Caustically Optimistic

gremlins

We have a gremlin that lives in our kitchen.  He drinks all the iced tea except a drizzle in the bottom of the pitcher.  He eats all the pretzels except for a few crumbs and salt.  He eats all the pickles and leaves the jar in the fridge with just pieces of garlic rolling around in the brine.  He also snipes the good leftovers and doggy bags. 

Apparently, he has infiltrated Chaos Bean’s work place and is apparently a girl.  I’ve not been in a woman’s restroom in a while – one can never forget the Damen/Herren imbroglio of 1987 – and I was unaware that ‘emergency’ feminine hygiene products are stashed there. Apparently the gremlin menstruates often and heavily or is lining her nest with sanitary napkins because the disappearance of tampons is a serious problem. 

Chaos Bean made this announcement during dinner with friends and a former coworker, many of the women that were there commiserated that this wasn’t an uncommon problem and any woman who has had this tale of misfortune pointed it out that it has happened to their emergency stash in the workplace. 

I can’t imagine the fury this must inspire.  I lose my religion when someone takes pens and chocolates out of my desk (you have to bring your own) so I am pretty sure people would die if they took my tampons, if I indeed had them. 

I imagine that this is a lot worse than the toilet paper roll running out and needing someone to run and get you a roll.  I’ve been to that aisle in Target.  I know that I’m out of depth and there are so many choices that mathematically I’m destined to fail.  Left to my own devices I will get the wrong toilet paper, either confusing the brand or the texture – I’ve been to college and I’ve learned that you really can use any toilet paper.  However, I know the retribution that comes with presenting someone with the wrong paper.  I’d hate to do that with a tampon. 

We fear what we do not understand.  I understand toilet paper.  I don’t understand how or why my friend Elizabeth considers it gluttony to use more than three pieces at one time – for me it’s a delicate balance between not getting my hands dirty and not clogging up the toilet.  I have no idea what to do about the tampons and I’m pretty sure that I’d not only get the wrong kind, but I’d get the wrong kind in the most drastic and catastrophic way.  The kids would call it, “epically bad.”  I also cannot imagine being sequestered in the bathroom waiting for rescue from someone wholly ignorant of your plight.  This must be how the gremlins entertain themselves. 

This is analogous to the time I tried to make an analogy at work by saying, “it’s like when you’re reading French literature and someone compliments a lady on how well she has made her toilet…” to realize that I am the only person in the United States who reads Dumas because he likes it, and misses Gretchen.  Certainly this is absurd where I work since most of them cannot read or write. 

When someone steals from us we say, “they probably needed it more than I did.”  This is not true in the bathroom.  I can’t imagine the converse indignity of the poor young lady, trapped by the gremlins, trying to describe what they needed EXACTLY and well enough so that they might be saved from their plight.  I really have no idea how bad that would be; I only know the terror of being outside scribbling down all the adjectives and modifiers that would bring you the exact product you needed to secure your release because the wrong product has it’s own awful consequences. 

I am now compelled to stock up on toilet paper.  

Bland is Optional

Bland is Optional If you make airline reservations you can pick which type of meal you’d like, Kosher, Vegetarian, Hindu, or bland? Personally, I’m concerned that the food I ordered would be Sephardic and not my preference for Ashkenazi; it’s very difficult for a Lutheran to keep Kosher while flying from Louisville to Denver. I’m pretty sure that there is a food out there that everyone can agree upon and eat without offending their religious predilections because I’m pretty sure they don’t have a kosher galley on the plane anyway. I wasn’t aware that they had a name for the food served to the rest of the world had a name since the food I’ve eaten has always been bland. What in God’s name does your food taste like? 

It’s amazing what we’ll put up with on airplanes. In any other circumstances I’d have ripped the headphones off the person in the next seat who’s cuddling with/drooling on me and yelled, “If I wanted to hear the “n” word over and over again and graphic embellishments of sex acts that never happened I’d go back to teaching sixth grade!” I cannot imagine a circumstance where a complete stranger would use me as a pillow and drool on me and I hope there isn’t another one. 

I do enjoy the fact that people cannot use their mobile phones on the plane. During my lay-over I was at a charging station refueling my iPhone so I could play, “We Rule,” (I almost lost an onion crop) and a woman was on her yellular phone chortling on alternately to her son and husband about an accident the son had been involved in driving home from college where no one was deemed at fault and all were okay. Normally, I’d have moved away from her conversation but I decided that since I was tethered to the same small table she was that politeness dictated she move or pipe down. I did my best impression of my Aunt Stella, leveling the evil eye at her while adding in my own signature “this is going on the Internet” eavesdropping. 

The woman behind me is ignoring her kids as it is but I am sure I’d have eaten one of those children in retribution for hearing her prattling on into her yellular phone and the wee bag of peanuts we’re given before the bland kosher vegetarian tour de force coming from the galley. This I believe is one of the greatest insults or gags of our time. In a world where we’re so minutely sensitive to the feelings of others are presented with a tiny bag of peanuts while riding on airplanes, which could kill one in three American children. I find it hard to believe that the same airlines that make sure I have my kosher vegetarian Hindu breakfast wrap overlooked this. I also believe that, at thirty-two years old, I should not only care about greater problems in the world but also be allowed to have an entire can of Diet Coke. Apparently, that’s just asking too much and had I not gotten two traffic tickets this week I’d have referred this to my attorney. 

