Friedwoman1

I woke up this morning and realized I hadn’t laughed in almost a month.  I love laughing, it’s cleansing and rejuvenating.  I can laugh at almost anything, especially myself.   However, debilitating hip surgery, then the decline and death of my dear friend and Jewish mama, Toby, within days of each other, left me curled up  in a fetal position ( figuratively because I couldn’t even roll onto my side post-surgery)   I did not eat.   I slept, cried, and disappeared.  Few of my friends and family knew Toby.  She was 30 years older than me, so there was no hanging out in a group.   She had no immediate family, and there wasn’t even a Shiva.   I did my own version without drop ins visiting.  I said my Kaddish internally, too strangled to say the words out-loud.  I didn’t cover the mirrors, rather I stopped seeing myself the night I said goodbye to her.

That Friday night I held her swollen hand.  Toby tried to shoo me out, “why are we doing this, Sarah?” I cried and pleaded, “please, let me stay, I need to stay for me.”  She ever so slightly nodded; it took much energy, and closed her eyes.  I hummed the Yiddish lullaby, Rozhinkes Mit Mandl’n.  She drifted in and out of sleep.  My being there kept her awake, she probably thought it rude to fall asleep on a guest, so I kissed her and said I’d see her the next day.  I didn’t come the next day.  My hip throbbed in pain, and I told myself I would come Sunday morning.  It never came; and she died Sunday at 6:30 a.m.

Toby and I laughed a lot together.  Her chuckle would start high then descend in tone.  Her ice blue eyes twinkled, and when she would catch her breath she might say, “Oh, Sarah-leh.”  Now I forget that I can’t call her when I wake up in the morning or fade off mid-movie.  I discovered a treasure though a few days ago, saved voice messages ranging in topic from “I don’t think I’d like the color of that purse,” to “just called to talk.”  Each sentence would begin with “Sarah-leh” or “Hello Doll.”  I have a few pictures too that a mutual friend texted me.  Toby never let me photograph her, and stupidly I listened.  I have her menorah she asked my daughter to polish before she went for open- heart surgery.  It is hammered brass and tarnished.  Her parents got it as a promotional gift in the 1970’s when they opened up an account with Bank Leu’mi.   Toby laughed a bit when recalling the memory.  It is dearer to me than any silver.

I know I will laugh again, it’s like air, and I need it to breath.  I smile now when I recall certain conversations or singing songs in the car to block out one of my babies crying in the back seat.  I have an elephant’s fabled or unfabled memory, and I thank G-d for it now, though some days I curse them for it too.  I remember unreturned calls because I was too busy, or times I had to cancel our lunches because life with kids was “just too much.”  She always understood, and would get mad at my apologies, “you have a family!”

Today my 9 year old son made me laugh when I chided him for being insensitive to his sister’s feelings, “Mommy, I have feelings it’s just that sometimes I don’t use them.”  I knew Toby would have loved that, laughed, and called him a genius.  The thought made me cry again, but my laughter still bubbled to the surface.  It wasn’t deep or even cleansing, but it was laughter nonetheless.

Source: What the Fleek!

What the fleek?!  At least that is how I thought this word would be used.  Again, being faced with my blaring un-coolness is so humbling – not really.   If you are like me and didn’t know, “on fleek” is the proper way to use it and means stylish, gorgeous, or extremely attractive.  Like when my daughter’s friends declared her perfectly waxed arched brows, “on fleek.”  My husband, a regular purveyor of any current streaming show, “What, you are just hearing that word, it’s been around for like 5 years?!”  I want a divorce!  Sorry, Mr. Professor, that I read an ACTUAL BOOK while you Peaky Blinder, Atlanta, or Master of None-it most nights.  No judgement, but jeez – not fleek!  Okay, I am using it wrong again.

I researched it on google (there is more than one academic in this house, thank you very much!) and fleek has NOT been around “for like 5 years,” it was coined by Kayla Newman on Vine in June 2014.    I, myself, invented a new word in 1999 after squeezing my first of three ungrateful children out of my loins – tutti (rhymes with fruity) – which is the word I used to refer to that place from whence those children came.  I don’t know why I couldn’t just say vagina, I hope I am the last of a generation to have the inability to express that perfectly fit word to a baby or toddler.  I blame my mother (sorry, mom, I am being blamed now too, but at least there’s fucking karma), she called “it” (see, still can’t say it – vagina, vagina, vagina) a tinkle box.  Yes, you read right – tinkle box!  As if that is any MORE fit for a child’s ears than vagina!  I mean, referring to “it” as a type of box is a bit, well, less respectful than saying vagina.  Maybe the tinkle as an adjective was a way of keeping me from knowing that the box had other purposes?

Years later, thankfully, we had to drop tutti, as my new Israeli niece’s nickname was Tutti, an understandable derivative of her name, Reut.  Also tut is strawberry in Hebrew, so maybe I wasn’t that original when I coined it.  Now back on fleek – what was I saying again?….

So much has been written about the Women’s March on Washington, in my circle positive, in others negative, so I just wanted to set the record straight: There were not enough port-a-potties so I had…

Source: Potty Politics

Yeah, yeah, it’s friggin cold.  What I don’t get though, is why it’s always my ass that freezes?!  You would think having more than adequate adipose on that part of my anatomy it would be snuggly warm, but no.  Every time I go out for any length of time I come back inside and sit on a heating pad for the next hour thawing my gluts.  My husband tried giving me some scientific speech on blood circulation and body heat, yada, yada, yada…. Don’t they say fat helps you stay warmer?  Isn’t that why seals and whales have blubber to swim in artic waters?  Yeah, I know, blubber is not the same as human fat tissues, back to the hubbie’s lecture.  So I am making a plea to scientists out there – find a way to turn my cellulite into blubber for the winter months.  If I am going to have it, it might as well serve a purpose other than shaming me out of my skinny jeans.  Then, of course, we need another pill to shed the blubber when Spring is upon us.  Cancer cures, wiping out Ebola or AIDS?  Nah, this is your money maker, now go to it!  In the meantime, I gotta turn down this heating pad.

