ms. malaprop – Page 10 – Wrekehavoc.com

Category: ms. malaprop

it don't come easy

Posted on June 28, 2008 by wrekehavoc

today, i share the tale of the Easy Bake Oven. it will be a tale much like another famous tale, though it involves no curtains. mercifully.

it’s starts with a little girl. let’s call her BC, shall we, as we always do around here. when BC was about three years old, she went to a chanukah party at her uncle BTD’s house. there were many children there, as her uncle has five kids, and her uncle’s wife’s family has a lot of children and cousins. at this party, everyone had presents to exchange; everyone, except the uncle, who had presents for all of the other children but no present for his beloved (and at the time only) niece, BC. probably a little oversight on the busy present shopper’s part.

in any event, bless BTD’s heart: this is conjecture, of course, but it appeared that after BC’s beloved uncle scrambled upstairs, and then downstairs, he presented BC with a gift he had plucked from an upstairs closet from thin air: a brand-new Easy Bake Oven. BC loved this oven; only, too bad for her. EBOs are for children age eight and up. no matter how mature madame was at this age, she was not ready for an EBO. carefully, her grandmother whisked the present away to toys r us, where she exchanged it for something a little safer for a spunky three year old.

fast forward to our hero, the now-eight-year-old BC. that same grandmother, remembering how much her granddaughter wanted that EBO, got it for her for chanukah. her other uncle, the lovable, right-wing nutball larry, supplied a whole bunch of EBO mixes to keep her own personal glycemic index at about 1000. happy days are here again, right?

not quite.

for our hero, who had not yet fully developed her ability to read fine print, took the giant long cattle prod pushing tool and shoved it into the oven, lodging it permanently inside the oven, even before she had any chance at baking anything. oh woe, she cried. her mom, desperate to dislodge the long plastic thingy, called up hasbro for guidance. unfortunately for all, hasbro and our friends at the cpsc had just announced a recall of the EBO. apparently, other things were getting entrapped in the ovens. (things called fingers.) dutifully, BC’s mom and dad packed it up and returned it, as they had been instructed. the mixes lingered, but the oven was gone with the wind postal service.

months went by, months when hasbro said they might rebuild it; or then again, maybe not. eventually, they issued a $25 gift certificate for any item on hasbro.com. considering the shipping, it wasn’t the best offer in the world. (BC’s mom promptly lost the offer, so in truth, she’s just rationalizing because she felt so guilty.) in time, BC’s evil mom, fearing that the mixes were going to be nastier than nasty, chucked them as well.

fast forward once again to this very date, a date which shall be remembered for so many things. for one thing, BC’s brother jools celebrated a whole week of dry nights; he was to be gifted, as promised, with a shark slip and slide. (after weeks of obsessing about this item, he decided to choose two other items instead as his reward.) for another, BC achieved straight As on her report card. and, remembering that a child had been denied her EBO for so many years, BC’s parents caved bought her her very own EBO.

hurray!

but woe to BC: her mixes are gone. BC’s mother, being cheap industrious, located DIY EBO recipes on the internet, as she knew the three included mixes would last about two minutes. and after BC’s dad returned from the store with a lightbulb (the secret to those crispy crusts delicate cakes heated plastic oven walls), we set forth on our baking adventure.

#1: yellow cake (one packet) with chocolate frosting (one packet), baked especially for the man who bought the lightbulb.

#2 and #3: chocolate peanut butter fudge, one serving shared by wreke and jools, this serving was affectionately dubbed gloop for it’s consistency. imagine the fine taste of confectioners sugar with a slight brownish tinge. the second attempt, eaten by BC after a stint in the fridge, fared a little better.

