Thank you for dissing me, Helen

I’m not the easiest person to get along with. I know that might come as a shock to some of you – or maybe just a shock that I’ll admit it – but it’s true. My mom always told me to keep my mouth shut if I couldn’t say anything nice, but it turns out living in silence isn’t really my thing. Biting my lip usually comes back to bite me in the ass.

I’m critical, both of myself and others. And don’t you dare tell my husband I said that or he’ll use it to win every argument from now until Christmas. I’m not harder on anyone than I am on myself. It isn’t my fault he’s incompetent. Somehow, even with 2 graduate degrees, he still can’t grasp the concept that not all clothing is dryer-safe. But I’ll stop there or this whole post will turn into a list of things he can’t handle, and I could write another book on that topic alone.

While I was adding a few book recommendations to my Goodreads list, I ran across my first truly negative review. It stopped me in my tracks for a minute. As an author, I have a tendency to surround myself with people who agree with and encourage me. I thought I’d scream or cry or be crushed. I wasn’t. Oddly enough, it made me kind of happy. So thank you for dissing me, Helen.

Maybe that sounds odd. I’m not begging for negative reviews here. I’d offer a blow-job for a reputable review, but then we’d both just end up disappointed. But how many truly thought-out criticisms do we receive? Very few. Readers who love my book are happy to contact me and write reviews. Those who don’t usually don’t bother finishing the book – well, except for my mother-in-law, who very clearly stated she was relieved she didn’t tell anyone she knows about it.

I feel lucky that I was surrounded by people who did not hold back critiquing me throughout the writing process. They forced me to swallow any pride I had in my work early on. If found them to be valid critiques, I made changes. If not, I didn’t. Either way, they made me carefully consider both what I’d written and why I’d written it, which made me more confident in the choices I made. Not everyone is going to appreciate my book. Or my blog. Or my tweets. Or my sense of humor. Or me for that matter. I didn’t write it for them. I don’t expect them to.

So what did Helen say in her two-star review? She said she’s not in this phase of life anymore so it was nothing new to her. She said maybe she would’ve appreciated it if she were younger. She compared me to a well-written blog post. Just the fact she used the words well-written made me incredibly happy. She didn’t slam me. She just isn’t part of my target audience. If her review scares off a few people, they probably aren’t part of it either.

Maybe I’ll get lucky and Helen will pass my book off to someone who will enjoy it or relate to it. Or maybe she’ll throw it in the trash. It’s irrelevant. What began as a mission to gain exposure and sell as many books as possible transformed into a way to connect to people with whom I have something in common. Adrenaline still surges every single time someone tells me they’re reading my book, but the real reward in writing has been finding the place in this world where I do fit in just being my critical, sarcastic, and occasionally crude self. I may dish it out, but I strive to take it as well.

World domination through faulty workmanship

I just used a pressure washer to clean the silverware basket that belongs in my dishwasher.  I don’t know if the basket is rated for that type of trauma, but I do know my body is not black mold resistant. Marketing paraphernalia for my appliance sanitize cycle, rated by the NSF International to eliminate 99.9% of common household bacteria, fails to mention that the warmth creates a safe haven for fungi. It practically invites them to dinner.

I can’t clean my front-loading laundry machine with the pressure washer since my husband objects to using it inside the house. Chicken.  So instead, I leave the door open or it, too, becomes a refuge for smelly  microorganisms.  Instead of invading us, China can save their resources and poison us with naturally-occurring fungi in our appliances. It’s brilliant if you think about it - world domination through faulty workmanship.

I don’t remember having these problems when we were younger. Maybe I’ve reached the age where everything in the past is glorified (for those of you who haven’t reached it yet, it starts around 36), but my parents owned one washer and one dryer the entire time when I was growing up. I’ve gone through 3 sets in the past 8 years. I’m also on dishwasher number 3. I know I’m not alone since one of my best friends was bitching about her third dishwasher in as many years as well. That’s 2 for 2. If you consider us a subset of standard US homeowners, you can infer 100% of homes own crap appliances, statistically speaking. Someone should hire me off that data analysis alone.

