Infectious Coryza

Do you know what I’ve discovered?  If you don’t have a God, you sure as hell better get one!  Shit is hitting the fan and there is nowhere to run—nowhere to hide. I’m beginning to think maybe the world is coming to an end or it’s doing a damn good job of faking it.   Every day that we wake up there is something going on that is worse than the day before, and we never know when the chaos, murder, or mayhem (ranging from the smallest bacteria to the latest natural disaster) is going to strike our pathetic little lives.

Image from sodahead.com

My collision with the proverbial fan started a few days before Valentine’s Day.  I was taking a break from writing and decided to check on the children’s well-being (ages 30 and 28) via their Facebook pages (I rarely comment, but like any good mother, I spy).  The thirty year old was fine and seemed healthy enough, but Baby-girl’s posting about her encounter with the common cold almost made me hop a plane with a couple gallons of chicken soup and a tub of Vapor Rub:

“Sweeping declaration:  this is the worst cold I’ve ever had. 4 days out of 6 spent entirely in bed, sleepless nights, overwhelming guilt about what I’m missing, single-handedly employing the good people at Bite Squad to ship in truckloads of chicken soup—countless tissues and cough drops later and all I can think is….I freaking love my dog, she is the best, the sweetest, the cutest and refuses to leave my side no matter what. She is my buddy. ” [Used by permission]

Wednesday Addams—Guard Dog Sick Duty|Photo by CDT

Like any decent mother, I was on the phone doing my combo nagging/worrying Momma jig as I jokingly said:  “Child, you get sick more than anybody I know.  You must not be taking care of yourself.  I’m so glad I’m nowhere near you (sorry kid, nothing personal; I just can’t afford to get sick right now)—you sound so awful that I wouldn’t be surprised if that cold traveled thousands of miles through the cell towers and tried to zap me right off my non-sick feet.  Just for grins and giggles, I think I’ll sterilize the phone in case you have an infection that defies science.  Drink lots of fluids, get plenty of rest, take your vitamins and call me in the morning, cutie pie.  MUAH!”

It is as if the gods of chaos, mayhem, and destruction heard my glib reply to my daughter and sent one of their oracles from Baby-girl’s city to stand at the entrance of my town dispensing “Infectious Coryza” curses (the common cold) as if it were Oprah giving out cars to a handful of lucky winners, because I came down with the cold from Hell within 24 hours of the phone call with my sick kid.

Oprah “Give Aways”

It’s been six days!  Six days of my life being turned upside down by a common cold which, can I state for the record, is not “common” by any means?  This torture was tailor-made for me.  Six days of in-and-out fever, hacking, mucus—my God, the rivers of mucus—the aches, the pains, and a high-pitch ringing in my left ear that I am quickly lapsing into insanity over as I keep slapping my ear while turning in frantic circles like a dog chasing his tail to try and catch the sound or make it go back to the Hell from which it emerged.  If Lennon was right and “life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans,” then “shit just happened” to me and I was definitely not making plans to encounter Infectious Coryza.  It destroyed my Valentine’s dinner with WW and turned it into a “Valentine’s Fail” because there ended up being no dessert that night (see “Epic Valentine Fails” http://howthehelldidienduphere.wordpress.com/).  Enough said!  I could hardly taste the delicious food and wine at my retirement dinner nor could I shake the concern that I might be killing off some very lovely people with my infection from Hell at the dinner party.   I’ve been in a complete fog at work (how much did I actually get done?), and I haven’t been able to write anything coherent for days which caused me to miss my blog deadline.  It hurt to even read so I dropped off the grid, and in just six days (not counting the mayhem, murder, and chaos in the Middle East and Africa that is always happening) I discovered that shit hit the fan in so many bizarre situations causing innocent lives to implode:

• An LAPD cop (Christopher Dorner) lost his mind and went on a killing rampage because he had been wronged on his job (who hasn’t been wronged on a job, and when did this become a license to kill?)
• The South African Olympian Blade Runner (Pistorius) allegedly shot and killed his girlfriend in a jealous rage (Yikes!)
•  A sorry-ass excuse of a man (Joe Rickey Hundley) flying on a Delta flight allegedly slapped a toddler (not his own—not that that would make any difference) across his face and left a scar, just because the baby was crying from an earache due to pressure from the plane landing, and to add insult to injury, Mr. Hundley allegedly called the baby the “N-word” (Huh?).
• A 10-ton meteor traveling at 40,000 mph exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk hurting over 1,000 people and exploding copious windows for miles around. It didn’t even land; can you imagine the damage if it had hit the Earth? (Did you know this happens all the time in Russia?  It just usually happens over Siberia where few people live.  The meteor that exploded near the Tunguska River in 1908 leveled 80 million trees and had this happened over a large metropolis, the meteor would have obliterated the entire city and its inhabitants—Holy Mary, Mother of God!)
• Fellowes killed off Matt Crawley on Downton Abbey (seriously, Fellowes, don’t I have enough stress?)
• A cruise ship (Carnival Triumph) left port on a 4-day cruise and got stranded at sea with only a couple of working toilets and 4,000 plus people, no air conditioning, not enough food, limited alcohol, and sewage back-up.  (Do I hear a mash-up of the Gilligan’s Island and the Love Boat theme songs making its way to YouTube?)

When I finally checked Dalai Mama’s Twitter account after six days of being knocked out by a common cold, sure enough my fans had a lot to say about bad things happening to good people citing the news articles I’d just gotten caught up on.  But the most delightful tweets were the Twitter feed from a couple of my fans on Carnival Triumph who sent me very creative reasons to never cruise again.

Cartoon by Chan Lowe|image from South Florida Sun Sentinel

“Shit Happens”/a tribute to the Carnival Triumph Mishap

Sung to the tune of “Love Boat by Paul Williams and Charles Fox

(My humble apologies to P. Williams and C. Fox)

CRUIS-ING—exciting and new!

Went onboard—sought a fantasy come true.

The TRI-UMPH—was a horror at best.

Shit seeping through the walls; shit flowing in the halls.

THE TRIUMPH—it won’t be making another run

THE TRIUMPH—just was too shitty for anyone.

Paid for steak, wine, and vodka

Got onions and mayonnaise.

And cruising—one of life’s great rewards

We’re so sick at sea—we just may swim to shore

It’s HEELLL!

 Welcome aboard!

SHIT HEEE-LL-LL!

There were 96 other verses on Dalai Mama’s Tweeter feed of “Shit Happens” (my readers obviously had a lot of time on their hands) but you get the point.  Dalai Mama’s readers paid for an expensive cruise and were expecting luxury, instead, “shit happened”—literally, and they got to cruise on a floating giant toilet with no air conditioning, no alcohol to numb their sorrows, and no gourmet food to assuage their pain.  In other words, they went in search of Heaven and landed in Hell.  C’est la vie. 

Cartoon by Simeon Liebman|image from London Times

I am discovering that no one ever wakes up in the morning and says, “today I’ll die in a Holocaust, get stranded at sea, or get shot by a madman.”  I am also discovering that bad things really do happen to good people, and we have little or no control over them when they do.  It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, male or female, black or white, religious or non-religious.   (Although, I’m getting a little sick and tired of never knowing when the sky is going to fall or when I’m going to get hit by the common cold or WWIII.)  I’ve got so many questions to ask God in order to try and make some sense of all of the chaos in world history.

I watched Roman Polanski’s The Pianist (a story about Polish-Jewish musician Władysław Szpilman, whose family was exterminated by the Nazis and who, himself, barely survived the occupation of Poland) while I was sick.  I was speechless through most of it. Why? Why? Why?  What was the point of all that hellish suffering?  And even though I get that we have no control over natural disasters (especially meteors), why should a two-year old adopted baby flying with his mommy have to learn so early in life that a stranger can cross the line, hate him, call him derogatory names, and hit and hurt him when he’s already in pain from an earache that he can’t control?  Why should a disgruntled cop be allowed to obliterate the hopes and dreams of people who had nothing to do with his grievances?  Why should the friends and families of all the gunshot victims we’ve been mourning from Sandy Hook to Chicago be battling anything today except possibly trying not to catch the common cold?  Years ago when I was stupid and self-righteous, I would have had pat answers to these questions.  Nowadays, since I’m entering my twilight years, the only thing I know for sure is that my response to suffering seems to mean so much more to my character, in the long run, than my ability to control every aspect of my life.  No one likes to suffer—least of all me.  But maybe Richard Bach has a point when he says:  “The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly.”

