¡Marianísima!

Sometimes, I love buying gifts. Finding that perfect something makes me giddy. Other times, I am filled with dread. What can I get the person who has everything he needs or wants? How can I surprise him?

My husband is such a person. It’s not that he’s picky. He possesses that lethal combination: disposable income plus penchant for internet shopping. This means, once he thinks of something he “needs,” he goes off and gets it. I have to be quick or I have to be clever.

With his birthday arriving, I panicked. He’s got hobbies aplenty, but I’m not going to buy more electronics, more drums, more cookbooks, or more gardening equipment. What’s a gal to do?

Meet Zeke. The gift for the gardener who has everything, because surely he doesn’t have a gardener zombie.

Mmmm….mint. Nom nom nom.

I recently shredded a piece of my past. While cleaning out a box full of outdated papers, cards, and scribbled notes, I found old employment reviews. I considered filing them. Instead, I shredded them. While the shredder chewed and spit out the pages, I wondered if it was a form of denial to destroy the documents that outlined all the ways in which I was not an ideal employee. Was I shredding them to erase the negativity? No, I shredded them because they’re no longer relevant. I don’t plan to return to fundraising, and even if I did, I wouldn’t hand a potential employer my performance reviews.

I’m having a harder time with old journals. Part of me desperately wants to shred them; the packrat-writer part feels compelled to keep them. I’ve had this internal debate for decades, probably. In fact, I had a journal my senior year of high school that I threw in the trash. Years later, while looking for something in my parents’ house, I found my old journal. My mom had fished it from the trash. I was simultaneously angry, horrified, embarrassed. I feared she’d read it. A friend said, “No offense, but she probably got bored with it.”

It’s like a fairy tale. Sweet & inviting bear, beckoning you to sit down and read. But watch out! He’ll cut you.

Yesterday, I decided to read it again. I would love to say my teenage journal is exciting, riveting. It’s not. It’s boring, filled with the minutiae of a high school senior – going to the mall, liking boys, dreaming about the prom. If it were just boring, that would be fine. But instead, it’s laced with doses of teenage angst, the worst being “I’m getting down on myself, feeling I’m too fat. I think maybe that’s why guys don’t like me – I’m too ugly.”

I vacillated between longing for connection and worrying about getting labeled a slut. How could I have worried about being called a slut when I’d only kissed a couple boys? Where did all my loathing come from? I wrote about a sweet grandfatherly gentleman I worked with who asked me “if all the guys were deaf, dumb, and blind” when I told him I didn’t have a boyfriend. I wish there were more Mr. Prindevilles in my life, and that I’d really heard them.

In the middle of this journal, pages were torn out. If I left all the anguish and doubt, what the hell did I rip out?

The problem with my journals is I only wrote when things were really good or really bad, thus they’re like manic-depressive roller coasters.

I’ve read this journal and now re-read it at least once. All it does it make me sad. That sadness is no longer relevant to my life. It’s going back in the trash, where it should have stayed in the first place.

A friend and I made a pact that if one dies, the other would take her journals and dispose of them. I’m going to save her the effort.

Sometimes, when you see a person running you think, “Wow, she looks like she was born to do that,” or “So graceful. He looks like he’s floating.” Runners are often likened to gazelles.

Me? Not so much! Today as I was heaving and panting my way through the backstreets (no main streets!) of my neighborhood, I felt as un-gazelle like as possible. Me? I run like a hippo.

Between asthmatic gasps, I thought: Huh, maybe it’s not so bad to run like a hippo. Sure, they’re large and maybe lumbering. Yet despite spending a majority of their days frolicking in the water, they’re fierce! They’ll kill people who come between them and the water. Plus, they run faster than I’ll ever run, faster than any human – 14 miles an hour.

Gazelles? They run because they’re always getting attacked. They run in herds. That’s not cool at all. A group of hippos, on the other hand, is a bloat. Or a pod. Or a siege. My next running team is going to be called The Hippo Siege. We’ll be badass, just like hippos.

Sure a gazelle is graceful, lithe, and balletic. I will never be any those things. Nobody will ever stop to admire me as I run down the street. (And, seriously, I need put “run” in quotes.) As if they’d seen a fearsome hippo, they’ll avert eye contact and get out of my way. Rock on!

On Thursday, the new installation company was scheduled to install our dishwasher. I was upstairs in my office when the doorbell rang.

I opened the door and laughed when I saw the same guys from the previous week. Evidently, “different installation company” is the same one that contracts out to BestBuy. Cue Three’s Company theme song, because it doesn’t get more farcical than that. And really, our landlord’s a younger, cheaper Stanley Roper.

In true Mr. Roper fashion, our landlord once again turned to CraigsList when our refrigerator died a painful, messy death (while dishwasher was still in middle of the floor). New one came literally on the back of a truck, half hanging off its lowered tailgate. It worked, but I think a smoker lived inside the refrigerator, because it stank. We aired it out, cleaned it out, used baking soda, and finally Smells BeGone. I swear, it’s called Smells BeGone. And it works!

