Random Esquire

I spoke with my sister tonight.  My niece is 2 and my nephew is 4 1/2 months old.  She said, “I’m going to get the kids baptized.”

I said, “Oh, yeah? What prompted that?”

(Just for the record, I realize the correct answer is “Jesus” but I asked, nonetheless.)

My sister said, “Well, you know I’m not all Catholic but it’s easier to do this when they are young. Otherwise, it’s a pain in the ass if they decide to get baptized later.”

Did I mention that my sister and I both went to Notre Dame?  That might have backfired.  We’re not all Catholic.  We’re Cafeteria Catholics.  (I’ll take some of that…a little of that…none of that please…)

She continued, “But if I do it here in town, I have to join the church and all that.  So instead, I have this friend…and she knows a priest.”  She might have whispered that last part.  I can’t remember because I was already laughing.

She said, “Yeah, I just have to make a donation.  To his mission.  In Sri Lanka.”

So I’m going to go visit and sign the paperwork to be a godparent.  And then, when the kids get older, I can tell them all about how their mother acquired a black market baptism for them from some beatnik poet dressed in black making money on the side by painting white-out on his collar and blessing the children with Pellegrino.

You know, since he’s for hire, maybe I’ll get Little Filthy baptized.  Anyone want to make sure my dog grows up properly? He’s going to need some godparents.

1. Anyone listen to NPR’s Sunday Puzzle with Will Shortz? Yeah. I’m a dork like that. Anyway! Every time I listen, I am distracted by the sound of Will Shortz’s obvious breathing in the phone.  It’s like…the New York Times Crossword Puzzle with a pervert.

2.  I saw my grandparents this past weekend.  I do not know them well.  My grandfather does not speak much and never has.  At dinner, I said to him, “Are you staying out of trouble, grandpa?”  He responded with a small smile, very softly and very slowly, “Oh, I wouldn’t know where to find it.”   I said, “It normally finds me.”  He smiled and said softly, “Then I guess that gives you some options.”

3.   In the past two weeks, two different people have said to me, “I love you…but you’re retarded.”

4.  I asked a certain young woman about her pet peeves and she said instantly, “Not being picked up at the airport.”  Huh.  I hadn’t heard that one before but yes, that is rather annoying.

5.  My quest to compliment a stranger was not working quite so well.  I decided to take a different approach and go with the random acts of kindness.  So today, while in line for a bagel, I decided that I’d pay for the person behind me in line.  When I got up to the counter, I turned behind me and said to a young lady, “I’d like to buy your bagel for you..um, as a random act of kindness sort of thing.”  She said, “Ohhhhh, that’s so nice! Thank you!  Do you do that every day?”

You know, the answer to that question is, “No, this is the first time.”  But that sounds a bit odd.  So instead, I said to her, “Yes.  But not always at the bagel place.  So…you know, don’t start hanging out here hoping to get a free bagel.”  She snorted her laugh at me.

6.   Today, someone said to me, “I’ve only eaten six bananas in my whole life.”  And I honestly wanted to reply, “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Which is odd.  Because I don’t usually swear in my blog.

I’m over at a friend’s family’s house, and the rest of the folks here have passed out. I’m somehow still awake, the only one not knocked unconscious by heavy drinking, which is unusual considering my moderately light tolerance…guess I wasn’t trying hard enough. Though spelling is a little difficult…thank goodness bloggers have spellcheck…

So a bit tipsy and sitting outside with a dying fire, I’m feeling introspective (okay, it doesn’t take alcohol and fires to make me introspective, I’m that way normally) and just wanted to put it out there:

Don’t ever take the ones you love for granted.

I don’t just mean that in the idea that you shouldn’t assume they’ll handle things they could do for you, or in any other trivial way. This week has been tough on my friends and family - an alarming number of people have wound up in the hospital or actually died during the past 7 days, and I’m feeling nervous whenever the phone rings right now. Today I got word that a friend’s dad had died, and not only was it unexpected, but the circumstances were just heartbreaking - this friend was out celebrating his bachelor party weekend, and his dad died while swimming in the ocean with his daughter, a 21-year old lifeguard. He was healthy and in decent shape, but the undertow caught him and there was just nothing she could do…

My folks are out of touch right now, up north at our cabin, and I’m going to be on high alert until they call me on Monday to let me know they’re heading home; RandomEsq is somewhere wandering around Europe and I’m going to be checking my email at insanely regular intervals to be sure that no emergency overseas flights are necessary; and my puppy is going to be leashed and watched like a hawk until this passes.