BC had a great time, though her mother, wreke, was left with the realization that the same woman who would not buy wreke an EBO was willing to do so for her grandchild. no, instead, wreke realized that her own mother, aka the grandmother, was willing instead to let wreke use the real oven instead.

in retrospect, it was probably safer.

pump it up

Posted on June 24, 2008 by wrekehavoc

during the school year, i hit the community center gym roughly at 9:15. it’s a great time to be at the smelly cheap wonderful facility, as the pre-work exercisers are on their way and the only ones left are:

1) the senior citizens, who play some weird, cultish game that is a cross between tennis and badminton (and they’re out for blood, man. seriously.);

2) the stay-at-home moms, including the new moms who do stroller stride around the track, desperately wishing for post-birth fat removal;

3) the junior high kids at their PE class — the community center gym is their gym, so you see four or five track stars running gym teacher mandated laps, followed by the herd, followed by four or five kids who you just know are already heavy smokers;

4) the one token woman who shows up in the weight room and who looks like a tough prizefighter; and

5) the fire fighters, who, during their non-call moments, are bulking it up in the weight room.

there are a few other regulars, mostly men who i wonder about. unemployed? shift workers? serial killers? who knows. one approached me when i was new and wanted to help me work out, but i casually flashed my wedding ring and tried to pawn him off on another lady. i rarely wear my rings, as i lift weights, so that was my lucky, albeit inexperienced, day.

but it is a known experience.

this week, i have to get to the gym after 1 pm, as that’s when i am childless for a few hours. i like to work out before i hit the supermarket; working out keeps the world safe from ring-dings. so i hit the gym, precisely at 1:00. it is summer now, so there are no PE kids to dodge. and apparently, at 1:00, the seniors must be having their naps. the new moms aren’t there, either — it’s prime baby napping time, too. and no firefighters to speak of. (sigh.) even ms. prizefighter is gone.

this left me with several men, some older, some younger, in the weight room. the only girl. i brought my new weightlifting bible with me, set it down on an unused bench, and started my routine. as i picked up my barbell and started lifting, i saw an older lifter looking at me. looking angrily at me. a look that said: what the fuck is a GIRL doing here? he glared at me pretty much for the entire 40 minutes i was in the room. i just focused on my workout. i mean, maybe he was just having a crappy day? or maybe he was constipated? i dunno.

i walked over to pull on some other weights. i noticed a younger guy looking at the bench where my book was laying. shoot, have i broken some gym etiquette, i wondered. i walked over and apologized. no, he replied with a smile, i was actually just looking at your book. well, the cover with the picture of the hot chick, anyway.

i started to do some step ups on a box that was covered in astroturf. these things kill me, but i feel better in the end after doing them. in the gym mirror, i noticed another one of the younger guys, just staring at my wisconsin-sized ass from behind. was he admiring my form? was he pissed that i was taking up space in the tiny room? was there a rip in my capris? i’ll never know. i was a little creeped out, but i just kept on.

finally, i had to get a ball and do these weird-ass jackknife things. an older man somewhere in the 50-60 range, hair parted and maybe bob dobb‘s dad, walked right up to me. what the hell are you doin’? he asked, snottily.

by this point, i had pretty much had it with the men. i can understand why some women join wimpy-ass places like Curves, but when i did a trial week there, it didn’t do anything but aggravate the shit out of me and waste my time.

i got up and looked him in the eye. it’s called a prone jackknife.

he looked at me. what the hell are you doing that for?

to get stronger, i replied. i’ll show you how to do them, then why don’t you try a few?

hell, no, he replied.

then, he left me the hell alone.

no one, but no one, is kicking darla out of the he-man woman hater’s club.

what's the frequency, kenneth

Posted on June 24, 2008 by wrekehavoc

this week, one of BC’s best pals is hanging out with us. because their names rhyme we decided they’d go by codenames. don’t ask how we got there, but BC’s pal is now going by moose and BC is going by the moniker of squirrel. (somewhere, jay ward is laughing. i know i am.) the plan is that every morning, we do something (or nothing), then every afternoon, the girls go over to the ice skating rink for skating camp. BC’s pal is one of the nicest kids around; they have been friends since they were about five or so, and having her around is a pleasure.

yesterday, things didn’t go completely to plan, though. jools had to stay home, as i needed to take him to the pediatrician’s to get his friday TB test checked. (happily, he is TB-free.) so i had two young ladies of around nine and one little newly-minted five year old. jools only wanted to play with the girls, and the girls preferred playing without his presence. there was much whining and gnashing of teeth. i took them to one of our great sprinkler parks, hoping that there would be something for everyone. and there was, for a time, until jools was too chilly and moose needed a knee repair after getting a bit of a scrape.

