Where the heck were MY priorities??

Now we are just a week away from Memorial Day Weekend and I have to put my emergency pre-summer plan into effect. In order to help me stay on the straight and narrow – as opposed to my usual path of wavy and wide – I decided I should come up with a checklist for summer.

Tracy’s Ultimate Countdown to Bathing Suit Season Checklist for Summer:

1. Get bad stomach virus so I will be tankini ready in a week
2. Have anxiety attack because virus only lasts two days
3. Take down summer clothes from the attic. Try everything on. Find out it is all too small. Go back to step one
4. Wonder if it is OK to wear white capris before Memorial Day because it is the only thing that fits
5. Decide to dye white capris black
6. End up with black dye all over arms
7. Decide to get fake spray-on tan to look beach ready but also to hide black dye on arms
8. Turn orange from spray tan
9. Wonder if black and orange arms could be new trend this summer
10. Pull summer shoes down from attic
11. Very excited because shoes ALWAY fit
12. Find ten pair of gladiator sandals in bin. Pretty sure gladiators are not in style this summer
13. Go to store to get new sandals. Salesperson asks where I got lovely black and orange tan
14. Shoe store has nothing in my size. Buy cute pair one size too small
15. Wear new shoes to drug store to buy sunscreen
16. Get blisters from shoes that are too small
17. Ask salesperson for bandaids for blisters
18. Salesperson asks where I got lovely black and orange tan
19. Get home, realize forgot to buy suncscreen
20. Decide black dye wlll probably shield me from sun anyway
21. Go outside to weed garden to make house pretty for summer and to forget about stupid things like tankinis, fake tans and gladiator sandals
22. Realize one of the weeds I have been yanking out of garden, sans gloves, is poison ivy
23. Immediately break out in poison ivy rash all over body
24. Also get sunburn from weeding without sunscreen
24. Apply anti-itch cream, anti-sunburn cream, anti-fake tan cream and anti-black dye cream
25. Decide summer is hugely overrated
25. Cancel summer

©2012, Beckerman. All rights reserved.
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I actually come from a long line of great shoppers on both sides of my family, going back nearly to the first strip mall at Plymouth Rock. It’s a tradition that has been passed down in my family from generation to generation. Some families share recipes. We share coupons.

When my daughter was born, I dreamed that one day the two of us would shop together. I assumed since she was a child of mine, she would also have my passion for fashion. It never occurred to me that she might get her father’s genes for shopping. He hates to shop. Loathes to shop. Will not set foot in a shop unless it’s an electronics store or a car dealership. I think it’s a guy thing. Apparently that “Y” on the male XY chromosome stands for “Y the heck do I have to go shopping…”

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Me.

From the nurse I get a call
I see the writing on the wall,
My daughter has a temp, and so
My fate is sealed, of this I know
She’ll cough at me and then I, too
Will have a case of ?#@&%! FLU.

Crawling sadly out of bed
Stuffy, drippy, achy, dead
I make the beds, I wash some fishes
Clean the clothes, and flush the dishes
I make some tea and rest my head
I think I feel a tad less dead.
But as I sit, the phone rings out.
Not good news, I have no doubt
My son is at the school nurse, too
Now he’s got the ?#@&%! FLU.

©2012, Beckerman. All rights reserved.
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In my defense, who among us hasn’t fumed about such things as the inequality of public bathroom ratios? How many of us waiting on line for the women’s room haven’t crossed over to the dark side in desperation and used the empty men’s room instead? Come on, admit it. You know who you are.

This is especially true in movie theaters. I never understood how a theater could sell you a soda the size of a fire hydrant, have you sit in a movie for two hours and then only have two bathrooms for a hundred bladder-bursting women.

While we’re on the subject of public bathrooms, I also have a problem with the concept of bathroom attendants. I have been pumping my own hand soap and taking my own paper towel for about forty-five years. I really don’t need someone to perform this task for me and, personally, I have a much higher regard for a restaurant if they have good food rather than a good bathroom attendant. You also have to wonder, how much does paper towel distribution go for these days? Fifty cents? A dollar? And now that my hands are nice and clean, do I really want to be touching all that dirty money? It’s a dilemma.

Then there are those automatic toilet flushers. I know they’re supposed to be more hygienic than the standard kind, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve happened to blink while I sat, and ended up with an unwanted bidet experience.

Why do restaurants put cutesy signs on the restroom doors such as weird pictures or the word for “women” in foreign languages. One night it took me a full five minutes to figure out that the picture of a cactus in a Mexican restaurant was the ladies room. A cactus? For women? That didn’t gel with my Freudian interpretation of symbols. Maybe they used a cactus because women retain more water than men. Or maybe it’s because we get more prickly when we can’t figure out which is the ladies room!

Whose bright idea was it to come up with faucets that you have to hold down to get the water to come out? I understand water bills can be high, and nobody wants to waste our natural resources, but it’s pretty impossible to wash your hands with only one hand. One time I encountered this problem, I actually held the handle down with my foot while I washed both hands. Fortunately, I’m pretty flexible. However, next time I’ll try to remember not to do this when I’m wearing a dress and the possibility exists that someone else might come in the bathroom while I’m in this position.

One more thing. I hate those dysfunctional toilet paper dispensers that don’t roll so when you pull on it, only one square rips off at a time. You spend more time manually rolling out the toilet paper than you do doing what you went into the bathroom to do in the first place. This can take so long that if you go in during appetizers, you’re lucky if you make it back to your table in time for dessert. And when you do get to the table, you get pitying looks because everyone assumes you’ve had some kind of major gastrointestinal episode.

