We were like four days into twenty-25 before I realized that my mom (bless) was born in nineteen-25, so I’m taking this opportunity to remind you that because baby girls are born with their little, tiny ovaries filled with all the eggs they’ll ever produce, mypersonal egg, the one from which I sprouted, was also “born” (sort of) 100 years ago. I’m not a life-begins-at-conception girlie, I see life as more of a long continuum endlessly renewing itself, and obviously no part of me or my brothers is 100 years old, we shed those cells long ago. But it gives one pause nevertheless.
My mom was a wonderful woman who I’m absolutely sure was on the spectrum, and because I was the third and youngest child, her attention often wandered off, so my childhood memories are full of things like:
running away from stray dogs;
getting my bike stuck at the bottom of a ditch during a lightning storm;
deciding, as a first-grader, to walk home for lunch, expecting my mom to be there, but finding the door locked so going across the street and getting a slightly annoyed neighbor mom to make me a sandwich instead;
wandering into a different neighbor’s house and being given a cup of coffee by some teenagers just so they could laugh when I spit it back into the cup and cried;
selling Girl Scout cookies door to door in the freezing cold with zero adult supervision, no one waiting on the sidewalk to make sure I wasn’t getting lured into a grown man’s rumpus room;
trying to make Kool-Aid in the gutter.
I know I can’t be the only one, so please comment if you, too, shoplifted a packet of Kool-Aid powder from your own kitchen, dumped it into the gutter outside, and then dragged a garden hose over and turned on the good ol’ public-access, non-filtered warm water. Did it end in disappointment? How could it not? Once the water started flowing I remember running to get ahead of it and then lying down, mouth wide open to catch all that fruit-punchy goodness. I couldn’t wait to show everyone this fun thing to do that I invented all by myself!
Of course, you had to put your own sugar into Kool-Aid in those days, the packets from the store only had a tablespoonful of raw powder inside, but even at that age I was impatient and cut corners so I skipped the sugar. It would still taste good! I knew it would! And there I was, belly down with my lips on the hot cement getting a faceful of watered-down red dye and chemicals from the flavor factory. God knows where my mom was that afternoon, probably ironing pillowcases or mowing the lawn. It’s hard to spend all day with a five-year-old.
BACK TO THE FUTURE
Jackson moved to Los Angeles *cue tears* (mine, not his) just before Thanksgiving. While he filled his Tacoma with everything he could fit into it, I hitched up my pants and drove the rest of his stuff (bed, dresser, bags, and boxes) to LA in a 16-foot Penske truck. I was nervous to get on the highway at first because I normally drive a wee little Subaru, but the five-year-old weirdo that invented Gutter Kool-Aid had also wanted to be a truck driver, so in a way this assignment was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream.
Once I turned off the radio (distracting) and got the hang of it, taking up twice the normal amount of space on the road was quite a bit of fun. It made me feel like a big whale cruising south to warmer waters. Too slow for you? Go around, my friend, this whale will get there when she gets there. Also, people get how unwieldy you are and make room, which is nice, and you have to focus and move very deliberately, which forces you to be a better driver and a kinder, more generous person, which is also nice. Good for the karma, etc. But no music, too distracting. Concentrate.
I went down through Oxnard and over to Malibu and straight on to the west side of LA. Once we both arrived at Jackson’s new address we Doordashed some lunch and unloaded both trucks, and then I hugged him (no tears! big girl!) and turned around and headed back up the coast. It was getting dark and my nerve was still holding but I would like to have a word with those who oversee the accursed three northbound 101 lanes in Ventura, they are in such a state of rippled disrepair that I honestly feared for my life. The truck’s suspension was rattling so hard that I thought the entire undercarriage was going to break into heavy, flying pieces and destroy fifteen to twenty cars behind me. I truly almost pulled over to call someone (not sure who, just dial 9-1-1 Help, I’m Afraid of My Vehicle?) but I didn’t, I chanted the same mantra I use when the plane goes through turbulence and lo and behold the road smoothed out as soon as I hit the Santa Barbara County line. Also, the Penske driver’s seat had a professional level of butt cushioning so after 200 miles in that thing I felt positively refreshed. (#notanad, but the local U-Haul place had so many terrible reviews I had to seek an alternate truck rental with Penske, and I’m glad I did.)
And then we moved and I lost all my yoga pants.
Then three weeks after Jackson left, Brian and I moved all of our stuff to a new house across town. Brian hired the movers to do 90% of the packing, though I was skeptical about that. “They’re professionals, they’ll do it better and faster than us,” said Brian. And, okay, if you’re Brian, I get it. He has thousands of pounds of books and he doesn’t care if a stranger handles our ramekins, whereas I:
have a strong need to take care of my own responsibilities and don’t like to ask for help, and
want to be the one who finds the vibrator that somehow wound up in an Ugg boot.
Eventually (it took three days) we got everything moved over, and after two or three more days of undoing it all I was like, Has anyone seen my yoga pants? I could have sworn they were in a big box. What happened to it? No one knew. I texted the moving company owner. Had we opened everything? Checked the garage? Yes, check, check, check — but after five days, still no box of yoga clothes.
After eight days of looking and several missed yoga classes, I broke down and went to Lululemon. I haven’t had new yoga clothes for like twenty years because I’m such a freak about eBay, but I have to say, Wow, new yoga clothes! They are great. The fabrics these days! Light and breathable. But new clothes are also expensive, and after practice I lay on my mat, seething about my losses. Had the box been stolen off the truck when our backs were turned? Did one of the nice moving guys have a girlfriend my same size who didn’t mind wearing used camis and leggings? But after imagining a bunch of stupid, depraved scenarios, I didn’t have the energy for it anymore. Fuck it — so you lost a bunch of stuff. You had too much anyway. Maybe it was a message from the Universe. Let go.
So I did, I let go, and once Jesus took the wheel it inspired me to throw out even more stuff. Soon I had two giant bags of clothes and shoes to donate, and the only clothes and shoes I kept, Marie Kondo, were the ones I really, really liked and that fit into my new drawers and closet.
And that, my friends, is when the movers found all my old yoga clothes.
Guess where they were? They were still inside my dresser, they’d never been packed at all. I’d given the dresser to one of the movers because it was too big to fit anywhere. Had I not checked all the drawers before giving it away? I don’t know, stop yelling at me!
I was trying to accept other people’s help!
And also guess what, once I had all those clothes back I ended up throwing out half of them. Seriously, once I no longer was attached, I realized that I really did have too much and should let other people enjoy the feeling of finding a bunch of still-good Lululemon at the thrift.
Lesson learned.
The last sort-of funny thing I want to tell you is that I ordered two bottles of Aura Cacia skin oil from an Amazon seller before Christmas and a week later the seller sent me four jars of Mrs. Renfro’s Peach Salsa instead. I was going to angrily mail it all back to them, but then I became a screaming possum meme — Ahhhhh the post office at Christmastime nooooo. So I kept the four jars and obviously I’m not going to put peach salsa on my skin after a shower, but now the challenge is to use the salsa that fate has thrust upon me. Tacos, I guess? Suggestions welcome.
Now you know why I haven’t posted since October.
Thank you, as always, for patiently reading and subscribing. Happy new year to us all! Try not to let the bastards get you down!