How to Tell Time in a Noisy Bar

We spent judgment day at my new favorite restaurant. The place is perfect really, within spitting distance of the house, great food, awesome margaritas. The only bad thing is that all of Houston seems to share my love for it. So there’s typically a nice little wait.

So the night the world was to end (and here I’m thinking how Harold Camping has lost all credibility), we’re sitting at the bar, killing our obligatory forty minutes by sipping margaritas (and please don’t tell my acupuncturist this since she’s suggested I abstain from alcohol during this phase of treatment.) But gee! We’re at my favorite Mexican restaurant! And I’ve abstained for weeks now. Well, okay, days. What could one little margarita hurt? Well, okay, two.

So we’re drinking our second margarita (except for Ronnie who’s working on his diet cherry coke) when I start thinking, surely, we’ve waited longer than forty minutes! I remember how one time the hostess forgot to light up our little flashy thing and we ended up at the bar way longer than we should have. By the time we got to our table, we’d forgotten what we were there for.

So I start wondering what time it is. And here I should probably share the fact that I’ve not worn a watch since I escaped the corporate world years ago. Basically, I never know what time it is. Which makes me either early or late for everything. Well, okay, mostly late.

Anyway, I’m rummaging in my Ameribag with all its hidden pockets, trying to find my phone since it now serves as my only connection to real time. Sometimes I use it for the date, too. Okay, sometimes even the day of the week. When I see my husband reach into his pocket for his cell phone, I know what he’s going to do; he’s going to call me so I can track down my own phone by the sound of its voice.

I have the most awesome ring tone! It’s the one Adam Sandler had on the movie Bedtime Story and it’s both obnoxiously annoying and hilarious at the same time! I Crack The Heck Up whenever someone calls me. My husband hates it though and I have to remind him that he’s the one who tracked it down and converted it from an MP3 file into a ringtone.

My son loves the thing too. And so, much to my husband's frustration, we both have the same ring tone! One day last week, I was sitting in the car and needed to get in touch with Ronnie. When I called him, I heard my own ringtone, muffled somewhere nearby. At first I didn't realize it was his phone, buried in the seat cushion. So I sat staring at my own phone wondering . . . how the heck is it doing that?! 

So anyway, that’s what I’m listening for as I sit at the bar, holding my Ameribag up to my ear. I don’t think it’s such a silly thing to do. In fact, I think it’s pretty brilliant since the bar is noisy and, how else am I supposed to hear the thing if I don’t get close enough? But then I’ve had a couple margaritas, unlike the waitress who walks by, takes one look at me and cracks up . . . 

But, hmmmm . . . now I’m wondering - maybe it was because she heard my awesomely annoying ring tone! !

The Trick is to Drive Fast Enough to Dry Your Underwear

So my son wears these things called compression shorts. All they really are is thick, padded underwear that support and maybe protect his special parts during his uber-active day lifting weights, playing football and generally getting the snot knocked out of him. Thing about it is, these shorts are not cheap and are sort of hard to find. So he has only two pair.

To his credit, he does bring them home for washing on occasion. Even on days other than weekends, which, according to his mother, is still not enough. Regardless, they do get washed from time to time which is more than I can say for other things that live in the boy’s locker room. Honestly, have you ever been in one? I helped decorate once before homecoming game and the FIRST thing us moms did was hang about a thousand of those pine scented tree shaped thingies from just about everywhere! It sort of smelled like a sweat soaked forest when we were done but it helped.

Obviously though, not all the boys are as fastidious as mine.

But then, lest I get too cocky, I might want to remind myself about that time years ago when he first started going off on weeklong campouts with the scouts. I had dutifully helped him pack: used six one-gallon zip lock bags, vacuum packing a full set of his underthings into each bag: a pair of boxers, a tee shirt, a pair of socks. I was okay with him taking only five pairs of pants, figuring that he could wear the same pair one or two times. He was, after all, camping. And he is, after all, a boy. Imagine my surprise when he came home and only three of the zip lock bags had been cracked open.

“You wore three pairs of underwear for seven days!”

Subsequent camping trips went a little differently. I didn’t bother helping to pack and when he got back home, I just hosed him off in the back yard before letting him in the house.

