I Don't Garden, Either

I don’t cook.

I used to cook. For a few years there I tried to do everything I imagined a grown-up girl’s supposed to do. I bought a house. I got married. I cooked. I even watered a goddamn plant once in a while, despite my lifelong aversion to all things horticult. But the marriage ended in divorce, the house is in foreclosure, and the plants died anyway. Good thing I never went so far as to have the goddamn babies.

Anyway, I didn’t suck at cooking, and people even thought I liked it. People gave me kitchen accoutrements for Christmas, came to my dinner parties, raved about my mustard-crusted rabbit (which I realize sounds like Urban Dictionary slang for a venereal disease, but I’m really talking about the Easter Bunny here). The best part of the process for me, though, was dancing around the kitchen with the music blaring, drinking beer. I could’ve much more happily ordered pizza, tapped a keg, and called it done.

Since I put away adultish things, I’ve quit all that. At some point in the past two years I did remember just how much I love to bake – but that’s a different thing completely, and a story for another time (everyone swears I make the best apple pie they’ve ever tasted and someday, if you’re good, I’ll tell you how). But as far as cooking real food goes, I’ve reverted to the Real Me, who thinks of it along the same lines as church: something she might watch on TV for the bizarro factor, but nothing she’d get off her ass to actually do. In both cases, these days, she’d just wind up burning the motherfucker down.

Which doesn’t mean that I don’t still have strong opinions.

Anyone who’s seen me watching football or America’s Funniest Home Videos – or church, for that matter – knows that I can get up on the couch and shout at the TV with the best of them. Quarterback sneak at the 14-yard line when you’re up by 25? WHY ARE YOU RISKING HIS KNEE AGAIN!? Handing the piñata stick to the jacked-up four-year-old? ARE YOU LOOKING TO TAKE IT IN THE NUTS!? God wants all of us to be millionaires? BUT DOESN’T THAT MEAN JESUS ISN'T GONNA LOVE US ANYMORE!?  

So it was hard for me at Dad’s last week when he was watching Bobby Flay on the Today Show. Bobby Flay, as far as I’m concerned, is another motherfucker that deserves to be burned down – but Dad’s been sick, so I was trying to keep my Strong Opinions to myself. Which was no small feat, because Strong Opinion #1 was that the segment should’ve been called Bobby Flay Queers Up Thanksgiving Dinner.

Yes, I know I’m not supposed to use that word unless it defines me. But who's to say it doesn’t? After all, I’m not married anymore; I’m a grown-up girl and I can say and do whatever I want. That word meant something else before it got co-opted by bigots, and what it meant is exactly what Bobby Flay was doing to that turkey.

No. Not that.

Now, I know there are different opinions about stuffing. They’re wrong, but I didn't open that can of worms (it’s called “stuffing” for a reason and if you want to call it “dressing” you can pour it over “salad”  – there, I'm done). I kept my mouth shut when, instead of carving it up proper, he took the breast right off the bird and cut it into steak-sized chunks. I said nothing when he put the dark meat back in the roasting pan and braised it off (because who needs to serve the whole bird to a hungry crowd at the same time anyway, right?). I even bit my tongue when he poured some watery ginger-Thai sauce over the breast chunks instead of gravy (because he is Bobby Flay, after all: if he knew how to make a proper gravy he wouldn’t be braising off the dark meat in the roasting pan). But then he started on the side dishes, and that’s when I stood up on the couch.

Fresh blackberries in your cranberry sauce? FUCK YOU!

It’s not about queering up the cranberries, motherfucker, it’s just an asshole thing to do. Hell, it’s an asshole thing to even say. Fresh blackberries are in season for a week and a half in August. Even then they cost $5 for a half a pint, and – if you buy them in the grocery store – are just a tease. Some of us grew up machete-ing our way through a half-acre of brambles that sprouted when some random bird pooped in our yard. Some of us remember emerging at the end of those August weeks all sunburnt and juice-stained, thorn-scratched and mosquito-bit, stuffed with all the berries that were so verge-of-rotten ripe they squished when you picked ‘em, and looking forward to a couple months of our mother’s jam and pie. I don’t think I’ve had blackberry pie in at least twenty-five years, but in our house it was always served with vanilla ice cream, and the rule was that when it was gone, you were allowed to pick up your dessert plates and lick them off.