“The person I choose to be from the suffering that is thrust upon me”|photo by “WW” Tomczyk

“In the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened.”—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

 “No man is broken because bad things happen to him. He’s broken because he doesn’t keep going after those (bad) [parenthesis mine] things happen.”― Courtney Milan, Unraveled

“Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape.”― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“Let the first act of every morning be to make the following resolve for the day:
- I shall not fear anyone on Earth.
- I shall fear only God.
- I shall not bear ill will toward anyone.
- I shall not submit to injustice from anyone.
- I shall conquer untruth by truth. And in resisting untruth, I shall put up with all suffering.” 
―    Mahatma Gandhi

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Eleanor Tomczyk and “How the Hell Did I End Up Here?” with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

Epic Valentine Fails

Do you know what I’ve discovered?    When I die and sail off into the great unknown, the first thing I’m going to do is look up Eve (of Adam and Eve fame) and kick her ass because of the “curse” and the gross birthing method women got saddled with.  I mean what woman has ever truthfully thought that that monthly plague we get was worth its hassle, or what woman wouldn’t exchange the excruciating pain of childbirth for the power men seem to have been endowed with from Jump Street.  In a fair world we should have been able to switch roles halfway through our lifetimes—kind of like musical chairs.  Maybe it would have been negotiable.  Who knows?  But we never got a chance to find out.  All that chick Eve  had to do was follow the game plan; but nooooooo, she was all:

EVE:       “Eat the apple Adam.  If you do we’ll be like God and we’ll know everything.  What’s the worst that can happen to us, Adam?” 

The second person whose ass I’m going to whup is Esther Howland, the mother of the American Valentine card.  The fluke thing that made Esther rich in 1840 was the spawn of all that is evil about Valentine’s Day in 2013.   It was just our luck that Esther was the daughter of a stationery store owner and she once got a frilly lace-embossed valentine card from Victorian England.  She was all:

ESTHER:  “Faaathaw, is not this lace-infused, linen-embossed, over-the-top valentine’s card simply marvelous?  What say you loan me some of your stationery goods and I’ll make every American woman lust after this manifestation of “true love” forever and forever.  My Valentine cards will be a tribute to the purest form of love and the start of a Valentine revolution!”

That was then:  1840

And this is what we’ve descended into now . . . 2013

valentine-teddy-gift-timesunion-dot-com

So 173 years later, lovers (men especially) must turn into consummate event planners for one day, lovers must become psychics who can accurately guess every whim of their beloved, and checking accounts must be depleted and drained to feed the restaurant, flower, candy, and hotel industries (worth about 18 billion
dollars) once Cupid’s arrow strikes its target.  The Valentine fails are legendary (I’ve had a few of my own).  Nothing ever turns out like we’ve planned:  a few Valentine scenarios will be better than anticipated but most will be worse, because shit always happens when you least expect it, because we’re humans.  The industry manipulations are too entrenched to throw them all overboard and start from scratch but guidance is definitely
needed.  I’m old and I know shit, so over the weekend I set up a “Dalai Mama Epic Valentine Fails website” to take questions from the Valentine road-kill in need of a word or two of wisdom about avoiding epic Valentine Day fails.

 Valentine’s Day Card for the Clueless

VALENTINE NOVICE #1: “Dalai Mama, I’ve met a girl I really like.  I’ve never done the whole Valentine production before but I thought, since this girl is so special, I’d rent a limo, take her to a great restaurant, and see where the night ends—if you know what I mean.  But there’s a problem, even though I started looking for restaurant reservations two weeks ago, everything from Manny’s Steak House to White Castle is booked, and no limo company within 200 miles will book me a reservation for under $200 an hour.  Also, did I mention that I just got my first job and I don’t have much money?  Can you help me or am I headed into an epic Valentine fail?”  Signed, Young and in love in Minnesota

DALAI MAMA:  “Of course I ‘know what you mean,’ Val Novice #1—I’m old but I’m not dead!   Yes, you are headed for an epic fail.  Only amateurs go to restaurants on Valentine’s Day.  An average dinner that would normally cost $70 will be sold to you for $150, and the food will be mediocre at best (a restaurant that normally serves a modestly priced fish dish will suddenly only serve high-end steaks or overpriced pasta with lobster and a mediocre red sauce that tastes suspiciously like canned marinara).  All the tables will be pushed together and maximum seating capacity completely ignored so that the restaurant can make up for its January slump, and every word you utter will be heard and judged by the elbow-bumping couples to your left, right, front, and rear. Not to mention that the noise from all the chatter will be cacophonous, and the agitated wait staff will serve you in such a hurried manner that you’ll complete your entire romantic meal in just under 55 minutes so that the 20 other couples can be rushed in to take your place and experience their wind-whipped Valentine dining experience.”

Dalai Mama’s Suggestion

Turn your living space into a restaurant and cook for your cutie (clean your apartment first—especially the toilet).  If you can’t cook, arrange for the local grocery store to prepare the meal, pick it up at the appropriate time and follow nuking instructions (throw away the grocery store bags to maintain the illusion).  Candles, romantic music, dim lighting, no old sock smells, and easy-going and funny conversation will go a long way to your final goal—if you know what I mean.  All women love a man with a sense of humor.  But if you’re humorless, well, I don’t know what to tell you—I can’t help you there.  P.S. If you really want to do the whole limo scenario, have one of your buddies put on a black suit and cap, and pick your girl up with you in the back seat carrying one rose.  (If you can’t afford a dozen roses during the hyped Valentine season, approximately $150-$200, one rose is always better than nothing.)

“Valentine lingerie”|image from toilette-humor.com

VALENTINE NOVICE #2:  “Dalai Mama:  I’ve been married to my wife for thirty-eight years.   Romance has never been our thing, but we almost got divorced out of shear boredom last year.  So I started taking the little blue pill, and I was thinking maybe it was time to spice things up a little bit this Valentine’s Day—if you know what I mean.   I was hoping to purchase my wife some sexy lingerie from one of the catalogues that recently came to the house, but it is hard to tell what she’d like.  I thought I’d better get some advice from a woman who is of similar age to my wife which is why I’m writing.  Oh, I forgot to mention that the wife is not the size she was when we first married.  What do you think:  am I headed for an epic Valentine fail?”  Signed: Looking to get a rise in Pennsylvania

DALAI MAMA:   “Dear Val Novice #2:  If you do this, I promise you that your wife will hate you forever.  Since when did you become an expert in women’s sizes?   You say she’s put on a few pounds?  This is an epic Valentine fail waiting to happen.  No man should ever buy woman lingerie, ever—no matter what her size!  That catalogue you received is a “sucker’s catalogue” trying to get you to waste your money on a multi-million dollar Victoria Secret’s industry.  They will sell you anything, including thong underwear that doesn’t even look that good on the heroine-chic model sporting it.  I bet you that it’s edible, right?  (Can I let you in on a little secret?  That shit sounds better than it really is.  Trust me!)  If the lingerie is too big, your wife will think you think she’s huge and it will make her sad (and you won’t be getting’ nothin’ that night), if it is too small, she’ll think you’ve been watching porn and she will kill you.  (And why does everyone keep asking me if “I know what they mean”—I’m not a sexless idiot!)  What if we switched the idea to another ass?  What if your wife bought your chubby little droopy ass some sexy underwear she saw on David Beckham in an underwear ad?  How would you respond?  (Never mind, don’t answer that; men are generally clueless when it comes to how they look in inappropriate underwear.)”

Image from cartoonstock.com

Dalai Mama’s Suggestion

Don’t do it—don’t ever do it.  Give your wife a gift card and let her buy what she thinks is sexy.  Besides, now that you’re taking the little blue pill, methinks she could be wearing a burlap sack and you’d still be dancing around the house singing, “Let’s get it on!”  Good luck!

Source:  remember-neverlosehope.com

VALENTINE NOVICE #3:  “Dalai Mama, I HATE VALENTINE’S DAY!   I hate it, I hate it, I hate it!  I can’t believe you’ve made my pain even worse by doing an entire blog about Valentine’s Day.  This ersatz “holiday” cuts through me like a knife.  (Did I mention that I hate it?)  Nothing makes me feel like such a loser than everybody showing off at the office by getting flowers from their boyfriends and husbands.  For the past five years or so I’ve been sending myself flowers just so I won’t feel like such a dork, but this year I’m not even going to bother.  I am what I am—alone, and I’ll die alone.  Most of my friends are engaged or married and the only guys I know are gay.  (Did I mention that I hate you for reminding me that I’m alone?)  Signed: 3^rd Wheel in Toronto

Dear Val Novice #3:  “Are you through feeling sorry for yourself?  ‘Cause the Dalai Mama don’t play that shit.  Life is what you make it and if it gives you lemons then you go out and make goddamn lemonade.  Dalai Mama didn’t marry her man until she was in her thirties, and “White and wonderful” (WW) was worth the wait.  In fact, had I married any one of the jerks I met before WW, I shudder to think what my life would be like today.  Have you seen Valentine’s Day by Gary Marshall?  It’s an awful movie, but the scene worth watching and emulating is the “I hate Valentine’s Day” scene where all the unattached girls meet for dinner with a piñata heart and beat the shit out of it with a baseball bat as they recount their horrid past relationships.  Excellent therapy!  So grab your single friends—guys, gals, straight, gay, divorced, widowed—and get all dressed up, and cook a great dinner for each other and then pulverize your own version of a piñata heart.  And then declare your urban family love for each other—being there to watch each other’s back no matter what is needed.  I guarantee you that Valentine’s Day will work for you and not against you.  P.S.  It helps if everybody gets a little bit drunk!