Disasters tend to come in threes, and we’ve had dishwasher, fridge. What’s next? I’m hoping the first dishwasher death counts as number one, because then we’re set. Until the next big earthquake, that is. When the earthquake hits, I’m running to the street, because this house is coming down!

When the dishwasher guy takes one look at your kitchen setup and mimes shooting himself in the head, it’s not a good start. Things did not progress from there. Unfortunately, that’s not the beginning of the story. This was Dishwasher 2. The first died on Feb 26. When we emailed landlord, he wrote, “Darn, that’s the second dishwasher that house has eaten.” A little bit later, he wrote, “Good news. Found a replacement dishwasher on CraigsList for $80.” Maybe we don’t have a dishwasher-hungry house, after all.

Whaddya mean, not up to code?

The landlord asked us to pick up and install the dishwasher. Derek refused the first but gamely agreed to latter. Clean dishes and happiness until April 25 when the second dishwasher broke. Derek emailed landlord, pre-emptively suggesting he buy a new dishwasher. Landlord queried again, “Can you pick it up and install it?”

At this point, I screamed, “No! You are not allowed to do any of it. That is his job. He can do it himself, or pay to get it done.” Derek politely declined set up, and landlord replied, “No big deal, I can do it.” That’s before we went on vacation for two weeks, and returned home to old, broken dishwasher. Six weeks after dishwasher death 2, the installation guys were in our house, scowling at the dated kitchen.

The repair guy opened the cabinet below the sink and shook his head, asking where the connection was. Luckily, he wasn’t fat, because he had to slide into “Harry Potter’s closet.”

I have to shimmy in sideways

He squeezed in and back out, again shaking his head. “We can’t install your dishwasher.” Evidently our kludge of a kitchen isn’t up to code. (We’d guessed as much.) Then he asked, “Where’s your water heater? There may be a workaround.”

“In the basement.”

“Basement? Where are the stairs?”

“There are no stairs. There’s a ladder.” I pulled the trap door open, and he exclaimed, “That’s a dungeon.” But he gamely climbed down. His assistant should’ve said, “It puts the lotion on its skin…”

“I promise it’s safe. Built by an engineer!”

From above, I directed them to the lights, and repair guy calls to his assistant on the ladder, “There are grow lights down here!”

“For tomatoes,” I clarify.

“Sure. Whatever. I don’t care.”

“No, really, for tomatoes.”

“I’ve seen it all. Went to a penthouse office suite, and the guy greeted me totally stoned.” Derek later told me I’d sent repair guy into basement for naught, because it’s the furnace in the basement, not the hot water heater (let’s hope we don’t still live here when the furnace needs replacing, because that’ll be a colossal pain in the ass). But after looking at the basement, repair guy said he can do some re-routing of pipes and plumber magic.

I called my landlord, who ultimately told me, “They’re crazy. It’s not that hard to install. I’ll just do it.” In other words, he declined their immediate service to avoid paying the $130. Yes, that’s $130 for an engineer/land baron – one who obviously doesn’t highly value his time, since just his drive to and from our house will take 1.5 hours.

And so, today…7 weeks without dishwasher, landlord came to do the install. I left with high hopes. I returned to see an old dishwasher in the driveway, and a new dishwasher…

in the middle of the kitchen! A note attached read, “installation was beyond my mechanical abilities. Called new installation company.” Allegedly, they’re coming in two days.

I seriously hope it costs more than $130.

Even more than that, I long for the day when I can get clean dishes with the press of a button.

Style bloggers talk about how great it is to layer. Sure, a cardigan over a cami can be awesome. Layers of emotion? Not so pretty.

Frustrated layered over crankypants is bad enough. Add a constant foundation layer of “I’m never going to be fit” and a dapper overcoat of PMS, and you’re the emotional equivalent of the kid brother in “A Christmas Story” who, unable to move his arms, ends up stuck in the snow, screaming and crying, “I can’t get up!”

Thusly encumbered, I decided to clean. The kitchen needed work; I needed instant results. I cranked up Pandora on my phone, jammed it in my back pocket, and scoured dishes and counters, happily singing along to 90s country tunes. As I scrubbed my embarrassingly nasty floor, the music went from merry to maudlin, pulling me down with it. Then, out of nowhere, mid-song and mid-emotion, Pandora’s channel changed. Gloria Estefan was belting out “Conga.”

A Pandorian guardian angel? A musical reminder from the universe to lighten up? Or just a fat ass that probably triggered the change when I bent over? Who cares? Sing it with me: “Come on, shake your body, baby, do the conga…”

Mom was right when she said, “Don’t talk to strangers.” Maybe I listened back then, but I didn’t heed her words the other day. I lived to regret it.

I was in the locker room of my gym, drippy and wrapped in a towel. Or as wrapped as I could be, considering the gym is a fat-hating place that won’t buy towels big enough to cover my whole body. They don’t have big enough towels, but they have big enough televisions, even in the locker room, because god forbid you should not be entertained (and advertised to) 24/7. A pregnant, nude Jessica Simpson filled the screen.

I turned to the stranger next to me, “Whose baby is she having?”

Stranger: “Her husband’s.”

Me: “Who’s she married to? Oh, some baseball player or something?”