re-enter the whining. i don’t think i have ever seen jools so whiny. it was frustrating. hours and hours of never-ending whining. they took my scooter! they won’t let me in BC’s room! they don’t want me around! as the youngest child in my family, i knew all-too-well the joys of this scenario, as i experienced in many times over. i talked to him about it, too. but as he was over-the-top in his mood, i was beginning to wonder whether he was actually not well.

we dropped the girls off at camp. i encountered an obnoxious parking deck checkout woman who looked at her nails while my free 15 minutes in the parking deck turned into 16 minutes and a $1 fee. we hit the doctor’s office — no TB, remember? and then, we went for a swim, just mr. whiny-pants and me. and d’ya know something? the dude was happy. he was swimming to me, diving after his spiderman dive stick, and playing with his little girlfriend, jo-jo. in fact, when he gave his dive stick to jo-jo to borrow and some young cad of about their age came by and took it from her, you had to see mr. man inflate himself and yank it back. i thought they were going to come to blows, so i ambled over, only to watch jools get out of the pool and put the dive stick back into my beach bag. he then returned and just continued to swim with jo, who was not bothered by the loss of the stick (and who then got whacked in the head by a volleyball gone wrong. poor kid.)

all in all, a most pleasant afternoon.

we picked up the girls. moose is a more skilled skater than is squirrel, and apparently, the powers that be at the rink noticed this and wanted to place her in a different camp. no, moose told them, my father signed me up for this camp and this is where i want to be. what a loyal, sweet girl! i dropped off moose, and the fighting continued.

ah, sibling rivalry. is there no one it can’t unhinge?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fxfDRYGtjw&hl=en

guilty pleasure monday: to sir with love (lulu)

Posted on June 23, 2008 by wrekehavoc

as the school year closes (at least around here — most of the rest of the nation has been out of school probably for six months by this point, but not OUR schools, which stay open practically until the next millenium), i am inspired to revisit an old chestnut from the teacher-who-tames-the-unruly-and-impossible-class genre. it’s another one of my 4:30 movie favorites, to sir with love, starring brilliant actor sidney poitier and a host of other mostly-english actors you’ve probably never heard of.

in typical hollywood fashion, the movie completely bowdlerizes the novel, down to the fact that when the girls burn something in poitier’s classroom, no one ever tells what’s causing that smell. (it’s a sanitary napkin. used. yech.) not to mention the fact that london’s east end in the mid-1960s was a very rough place, thanks to kray-zee guys like these. (i, of course, follow the east end of london closely, the current bowdlerized version anyhow, via eastenders. so i should know. of course.)

but i rabbit on digress. and this is about guilty pleasure songs, not films. apparently, the american idol folks had lulu on in the not-too-distant past, reviving this old chestnut. i’m sorry i missed it but am glad i can still see it, for while i avoid AI like the plague, i do like seeing old singers trotting out their hits. and it is a lovely song, much better than the crap lulu ended up singing for eurovision a few years after.

too bad for her, though: she can no longer feel parts of her lovely face. no more botox for you, lulu!

so is there a point to all of this? let’s see:

1) the east end of london is not a groovy disneyland;

2) you ought not set fire to your kotex under any circumstances;

3) love your teachers and sing to them often;

and

4) botox — or buttocks, as BC mistakenly calls it — is probably not a good option.

pictures of you

Posted on June 19, 2008 by wrekehavoc

props to onthecurb for stealing this groovy idea. and i’m stealing her verbage, in case kids want to try this at home:

The concept:

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s Flickr Toys: mosaic maker.

The Questions:

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food? right now?
3. What high school did you attend?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One Word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name.