Anyway, back to the underwear. Most times, when he brings them home for washing, he remembers to do it the night before. But sometimes he’ll forget to throw them into the dryer so I’ll walk into the kitchen the next morning to the sound of the dryer tossing around two items. And here I could launch into a whole rant about wasting energy and electricity and money and blah, blah, blah. But to be honest, it’s been done and said and said and done . . . and still he dries two pair of underwear by themselves in the morning. I imagine he might change his tactics when it’s him paying the electric bill and not us.

Anyway . . . of course the shorts don’t get all the way dry in the few minutes they have to tumble. And here I have to take a little diversion and explain that my son does not have his license yet. His dad and I told him a long time ago that he can get his license when he makes his Eagle Scout. As of this writing, he’s close, but not there yet. In the meantime, he has his permit and is getting plenty of practice driving himself to school. The downside is that I have to be there to bring the car back home.

So on those mornings when I wake to the sound of the dryer, I know exactly what my job will be.  Yep, I’ll be dangling his underwear out the passenger side window while he drives to school. And he’ll be taking the longer route, the one with the straight stretch that lets him get up to the 40 MPH speed limit and, hopefully, get enough wind action on his underwear to help the drying process.

The other morning we got behind a pickup truck with an old guy in it and I actually heard myself say, “I hope that guy drives fast enough to dry your underwear.”

Is it weird that this sounded perfectly normal to both of us?

Anyway . . . I’m left thinking a couple things: 1) how, when he drives really fast, I get a pretty good workout on my underwear holding arm and 2) we moms sure do some bizarre things for our kids.

Three A.M.

What is it that pulls me from the depths of sleep at three A.M. to toss and thrash and worry?  Everything seems larger than life and a thousand times worse when viewed from my sleep deprived perspective: the bills, the funny noise the freezer has started to make, the argument I had with my son, things I said in the past, things I failed to say, all those large and glorious projects that I don’t seem to have enough time to do. My past relationships, my failures . . . Everything negative comes under glaring scrutiny as I lay there rehashing lost possibilities. 

I read somewhere that the creative nature of the mind is more active when the cognitive side has been dulled by sleep or quieted in some other way. It’s one of the reasons I began meditating years ago – to unplug from the race and sink deeper into the right side of my brain, to still the chattering monkey and hopefully to touch the place of higher consciousness. And I have to admit, meditation has helped - a lot. At least during the waking hours.

But it’s those other times, those midnight raids of non-reason when I can’t seem to find my Om. It’s that alarm clock sitting there mocking me from its place on the nightstand, clicking away the minutes of my life as the mistakes of my past flash across my mind like a horror movie played over and over in slow motion. It’s the snoring from the other side of the bed reminding me that I’m the only one awake and obsessing during these vulnerable, wee hours. 

If I’m lucky, I’ll get back to sleep, catch a few more winks before the demands of the day call. Or is it that dammed mute alarm clock suddenly finding its voice.

Sometimes when I wake I’ll remember the pounding I’d given myself just a few hours earlier. And if I do remember, I might laugh at how silly I was to worry. For somehow, with the light of day, comes the realization that all those horrible, huge, monstrous problems haunting me during the night - well, they’re not really that monstrous after all. They’ve all shrunk disproportionately from their looming largeness of a few hours ago and are beyond merely miniscule. They’ve slunk back into the closet and are cowering in the corner waiting for their own day to begin.

See that’s when I’m back asleep. And the clock opens its eyes to start staring at me . . . . again. 

Query Letters

Query:  n - A question, an inquiry. Mental reservation, doubt.

  v - to ask or inquire about. To question as doubtful or obscure.

Mental reservation, doubt? To question as doubtful or obscure? Is that why I’ve got this odd queasiness in my gut as I sit here trying to write query letters to literary agents? Is that why I’m putting the writing of said letters off and off and off, treating it like one of those household tasks I loathe so much (aka, anything domestic).

It’s not like I haven’t done this before. I mean, the first time I thought my book was finished, I rushed into the submission process - too soon I might add and obviously, without the desired outcome. I sent the thing off to several publishers. Some responded (negatively of course, else I wouldn’t still be here). Others didn’t bother to respond at all. Sort of reminded me of a poem I’d once written for an assignment in Composition and Rhetoric: either write a story about a poem or a poem about a story. Being the “Hermione” of the class, I’d done both. But rather than turn both in for the assignment, I decided to submit the story for publication and submit the poem for a grade.

