschool Political Activist

     When I tell people that I lived in Athens, they usually respond with, “Did you meet Michael Stipe? Ha ha.”  The “ha ha” is almost always there. The idea that famous people would just be walking around is, I think, absurd to the general populace. Famous people are supposed to have a perimeter. They should wear a red carpet and velvet rope ring around them like a Lady Gaga outfit. It’s not like that in Athens. Stipe just walks around like a regular person, and the locals are generally unfazed by it.

     In 1994, I was in a bar in Athens.  (“Throughout 1994” is also accurate.) Stipplehead walked in. My exuberant friend lunged forward in his chair.  “There’s Stipe. Do you want to meet him?”

     “No. No, no, NO…”  It was too late.

     “Hey, Michael, this is my friend Laura. She’s from Collinsville.” Stipe had attended high school in The Horseradish Capital of the World. Logically, we were now going to have a pleasant conversation about the ‘ville. Stipe wasn’t smiling. He looked annoyed.  I panicked and tried to think of things he might remember.  There was a place in the woods where high school kids used to go drink and smoke pot. There were all these urban legends about bizarre things happening out there.

     “Do you remember ‘The Gates of Hell’?”

     “I know the painting.” He sneered.

     It didn’t make any sense. ‘The Gates of Hell’ is not a painting.  It’s a sculpture by Rodin. More importantly, why was he being so difficult? I was from The City with that Weird Catsup Bottle Water Tower. I wasn’t some wacko. I was cool. He would totally like me if he talked to me. He was just standing there.

     I mentioned the golf course near his old house. He insisted that there was no golf course.  My encounter with Stipplehead was escalating into an argument about regional attractions. Why was he still standing there? I squinted at him and probably did that splayed-fingers thing that I do when I’m freaking out (“spaz hands”).  We stood there for a few more seconds like tofu marinating in awkwardness, then it was over. I had met Michael Stipe. Yay.

    Maybe the locals are generally unfazed by his presence, but I was überfazed. For the next fourteen years, I experienced a crippling adrenaline rush spaz response every time I saw him. “Oh no, Michael Stipe is at The Grit. Fight or flight? Fight or flight?”  Not that I wanted to fight Michael Stipe, of course, but I didn’t want to go running out of The Grit with an unfinished Golden Bowl plus veggies, either. Why would I do that? The food was great, and Michael Stipe was there. How cool was that?  The battle between fight and flight always manifested itself in an anxiety attack. It was difficult to eat with spaz hands, but I usually got by. I’m cool like that.

   My Stipe trauma came full circle when Jack met him the November before we left (November 23^rd is now officially the holiday “Stipe und Kreis”, the day the “perfect circle” closed.) My friend, Diana, and I had decided to attend a party for Jim Martin who was campaigning for the U.S. Senate. Jack was four and very into politics. I also didn’t have a babysitter. It was a fun party, and Jack was having a great time. Late in the evening, an announcement was made encouraging people to take some “Vote for Jim Martin” yard signs with them when they left. Shortly after the announcement, Jack began carrying around a yard sign and shouting, “Vote for Jim Martin” like a little free-range, organically grown Paul Revere.  He walked up to Michael Stipe and held up the sign, “Vote for Jim Martin!”

    It was cute.  

    It was also completely silent. Stipe didn’t say anything to Jack. He didn’t look for Jack’s grown-up or generally announce “Aww…what a cute kid!” He didn’t even laugh.  He didn’t do anything.

    I could smell the awkward tofu from The Great Regional Attractions Debate of 1994.

    “Did he just tell me to vote for Jim Martin?”

    I don’t know who he was talking to, but he wasn’t talking to me.  The man mumbles. Michael Stipe talks like he has a microphone pinned to his lapel so that his comments are only audible to a select group of people. Of course, it may just seem that way because he is NOT TALKING TO ME.

   For a few seconds, nothing happened. I looked at Jack. He was waiting for a response. There he was, this tiny kid holding up a sign waiting for a response from some random guy. He was my little Lloyd Dobler. For the first time, I didn’t have that fight or flight feeling.   I was just getting pissed.  I glared at the side of Michael Stipe’s head, thinking, “Come on, Michael Stipe. Don’t you know who that is?”

   “Did he just tell me to vote for Jim Martin?” hovered for a second, and then it was gone. I was over it. I had a new hero now.  My hero had given up on Michael Stipe and was now urging other party-goers to show their support for the man who unfortunately wouldn’t beat Saxby Chambliss in the next election. Jack’s little voice shouting “Vote for Jim Martin” affected me in a way that Stipe’s “Green”-era megaphone couldn’t come close to.

    It was time to stand. It was time to face north. It was time to think about direction.

    For the record, I didn’t wonder why. I knew.

 

Be a Fan

Plumbing with Grandma

I live in my parents’ basement.  It’s decorated in Late 1960s Man Cave, snazzed up with the clown mosaic that will unfortunately flash before my eyes when I die, and updated with stylistically-out-of-effin-nowhere Christmas in Santa Fe upholstered furniture. The centerpiece of the underground lair, if you can make it past the pop of the red and green furniture against the ash-colored paneling that goes on for days, is a hulking I-don’t-know-what-wood-that-is, giganticus and boozeless bar (with saloony- looking swivel stools). I sleep on the fold-out Christmas couch. This was supposed to be a temporary gig, but until I find a full-time teaching job or the writing starts to pay off, it’s slumbertime in Santa Fe for me. (So take a minute and check out one of the advertisements on this page and maybe share the link with your other friends who can read. Support the arts and my lower back.)