I’m not sure why I’m compelled to post this, as I’m not in need of sympathy or anything for myself. I guess that, in my drunken state, I just wanted to put it out there that life can change in an instant.

I was reading one of the Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff books recently, waiting for my highlights to set at the salon, and got caught up by one section in a similar vein. It said that you should always act toward your loved ones as if this might be the last time you’re going to see them - never letting an argument continue out the door, never going to bed angry, never leaving for work without kissing someone goodbye and telling them you love them. I’d already taken that sentiment to heart but now…let’s just say that now, ain’t no way my loved ones are hanging up the phone or leaving for work without hearing just how much I love them. It’s worth every extra second.

1. I did not have lunch with Instigator today. This is because she is on a task-force of sorts to handle deals worth a lot of scratch. Suspiciously sounding like an honor, it is actually more of a burden which we refer to as a “big fuckin’ deal” - much like one might say “who the fuck cares.” We have an understanding. If either of us is busy and the other walks into our office, we simply give that look that says, “Get out” and the other doesn’t take it personally. Today was my day to not take it personally because Instigator was up to her neck in some big fuckin’ deal. Bah!

2. My sister sometimes says things that strike me as ridiculous. She was watching me change my niece’s diaper to make sure I was doing it right. I sprinkled some powder and my sister said, “You’re salt and peppering the baby.” Is it just me or does that strike anyone else as offensively funny in a way? Then, there was the time she said she would show her children the movie Mystic River as a cautionary tale against running away by telling them, “That’s what happens to kids who run away.” The other day, she was talking about my niece and potty training and said something like, “Getting her off of diapers is like pulling her from a line of coke.” Dude. That’s just wrong.

3. I took a sleep-aid 90 minutes ago. This is because I am trying to go to bed earlier to reset my clock before I head overseas. I typically go to bed around 1 in the morning. Bad. It is now 10 p.m. and I am still wide awake. Dumb pills. Maybe I didn’t wash them down with enough whiskey chaser.

4. I have not yet told Little Filthy that he will be staying at Chez Parents while I am gone. He…has a bit of a reputation staying with them. Sort of like a rock star at a hotel. There was the time he baked a potato on my mother’s expensive oriental rug - which my pregnant sister discovered. With her foot. Or the time he ate my father’s ear plugs…which I discovered when he returned home and promptly pooped them out…all told in a nice little picture story here.

5. I, stupidly, taught Little Filthy how to lick on command. I say, “Kiss. Do it!” in my certified broken, third half-ass language and he will run up and give my cheek a lick, after which he is rewarded with a small treat. Unfortunately, Little Filthy does not associate his obeying the command with a treat so much as the actual licking. And so if he decides he wants a treat, he’ll just lick the shit out of me. *sigh*

I took my dad to the Diana Ross concert. Unintentionally, mind you. I won’t go into the awkwardness of sitting next to my dad while Diana Ross sang Touch Me In the Morning.

Then there was the time I went to the Oprah show with my mother. Boss requested the tickets using my name. We got the tickets…only neither Boss nor her mother could go.

And now…it seems I will be taking my mother to see Tina Turner in October.

October of last year was a really, really difficult time for my family. My mother in particular. I will not get into particulars but suffice to say that it will be a difficult October this year, as we recall the events of 2007. The events permanently changed relationships in my family and, for my mother and myself, improved them. I don’t suppose I fully appreciated the sacrifices and hard work that go into being a mother until my sister had children and yesterday provided a fair amount of time for me to reflect on my own mother and her sacrifices. It has become important to me to make sure that my mother does more of the things she enjoys and to make sure those things happen while she can enjoy them to the fullest. And you know what? She likes Tina Turner.

And so I think she should go. So I called her this morning and told her to put it on her calendar because I just got tickets. She was out walking with friends and I could hear her tell them, excitedly. So, yeah, I’m taking my mother to see Tina Turner.

And it’s going to be Simply, the Best.

heh. I’m a dork.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there! May you have a wonderful day as you deserve.

Sincerely,

-R.

I was reading Schokolade Madchen’s blog and she did and entry on how she’s making foods she ate as a child for her German born husband.  So far, he’s impressed with macaroni and cheese but not so much impressed with green bean casserole.  The man clearly has good taste.

This made me think of what foods I loved as a kid.  For better or for worse, I ate anything as a kid.  I still do, generally speaking.  I admit, I love meatloaf - but with barbecue sauce, not ketchup.  And if I make it, I have to eat it with scalloped potatoes and green beans because that’s how I remember it.  I dig maple and brown sugar malt-o-meal, too.  (Another food she’s making for her husband.)  I do not miss eating goulash at all.  Does anyone love this stuff?