The poem got an A. The story got . . . well, here’s the poem:

Off to the Great Black Hole

Journal in hand, I took up my pen

and it knew just what to do.

Mind blank, hand in charge

over the paper it flew.

Page after page a story emerged

from imagination gone wild.

a dad and a witch in a city ~

a small and innocent child.

And as the tale unfolded 

my pen, it grew more bold

wrapping the oddest twists

around the story that it told.

A great bond it did build

‘tween father and his son.

And my pen, it burned through ink

‘till at last our story was done.

Then, setting aside my weary tool

I sat back, gazed in delight

Oh, so proud I was the creator of

this wonderful thing I did write!

And off to the great black hole

of publishers it went

without the faintest hint

of how dear to us it meant.

Then long my silent pen did wait

while I bore it company

both in rapt anticipation

of what our fate might be.

First one week, into a month

still silent for a year

our hope all but abandoned

then alas, long waited fear.

Letter in hand, I took up my pen

and it knew just what to do.

Mind blank, hand in charge,

and together we started anew.

So here I am again, getting ready to put myself out there, to expose my soft underbelly to the literary world. This time I’m querying agents rather than going straight to the publishing houses, although I’ve heard it’s just as difficult to get one’s foot in the door there as it is a publishing house.

And I’m hoping that my refusal to follow “the rules” will be embraced for the risk-taking it represents, rather than shunned like a diseased mutant. 

New writers should avoid vernacular. But, how else will my bagpipe playing, kilt wearing, pipe smoking, Scottish gypsy find her voice? 

New writers should stick with one point of view and never mix. Okay, but what about that recent debut novel - the one that’s on the NY Times Best seller list and is written in multiple first person with a single omniscient chapter plopped right smack dab in the middle? 

Middle grade novels should be no longer than 60,000 words. Okay, mine’s a little longer. But I’m willing to kill some of my darlings if someone really, really wants it bad enough.

So I guess I’ve taken enough time writing about querying rather than actually doing it (and yes, I have written about the avoidance of domestic chores, too). But, I suppose it’s high time I donned my asbestos underwear and sent out some letters. 

Wish me luck!

Lessons in Odd Places

So I’m pulling into the Krogers parking lot anxious to get in, get my loaf of bread and hurry home.

I’m hungry.

Not only that, but I’ve been some three hours away from home, the longest I’ve left my two Bostons and I’m wondering what sort of havoc they’ve wreaked. 

I say that, but in reality, they’re really good dogs. The most they’ve done when I’m not there to entertain them is to snore really loudly.

Nevertheless, I’m a tad bit worried and I spot a primo parking space real close to the door, thinking this might chop a few seconds off my abandonment guilt. But there’s a LOL (aka little old lady) taking her lovely time walking the few steps across my parking space. She’s bent way the heck over into one of those backs that comes only as a gift from osteoporosis. I stifle my impatience. But I still can’t keep from wondering why in God’s name she didn’t get someone else to do her grocery shopping. I mean, look at her! She can barely walk!

Finally she hobbles past my space and I pull in, kill the engine, grab my purse and bounce out, locking the door with my remote before bounding toward the front door.

I pass the old girl on my way. She’s slowly, carefully, gingerly easing herself down into the driver’s seat of her car.

Into the Krogers I go, grab my loaf of bread (along with three or four sundry items), swipe my card and hurry out. It’s only when I’m pulling out that I notice how my perfect parking space had been between her car and the basket return. The old girl had been RETURNING HER BASKET!

Now this might not be such a big deal where you come from but here in my town, it’s not typical. You’re more apt to find a cart abandoned behind your car when you come out. Or worse yet, left to roll into the passenger side of your spanking new BMW. You’re less likely to see a decrepit old soul, tapping into the last reserves of her energy to put her basket where it belongs.

When I shared this story with my teenager, he reminded me that it was typically the younger shoppers leaving the baskets. “But older people have been brought up differently,” he said.  

His words, not mine.

May people never cease to amaze you . . . in wonderful and uplifting ways!