Jessica Biel in “Valentine’s Day”|Warner Bros. Pictures

I am discovering that we are all the victims of the money-grubbing Valentine industry.  Our minds have also been poisoned by storytellers like Nicholas Sparks and Hollywood’s formulaic romantic comedies (boy sees girl, girl sees boy, both fall madly in love, both fall out of love, both run languidly through the wheat field/airport/city
street/along the beach declaring their undying love in the last five minutes of the movie and live happily ever after.  Life is just not like that.  Relationships are up and down, in and out.  Romance is real but is only meant to be a beckoning call to attract each other and sexually connect us.  Once that has happened, then the real work
begins—the “growing in love” part.

The romantic love we feel toward the opposite sex is probably one extra help from God to bring you together, but that’s it. All the rest of it, the true love, is the test.”—Joan Chen

The sooner we untangle ourselves from the commercialism of Valentine’s Day and search for what makes us happy as individuals and what makes those who love us happy, the better off we’ll be as people and lovers.  Trust me—it has nothing to do with money and over-the-top treacle romance.  It has more to do with the “c” word:  commitment.

My parents circulate the room hand in hand . . . Soul mates. They really call themselves that, which makes sense, because I guess they are . . . They have no harsh edges with each other, no spiny conflicts, they ride through life like conjoined jellyfish—expanding and contracting instinctively, filling each other’s spaces liquidly.  Making it look easy, the soul-mate thing.  People say children from broken homes have it hard, but the children of charmed marriages have their own particular challenges.”—by Gillian Flynn from Gone Girl

 “True love doesn’t happen right away; it’s an ever-growing process. It develops after you’ve gone through many ups and downs, when you’ve suffered together, cried together, laughed together.”—Ricardo Montalban

  “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”—Lao Tzu

 “I don’t understand why Cupid was chosen to represent Valentine’s Day.  When I think about romance, the last thing on my mind is a short, chubby toddler coming at me with a weapon.” —Author Unknown

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Eleanor Tomczyk and “How the Hell Did I End Up Here?” with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

All Bets Are Off

Do not read if you have not seen Season 3, Episode 4 of Downton Abbey.  Also, do not read if you are pregnant with your first child and are already scared shitless about the whole birthing process (I know, girlfriend!—what WAS God thinking?)

Do you know what I’ve discovered?   Even when one tries to get away from the chaos and meanness of everyday life and wants to submerge one’s brain in the soapiest of soap opera fantasies with a bottle of wine and a bucket of chicken wings, pooh-pooh always occurs and snatches one’s mind right back to reality and the horrors of the past!   So says one.

Downton Abbey Cast 2013/Carnival Film & Television Limited 2012 for MASTERPIECE/PBS

Having coerced my husband to watch the “can’t miss TV Episode 4” of Downton Abbey in exchange for two episodes of Homeland and some hot wings, WW (“White and Wonderful”) promptly fell asleep leaving me riveted to the 52-inch screen in his man cave contemplating what it would be like to have been born white, rich, and British with a to-die-for wardrobe, mountains of bling, and tons of servants.   As soon as Lady Sybil (the youngest daughter) took to her bed in the final weeks of her pregnancy, with swollen ankles, high blood pressure, high fever, and random crazy talk, I started beating WW’s leg with a chicken bone to wake him up to witness what I knew was the inevitable:  Lady Sybil was going to bite the dust with something that had almost killed me 28 years ago—preeclampsia (what used to be called “toxemia of pregnancy”).  Having the baby is the only cure for preeclampsia and sometimes that doesn’t even help.

ME:        Wake up, WW!  Wake up!  That damn writer, Julian Fellowes, is going to kill off Lady Sybil—I can feel it in my bones.  I know these symptoms.  I swear to God if he kills Lady Sybil off, I’ll have to get on a plane and fly to the UK tonight—tonight I tell you—to open up a can of whup-ass on his chubby little British butt.

WW:     Huh?  No, no, no, no, no.  You’re getting all bent out of shape about nothing.  You’re watching this so that you can relax, remember?  Fellowes knows he has you women wrapped around his finger.  The writer is just messing with you.  Look, the baby has arrived.  It came through with flying colors and all is well.  In the meantime, stop beating my knee with that damn chicken bone.

ME:        It’s all a ruse!   I had this sickness when I was in the final stages of my pregnancy almost 30 years ago.  Don’t you remember?  I almost died, and I had modern medicine and antibiotics.    Lady Sybil doesn’t have a chance.  I’m telling you:  a tragedy is unfolding in my favorite happy place!  Rich white people are going to suffer and I can’t handle it.  Nothing is supposed to mess with their world—they’ve got it all.  In fact, when I finally come face-to-face with God, I’m going to ask him why the hell he didn’t make me white, rich, and a man.  So I don’t want to hear about death and mayhem messing with my “upstairs” Downton peeps.

Joss Barratt photo|Lady Sybil and Tom Branson|Downton Abbey

Sure enough, when everyone at Downton Abbey (both upstairs and downstairs) was doing the delirious “Hallelujah-glory-dance” over the birth of the first Downton Abbey offspring from one of the Crawley girls, Lady Sybil suddenly went into a seizure and died from:  dun, dun, dun. . . “eclampsia” while two doctors (one of them, an arrogant asshole) looked on helplessly.  As Tom, the husband, and Cora, the mother, flung themselves on Lady Sybil’s body and pled, “Please don’t leave us, please,” I broke down into inconsolable sobs while flinging chicken bones at WW for falling asleep in yet another eclampsia episode.  (Oh, oh, you wonder, is this foreshadowing?  Can it possibly be true that WW, “White and Wonderful,” slipped from his god-like pedestal and royally blew it by falling asleep in his wife’s hour of need—say it isn’t so?!)

Cartoon by Dave Coverly|speedbump.com

In defense of WW, my eclampsia crisis happened a long time ago in a far, far away land—the land of Jesus’ birth.  We lived in a border town that connected to Lebanon and eventually Syria where WW’s job provided the occasional stress of having his bullet proof-jacketed-ass shot at while going to and from work, the periodic necessity of shuffling his family into a bomb shelter while Katyusha rockets reigned down from the north (Lebanon), the medical requirement of driving his bed-ridden pregnant wife back and forth to a doctor who was two hours from our home, and the fatherly duties of taking care of our newly adopted older daughter, while doing all the shopping, cooking, and cleaning.  This was not how we had planned our lives would transpire.

When we first moved to the land of the Messiah with our two-month old adopted daughter, it was assumed that I could not get pregnant.  Well . . . more like I could get pregnant, but I couldn’t stay pregnant.  WW and I had made peace with being dealt our infertility hand, and figured there were worse things in life.  Besides, by the time all was said and done, I was way too old to start popping out babies.  But as is common to most, as soon as we stopped “trying,” we got the news:

ISRAELI DOC:      Congratulations, Bubbe (translation:  grandmother in Yiddish)!  You’re carrying the gift of life.

ME:        Say what? No, no, no, no, no . . . I came to see you because I’ve had the stomach flu for three months, and I can’t stop throwing up.  What kind of joke is this?  Something is definitely being lost in translation between us, because I can’t get pregnant:  אני לא יכול להיכנס להריון!  (Mumbling to myself)  Although, come to think of it, I was contemplating suing Jane Fonda because her exercises sure don’t seem to be working—my tummy is blowing up like a balloon. 

ISRAELI DOC:      What is that to me?  You’re in the land of miracles.  If your Jewish Messiah could be born here from a virgin Jewish mother, then you, Bubbe, can get pregnant.  Mazel tov!

Cartoon by Jeff Swenson|swensonfunnies.com

I thought being bed-ridden for six months (because I almost lost the “miracle baby”) was hard enough, but nothing could have prepared me for the preeclampsia manifestations.  By the eighth month my ankles were the size of elephants, my body looked like a chocolate Goodyear blimp waiting to take flight, and when I walked into my Israeli doctor’s office in Haifa for my penultimate pre-natal appointment, I had a fever of 103 and high blood pressure of 260 over 110—stroke level.  (Oh, did I forget to tell you that I lost my mind and turned into a crazy woman?)

ISRAELI DOC:      I’m worried about you, Bubbe.  You have all the symptoms of toxemia.  I can’t risk you going back home via a mountainous two-hour drive.  I want to check you into a hospital.