Stranger: “Hockey, I think. But yeah, sports star.” This is where a normal person would have ended the conversation, turned to her locker and gotten on with her day. But no. Stranger continued, “Oh my god, I can’t believe how FAT she’s gotten. I mean I get Demi Moore, she looked great when she was pregnant. But Jessica Simpson has ballooned.”

Me: [pulling towel tighter around my cellulite-decorated thighs] “Well, not everyone can be cute when pregnant.”

Stranger: “Blah, blah, something like 70 pounds, blah blah, gestational diabetes. So bad for your health and your baby’s.” I’m paraphrasing, of course. Instead of saying, “Have a nice day, fat hater” and turning abruptly to my locker, I told her of friends who had gestational diabetes and then had healthy, normal weight babies. That kind of quieted her, but probably she turned away because she finally noticed she was talking to someone who weighs more than a pregnant Jessica Simpson.

I left with three new resolutions: ignore locker room TVs, avoid conversations with gym rats, and bring my own towels!

As I cruise into midlife, I clearly hear the echo of a friend of a friend who said, “You’d better figure it out. You’re halfway to dead.”

So, what do I have to show for the past year? In short: I quit my job, reconnected with old friends, honeymooned, knit a lot of hats (including a Yoda hat), dyed yarn with Kool-Aid, tried to swim from Alcatraz, held squirming grubs in order to feed squawking birds, visited Graceland, read nearly 30 books, and hosted Thanksgiving for the first time.

Oh, and I wrote a book!!  I’m not completely finished with the revisions of said book, but I am still going to celebrate it. In the not-quite-year since I quit my full-time job, I finished a full-length novel – one which had about ten pages for the preceding three years. I have always wanted to be a writer, always dreamed of writing a novel. Still in many ways, the dream seemed as possible as my walking on the moon or winning an Olympic medal.

I do not have an agent or a publisher or any of those necessary things. Soon I’ll be shipping my book off to be judged by the harsh, capricious literary world. I’ll also be redoubling my search for paid work – validation to offset the almost-guaranteed rejection.  Plus, I’ll be working on my next novel and my next short stories.   I may be halfway to dead, but my dream is no longer a trip to the moon; it’s a journey through my imagination by way of my keyboard.

Instead of “the good, the bad, the ugly,” I thought I’d do it in reverse and save the best for last.

The ugly — My wetsuit-hickeyed and bruised body.  No photos!

The bad — My attempted escape from Alcatraz on Saturday. Note the “attempted.” Everyone kept talking about how the water was “warm.” Everyone not swimming, that is. Let me assure you that 61 degrees is not warm! It was less cold than last time I swam, but the bay water still froze my brain, made my lungs contract, and set off every panic response in my body. I swam for a while but never got anywhere near relaxed. The water was extra choppy, and every time I managed to catch my breath, I got slapped in the face by another wave. I swallowed much water.

During my past open water swims, kayaks zoomed around me like vultures around a dying animal. I had to shoo them away. This time, I desperately wanted a kayak or a boat, and none were forthcoming. Finally, someone came and hauled me into his little zodiac. He transferred me to a bigger boat with a cabin. The second boat proceeded to idle about the bay for what felt like forever, until I began to feel seasick and actually asked the captain to let me jump back in the water. The captain told me he’d drop me at Fisherman’s Wharf after the swim was over, and I told him, “But my husband is waiting for me at Aquatic Park. And I have no shoes.” The deckhand came over a few minutes later to assure me the boat’s berth in Fisherman’s Wharf was not too far from Aquatic Park, and that there’s a sidewalk. I’m sure there are worse things, but the idea of walking around Fisherman’s Wharf barefoot, cold, and clad in a wetsuit was wretched to me. Finally, though, I just shrugged and said “Fine.”

Just a few minutes later, yet another zodiac driver came by to rescue me and one of the other two swimmers aboard. He made us swear we could swim the last bit, and we promised, so he said, “Hurry on up. I’ll get you to the breakwater, and from there you can enter Aquatic Park.” Somehow, it was a relief to get back in the water, to know I would soon be on shore where my husband was waiting for me with a towel and a swim parka.

The good — My sweet husband was patiently waiting for me on dry land. He took some photos to document the debacle. He even awoke at 5 am to drive me into San Francisco. He held a giant beach towel up as I did the surfer-girl change by the car in the Fort Mason parking lot. Then, we wandered back toward Aquatic Park and met our friend for brunch at McCormick & Kuleto’s. (There I had, if not the best at least the most hard-earned, spicy Bloody Mary ever!) Sweet husband, of course, laughed when I said, “Never again!!” and laughed even harder a few hours later, when I started a sentence with, “Should I ever try to do that again…”

***

The unrelated — Sunday it was my turn to be supportive spouse and #1 groupie. I went to the Concours d’Elegance at Stanford to listen to the San Jose Metropolitan Band play. In addition to listening to fun music in the warm sunshine, I was able to admire all kinds of fancy old cars — and some schmancy new ones, too. I fell in love with this beauty. I’m mildly obsessed! Hello, Tiger, where have you been all my life?!