When I look to my engineering colleagues for advice, they offer few answers. Most of them were smart enough to marry for money. The others immediately saw the income potential in sales and jumped in bed with the enemy. They knew their fancy technical engineering-school jargon would give them an edge in confusing the customer, not to mention the HR rep who interviewed them. 

Am I helping the economy with my appliance purchases? Only if we’re trying to increase the import % of our GDP. Why are our products less reliable than those built 30 years ago? I don’t consider myself a great patriot, but it would be nice if we could go back to building things that actually work here in our own country. And don’t tell me we don’t have the brainpower. My friends are all wasting theirs on social media, frustrated because they’ve sold out to sell crap, because that’s all that’s out there. If someone, anyone, was capable of looking past quarterly profits to long-term reliability, they’d have a customer base of the entire fucking USA.

Don’t give me a crap, cotton, Made-in-America t-shirt. Give me a washer with no electronic bells and whistles with a motor that runs. It doesn’t have to play the fucking star-spangled banner every time I turn it on. It just has to wash my clothes so I don’t have to sit at the sink, scrubbing the fungus-stains out of our not-so-clean clothing like my great-grandma used to do in her front yard with a basin. 

But what do I know? I’m just a stay-at-home mom writing this shit in my basement. Because my kids locked me down here.

Boats and Spybot and Porn, Oh My

My 11-year old came home from a trip to my parents today. While mocking my parents with my spouse is fun, listening to my daughter ridicule them is a special kind of karmic reward. She appreciates me more, plus recognizes their idiosyncrasies, proving that I am not insane and it truly is a miracle that I escaped from them unscathed. Or perhaps it proves I’m warping future generations already, but let’s ignore that for now.

Her favorite story revolved around Papa and his boat. My father has owned a succession of boats, each progressively larger, as I’ve aged. When I was young, I was tortured mercilessly, forced to spend weekends in the hot sun, bouncing around a lake on a small runabout. However, when my dad dropped me off at college, only a giant Sea Ray with a bathroom and air-conditioning could replace me. When my parents become empty-nesters, an even larger cruiser took its place. Then another. Then another. Apparently, somewhere along the way, my parents decided to spend their money before giving me a chance to inherit any, which is funny because when I was younger, they told me they couldn’t afford gum in the checkout line, leading me to believe they were poor. But after all these boats, they might be. Perhaps it’s all a grand plan to move in with me when they’re feeble, because they see what an awesome caretaker I am with my children. Shut up. 

But I digress. My father’s boat is his pride and joy. Although I come in 2^nd, above my brother, because my father is an accountant and I was born on December 31, thereby providing him with a tax deduction for the entire year while he only had to support me for one day. I’m the favorite. Sorry, sibling. Better luck when you’re reincarnated next time. 

The boat is the love of my father’s life and all of our vacations with my parents involve time on the lake. However, climbing up from the swim platform after a swim, 11 was greeted with, “Stop! Don’t get the boat wet!” I find it hysterical that the boat is his love and he can’t get it wet. It’s supposed to get wet. It makes me feel kind of sorry for my mom. If you don’t get that joke, you don’t understand me at all.

What moron manufactures a boat for $150k without waterproof carpeting? In my mind, that’s a defective warranty claim, Sea Ray. But my mom confessed that the carpeting is fully water-resistant, only my father’s interpretation of the word water-proof is defective.

I carefully explained to my daughter that Papa, although insane, appreciates his life and works hard for his toys. Due to this strain, he has completely lost his mind. Or maybe I said he is consumed with caring for the boat to the point that he loses the enjoyment in it and tortures the rest of us to maintain its perfection.

Life is a lot like that, isn’t it? At the age of 18, I was content to live in double-occupancy dorm room in East Cleveland if it meant my parents couldn’t drop in for dinner. Hell, the mayor of East Cleveland doesn’t even want to live there. At 20, I lived in an efficiently apartment furnished with milk crates I DID NOT STEAL from behind an elementary school. By 25, I was married, we’d purchased a starter home, and we ceased furnishing our home with finds from the side of the road. Now, at 38, we’re living the dream.