ME:        Hell, no, Doc!  I’ve got to get back to my 20-month old.  I’m pretty sure her baby-sitter is a serial killer or at least wanted by the Mossad.  But she was the only person available who speaks English who could watch the baby.

ISRAELI DOC:      You don’t have a choice in this.  Besides, I’m sending you to one of the best hospitals in the country—it’s a Kupat Holim hospital on Mt. Carmel.  You’ll get the best of care.  The midwives are waiting for you.

ME:        Read my lips, Doc, I’M NOT GOING!  I have to get back to my baby.  I don’t know this baby inside of me (maybe he’s someone I’ll like—maybe he’s not—only time will tell), but I do know the one that is at home, and I’m telling you that psycho-chick is her babysitter.  I don’t know why I let WW talk me into letting her sit for my baby, but she’s his secretary, and he insisted I couldn’t miss this doctor’s appointment because I was all feverish and shit.  But you need to know, the secretary-bitch has a legion of demons running around in her and eyes like Rosemary’s Baby.  Besides, I’ve heard about that hospital you want me to go to and I ain’t havin’ it, Doc.  It’s on Mt. Carmel where Elijah fought the gods of Ba’al and won, BUT not until Jezebel almost fricasseed his ass.   I know the Talmud—you can’t fool me.  That hospital is sitting on some pretty funky ground.  Who knows what might come up through the basement and possess my baby?

ISRAELI DOC:      First of all, Bubbe, how do you know your baby is a boy?  You wouldn’t let me use my new magic machine from America called the “ultrasound.”  I’ve got the only one in town.

ME:        Cause I don’t know what that thing is!   They didn’t have those when I left America.   For all I know that radiation thingie will turn my baby into a Conehead from the planet Remulak, and it will be entirely your fault.  Besides, all my Jewish neighbor-friends assured me I was going to have a boy by the shape of my belly.  We don’t even have a girl’s name.  Anyway, I had a dream from God and he told me to name him Brian Eden.  If this baby doesn’t come out sporting a penis to claim the name of Brian Eden, then it will go through life nameless.

Ultrasound| fins cartoon by Mark Elden fins.voot.com.au

Yeah, I was shit-faced delirious and in full-blown preeclampsia.  After fighting for 45 minutes with my very patient and wise doctor, he and WW tricked me into going to the hospital for a urine test which they both adamantly assured me wasn’t situated on the part were the “Ba’al gods” used to roam.  They promised I could go home and rescue my older daughter from Satan’s helper once the test confirmed that I didn’t have elevated protein levels in my urine (a sure sign of preeclampsia).*

My saint of a doctor conspired with the hospital to detain me and perform an ultrasound test while WW had everyone he knew from the States call me and try to pull me back from the brink of insanity.  At 10:00 p.m. I started down the road of 20 hours of the most excruciatingly induced labor I have ever heard of in my life (I will never let my youngest child live this down—ever!)  It felt like a watermelon was trying to ram through a vagina hole the size of a pea.  At the 21^st hour WW fell asleep for a few minutes and woke up to the screaming of a banshee:  “ARE YOU FUCKIN’ KIDDING ME—YOU’RE ASLEEP?”  At the 22^nd hour, midwives stepped aside and let my Israeli doctor perform a C-section, and Baby-girl (“CDT”) was born.

When I awoke some time later, I asked WW all the questions you might think:  was our baby okay, did it have all its fingers and toes, and was “Brian Eden” a lovely chocolate-brown?  WW looked at me and slowly said the doctor had assured him our baby was fine, but WW was convinced that the nurse had given him the wrong baby to hold and promptly told her so:  “This is not my baby—you made a mistake.  First of all, it is a girl (we don’t have a girl’s name picked out), she is completely white with grayish-green eyes (obviously, she’s supposed to be brown), her head is in the shape of a cone, and her face is a canvas of bruises from trying to push through the birth canal.  I gave the baby back to the nurses and told them to look for a mocha-chocolate boy.”

Before I could even begin to process WW’s information, I lapsed into eclampsia (name of malady after the baby is born), and began a week-long struggle with high fevers as I muttered:  it’s a “girl,” she has a cone head from the ultrasound, and she doesn’t have a name—oy!”  Anti-seizure meds were fed to me like water, and at one point, the nurses pushed my bed into a storage closet to get some sleep and escape the chaos of my “semi-private” room of 12 new mothers and their extended families in a hospital that seemed to have 24/7 visiting hours and rockin’ out birth parties.

The fever would break on the 7^th day and I would take my beautiful “ginger baby” (as the Arab women in the hospital called her) home to meet her big sister (“KLT”).  My beautiful baby-girl would no longer have a cone head and bruises, but her older sister (having been promised a little brother who would be her playmate), after two months of listening to crying, eating, burping, farting, and watching Baby-girl sleep would summarily announce:  “You know that baby you got at hospital?  Take back—it broke!”

Not our baby but sure looks like “CDT” when she was born—only her head was pointier and her face was so bruised it looked like she had been cage fighting

I am discovering that all bets are off when it comes to filling in the blank space between birth and death, if you survive the birth.  I don’t care how rich you are—whether to the manor born like Downton Abbey or born in the projects of Cleveland like me—few things in life will follow our best laid plans.   At the time of Lady Sybil’s death, 37 million had died in WWI and 27 million were severely wounded—no young men were still alive for the women to “court” according to Lady Edith, Sybil’s middle sister.   Until WWI, tragedy was not a Crawley relative.  If we’re lucky as humans, a couple aspects of life will turn out better than we expect, but most of life will be much harder than we could have ever imagined.  It takes great courage to live life.  It is easy to be born and it doesn’t take that much effort to die.  It is the stuff in between that takes everything we’ve got.

******

“Don’t tell your kids you had an easy birth or they won’t respect you. For years I used to wake up my daughter and say, ‘Melissa you ripped me to shreds. Now go back to sleep’.”—Joan Rivers

“Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth – look at the dying man’s struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment.”—Soren Kierkegaard

“When you’re born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you’re born in America, you get a front row seat.”—George Carlin

“One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.”—Maya Angelou

***

* “Nobody knows what caused preeclampsia in the early 1920s or causes it now. It appears to be an out-of-control state of inflammation.”—David Brown (“Lady Sybil’s shocking death. Did it have to happen?”) Health and Science/The Washington Post.  My story was presented tongue-in-check but preeclampsia is no laughing matter.  I almost died and women still die from it today.  Even though I told first-time mothers (the most likely candidates for this condition) not to read this blog, if you disobeyed me  and read it anyway, and you start to display any of the symptoms suffered by Lady Sybil and me, run don’t walk, to your doctor’s office because preeclampsia is serious shit. 

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Eleanor Tomczyk and “How the Hell Did I End Up Here?” with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

A Different Set of Rules

Do you know what I’ve discovered?   If I spent every day visiting all the places that I couldn’t enter before the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (I was born in 1948), except through the back door as a maid or a slave, I’d probably never die—at least not anytime soon.  That is why I engage in a project surrounding Martin Luther King Holiday weekend that brings me great joy.

Not only do I sashay my black ass (dripping with bling) through the front door of a former slave-owning or white’s only establishment at least once a year, but I stay in the best room they have to offer, order room service for breakfast, and get an 80-minute massage if they offer it.  Since MLK weekend coincides with my husband’s (WW—“White and Wonderful”) birthday, I walk through the front door of those former plantations with my arm wrapped around my white husband’s arm, a big smile on my face, and give a silent middle finger to the racists ghosts who surely must roam the halls of said establishments.  Because there is no way any god worth his salt would ever allow those unrepentant slave owners entrance into Heaven (are you hearing me Thomas Jefferson?), I am convinced their Hell must be tailor-made to watch an African-American making herself at home with sheer abandonment in their “whites only” environment.

I call this bitch slap to the haunted the FYRS-LWITBR Project, which stands for “FUCK YOU RACIST SPECTERS—LIVING WELL IS THE BEST REVENGE!”  My “in your face” rebel cry has nothing to do with the current owners (I do not visit the sins of their ancestors upon them so long as they treat me with dignity and respect), but I do take on the racist ghosts of their lineage.

Oak Alley Plantation on the Mississippi River in Louisiana |Trip Advisor Image

In the interest of full disclosure, my children think I’m crazy.  That’s because I’ve raised them to be color blind, and to my knowledge they have never suffered at the hands of racists, which makes me very happy.   Their friends are color blind (black, white, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Straight, Gay), as well, and have formed little urban families around each other to unite against the hardships and vagaries of life.   I am very proud of them, and I consider them all “my children.”

But my children and their friends have not seen what I’ve seen or experienced the hatred I’ve embodied.  They have never heard of The Negro Motorist Green Book which was in full swing the year I was born and lasted until after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and they have never had to plan their travel around such a book just to keep from having their asses kicked (or killed) by men in white robes and pointy hats carrying burning crosses.