I’d have made my own big deal about this but I didn’t bring Chaos Bean with me – and to own the truth, she raises a ruckus better than anyone I know so I prefer to let her settle accounts – and I am flying to Texas and the last thing I need to do is to put on my Max hat and start the Wild Rumpus or incite a riot. My attorney is good, very good, but I don’t think he’s “started a imbroglio/brouhaha on an international flight,” good. 

Besides, I promised I would behave while in and en route to the only place on Earth and surrounding planets where guns more popular than the Beatles and Jesus Christ. I bet when she flies they take one look at Chaos Bean and think, “give her an entire Diet Coke, it’s not worth it.” I knew I should have brought her. I am sun-burnt, have an uncanny command of the English language with a distinct northern accent; they’d confuse me for a foreigner in a heartbeat and as soon as we cross over Louisiana I will be – at best I’d have been shoved in an overhead bin until we landed. 

Indeed, I tell you the truth, until Joe Biden gives us high-speed rail service across the Republic we’re at the mercy of the airlines. I would love nothing more than to take an adventure across America with Madame de Suburban Island drinking entire cans of Diet Coke and taking in the sights of our beautiful country. It would be like a black and white movie, as all adventures with the Madame de Suburban Island are; there might even be a murder for us to solve. Instead, if I am lucky, I get to peek out a tiny window at the tops of clouds at a world built for ants. I’d almost take that over our health care reforms but in my imagination I see myself dying of cancer and Madame leaning across the table in the café car telling me, “You’re an ass. You should have gone with Obamacare” 

I’m sure no politician but Joe Biden could save us because I’m sure that the flight attendants are so star-struck by anyone important or remotely powerful that they might encounter in first or business class that they’d give them an entire Diet Coke and perhaps a snack that wouldn’t rage through a fourth grade classroom like bubonic plague. I’m pretty sure that my friends who don’t agree with me on politics would agree on the point that an entire Diet Coke is a change we could all believe in. I’m in that tax bracket that sees a third of their income disappear and if I work really hard I can see more of it go away as well so even if you don’t get a whole Diet Coke I think I should my class should be as full as my tax bracket. If I’m in that forty-seven percent of Americans paying taxes I should get fifty-three percent of a can of Diet Coke. Don’t call that cockamamie; call it a start. My ideas are no less ridiculous than George W. Bush’s designs on invading the planet Mars. 

They’ve seen what we’ve done to our own planet, George, they’re not going to welcome us a liberators. 

Stay home. Instead, I remain here – faithfully yours – in mind-your-own-business class, cuddled up with someone who drools facing the ire of the guy with the lazy eye from the layover whispering to the woman with the yellular phone about what a jerk I am. I should just take a nap to dream of film noir cross-country trips with full glasses of Diet Coke.

[1] Valerie, see Madame Librarian for more information on the distinction between the Sephardim and Ashkenazi.  

an appalling lack

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away I was going to the movies with friends – and I know you’ve heard this because this is my favorite story about one of my best friends – as I was getting into the front seat of the car someone tried to beat me to the seat, thinking I was holding the door for them and I asked why she thought she could have my seat and she responded, “because, I am a princess.”  I then asked her who told her that she was a princess, she told me that her mother had told her that and I replied with, “I bet she also told you that you were beautiful.”  While she stared at me, dumbfounded, I took the seat. 

Now, before I go further with this story it’s important to note that you don’t tug on Superman’s cape, you don’t spit into the wind, you don’t pull the mask off that old Lone Ranger and you don’t mess around with Carol Potter. 

We’ve remained great friends all these years despite my Napoleon and Peter Pan complexes or the time I tried to start a bar fight in a Kentucky Fried Chicken.  She even stayed friends with me after going to see the Holy Father in Rome following a flight where I’d only communicate with the flight attendants using puppets made from the vomit bags and a roommate who drank all the alcohol on the plane. 

Sure, she’s tried to kill me.  She set Kristy’s chickens on Nate and I when we were at Kristy’s little house on the prairie but the examples of her epic much-ness far exceed the times when she tried to push Liz and I into vats at Budweiser – like the time she helped me care for the twelve children I accidentally adopted from Cambodia or the time when she and Nate pretended like I always put a full shaker of peppers on my pizza and then they would use my pizza to pepper theirs.

However great the felicity of our society may be one has to question one of two things, either her judgment is exceedingly terrible or there is an appalling lack of Lutherans available at the present moment because she and her husband (oddly enough, one of the said Cambodian children) have made me the Godparent of one of their children.  As a God Parent I will be responsible for making sure this child has a great education and is showered with gifts, most importantly I will make it my business to make sure the child knows all that I know and is well-equipped for life. 

Sure, it will be hard to find her an autographed picture of Pol Pot but I am confident that there are tiaras for babies and a children’s version of Animal Farm.  It is my greatest ambition that her first words are, “four legs good, two legs bad!”  I’m not a little disappointed that Liz became a Seventh Later Day African Episcopal (or whatever) and disqualified herself from raising a Lutheran children child by satellite because this is a daunting task to undertake on one’s own.  I’m sure the other people who are God Parents are very good, capable people but there are few that match me in terms of enormity of eccentricity.  There is also enough baby-sized argyle that I am not worried about that.  I’m not saying I’m not honored, just daunted and I am pretty confident that they were scrapping the bottom of the proverbial barrel when they dredged me up for this job.

Someone should also warn Texas that I am coming (again).  Houston has survived hurricanes; but can it survive me?