What dream is that? The dream where I spend more time updating my computer than writing on it. The dream where I spend more time balancing my pool chemicals and lifeguarding around my pool than I do swimming in it. The dream where anything new is no longer exciting, but just additional hassle to maintain.

I’m guilty of it too, Dad. No shoes on the white carpet. Don’t sit on the arms of the sofa. Stop surfing porn because I’m tired of cleaning off the viruses. Sorry – that one was a side note to my husband – but maintaining an erection is hard work when you have to wait for Spybot to run, and then he’s just cranky with me later if it doesn’t all work out for him.

So tonight, I’m appreciating my daughter, and my life, a little more. Instead of maintaining the house, I played Battleship with 11 and talked to her. I missed her. 9 is now off visiting my parents, so I can’t wait to hear what tales he comes home with at the end of the week.

As a side note, I’m sorry to ruin your plan, Mom and Dad, but your boat won’t fit in our pool, so I’m pretty sure sibling 2 is a better bet as a long-term housing option. The boat could, however, be modified for one of those burning-at-sea burial rituals in a pinch.

Now you know why I’m always in bed by ten o’clock. Any time after that, I’m verbose and delusional, which is also how I wrote a book, by the way. If you had enough time to read this, you definitely have enough time to read that, too.

The Beast in the Jungle

This is not a normal blog post for me. I'm not going to attempt to be funny or wrestle my demons or complain about my kids. My husband took our kids on a trip this weekend to give me space and time alone. You'd think I'd be sitting in front of the television snarfing ice cream, but my brain decided it won't allow me to rest until I do this. The only thing I can think about is my favorite book of all time, "The Beast in the Jungle". The sentences run on forever. Sometimes, the story feels like it’s going nowhere. Like any relationship, you can’t see the truth of it until the end. 

I’ve had lots of people tell me they started to read it due to my love for it, but then for some reason or the other didn’t finish it. So today I’m going to summarize it in quotes from the book itself (with an occasional parenthetical explanation.) It will be longer than my usual blog post. But this isn’t a post. It’s a book I dearly love and I hope I don't do it a grave injustice. My apologies to Henry James, who would probably roll over in his grave and shoot me for this. But every quote, every word, says something to me that both tells the story and stands on its own.

The Beast in the Jungle

by Henry James

*** (It begins upon their meeting for the second time)

He (John Marcher) really didn’t remember the least thing about her. They looked at each other with the feeling of an occasion missed.

“You know you told me something I’ve never forgotten and that again and again has made me think of you since.” (May Bartram) “You had the sense of being kept for something rare and strange, possibly prodigious and terrible, that was sooner or later to happen to you, that you had in your bones the foreboding and the conviction of, and that would perhaps overwhelm you.”

 (This is the crux of the story. He feels he is meant for some undefinable life experience and is waiting for it. He confided this secret in her once long ago.)

She was the only other person in the world then who would have it, and she had had it all these years, while the fact of his having breathed his secret had unaccountably faded from him. He had thought of himself so long as abominably alone, and lo he wasn’t alone a bit.

“Isn’t what you describe perhaps but the expectation – or at any rate the send of danger, familiar to so many people – of falling in love?” (May)

“Of course, what’s in store for me may be no more than that.” (John)

“You’ve been in love and it hasn’t meant such a cataclysm, hasn’t proved the great affair?”

“Here I am, you see. It hasn’t been overwhelming.”

“Then it hasn’t been love.”

For a minute, their lightness gave way to their gravity; it was as if the long look they exchanged held them together. They were literally afloat together. That the right person should know tempered the asperity of his secret more even than his shyness had permitted him to imagine. He had thought himself, so long as nobody knew, the most disinterested person in the world.

*** (They spend time, years, as friends)

All this naturally was a sign of how much he took the intercourse itself for granted. The thing be, with the one person who knew, was easy and natural – to make the reference rather than be seeming to avoid it. He knew there was no moment at which it was traceable that she had, as he might say, got inside his idea, or exchanged the attitude of beautifully indulging for that of still more beautifully believing him. He had a screw loose for her but she liked him in spite of it. Above all she was in the secret of the difference between the forms he went through – and the detachment that reigned beneath them.

There was but one account of her that would have been true all the while and that she could give straight to nobody, least of all to John Marcher.