The Green Book was started by Victor Hugo Green (a Harlem mail carrier) in the 1930s and it would eventually cover lodging, eateries, and stores in every state in the USA as well as Bermuda, Mexico, and Canada that would do business with Negroes.    If there were no hotels that would cater to African-Americans (often the case), the book would list “tourist homes” that would rent the traveler a room or two for their journey.  The Green Book spoke volumes by “omission,” as the writer Justin Hyde has noted.   In 1949, no restaurant was listed in Alabama that would serve black people.  Justin Hyde in his article on The Green Book in Jalopnik underscored the fact that “Black motorists in those eras frequently kept extra fuel, food and portable toilets on hand to avoid stopping in unfriendly locations. Even outside the South, roadside motels and diners often wouldn’t serve black customers.”  In 1963 (one year before The Green Book was taken out of circulation), I was kicked out of a New Jersey hotel in the middle of the night along with a family (a lawyer and school teacher and their two young children) that I was the babysitter for, and we were forced to drive through the night to our approved “Negro cabin” in Maine.

Image from Wikipedia

INTRODUCTION PAGE OF THE NEGRO TOURIST GUIDE:   “There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States. It will be a great day for us to suspend this publication for then we can go wherever we please, and without embarrassment. But until that time comes we shall continue to publish this information for your convenience each year.”

The fact that President Obama’s 2^nd inauguration (talk about “living well is the best revenge!”) fell on the same day as the MLK holiday weekend and coincided with my husband’s b-day gave me the perfect excuse to engage in my “project” (not at the plantation above used only as an example, but at another glorious location in the South and situated on the Gulf of Mexico).

President Obama and Martin Luther King |image from thedvrfiles.com

As I stretched out on the beautiful “sugar sand” of a site where there once stood a private mansion that I could have only entered the back door of to make the beds and empty the slop pans, I meditated for hours on how far we had come as a Nation since the publication of The Green Book.   I watched the inauguration of our  magnificent 44^th president from my waterfront suite as I lifted a glass of champagne to the triumph of a man that we are lucky to have as a leader.  As I contemplated my own American journey, I joined President Obama in spirit to pray for the further emancipation of our Hispanic brothers and sisters, our Gay and Lesbian brothers and sisters, and the disenfranchised jobless families in our midst who need a helping hand.

Archival image from pattyhume.com

I am discovering, however, that even though we are in more “tolerant times,” one must be ever vigilant against the spirit of bigotry—especially amongst the religious—or we will be doomed to repeat our history.  Martin Luther King often preached about the complacency of white Christians toward the suffering of those who did not fit their cultural narrow-minded viewpoint (specifically the Southern Baptists).    I have read many of the multitudinous sermons preached by well-intentioned pastors in favor of slavery in the 1800s and then again against desegregation in the 60s and their arrogance and cold-heartedness grip my heart with horror.  Where would we be as a country if righteousness had not won the day?

Today it boggles my mind that Christians who say they love Jesus are part of the Tea Party, but they don’t speak out against the racism that is so visible on their websites and from the mouths of their leaders.  I know that not all Tea Party members are racist but their silence is killing me.  The language of the Tea Partier is slightly different from the overt racist (normally doesn’t include the “n” word), but it is deceiving to the perpetrator because they see themselves as righteous:  “I respect the office of the presidency but I don’t respect this president because he is a Socialist, a Muslim, a spawn of Satan or Hitler (I’m searching for his hidden horns and drawing on his Hitler mustache even as we speak)” or “I don’t have a racist bone in my body, I just worship Sarah Palin, Fox News, and the Drudge Report who do”—said with such vehemence and so many times that it prompts the person of color to scream to the heavens:  “me thinks thou doth protest too much, Tea-bagger!”

Racist Tea Party Cartoon|image from politiskink.com

DEAR TEA PARTY:
“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than
sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Even though we’ve come a long way, whenever I do a Google search with our President’s name, I almost vomit from the visceral racial hatred and disrespect that lashes out at me from the Internet because it seems that some of us are playing by a different set of rules, requiring others of us to reinstate “The Green Book” in order to survive.  This causes me great despair until I read the blogs of people like Frank Angle who wrote “On MLK 2013” (http://afrankangle.wordpress.com/2013/01/20/on-mlk-2013/ ) about the repentance of Elwin Wilson in 2009, a former Klansman, who attacked and beat a black college student in 1961 when he was one of the Freedom Riders trying to win the ability for African-Americans to travel across country via Greyhound and Trailway buses.  The black freedom rider grew up to be Congressman Joe Lewis.   Frank Angle included a YouTube video in his blog post of Wilson and Lewis’ exchange of repentance and forgiveness after 50 years, and it makes the viewer understand that there is a God, and one day we will all overcome our bigotry, our stupidity, our short-sightedness, our lack of grace, and our arrogance!

Photo:  George Burns| Harpo Studios

For years, Elwin, an admitted former member of the Ku Klux Klan, says he prayed that he would meet the man he attacked at the bus station. –Oprah.com

***

QUOTES BY MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

“In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

 “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

      “It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.” – Martin Luther King, Jr

 

TALL DOG TALES

I’m participating in another project for the next two weeks and won’t be very active online, so I thought I’d pull together a couple of humorous stories about dog ownership—mine (owned briefly when I momentarily lost my mind)—and my neighbors’ dogs who crap on my lawn, that I secretly fantasize about  kidnapping and selling to Mitt Romney.   Enjoy and see you again on January 27^th.

******

GET OFF MY LAWN (Story #1)

Do you know what I’ve discovered?   I’m turning into one of those types of old people—I’m going to be “that woman.”  I thought I would go gently into the good night, but I’ve become a haranguer.   You know the kind of old person who hides behind their 6-ft tall azaleas and jumps out waving their cane at the pooping dog owner as they scream:  “GET OFF MY LAWN, YOU S.O.B!”   I figure by the time I’m in my eighties, the FBI will consider me to be my own terrorist cell.

Crone|image from fearnoweebes.wordpress.com

I never thought much about dogs until I moved to a suburb full of white people who treat their dogs like four-legged gods. In the inner city neighborhood of my childhood, none of my neighbors had dogs as pets.  If you owned a dog, it was to guard your shit from getting ripped off.  There was no such thing as a “lapdog.”  The dogs were German Shepherds or Rottweilers and, as a kid, you never went near them unless you wanted to be lunch.   And they didn’t live in your house, either.  Even in the dead of winter in The Cleve, all dogs lived outside—period!

And nobody “walked” their dogs.  (People worked three jobs a person just to survive—who in the hell had time to walk a dog?)  If you saw a German Shepherd or a Rottweiler walking down the street, it meant it had escaped and was up to no good or it had rabies.  You’d hear a cry go up and down the neighborhood yelling for all the kids to come inside:  “CHILRIN’ MAD DOG COMIN’; RUN, CHILRIN’, RUN FOR YO’ LIVES!”  But now I live in one of the richest counties in the nation and dogs are pampered children to these people.  Every other house has at least two dogs, and they all walk past my corner lot pooping and peeing on every square inch of my pristine golf-course lawn as if it were their own private doggie park.  My office window overlooks the area and even as I type this story, ten dogs and their owners have just strolled by, and one of them was a Great Dane (do you know how huge the poops of a Great Dane are?).  I’ve tried everything to keep these four-legged demons off my property and out of my exquisite flower beds.   I’ve had to replace one 5ft tall hydrangea bush that took me years to turn fuchsia, one dwarf pampus (nothing can kill pampus grass—except dog urine), I’ve reseeded a quarter of my lawn that completely died from a golden retriever’s urea (ammonia in the urine which converts to nitrates), and replaced an ornamental tree killed by an Alaskan husky.  After I planted the dwarf Japanese Cherry tree in a spot that had lost three ornamental trees, I did what generations of law-abiding citizens have historically done:   I declared war.

In the interest of full disclosure, my immediate neighbors are good as gold (plus they read my blog and I don’t want to piss them off) and never let their dogs desecrate my lawn.  (There was that incident with the old fart from the Kamchatka Peninsula who let her nasty-ass dog come right up to my stoop and do his business, but I had my husband, WW, teach me a few choice swear words in Russian, and I dispensed with that nonsense—“toute suite.”  There is nothing like a half-crazed black woman waving a watering can coming at you swearing in fluent Russian mixed with a little French to get one to see the error of one’s ways.)   But my worst offenders come from blocks away and after depositing their “gifts” disappear into the mist (obviously, their dogs have told them that my property is a preferred poopy-place-of-choice.)   I’ve tried the High Noon evil-eye approach as I water my plants (“Uh-uh, I know you’re the one who killed my hydrangea—I’m watching you, buddy”), the pepper flakes in my flower beds (hoping to give the dogs a sneezing attack), the anti-dog spray on my lawn (it cost me a fortune and didn’t deter one dog), and waiting in hiding and jumping out from behind the bushes while catching the culprits in mid-defecation and screaming:  “A-HA!  I CAUGHT YOU DEAD-TO-RIGHTS, YOU LOW-LIFES!”   But nothing worked until I found my magical dog signs that WW was convinced would cause us to wake up to a revenge truck load of dog shit dumped on our lawn in the middle of the night.