1. Sheryl Crow -Vancouver, 2. Peanut Butter Cup Heart, 3. Toms River High School North Marching Mariners, 4. eccentric beauty, 5. you really don’t have a blog?, 6. Fishin’ Remuz, 7. Arched people, 8. Spicy Mini Chocolate Lava Cakes, 9. We are fuckin Rock Stars, 10. wildwood crest – windblown, 11. colorful world12. Not available13. Not available14. Not available15. Not available16. Not available

wise up

Posted on June 17, 2008 by wrekehavoc

i’ve been on a cleaning and purging kick lately. i am of the opinion that the things which have been collecting around my house are weighing me down, both from a neatness perspective as well as a psychological perspective. which is why i thought this was a bit interesting.

every now and again, i have chosen to write about something which got my proverbial goat. it’s probably why i blog. i write for release, for therapy, and cos it’s so gosh-darn fun. so it was fascinating to me what i found when i cleared out my old franklin tool from the organizational cult of all cults planner. i’ll just type it verbatim. i would point out that this was written while i was a new mother of an eight month old who was struggling to balance work and home, with no one to help me except for BS.

7/29/99

Today, S [my then boss] and I met for lunch to discuss my future. She is retiring on Nov 30 and wanted to know my plans because she wanted to know whether I wanted to be recommended for her job or whether i wanted to do something else. I told her I would be pleased to manage the XXX group, that I thought very highly of my XXX colleagues, and that such a position would be instructive to me — that I would bring plenty to the position, having managed people before, but that I would learn much, too. But I also told her that I enjoyed strategic work and liked figuring out process.

She said I didn’t seem so enthusiastic about managing the team and that she really needed to lobby if I really wanted the job because someone is concerned that I leave at 4:30 each day. I told her that whenever I am needed to stay later, I have made arrangements (such as when I was covering SP2 for her a few weeks ago and had to stay late to deal with a problem it had.) And I come in earlier, which is better for my customers [who were in Europe and Asia.] She said I should come back to her on Monday and let her know what I think.

eventually, i was lateralled into another position. someone i had trained got the position. the same person who was promoted over me while i was on maternity leave because i looked so tired when i brought the baby in to visit that they didn’t think i was really coming back to work after maternity leave. i especially appreciated it when S, my direct supervisor, tried to sugarcoat the whole thing. yep. made it all better. not.

for nearly 10 years, i have been trying to clean and purge the anger i have felt about being penalized at work because i was a new mother, penalized by a company which, incidentally, won a best company to work for by working mother magazine. (what a laugh.) i did my job — and i did it well, if i may say so — and yet i was scolded for not keeping the same hours as my boss’s boss. nevermind that i was available to my customers who were in different time zones. nevermind the conference calls i had to take some evenings, while my colicky baby fussed.

i had to suck it up. for financial reasons, i had to suck it up. plain and simple. i had to feel tremendous shame and anger at being passed over — twice — because basically i was a mother. no one else in my group was a parent at that point. (i still remember when some of the women freaked out because i had to pump in the ladies room. it’s not like i could do it in my cubicle.) and every day, i had to come in with a smile, a smile which hid some incredibly venomous feelings, feelings i had to swallow in order to continue doing what i was paid to do.

i sucked it up until march 2000 when i was free at last. ironically, i was called back to the same company to work again, only to eventually leave because a new supervisor had a serious issue with my prenegotiated schedule. you know, the ironclad one i ensured i had before ever starting work there again — the one that gave me my tuesdays with my girl? it never impacted my work. and yet the new supervisor — childless, btw — could not deal with the situation. instead of talking to me about it, she yelled at my direct supervisor. for hours. fortunately, i was in a position this time to leave at will. which i did.

i am so lucky to say that i have had some amazing bosses in my life. i still communicate with several of them; i count them among my friends. and yet here i am, remembering an experience which really and truly soured me. i often wonder how many women end up in this situation?

i need to wise up and purge it. it’s done.

but sometimes, that’s easier said than done.

radioactive

Posted on June 13, 2008 by wrekehavoc

heh.

as foreshadowed last week, yesterday, i had a stress test with pictures. this means in normal human parlance that i had some radioactive dye injected into my arm so that they could see how well my heart functions as i walk faster and faster uphill. not really too hard until you realize that all i was allowed to eat all day was toast and a little juice before 5 am. and the three-hour test started at noon.

but i passed. i believe the doctor’s words were: you have a good heart. he literally went into no details, such as my recovery time after hitting 90 percent of my heart rate. nada. i still don’t even know what was seen on my echocardiogram i had the day before. (because of insurance vagaries, i had to schedule the tests on different days.)