Hmmm…I do remember taking vanilla ice cream and mixing in peanut butter and Nestle’s Quik like some mad scientist.   Of course, I also mixed together all the shampoo and conditioner pretending that my bathtub was a laboratory.  I didn’t eat that, though.

This reminds me of the time I flushed an apple down the toilet.  I had taken a bite and decided I didn’t like it.  So I flushed it.  Then I promptly tried another apple.  It sucked, too.  So I flushed that.  I have vague memories of my father eyeballing me from across the bathroom as he snaked the toilet and apples pieces came bobbing up to the surface.  To this day, I still can’t stand Jonathan apples.  Those things taste like dust to me.

What’re your favorite childhood foods?  And did you ever do something with your food that got you into trouble?

I spent the weekend with my sister and her family out on the east coast.

1. I took my 2 year old niece to “little gym” which is indoor, organized 2 year old playtime with gym equipment - balance beams, parallel bars, a big parachute, balls, etc. We took along my nephew, who was sleeping in the car seat. The teacher said to my niece, “Ohhhh, did you bring someone special with you this week?” Of course, she meant the baby. My niece said, “YES!” and for a brief moment, I thought she was going to point to me. But instead, she said, “Dunkin’ Donuts!” and my sister and I looked down at our hands holding cups of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. Guilty.

2. My sister watched the little dude in the waiting room and I went in to run around with my niece. There are a lot of beautiful soccer mom types at little gym. They hop out of their Volvo SUVs, shake their high-lighted hair free of a ponytail and put a kid on their hip and come inside. These women put on lipstick to go to little gym. It’s a beautiful thing. Seriously, if they served drinks, I might spent a Friday night there. Hellooooo, soccah mahm.

3. My brother-in-law was talking about how he ran away as a kid - for a day. I declare this a “long walk” and not officially running away. My sister said, “My kids will never run away.” I said, “What? How do you know that?” She said, “I’m going to show them a video.” I looked at her and said, “What video?” She paused and then said, “Mystic River. I’m going to show them Mystic River and say, ‘That’s what happens to kids who run away.’”

The offensive sense of humor runs in the family, apparently.

I got an e-mail last night at 12:30 a.m. from my sister with the subject, “In labor I think.” She said that her contractions were 8-10 minutes apart and she was watching some television and hadn’t yet told her husband but would when the contractions got closer together.  I sent her a text message and said that I hoped she was not in too much pain and not to be scared.  I remembered something from when my sister had her first child.

She had called me to tell me she was going into labor. We chatted and before we got off the phone, I said to her, “Don’t be scared…it will be okay.” I did not remember saying it but she told me later that I was the only one who reassured her about being scared…and she was definitely scared. She said she told her husband what I had said and he had looked at her a little blankly and said, “Why would you be scared?” I imagine my sister may have rolled her eyes at him for that one.

By 4:15, I had a text message announcing, “It’s a boy!” My sister and brother-in-law waited until their order was served to see if they got a baguette or a crepe (thank you, Avitania, for an analogy I can not quite shake). It does make it a bit more exciting (if that’s possible).

So now I have a niece and a nephew. I didn’t expect to get a full collection quite so quickly. NOW what am I going to do?

I went to dinner tonight with my cousin, her mother (my aunt), and her friend. My cousin is only 13 years old (turning 14 next week, I should add). They are from a very small town in Minnesota and came to Chicago to see Wicked. I do not remember the last time I had dinner with two thirteen year old girls. It was hilarious.

First of all, the story telling abilities of a thirteen year old girl are greatly hampered by (directly proportional to) the relative excitement of telling said story. The dinner was like…turning on a newscast halfway through a story and trying to figure out what was going on. And when one paused to take a breath, the other would jump in and none of it was entirely linear. It was like watching a tennis match under a strobe light. You’re following the ball but also know that you’re missing the finer points.

Second, because they are from a very small town, Chicago both thrills and scares them. I heard about crazy cab drivers and their fear of getting shot (in the loop!). My cheeks hurt from grinning. My aunt, who grew up near Chicago, found it equally amusing to listen to their observations. They were rather fascinated by the fact that I live in a loft and that my walls did not go all the way up to the ceiling. I pointed to the exposed duct work in the restaurant and noted that my ceilings were very similar which seemed to impress them. I told them how I could throw Little Filthy’s toy from the bedroom over the wall of the kitchen and into the living room. Again, fascinating stuff here.

It was good to see some family tonight and get out for some fresh air. For some fresh, minus 5 degree air.