ET’s “anti-pooping sign” for dogs that I thought could obviously read

For a while the signs worked like magic.   The shitty gifts stopped arriving and I noticed that the offenders would cross the street when they got to my corner to avoid their dog’s desire to mark the same place that had become their favorite spot for years.   I was pretty satisfied with myself until I went out to get the morning paper months later and saw a pile of poop perfectly placed under one of the yard-dog sign’s ass.   It was obviously “placed” there by a human giving me the finger during the cover of night.   My neighbor (my same age) up the street says she thinks she knows who it is because she started her own anti-defecation league after her shrubs died this summer from dog pee, and she was hiding in the bushes with infrared binoculars and a camera to catch the ne’er-do-wells when she saw the guy commit the crime.  We’re talking about forming a coalition.   In the meantime, I’m thinking of contacting one of those baby announcement, wooden sign makers for a 6-ft sign for my lawn that will be created from a design I found on the Internet:

Image from cocothewolfpoliticalbullpen.com

I am discovering that I am getting crazier by the minute, and the dogs in my neighborhood are bringing it out in me.  But I’m getting old, and I think that becoming the crazy old fart on the corner is my prerogative.  At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

P.S.  WW says he wants nothing to do with this crazy woman who has invaded his wife’s body, and he disavows all knowledge of her or her shenanigans.

******

MY PRECIOUS (Story #2)

(2nd STORY EXCERPT ABOUT THE DOG “PRECIOUS”  EDITED AND UPDATED FROM AN EARLIER BLOG:  “Maintenance [or lack of it] Will Kill You”)

Do you know what I’ve discovered?  Some people should never own pets and I am one of them.  For 14 years I held off on getting a dog.  I didn’t buy that bullshit from the kids when they were young that I wouldn’t have to do anything for the dog—they’d do everything.  “You’ll see, Mom; you’ll never regret getting us a dog because we’ll do it all.”  Yeah, right!

I knew better – I’m no fool.  I knew my little barbarians could lie like a rug, and they were trying to pull the wool over my eyes.  I envisioned exactly what would happen: they’d be into the dog for exactly one week, two days, and one minute, and then the only one who would walk the dog, feed the damn thing, pick up its shit, groom it, or discipline it would be me.

How I lost my resolve is not as important as the fact that I finally did break down and get a dog that at first blush looked harmless and without guile.

Bichon Frise|Google Image

The next thing I knew, I was up all night with a crying puppy while everyone else slept soundly through the night.  She would only stop crying if I held her and rocked her to sleep like a human baby.

Our dog took only six months to turn into a little bitch. (I honestly think she was mentally ill from the beginning. I would discover that incestuous parenting was hidden from us by the breeder.)  All we saw when we first met our darling puppy was a delightful little puff-ball that kept falling on her head as she listed sideways like a sailboat blown off course.  We figured it was an adorable puppy anomaly – we had no idea it was “loose marbles.”

The dog’s name was “Precious” (her name has been changed to protect me from a lawsuit because I swear the bitch is crazy).  But I privately called her “Miss Thang” once her true personality was revealed.  At eight months old, Miss Thang developed something called Small Dog Syndrome in which she decided to become “Queen of the Hill” and make herself pack leader over all the humans in the house.  She barked incessantly, wouldn’t come when we called her, wouldn’t eat without throwing up, had explosive diarrhea every other month, and wouldn’t go outside to do her business if it was above 75 degrees or below 50 degrees.  The high-maintenance-diva-dog from Hell wouldn’t poop on grass because it was “too prickly” and wouldn’t poop on the driveway if anyone was watching.

Actual picture of “Precious” (a.k.a Miss Thang) on a “play date” at a dog friend’s house|photo by C. Tomczyk

Precious hated cars and had to be given puppy Demerol in order to go on a trip just ten minutes away from the house.  She despised her groomer and rebelled against getting her hair cut.  The damn dog learned how to spell and would run and hide under the bed when we tried to get her into the car by telling her she was going for a “walk in the park,” while I spelled, “we’re going to the ‘V-E-T’” to my disinterested family.   Miss Thang would have fits of hysteria and run up and down the stairs at 90 miles an hour until she collapsed from exhaustion if she felt the people in the house hadn’t given her enough attention.  If you scolded her, she’d get a ‘tude, become whiney, and refuse to look at you for hours at a time while placing her right paw over her nose to hide her eyes.  One day she started gnawing on her left foot and scratching holes in her side, and my family decided that The Mother (moi) — (“since you’re home with her more than we are”) — should take Precious to the outrageously expensive “dog whisperer” in our town to see what was wrong with her.  After many sessions and a vet bill that could have paid for a cruise to the Bahamas, the medical verdict was announced to me by the vet.

VET:       Mrs. Tomczyk, I don’t know how to break this to you, but Precious has issues that have caused serious psychological problems.

ME:        She told you that?

VET:       Precious is suffering from separation anxiety since leaving her brothers and sisters at the kennel.  Surely you can understand how traumatizing that could be for a sibling.

ME:        Noooooo, not really – she’s a damn dog.  Where I come from dogs weren’t even allowed in the house —they certainly didn’t have opinions, and I definitely didn’t arrange play dates for them because they were lonely.  They just guarded your shit from being stolen by the heroin addicts or numbers runners and were grateful for a pat on the head once a day and the leftover scraps from the table at the end of the day.  They stayed outside 24/7, and this was in Cleveland which isn’t exactly temperate weather.

VET:       Well, Mrs. Tomczyk, need I remind you that this is not a Cleveland ghetto?  This is a Washington suburb—the richest in the nation—and you have an expensive purebred that must be treated with the utmost respect.  I would like to prescribe a maintenance program of special diet food for sensitive stomachs that we sell for $40 a cup, and I would like to start Precious on a Prozac regimen for her stress.  I highly recommend massages on a weekly basis to help settle her nerves, and I propose monthly conditioning treatments at the Fabulous Puppies-R-Us to help lubricate her dry skin which is the reason she’s scratching a hole in her side.  I’ll also need to see Precious on a weekly basis to gauge her psychological improvement.

ME:        Now you listen to me, crazy-ass doctor who must have lost your mind:  you haven’t seen stress until you’ve walked a mile in my shoes.  I’d sure like that exact same prescription for myself ‘cause I’m the one who is actually going crazy caring for this little monster.   But here’s a news flash, Dr. Dog Whisperer:  PRECIOUS DOESN’T HAVE A JOB!   Nor does Precious have any health insurance, and until she can produce both — you can kiss this little diva’s ass good-bye.

As I gathered up my dog, I whispered into her ear a guttural threat that made her hair stand up on her head and her eyes become the size of saucers:  “Miss Thang, don’t you go getting any fancy ideas from this man.  That crazy-ass doctor must think I’m a fool!  I already spend half the day picking up your shit, looking after your shit, or paying for your shit.  Now let’s get your little ‘vanilla behind’ into the car.   You may be white living
in an all-white neighborhood, but you belong to a black mother, who grew up in the ghetto.  And before I pay $500 a month for a psychiatrist, a spa, and Prozac for a dog, I’ll make sure your stress is permanently cured ghetto-style–you hear me?  You’ll be singing with Jesus before you can utter another bow-wow, you little terrorist!

VET:       I HEARD THAT.  We don’t condone violence against animals here.  This is a safe place. . . I’ll have to call Doggie Protective Services if you don’t change your attitude, Mrs. Tomczyk.

ME:        But of course, Doc – what on earth was I thinking speaking to Precious in that manner?  (I said, ever so sweetly.)  Tell me:  How do you feel about violence against dog whisperers?

*****

UPDATE ON PRECIOUS AND DOGS IN GENERAL:

“Precious” went on to become “Sheba-Di” when I sold her to a rich white family a few blocks away who really catered to all that dog whisperer shit.  I recently got a postcard with her photograph sporting a diamond choker and a note that said:  “IN YOUR FACE MUTHA-FUCKAS—I’M LIVIN’ LARGE, SUCKAS”!   I did finally fall in love with a “perfect dog” (Wednesday Addams) that is just my speed but doesn’t have anything to do with causing any stress in my life because she doesn’t live with me (she’s also not insane).  I get to spend time with her once a year and give her back to her mommy when she needs to be taken for a walk or gets out of hand — kind of like being a grandmother.  That’s my kind of dog ownership!