So last week, The Gummer yells, “Lah-rie! What color is the water in the toilet tank?”

Ugh.

I can’t tell. The water in Collinsville looks like it came out of a coffee can full of bolts that was left on the back patio in the rain. It has bits of rust floating in it. Conveniently, I have been collecting little paper ketchup cups thinking that I would use them when I paint… or perhaps take water samples from toilet tanks.

“Clear!”

The little ketchup cup could not stop The Gummer. The Gummer calls a plumber.

Shortly after that, the doorbell rings, and there is some muffled banging around upstairs.

“LAH-RIE! Unlock the backdoor!”  

Before I have a chance to walk the 40-some odd feet to the door, she is banging on the screen door.

“LAH-RIE!”

I turn the deadbolt and open the door to see The Gummer in her weird “Guests make me snarky”-mode and the plumber. The plumber looks like the bastard love child of George Costanza and Patrick Star from Sponge Bob. He is smiling at me. He is smiling a lot. He is smiling way too much.

I look down to see if I am wearing a shirt. I am. Not only am I wearing a shirt, but it’s just a SHIRT. Left to my own devices, I generally dress for function. My primary objective is just to have clothes on. There was nothing for this plumber to write a letter to Penthouse about.  I turned around and walked away.

Twenty minutes later, I was sitting on one of the Christmas in Santa Fe couches and George Costanstar was going over his estimate with The Gummer.

“Is your daughter married?”

WHAT? I froze.

                The Gummer replied in a stage whisper: “She’s a single mom.”

                Damn it. What was she DOING? She would never, never, never try to set me up with someone. Was she flirting? Why did she even answer his question? She needed to go back to wing man training camp.

                Costanstar left, and I was informed that he would be back tomorrow to install new toilets in both bathrooms. Great. Now I was going to have to hide my Personal Items and find somewhere to go while this goofball was plumbing.

                “I heard you answer his question. He asked if I was married. What was up with that?”

                “Oh… I don’t know.”

                “I heard you say that I was a single mom. What was up with THAT?”

                “Oh…I don’t…know. He just…asked a question.”

                She was making Airy-Fairy face in an attempt to appear oblivious.

                “Ok, well... don’t do that. Cleaning my pipes is not a line item."

                I was called to substitute teach the next day, so I didn’t have to hang out with Costanstar.  Shockingly, he was still there when I came home. I had been teaching Special Ed all day, and when I walked in the door, he was sitting at the kitchen table smiling at me like, “GUHHHH!”

                I’m off the clock, buddy. 

                I just don’t understand how I’m still single.

Be a Fan

Cheeseburger

The Gummer does not call me Laura. Ever.  She calls me “Laurie”, and she pronounces it like this: “LAH-RIE!!” She says it with that Midwestern accent that makes the word “slacks” feel like it’s actually made out of polyester:  “Damn it, Laurie. Put on some slacks. It’s time for Mass.”

                “LAH-RIE!” is my “kitten”.

(These first posts, you see, need to provide some background information.  I want to write about the weirdo plumber who was here last week, but first I need to explain why she was yelling “Laurie, what color is the water in the toilet?” This is where “Laurie” came from, and what follows is the quintessential “Laurie” of my childhood. It’s what you would find if you had to, I don’t know, stick a pin in the Laurieness of it all and plot it on a map.)

             In the summertime, my neighbor/friend, Stephen, and I would play catch or tennis or croquet… things like that… while we talked and talked.  We talked, I think, like grown-ups.  We squinted and paced and said “someday” while staying within the invisible dog fence boundaries of good kids in a good neighborhood.

             My Dad would grill. He liked to grill. But then, he married a woman who cannot cook. Maybe my dad just liked to eat.

Anyway…he would grill.

Midafternoon, the thawing would begin.

Just typing that, I can picture the whole thawing construct: the, what is it… 10 x 10?, Corningware pan on the kitchen counter with a hot dog and couple of hamburgers, the real kind made from actual meat from an actual butcher shop and pressed into wax papered-patties with some heavy silver something from my grandmother’s house…everything pink and frosted over with this faint almost–snowy  haze that disappeared when you touched it, and that barbequing tray,,, the one with the pencil sketch of a grill, a mustard-colored center, and a red and white checkerboard border, the tray that said “Carter wasn’t  Kennedy, but Reagan just makes me think “Yes, we can!” You know… THAT tray.

  Before the thawing could begin, an announcement had to be made, like we were in Elizabethan times and the town crier needed to put forth a call for action.

My mom would step out onto the back patio and shout: “LAH-RIE! HAMBURGER, CHEESEBURGER, OR HAHT DOG??!”

From somewhere in the distance, a faint reply: “cheeeese-bur-ger!”

So anyway, she calls me “Laurie”, and last week, we had this weird plumber guy at the house…

Be a Fan