i still have chest pain which radiates down my left arm. i guess since i am not dead it is probably something else, like a nerve. but the nifty thing i have now is a letter. a letter which will help me enter federal buildings, airports, and anywhere else with a detector. see, for the next three weeks: i’m radioactive. i can set off all sorts of things.

i always thought i was a little radioactive, considering i grew up a little ways from a nuclear power plant. but now, i have a letter to prove it.

whee! better living through science!

i wonder if i glow in the dark?

home

Posted on June 11, 2008 by wrekehavoc

BS sent me this article from the Inky regarding perhaps the most pressing issue of our times: where does north jersey end, and where does south jersey begin? and, more importantly, is there a culture to central jersey? a research-minded person has just completed a documentary on this very topic, and i, for one, hope it makes its way to the DC metro area, where there are boatloads of NJ refugees transplants.

now, most of you folks who have either never been to the garden state or whose experience of my beloved home state consists of a ride on the turnpike (helpful hint: hold your nose as you pass through elizabeth) probably have no earthly idea that we new jerseyans think we have different culchahs. we do, though to be fair, a lot of our customs depend on our proximity to either new york or philadelphia.

for me, for half my life, this was home. and in the old days, it was simple to me: you were either in the 201 area code, or you were in the 609 area code. growing up in toms river, i lived literally on the border of 609 and 201, though i was proud to be in 201 merely because i was sick of the yeehaws in south jersey who perpetually wanted to secede. (we were willing to let them, believe me.) i always figured monmouth and ocean counties were sort of a mix of north and south, as we always had an influx of people from both philly and new york. to me, monmouth and ocean were and ARE central jersey, and everything north of monmouth is north jersey; and everything west of both is south.

now, of course, there are 50,000 area codes covering the state, so my definition pretty much goes kerflooey. that, combined with the fact that monmouth and ocean seem to be completely infiltrated by new yorkers looking for better home prices (well, they were better until the influx) leads me to wonder whether my two home counties are still central anymore. i mean, route 9 — you know, bruce’s fabled highway, which passes both by my old house as well as by BS’s hometown in scenic freehold boro — is a nightmare now, with traffic that rivals long island. i’ve been gone for nearly 20 years, and the place is completely different.

but i still return. my family is still there. i can’t get decent pizza outside of the new york metro area. i can’t really experience the sleazy joy of the boardwalk anywhere else quite the way it is there, the rancid odor of the sausages and zeppoles, the taffy which can cost you $1000 in dental work if you’re not careful. the salty smell of the shore, the green of the pine barrens, the swirl of hungry seagulls swooping and diving inland before a storm, the delicious, secret thrill of hanging out amongst people who probably live a lot more dangerously than you do.

i just can’t really feel that anywhere outside of my old stompin’ grounds. i guess i don’t really care whether it’s north, south or central jersey, in the end. it’s just an overpopulated, underappreciated place.

but one thing’s still for sure: people in new jersey never, ever, call it joisey.

twisting by the pool

Posted on June 8, 2008 by wrekehavoc

we belong to our community pool. it’s hard to believe, in fact, how much it costs to be a member of said pool, and yet, we do it. there are not many options where we live; we can’t actually put one into our backyard (besides the overwhelming expense, our back yard is a bit of a luge run), and it’s close to the house. yes, we are lemmings.

anyway, in years past, we have not known anyone at our pool, save for another family from our synagogue. i have actually tried making friends, but apparently, there is a huge sign on my forehead that says: avoid! avoid! she has a strange sense of humor, and her hair is bad! but this year, as BC goes to school with a lot of the kids from our neighborhood, i figure we will meet plenty of the people who swim.

today, we went to the pool. luckily, our new neighbors were there. wow. who knew that the pool experience is so much more fun when people actually talk to you! BC played with our neighbor’s two kids, while jools hung mostly with BS and i. and lo, and behold: the dude, whose feet touch the 3 foot bottom on tiptoe, actually hit some milestones, all in one day.

swim without waterwings: check.