You don’t come up with a rule like that by buying them in November and fucking ‘em in a pot with goddamn cranberries.

The next day, over our non-queered-up Thanksgiving dinner – at which I daintily wolfed down the (non-braised) turkey wing with my grown-up hands – I was still bitching about Bobby Flay, confident that those who also remember machete-ing the half-acre, not to mention the jam and the plate-licking, would understand how Strong my Opinions about blackberries are. I knew they’d get it when I said I don’t even buy them when they are in season. I just visit them, pat the package, and walk away. I may be nostalgic and Opinionated, but I’m not dumb enough to spend $5 a cup on some watered-down imitation of the Truth we used to get out of our backyard by the gallon, and for free.

“What you should do,” my brother said, “is spring for the five bucks, bring ‘em home, and throw ‘em in the yard.”

He was right. I mean, he’d’ve been righter if he’d said “fuck ‘em in the yard” instead of “throw ‘em,” but my brother has a three-year-old; he has Strong Opinions about things like diapers, Disney Princesses, and Fuck.

But anyway, he was right, and it got me thinking: just because they pick ‘em green and ship ‘em cold and by the time they get to you they taste like ass, that doesn’t mean they aren’t the same seeds on the inside. If I sprung for the five bucks right now – what with the unseasonably warm weather we’ve been having (in between equally unseasonable nor’easters) – I might just have my very first unfruitful, picker-laden bush-sprouts in the spring!

Of course, the point of this whole diatribe to begin with was that blackberries aren’t in season now. So they probably don’t cost five dollars anymore. Plus, I got laid off on November first and – due to a combination of my being a Good Daughter and a Little Bit Of A Flake – my unemployment still has not kicked in. I am so turn-pocket poor these days I’m considering bagging out on one of my pool teams just to save the 1/4 tank of gas it takes for the round trip from the ass-end of creation where I live to what passes for civilization in these parts. How could I justify the expense? I mean, I’ve only been living at the ass-end of creation for eighteen months: nowhere near long enough to make spending $10 on something I’m gonna fuck in the yard sound like a bargain. It’s not like I grew up here, for god’s sake.

So last night I was lamenting all of this to my Best Friend In The Whole Entire World. She lives in Connecticut these days, but it’s not like she grew up there, either: she’s poor, too (plus she still has a sense of humor, and a soul), so she understood my predicament completely.

“You could eat them first,” she said, “and spit the seeds out in the yard. That way you would at least get a treat.”

“Or I could—”

“No.” 

This girl’s been my best friend since 1990. She knew exactly what I was going to say.

“Oh come on,” I said. “I’ve been living at the ass-end of creation for eighteen months now. Don’t you think it’s about time I took a shit in the yard?”

“Go ahead if you want to,” she conceded. “I’m just saying I don’t think blackberry seeds go through a person like they do a bird. You might want to spit the seeds out first, then poop on top of them. Just remind me never to eat blackberries from your house if you do.”

I’m still mulling it over. I don’t know, though. I mean, I’d have to make the long trek to the grocery store, spend too much money on one special ingredient, do stuff to it, then wait patiently for time and temperature to turn it into something I can actually eat. And what did I tell you when I started this whole story?

I don’t cook.

The Curse

As gal’s go, I’m not what you call Regular. Never have been.

Yes, my friends, that is a metaphor. But no, I’m not talking about poop.

I didn’t even become an official Gal till I was almost 16 years old, and for five years or so after that it was hit or miss. Mostly miss, unless I planned a camping trip or something. Or made the mistake of stepping on an airplane. In which case It would hit me like a ton of bricks. Fortunately I didn’t start doing the sorts of things that make a gal keep track of calendars until I was almost 21, so at least I didn’t have to do Lunatic Math.

After that, It would hit me every couple months. Or I’d skip two, then go two in a row (which always pissed me off), then skip two more. I didn't mind it, but it was hard to plan for. And during what I like to think of as my wild-oats phase (for which read: most the ‘90s), I pretty much got in the habit of buying pregnancy tests whenever I bought condoms. Just, you know, so I could get to sleep at night while waiting for It to hit.

Then I got married.

