How To Get Old

1. Have kids.

Bing! You're done.

Katie turned 18 today, which brings the number of legally adult children I've brought into this world to two.

Do you remember becoming legally an adult? It may be a ways back. Do you, nonetheless, secretly suspect there may have been some mistake?

Certainly I do; but what brings it home for me tonight is not the fact that my second-born is six days short of being able to vote straight Democratic in the upcoming midterm election, dammit. No, it's that her brother, my oldest, who is twenty, came by with his girlfriend to help with the cake.

I'd like it if my adult son had a job to go with the girlfriend, and a household that the two of them were maintaining on their own, but they are not. They are living with my first husband's mother. This is scary because my son is the age that I was when he was conceived, living under the very same roof, with the very same matriarch upon whom he and his girlfriend now depend. Plus ce change...

I talked to him about that a bit tonight, and he assured me no such thing is going to happen with him and Marty, although (as I did point out) nobody ever, ever, ever thinks it is going to happen to them, while much of the continuation of the human race is contingent upon the eternally unexpected.

But do your kids have to make you so old?! It had been a long day with Katie - I took her shopping at the outlet malls; and she was tired too, there's a lot of walking, not to mention the draining salesmanship of a couple of very young guys who are much more profoundly dedicated to the mission of selling you a pair of $165 Uggs than any human being should rightfully be.

But I'm tired, and Katie has gone off with my ex, and there I am with my son and his girlfriend, listening about how they perform in a shadow cast for an obscure movie whose title I won't bother to look up so I can type it out here, and they've eagerly disregarded a few gentle hints I've thrown out about how tired I am and how tomorrow is a work day and so on, until I finally say - and it's not rude, if you think of both of them as my kids: "Well, listen, guys, it's late, and I'm pretty wiped out. How about we all call it a night?"

The girlfriend says okay, and they make their way to the door - to go back, I guess I should add, to my ex-mother-in-law's house - and we all say goodnight. And I hug my son, because I love him. And I hug the girlfriend, not because I love her - I barely know her - but because she's a nice girl, isn't she, and my son loves her, and it's polite, and whyever shouldn't I? And I'm struck by how surprised she is, how unexpected the friendly gesture seems to be.

And this is selfish, but as they leave, I feel with renewed force how I am not twenty anymore. I know - without ever having become aware of learning - how to behave in a way that puts younger people more at ease, that assures someone else that socially, everything they've done is okay. When did I get THAT power?!? Last time I checked, it was all I could do to eat dinner in company without covering myself in spaghetti sauce. And now I am calling an end to an evening and easing the social awkwardness of uncertain youth?! Who the hell died and made me 41?!?!?

Which reminds me, I'd better track down my voter registration card soon.

Mind Your Own Business

They were giving out fortune cookies at the blood drive at work today. I opened mine. “We need each other. Please give blood,” it read.

“This is kind of weird with ‘in bed’ at the end,” I complained to the blood drive coordinator, but she didn’t seem to know what I was talking about.

Giving blood bothers me a lot less than it used to and I don’t really get nervous anymore, but the long list of intensely personal questions is still pretty embarrassing. And it takes such a long time! The actual blood-donation part of donating blood only lasts about five minutes, but the screening, prep work, and post-donation snacking take up the better part of an hour, especially if they have those little Ritz cheese sandwiches.

As I was lying down on the table, one of the phlebotomists called over from the screening area, “This gentleman needs to leave for lunch – can he just come back and finish afterwards?”

“You’ll have to take all his vitals again,” replied the woman swabbing my arm.

“All of them? Even the iron?”

“Yes,” she responded, “but you don’t have to run through the questions again.”

This troubled me. What if the man was planning to turn tricks on his lunch hour? Or get a tattoo or a cornea transplant, or hop an express flight to London for a cheeseburger? You don’t know.

Actually, I asked about the tattoo question, because I’m always kind of toying with the idea of getting one, and they ask if you’ve had a tattoo within the last twelve months. (They also ask you if, during the last twelve months, you’ve had sexual contact with anyone who takes drugs or money for sex, a man who’s had sex with another man, anyone who uses needles to take illegal drugs, and a few other things. I always answer no, but to be perfectly honest, I’m just guessing.)

“So do you get deferred if you get a tattoo?” I asked the phlebotomist.

“Only if you did it outside of Texas,” he said.

So now you know. I didn’t ask, but I’m sure the same standard applies to all the nosy questions they ask about what you do in bed.

The Garden Quite Contrary

"Oh, Lamb's Ear is easy!" breezed the chick at Great Outdoors. "It's impossible to kill! Absolutely! Buy the lamb's ear!"


This plant is not merely dying. This plant is staggering theatrically around the room, clutching at its chest and uttering heart-rending cries of distress, pausing only occasionally to cast a reproachful glance in my direction, just to make sure I'm paying attention. But God help me, I've tried everything.

Why is it that the plants I've inherited, found, been given, dug out of a crack in Corpus, or started from clippings always grow like crazy, but if it cost money, it almost immediately dies?


Plants! Can't live with 'em, can't survive in a carbon-dioxide rich atmosphere.

Top Ten More or Less Rhetorical Questions of the Day

10. What do you do when the lucky bamboo you bought for your kitchen window gets too tall to fit?

9. Hi! How are you today?

8. What's with this overwhelming urge to flirt in French, which no one actually speaks besides Eric Idle?

7. Why - for God's sake, why do people persist in watching reality TV shows? I'm looking at you, Katie. Oh, wait, rhetorical questions - I forgot.

6. Tell me, who, who, who wrote the book of love? And can we file a class-action suit for misrepresentation?

5. Honestly. Did pussy go out of style? And why are men so weird? I guess this is actually two questions.

4. Or is it just one?

3. If a hotel's banquet event order specifies that a "pitcure" of water will be provided for your general session presenter, should you assume that means a "pitcher," or should you worry that the catering staff merely intends to taunt the thirsty speaker?

2. Did you know everything you needed to know in life by the time you were fifteen?

And the number one rhetorical question for today:

1. Playing dumb? Or just plain dumb?

Wondering

If something's been real, and it's been fun, how could it possibly not have been real fun?

This has never made sense to me.

Tending Life

I think playing in the dirt is very therapeutic. Cats generally think so, too, though for somewhat more immediate physical reasons.

Slappy White intrudes, here, on what was supposed to be a portrait of Spikey, the crack weed from Corpus, who's been making babies like mad. A couple of weeks ago the top of him broke off, so I stuck it back in the dirt. It resumed growing, and the bottom half took off in a new direction from the break. I guess if you can make it in a driveway crack in Corpus, you can make it anywhere.

So this weekend I got a new bag of soil and a few pots, repotted some rootbound plants, and finally got around to planting these clippings from Margie's birthday present, which have been rooting frenetically in a bottle of water at my desk for a month and a half. They don't seem to know quite what to think of being suddenly earthbound. I hope they'll survive.

I'm concerned about this guy:

He was a birthday present to me, two and a half years ago, from a client. Did great in my office in Corpus, did okay in the apartment, but here at the house he does not seem to be content either inside or out. I thought maybe he was rootbound, and repotted him, and this morning he looked a lot perkier. But now he's all droopy again. What's it take?? What does a girl have to do to make you happy?!?

Cats are easier to please than plants. All they ever really want is just to be on the other side of the nearest door.