swim with head underwater from mom to dad: check.

jump in pool and recover himself enough to swim to appointed adult: check.

so very proud i am. truly.

it would have been a completely perfect day had the boys BC knew from school not come around and started calling jools stupid! these are third grade boys going off on a five year old. i wasn’t there — BS witnessed it. and while BC was outraged for her brother (yes, the same brother she thinks has psychological problems and, in her professional opinion, needs speech therapy), BS told her to ignore the boys. why should she care what they think?

clearly, i need to let BS know that this is not the way bombastic me would have handled this. see, i take no prisoners and wear my mom badge proudly. and i have no problem with taking a boy by the hand and marching him to his mother, asking her whether she approves of her son taking on another child nearly 5 years younger than him, unprovoked, and calling him denegrating names.

and you wonder why other people avoid me at the pool.

piece o' my heart

Posted on June 5, 2008 by wrekehavoc

welcome to crazy-busy central, where, at the rate we’re all going, someone’s going to shoot out an eye. jools is graduating from preschool next week; BC is hugging trees at school (as uncle larry put it, though they’re actually simply identifying them. but you know uncle larry, AKA the man who is to the right of attila the hun, will never shy away from an opportunity to put a political slant on a situation, joker that he always is…); and i’ve had a date this morning with a cardiologist.

see, i just don’t have enough specialists in my life at the moment, so i thought i’d go for the gold. i’ve been having pains in my heart and weakness that radiates down my left arm and into the left side of my neck and head. i feel like a crazy person, but BS strongly suggested that i’m not and that i need to take care of myself (as did my parents), so i broke down and ended up at a cardiologist, someone who seems quite approachable. my blood pressure is fine, and so was my EKG, but next week, i have to have a treadmill stress test and an echocardiogram. i figured next week would be good in case they need a vein, as tomorrow is another date with my IVIG!

(i wonder if keith richards experiences this many medical interventions?)

i have to laugh at the concept of a treadmill being my stress inducer. ha! i seek out the elliptical stepper to relieve my stress. here’s my idea of a real stress test:

1) up intermittently all night with one child who is barfing.

2) wake (ha! ha!) in the morning knowing that something is due. a report? paperwork? oh. now i remember. a presentation in front of bigwigs. a presentation i dutifully and diligently completed but was going to put finishing touches on last night after the kids went to bed; only, too bad for me. a kid got sick.

3) the realization that your spouse and you will now play the game whose job is more important today!? let the shouting begin!

4) “winning” that competition, off to work you go, exhausted, with other child in tow. drop other child off at school. park car; take a bus and two metros to work.

5) give important presentation, realizing that important piece you didn’t get to was actually more than just windowdressing. oops.

6) call from other child’s school. child is barfing. please come pick up child. spouse cannot pick up child, as other child is currently reenacting the magic of krakatoa in full bloom.

7) take two metros and a bus to get to car. get to school. get to child. child blows chunks on your Jones New York suit. (hold in those tears. it’s not your turn.)

8) after your dry clean only apparel is destroyed when child helpfully wipes a wet paper towel over the spew, get kid into car. do happy dance when you locate a plastic target bag in the back. place target bag in front of child.

9) get home to find that spouse, too, is kissing the porcelain god. spouse sees you, mutters something of the whereabouts of barfy child #1, then runs upstairs to the bedroom and closes door. buh-bye. won’t be seeing him again until saturday.

10) there you are: sleepy, queasy, in heels and a formerly good suit, with two kids looking up at you for help. it’s 3:00 p.m. go.

now you can attach electrodes to me and see how well my heart fares. not that this has ever happened to me… well, not necessarily in this order. i suspect there are other, better scenarios out there. i can even recall the night when i had a child and a husband barfing and a child not breathing. i held a bucket under one and a nebulizer on the other. oh, if only i had the wherewithall to take pictures of this joyful wee-hours-of-the-morning family experience. but in the end, i had to leave the barfers to themselves and drive the non-breather to the hospital at 4 a.m. — behind a weaving, probably drunk driver. really. good. times.

in short: i don’t need no stinkin’ treadmill.

(doctors? you can thank me later for this test design.)