“Wednesday Addams” (Best dog ever)||image by C. Tomczyk

“If I loved a guy as much as I love my dog, the guy would be in serious trouble. Because I’m all over that dog, all the time.”—Maria Sharapova

“Some dog I got too. We call him Egypt. Because in every room he leaves a pyramid.”—Rodney Dangerfield

“The rich man’s dog gets more in the way of vaccination, medicine and medical care than do the workers upon whom the rich man’s wealth is built.—Samora Machel

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Eleanor Tomczyk and “How the Hell Did I End Up Here?” with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

Larger Than Life

Do you know what I’ve discovered?   According to all the leading news media, the #1 New Year’s resolution of Americans is to “lose weight,” quickly followed by exercise more, drink less alcohol, get out of debt, and quit smoking.  If 50% of us conquered these resolutions every year, we’d be the skinniest, most smoke-free, wealthiest, healthiest, and potentially the most boring people on the face of the planet because we
wouldn’t have time for anything else.

Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes|image from fastatforty.blogspot.com

It is well known, and the fodder of many comedians, that our mostly superficial resolutions don’t usually last past the second week of January.  Just recently it was brought to my attention that most of our top five resolutions rarely include something that is magnificent—like “become heroes.”  If we’re honest with ourselves, our temporary resolves are mostly external and mean a great deal to us because they give us the short-term illusion that we’re “WINNING!” at the game of life of being popular especially when our traveling stadium of friends, relatives, and co-workers enviously applaud our triumphs—no matter how short-lived.  At least that is what my “sorry ass” told me when I was on the treadmill attempting to shred it of its copious “jelly” while trying not to think about how hungry I was after six days of strenuous dieting, 60 minutes of daily treadmill walking, 55 minutes of alternate-day Zumba dancing, and 30 minutes of three times a week Kettle Bell swinging that had almost put one of my eyes out.

Cartoon by Mark Parisi|image from offthemark.com

My iPod blared one of my favorite workout songs (“Holding Out for a Hero” by Dean Pitchford from the film Footloose) as I jogged the third 6.0 incline on the treadmill and felt very smug and superior about myself and my top two resolutions—lose weight and exercise more.

“Holding Out For A Hero”

I need a hero

 I’m holding out for a hero ’til the end of the night

 He’s gotta be strong, he’s gotta be fast

 And he’s gotta be fresh from the fight

 I need a hero

 I’m holding out for a hero ’til the morning light

 He’s gotta be sure, he’s gotta be soon

And he’s gotta be larger than life, larger than life

Writer/s: PITCHFORD, DEAN / STEINMAN, JIM

Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

Just as I started to harmonize with Bonnie Tyler at the top of my lungs on the lyric, “AND HE’S GOTTA BE LARGER THAN LIFE, LARGER THAN LIIIIIIIIIIIIIFE,” I heard someone say:  “Feed me, bitch!”  Thinking it was my husband (WW) who must have suddenly lost his mind and morphed into a Tyler Perry Madea-like voice, I shouted toward the basement ceiling so that the sound would carry to the upstairs bedroom.

ME:            WW, DID YOU SUDDENLY WAKE UP WITH A DEATH WISH?

MY ASS:   Your man ain’t here.  He went to the sto’ to get some eats which you failed to buy us yesterday when you hauled me (your chunky “sorry ass”) through Whole Foods lookin’ for kale and tofu.  White and Wonderful (WW) is as tired of eatin’ that crap as I am of eliminatin’ it.  (For the record Bitch: what self-respecting black woman eats kale and tofu?)   I’m so hungry I’m about to detach myself from your body, crawl up your back, grab your car keys, and drive your ass to the grocery sto’!  You better hope yo’ man brings home somethin’ chocolate and deep fried or else you and your sorry ass are gonna’ be on the 6 o’clock news ‘cause I plan on havin’ me a throw-down.

ME:            (Mumbling to myself) This is not real . . . my ass can’t be talking to me . . . this must be a hallucination brought on by dehydration or lack of fat in my diet.   WW warned me to drink more water.  Besides, nothing is going to make me break my diet and exercise resolutions this year—absolutely nothing!  And just in case it’s a demon, I’ll cast it out for good measure:  “Get behind me Satan!”

MY ASS:     Girl, you’re a bigger fool than I thought.  My name ain’t Satan, it’s “Sorry-ass” and I’m already behind you because I belong to you.   Long as we been livin’ together, you don’t know yo’ own ass?  I’m tired of your shit—DO YOU HEAR ME?  An ass cannot live by bein’ a traveling bootie-chair alone!  Heifer, you been puttin’ me through this starvation routine for over sixty years and it’s always the same.  You starve me practically to death and whittle my ass almost into oblivion until I almost fall off, but then as soon as you take a gulp of air or can’t maintain your gerbil exercise routine, the fat comes right back and plumps yo’ ass into fluffy-nutter status, baby!  Just ask my best girl (Oprah’s sorry-ass)—we will always, always return—Dr. Oz or no Dr. Oz.  Now I told you befo’:  FEED ME, BITCH—I’M ABOUT TO FAINT DEAD AWAY!

ME:             La-la-la-la, I’m not listening to you.  Besides, your argument isn’t really fair!  I’ve gone years when I’ve made you disappear, and I did it by not giving into temptation.  So go away!

MY ASS:    Yeah, but I always came back, didn’t I?  Sometimes you’d make me disappear for 4 or 5 years at a time, but then I’d just bide my sweet ol’ time, and six partyin’ months later of weekly vodka gimlets and rib eye steaks, and whoop, there I am!  Your lady lumps and me would show up larger than life at the end of your most die-hard resolutions.  Lord Jesus, I have no idea how I got stuck with you because you’re really not very bright, girlfriend.  You think you’d learn after all these years to make resolutions that weren’t so fly-by-night.   Why don’t you stop torturin’ my ass and decide to do something that will make you an asset (you like my pun:  asset?) to the human race?  I heard you singin’ about “holdin’ out for a hero who is larger than life.”  Instead of you waitin’ for someone else to become a hero, why don’t you become someone’s hero?

ME:             Shut up, shut the fuck up!  There is no way I’m going to start out 2013 by being lectured to by my ass.  If I start out this way, Lord knows where I’ll end up at the end of the year—probably flushed down some proverbial toilet.  Besides, my 5th resolution is, “Become a better person,” Miss Chubby-ass Know-it-all.

MY ASS:     What the fuck does that mean:  “Become a better person”?   All you humans write that crazy shit at some point in your lives, but it’s only done to make you feel better about yo’selves—rarely does any y’all follow through.  I’ve been chattin’ it up with some of the other sorry asses throughout the land and they agree all y’all are pretty much the same.  You’ll promise the moon as long as it doesn’t cost you nothin’.  You’ll say “I love you,” but make choices to hide parts of your heart and soul from each other.  Become a better person?  Become a better person, how?  You forget that you sit on me when you say your prayers rather than kneelin’, you lazy heifer, so I hear everythin’ you afraid of.  I know your greatest fear is dyin’ without makin’ a difference in the world.

ME:           Well, that’s cold!  And what do you mean you’ve been communicating with other asses?  How is that even possible?

MY ASS:    What you humans don’t know about life I could fill an ocean with.  All the sorry-asses of the world have a communication system downstairs that would make the servants’ quarters of Downton Abbey seem like child’s play.  (Giiiiiirrrrl, don’t you just love that show?)  Annnyyyhoo, you may think the upstairs head and heart controls yo’ destiny but y’all humans are just an intestinal flu, a severe food poisoning, or auto-immune disease away from singing with Jesus.  All I gots to do is run a coup on you with kidney and liver, and your heart would collapse before you could say, “help me Jesus, help, help me Jesus!”  That’s how precarious ya’ll lives are, and since that is the case, why don’t more of you make your #1 New Year’s resolution something more profound—like ”become a hero”?   Debi Mazar’s ass, which is quite lovely I might add, told me the other day that Debi says:

“A hero is somebody who is selfless, who is generous in spirit, who just tries to give back as much as possible and help people. A hero to me is someone who saves people and who really deeply cares.”

But if the truth be known, me and the rest of the sorry-asses have found most of y’all humans to be pretty self-centered.  You’re like Scrat, the saber-tooth squirrel, from Ice Age who is so fixated on findin’ and keepin’ his own acorns (this is like y’all humans clingin’ to your own shit—be it anything from a couple of dollars to an empire), that he barely gives up his stash to fall in love with Scrattee, the female saber-tooth squirrel (the only bitch that really “gets him” through all the ages by the way).   And even though he loves his woman, he abandons Scrattee in the end to the dangerous world of dinosaurs who will probably trample her ass in a New York minute.  And why does Scrat do that?  So that he can chase after his self-centered acorn addiction.   And what does his selfish, anti-hero choices get him:  A world of hurt and constant crazy-ass mayhem.   All I gots to say is that humans are a lot like Scrat and you are one sorry-ass race of people!  Now feed me, goddamnit!