Assicle.

Hell I knew it was coming, they were bound to escape…  The first rat that got out was Schnitzel, and he wound up on my sister’s head at 2 a.m.  She was pretty  cool about it, “guess what woke me up last night?” said over a cup of coffee and lot of laughter the next morning.   The second prison break happened a few weeks later at 3:20 a.m.  My partner and I were alerted by our 85 pound guard[dog].  Getting up there in both weight and age, she doesn’t make a habit of  maniacally running around the house at early hours, so we went to check on the disturbance.  The crime scene  in my son’s room was strewn with  food pellets,  paper bedding, and the top of the cage teetered on a perilous angle.  The rats were out!

Chowder was soon found frozen upright, though thankfully physically unharmed,  in a state of shock under the bookshelf (do rats get PTSD?).  I figure a giant beast with gnashing teeth will do that to you, but Mr. Schnitzel was still missing.   Call out an APB!  Our initial  fear was that “Cujo” had struck, especially since her favorite snack is baby bunnies, however  she is not a neat eater.  There would have been fur and blood evidence abound, a rat massacre to put any Tarantino movie to shame.  We’d  have to call in  a Harvey Keitel-esque”Winston the Wolfe” to do a thorough cleaning to avoid the therapy our son would  undoubtedly  need.  Luckily no bloodshed – YET.  The clock was ticking though,  and we knew  the Schnitz had to be found before the boy or the dog got to him first (those words switched around in a totally different context would sound so damn sweet!).

After hours of searching – I lie, it was really thirty minutes, return to bed, and another search after multiple cups of coffee the next morning,  I found the missing  morsel in my son’s pajama and underwear drawer (partner had long since abandoned me).  Well I found his tail, pointing straight at me between striped boxers and Lightening McQueen feetsies, and attached to the tail was a breathing, blood-fee, nose-twitching rat.   Crisis averted, at least until my next rat-venture.  Now our dog has literally become a prison guard:  sniffing around the perimeter of the cage to check that all is secure; staring unblinking when my son holds them; and trying to get a little closer each time he does.  She is biding her time to pounce, and with no Amnesty International to protect these inmates, I hope they learn to accept, if not love, Ratcatraz.

A few months ago my husband and son informed me they were getting 2 “fancy rats.”  I guess fancy means they are not riddled with bubonic plague and don’t come from sewers, what a relief.  They also don’t cook gourmet meals while perched atop  my son’s head, kind of a disappointment.  So what DO they do?  They twitch pointy little noses while scurrying across your arm and shoulders, bb-sized gonads dragging behind their cord like tail.  Now bb’s may seems small, but these balls are disproportionately large compared to their their grey and white baby rat bodies.   I didn’t even mind the occasional shit sprinkles they left on me in the beginning — solid, firm, and scooped up with a bleach wipe — easy disposal.  But those damn testes running up and down my son’ts arm are very unnerving.

I  looked into getting them neutered so I won’t have to look at them hanging there and  called the nearest exotic animal veterinarian clinic (exotic being a nice way of saying ugly-ass animals that shouldn’t be anyone’s pet).   The procedure is $250 per animal , not counting the $124 for their initial exams!   A friend suggested some comparison shopping, so now I am adding that to my holiday to do list….

They  really aren’t exhibiting any aggressive behavior to warrant castration, and since they are brothers neither can  get the other pregnant (I hope)!  So why neuter them?! I guess it says something about me that I can handle rat shit but not rat balls — I have yet to see any species’ set of jewels that have bedazzled me.    If they floated  like itty bitty rat balloons I would have some peace, but they  do not.  These are small fuzzy cement sacks making a path over a wood shaving lined cage, through my child’s hair, and over my coffee table when the said father son team is training them for the the friggin rat Olympics.  They even invested in building a maze to have “races to the cheese” – place your bets now!  I would put my odds on  the one I turn into a eunuch.  It will be an experiment in the negative effects of testes on speed.   Alas, the rodents only live 2 years (there is a G-d!), so it’s not worth the investment.  I will just have endure by averting my eyes or girding their loins.  Now off to shop for exotic animal nut cups.  Happy holidays!

When I was a kid, every time I whined out or asked for something, which I undoubtedly never got, my mom would say, “yeah, well people in hell want ice water.”  Ah, the cliche, old and staid.  Yet if one has read Dante’s Inferno, shouldn’t people in hell want hot cocoa or a latte? I mean hell should be, well cold as hell — the furthest point from the sun.

This meandering thought led me to invariably  modernize the stuffy adage.  Now when my kids ask for something there is no WAY I am getting them or they plead for rest  when they have to walk more than 100 feet -“well I want a cappuccino and a cannoli, but I ain’t getting one.”  Parenthetically, I have been  to Mikes’s Pastry in Boston’s North End and ingested THE cappuccino and cannoli, but I’ve only been there twice  in my lifetime so the retort still stands (shhh – kids need not know).

I’ve been saying it for so long now that deliverance  from any hellish situation is followed by images of frothy caffeine cups and tubes of pastry cream sprinkled with chocolate chips floating by.   And I think my kids come to think of Eden as a patisserie or bakery with an Italian espresso machine.  I guess I am hoping that someday one of my ungrateful offspring will actually conjure up a steaming mug and present me with a sweet cylinder dotted with powdered sugar.  Until then it will be a cold day in hell, or would that be a hot day….