They had from an early hour made up their mind that society was, luckily, unintelligent. “What saves us is that we answer so completely to so usual an appearance: that of the man and woman whose friendship has become such a daily habit – or almost – as to be at last indispensable. I’m your dull woman, a part of the daily breads for which  you pray at church.”

“Only doesn’t it sometimes come to you as time goes on that your curiosity (in waiting for his life experience with him) isn’t being particularly repaid?” (John)

“I’m more sure than ever my curiosity, as you call it, will be but too well repaid.” (May) “Living with it so long and so closely, you’ve lost your sense of it.”

“You know something I don’t.” Then his voice, for that of a man of courage, trembled a little. “You know what’s to happen.  It’s so bad that you’re afraid I’ll find out. What is it that saves you?”

“You’ll never find out. If you’ve had your woman, I’ve had my man. I don’t pretend it exactly shows that I’m not living for you.”

“How shall I ever repay you?”

“By going on as you are.”

She had all the while not appeared to feel the need of rebutting his charge of an idea within her that she didn’t dare to express. She knew something and that what she knew was bad – too bad to tell him.

***(May falls ill)

He felt in these days what, oddly enough, he had never felt before, the growth of a dread of losing her by some catastrophe. What if she should have to die before knowing, before seeing-? Her original adoption of his own curiosity had quite become the basis of her life.

If she was old, or almost, John Marcher assuredly was, and yet it was her showing of the lesson, not his own, that brought the truth home to him. That she, at all events, might be recorded as having waited in vain – this affected him sharply, and all the more because of his at first having done little more than amuse himself with the idea. What did everything mean – what, that is, did she mean, she and her vain waiting and her probably death and the soundless admonition of it all – unless that, at this time of day, it was simply, it was overwhelmingly too late? It was a failure not to be anything. As he waked up to the sense of no longer being young… The sense of being stale…. The sense of being weak… The possibilities themselves had accordingly turned stale. Her work was over and it made him feel strangely abandoned.

There was something, it seemed to him, that the wrong word would bring down on his head. "I appear to myself to have spent most of my life in thinking of nothing but dreadful things. A great many of them I’ve at different times named to you, but there were others I couldn’t name. We had looked most things in the face."

“Including each other?” she asked.

He shook his head. “You can’t hide it. You’ve done. You’ve had your experience. You leave me to my fate.”

“It would be the worst,” she finally let herself say. “I mean, the thing I’ve never said.”

“You abandon me.”

“No, no!” she repeated. “I’m with you – don’t you see? – still. I haven’t forsaken you.”

“Then tell me if I shall consciously suffer.”

She promptly shook her head. “Never.”

“It isn’t that its all a mistake?
“A mistake?” she pityingly echoed. That possibility, for her, he saw, would be monstrous.

“The door isn’t shut. The door’s open,” said May Bartram. “It’s never too late.”

She only kept him waiting, however; that is he only waited. It had become suddenly, from her movement and attitude, beautiful and vivid to him that she had something more to give him.

“Do you know now?”

“I know nothing. What has happened?”

“What was to,” she said.

She was dying and his life would end.

“I’m not sure you understood.  You’ve nothing to wait for more. It has come. Your not being aware of it is the strangeness in the strangeness. So utterly without you knowing it. It’s enough if I know it.”

“I can’t begin to pretend I understand. Nothing, for me, is past; nothing will pass until I pass myself.”

“You take your ‘feelings’ for granted. You were to suffer your fate. That was not necessarily to know it. I would live for you still – if I could. But I can’t.”

*** (May dies)

The things he saw couldn’t help being common when he had become common to look at them. They indeed had been wondrous for others while he was but wondrous for himself. It was because he had been separated so long from the part of himself that alone he now valued. This garden of death gave him the few square feet of earth on which he could still most live. He once had lived. As one of the cemetery walks passed near him, he caught the shock of the face. What had the man had, to make him by the loss of it so bleed and yet live?

Something that he, John Marcher, hadn’t. She was what he had missed. The escape would have been to love her; then, then he would have lived. He had never though of her but in the chill of his egotism and the light of her use. This horror of waking – this was knowledge.