Scrat an Scratte from Ice Age|image from freewallpaper-picture.net

ME:      (At that moment, the front door is heard opening and closing upstairs.)  WW, is that you, honey?

WW:     Of course it’s me.  Who else would it be—you and I are the only ones who live here.  Have you finished exercising?

ME:      No, I’ve had enough of this torture today, because I think I might be hallucinating from lack of fat in my diet.  In fact, why don’t we go to Ben’s Chili Bowl for lunch for a mouth-watering “half-smoke” and some cheese fries?

WW:      I’m up for that.  But I don’t want to hear one word next week about your ass looking too fat in your jeans.   Deal?

******

I am discovering that our calling in life is to be heroes—it’s what being human is all about, and if you believe in God, I think it is what he expects of us.  I also am discovering that the core of a hero’s heart is love, and the single most deterrent to becoming a hero is self-centeredness.   What if our #1 New Year’s resolution was to become heroes to the people we say we love (if we can’t do this for people we love, then screw the ones we despise) which would mean our raison d’etre would be to let go of anything that would bring our loved ones harm and to walk alongside them to help them become all they were created to be.   Of course it would mean that we’d all have to give up something that was a “right” or an “obsessive need” in order for those we love to succeed, because sometimes what is good for the goose is not always good for the gander.

And if 53% of us became heroes to our families (no one cheated on their spouses, no one lied to their friends, no one abused their children, no one was dismissive to the needy amongst us, no one was dishonest about their hopes and fears, and no one was slow to ask and give forgiveness when we screwed up), can you imagine what would happen to America as the sparks of heroism in our families morphed together and spread across the land forming safe-havens of our towns, our cities, our countryside, and our governing bodies?  There wouldn’t be a stalmate about gun control in our country, there would only be the collective resolve to become heroes to our country’s children to do whatever was necessary so that they’d grow up and become heroes themselves.   Rape, murder, and mayhem would cease to exist in our neighborhoods, and racial hatred and homophobia would become a thing of the past because we’d all be heroes looking for ways to “lay down our lives” (euphemistically speaking ) when it came to our self-centered desires over the  genuine needs of our fellow man .

But I suppose the reason we rarely make our #1 New Year’s resolution to “become heroes” is because the world is much too populated with sorry-ass Scrats who just can’t let go of their lust for acorns.

Pic from Google Images

“How few there are who have courage enough to own their faults, or resolution enough to mend them.”—Benjamin Franklin

“My Dad is my hero. He’s 85 now and he is in great health. He is handsome and strong. He has an incredible moral and ethical backbone. I couldn’t have been luckier with my parents.”—Harry Connick, Jr.

“A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.”—Christopher Reeve

“A boy doesn’t have to go to war to be a hero; he can say he doesn’t like pie when he sees there isn’t enough to go around.”—E. W. Howe  

 “The thing about a hero, is even when it doesn’t look like there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, he’s going to keep digging, he’s going to keep trying to do right and make up for what’s gone before, just because that’s who he is.”—Joss Whedon

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Eleanor Tomczyk and “How the Hell Did I End Up Here?” with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

The Odyssey Continues

Do you know what I’ve discovered?   My time is almost up and my odyssey is drawing to an end.  I mean I don’t plan on dying tomorrow (although you never know), but I’m not nineteen anymore and given the slide rule of life, I’m a lot closer to the end than I ever was before.   People just a little bit older than I am are dying all around me in my personal life, and at least 50 celebrities that entertained me most of my life (Soul Train’s Don Cornelius, Nora Ephron, Donna Summers, Dick Clark, Ray Bradbury, Marvin Hamlisch, Maurice Sendak, and Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees just to name a few) bit the dust in 2012.  I did the math and the average age-span of all those who died this year were just eight to ten years older than I am.   Jesus, Mary, Mother of God—where did the time go?  Just yesterday “we were young” and setting the world on fire.   Well, at least they set the world on fire—I’m still striking the match.

That is why I’ve been begging God for one more chapter in my life. I don’t mind dying; I just want to end my life better than it began.   I must sound like a broken record in his ear:  “please, please, please don’t let me die yet until I’ve had one final chapter of me leaving my mark as a writer and a storyteller.”   Imagine my surprise when God answered.

GOD:     Okay, Kiddo, I’ve heard your prayers.  As of March 1^, 2013 you’re losing your job.

ME:        What the___________ (oops, sorry).   I didn’t ask to become unemployed, God!   Perhaps you misunderstood me.  I asked for another chapter in my life—preferably one that is interesting and not pathetic.  You know how much I love bling and travel and food.  I need to keep the Benjamins flowing to keep my game on—thus I need to keep my job.

GOD:     You’re not becoming unemployed, so to speak; I’m just closing a door to this particular employment chapter.

ME:        And opening a window, I hope, with money trees outside that window?

GOD:     Nice cliché, Cherie, but no—I’m just closing a door so that you have enough hours in the day to pursue your next chapter in life.   How you get out of the room you’re currently in is up to you.

ME:        Wait a minute!  This is not what I want to hear.  Are you sure you’re God?  Or are you the one who told, Bachmann, Romney, Gingrich, Santorum, Perry, and Cain to run for President of the United States in 2012 to save our country for the “real Americans?”   Remember them?   (You don’t?  Well, neither do most of us!)  Because if you are the same voice they heard, I think you must be Satan, and I may be in a world of hurt.

GOD:     Yes, I’m the same God, but that clown car only heard the first half of what I had to say.  They didn’t stick around long enough to hear the part that said they weren’t going to win.  They mixed up my voice with Charlie Sheen’s triumphalism battlecry of “WINNING!”  There are a lot of chapters in life that have multiple lessons that are needed to complete the book of life of every human, and not all of them hit the “mother lode”  or the jackpot as you humans like to boast about which is really code for “money, power, or fame.”  Sometimes roads are meant to be traveled just for the journey and the character development.  I think my boy, Sheen, finally got that message in 2012.  At least I hope he did, for his sake.

ME:        Well, I would like to make a living from my next adventure.    What’s wrong with that?  I think my voice of love and tolerance is something the world needs (a born-again Christian with a sense of humor who isn’t nuts and doesn’t have a rod up her ass, who isn’t a bigot, isn’t homophobic, and who isn’t against science and the reality of global warming, to name a few of the items that have turned so much of your Church into a laughingstock).  Couldn’t you use someone like me and pay me as well?

GOD:     No guarantees, Chica.  You’ll just have to walk this road and see where it leads you.  If you extrapolate that you’ll become rich and famous from your journey, you’ll be as bad as the political clown car of 2012 that you judge so ruthlessly.    As for your motivation, I’ll leave you with a quote from one of my favorite peeps up here in Heaven (Sparrowrose Howard Thurman) who was Martin Luther King’s favorite theologian:

 “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs are people who have come alive.”

******

I am discovering that I have had many chapters before this final chapter in life that is being dictated by my age.  I’ve been the poor black kid in the ghetto who “came alive” through the love of reading and education, I’ve been the affirmative action kid who went to college on a full scholarship who helped integrate an all-white school and worked my ass off in the process because I found my calling, I’ve been half of an interracial marriage of 34 years that is so full of love I pinch myself on a daily basis, I’ve been the mother of two amazing women and now the grandmother of a truly delightful grandson, and I’ve traveled a great deal of the world that I once thought I’d only experience through books.   Writing, acting, storytelling, motivational speaking—giving hope to a world that desperately needs encouragement in the midst of all the terror that assails us—that is what makes me come alive!   2013—here I come!

 “Sometimes your only available transportation is a leap of faith.”—Margaret Shepard

(image from lawlogix.com)

******

“Life is full of beauty. Notice it. Notice the bumble bee, the small child, and the smiling faces. Smell the rain, and feel the wind. Live your life to the fullest potential, and fight for your dreams.”—Ashley Smith

“Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life – think of it, dream of it, and live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success; that is the way great spiritual giants are produced.”— Swami Vivekananda

“Carpe diem! Rejoice while you are alive; enjoy the day; live life to the fullest; make the most of what you have. It is later than you think.”—Horace

“The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.”—Walter Bagehot

“”When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one that has opened for us.”—Alexander Graham Bell

Calvin and Hobbes||Bill Watterson Cartoon

***

DEAR READER:

      “This is my (2013) wish for you: Comfort on difficult days, smiles when sadness intrudes, rainbows to follow the clouds, laughter to kiss your lips, sunsets to warm your heart, hugs when spirits sag, beauty for your eyes to see, friendships to brighten your being, faith so that you can believe, confidence for when you doubt, courage to know yourself, patience to accept the truth, Love to complete your life.”—Anonymous

HAPPY NEW YEAR—FROM ET, WW, AND OUR DELICIOUS BROOD!

PHOTO CREDIT:  C. Richardson (a.k.a. “Pee-Wee”)

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Eleanor Tomczyk and “How the Hell Did I End Up Here?” with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.