Still, there are times when beggars can’t be choosers and you just have to accept what’s available. One day on a long road trip, my then six year-old daughter announced that she absolutely, positively, could not wait until the rest stop. So we took the next exit, pulled into the nearest gas station and made a beeline for the unisex bathroom. My daughter opened the door, looked around inside and then turned to me in disgust.

“I CANNOT use this bathroom,” she stated adamantly with her little hands on her hips. “This floor is atrocious.”

I nodded. Clearly bathroom issues are hereditary.

©2012, Beckerman. All rights reserved.
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Good question. My kids are too old to make me popsicle stick picture frames and too young to have enough money to buy me jewelry. Besides, I don’t really need any more picture frames or jewelry. Not that you ever really NEED jewelry, but I’d never tell my husband that.

Anyway, I gave it some thought and came up with a couple of things I actually could use and thought I would share them with you, in case you need them, too. Of course, there isn’t much time left, so if you like any of these ideas, your family is going to have to shell out some extra bucks for two-day shipping. But you’re the mom. You’re worth it. Besides, you gave birth to them. They OWE you!

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Guy #1: “So, where do you live?”

Guy #2: “Oh, you take 95 north to Exit 43, turn right and go about 2 miles up the hill past the liquor store, and then take your next left. I’m the last house on the right with the basketball hoop on the garage. But don’t park in the driveway cuz it ticks off my mother.”

I realized that guy #2 wasn’t just giving a location; he was actually extending an invitation. What he was really saying was “Come to my house, bring a six pack of beer and come shoot some hoops with me.”

Guy #1 got this right away.

But my takeaway was slightly different.

All I got was, “You still live with your mother???”

In contrast, when I told my new girlfriend what stores I lived near, she knew I wasn’t really telling her where I lived. I was extending an invitation, as well. What I was really saying was, “These are the kind of stores I like and if you like them too, you should come shopping with me.”

This is exactly what the other woman heard.

What the guys heard was: “Blah blah (name of store) blah blah.”

Now here’s where things got dicey. When a man and a woman met and the same question was asked, he gave her directions and she thought he was trying to pick her up. When she told him what mall she lived near, he thought she was telling him where to go to buy an engagement ring.

Once I realized this dynamic, I decided I should shake things up and talk to a guy in a way that he could understand. So when I met some guy and he asked where I lived, I said,

“Take 78 west to exit 7B, go past the mall, up the hill, take your second right and I’m around the circle with a soccer net in the front yard. But don’t park in the driveway cuz it ticks off my husband.”

And what he heard was: “You have a husband?”

Which was exactly what I intended him to hear.

©2012, Beckerman. All rights reserved.
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I glared at him. I had spent the past 20 minutes looking in every nook and cranny in the kitchen to find the source of the stink. I had gotten a whiff of it when I came downstairs to make breakfast, confident that the dog had done something unmentionable. But there was no evidence of a doggy felony anywhere and there were no obvious culprits in the fridge or elsewhere, either. Whatever it was, it threatened to tarnish my spotless reputation as a domestic goddess extraordinaire. Yes, my house looked clean. But it smelled like a hot day in an Odor Eaters testing site. Not an appealing smell unless you have a foot fetish…

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Let’s start with a rundown of how my dog spent his day today:

6:30am: Went outside. Peed, sniffed some grass, and ate a slug

7am: Ate breakfast (actual dog food)

7:15am: Washed down breakfast with a toilet bowl chaser (I can’t swear it was flushed) and then helped himself to a dessert of used tissues from the garbage can

8am: Went outside a second time. Pooped, found a partially decomposed squirrel and tried to have it for second breakfast before I tossed it into the bushes

9am: Spent a good half an hour licking himself in places where the sun don’t shine

10am: Went outside a third time. Found a puddle filled with worms from the previous night’s rain. Had worm soup

10:20am: More licking. How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Doggie Pop?

11am: Chewed up dirty socks left on teenage son’s floor. A little dry but tasty.

Noon: Went for a long walk with me. Tried to eat a) dead bird, b) a rock and c) empty can of Red Bull.

1pm: More licking. His mouth may be filthy but this dog has the cleanest nether regions in the western hemisphere.

2:30pm: Went outside. Discovered a veritable buffet of deer poop.

3pm: Kids came home. Threw dog Frisbee. Dog returned with decomposed squirrel from earlier in the day

4-6pm: Naptime. Can’t eat disgusting things while sleeping

6pm: Served dinner (kibble). Did not eat it. Probably full from deer poop, slugs, worm soup, dead squirrel, red bull and rocks

This is a pretty typical day for him. And before you start going all PETA on me about letting him get into all this, I will swear that I watch this dog like a HAWK but he is like Houdini when it comes to quickly getting out of sight to find something disgusting to wolf down.

Now maybe your dog isn’t this bad, and if that is the case, I apologize for making disparaging remarks about being kissed by a dog. But experience has taught me that dogs can, and will, eat anything that smells interesting, chew on whatever is chewable, and lick wherever they can reach because they are dogs and that is what they do.

I love him no less for this…
But kiss him I will not.

However, if you would like to smooch with your pooch, knock yourself out.

©2012, Beckerman. All rights reserved.
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©2012, Beckerman. All rights reserved.