I stopped buying condoms and got one of those plug-things in my arm. It made me fat, no fun at all, and (after a year or so) a marginally-Regular Gal at last. All of which pissed me off enough, you can imagine. But when it killed my sex drive, too, I ripped it out.

After another year or so I was back to my Irregular old tricks, but by then – well, let’s just say it was like living those first five years of officialdom over again: no pregnancy tests or Lunatic Math necessary. Just to be extra-double-sure, though, I went and got myself an IUD. Poor little device. Sat there for years like a kid wearing a catcher’s mitt in the cheap seats, hoping against hope for a chance to field a ball.

Then the seventh-inning stretch came, and I ran.

Single again (for all intents and purposes), I entered Wild Oats Phase Two and fell back into lockstep. Condoms, pregnancy test, sleep at night, etc. Because honestly, in the whole time that wee device was suited up on my behalf, it’d only had one quick cup of coffee in the majors, and I wasn’t about to let the World Series ride on its ability to play.

But Phase Two only lasted for a month. Because while I was in the throes of it, I met Some People. And before long, Some People and I weren’t Meeting any other people. We never Agreed Upon such a Momentous Thing – because that would be too much like having a Real Conversation, which Some People and I have always refused to do – but I wasn't, and he wasn't. We weren't.

So I trusted the catcher’s mitt in the cheap seats to field the flies.

By this time, of course – since about 2009 or so – I'm about as Irregular as a gal can be and still call herself a Gal. It misses more than It hits me, as a rule. And even when It does connect, It's more like a drop-bunt than a grand-slam. I chalk it up to the fact that I work out a lot. But because I do, I know my body well enough to know that the catcher’s mitt is doing its job. There came a point this summer I got so used to It missing that I sort of forgot It was even supposed to hit. Until I had a doctor’s appointment recently. And they asked me when it last had. And I did Lunatic Math… 

And figured out It hadn't hit since early May.

Well, you know, sure. I mean, yeah, big fat gulp and everything. But like I say: I’ve had this body for a while now; I really think I’d be able to tell if it started sprouting a spare. Besides, I have enough to worry about these days – the divorce and the house and my impending layoff and Dad in the hospital and writer's block and everything. So I did a quick scan of the stands, reassured myself that the catcher’s mitt hadn’t budged from its position, and chalked the whole thing up to I’m-Forty-Fucking-Two-For-God’s-Sake-And-I’ve-Avoided-Slipping-On-This-Particular-Banana-Peel-For-Twenty-Six-Years-So-It’s-Just-Not-Something-That’s-Going-To-Happen-To-Me-Now. 

It never even occurred to me to mention it to Some People.

Not then. And not over the past few weeks. Not when I spontaneously quit smoking because the idea just started to seem gross. Or when I gained a little weight (because that’s just the smoking, right?). Or when I started craving salsa suddenly, on everything (because it’s okay for a girl to eat something besides apples and chicken breasts once in a while, dammit!). Or when just smelling the salt in the salsa made my calves swell up to seven times their size (I figure that’s a normal physical reaction for a gal who hasn’t eaten processed food since April 2010). Or when the swelling made my knees ache (hey man, I walk seven miles a day when I can, and I work out a lot). Or when I managed to put away three pounds of chocolate in two hours on that Sunday afternoon (no people – let alone Some People – need to bear witness to that). Or even when I finally started going a little nuts (although, to be fair, Some People couldn’t help but notice that).

But then one night I slipped and mentioned the no-hitter. By mistake, you understand. I didn’t Mean To. I just sort of, kind of, offhandedly, in passing, did. All I said was “not since May” and changed the subject. La la la... Then two days later I told Some People to fuck off until they were ready to Talk.

Christ. That poor Kid. I swear to god. Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, this hot mess had to clomp her boots into his.

Well, to make a long story short, it seems that little mention broke the curse. First, though, I got even nutsier without ever consciously acknowledging the elephant in the cheap seats. And while I wouldn’t say Some People came around looking for crazy, they were certainly there to field it when it fell. For a week or two or whatever it was. Until, out of the blue, It finally hit me. 

Which, you know, explains the swelling and the craving and the knee-pain and the nuts. I’m just so out of practice with It, I forgot.

I.

Told.

Everyone.

I hadn’t told anyone about the not-since-May stuff, but everybody heard about October. People I work with. People I’m friends with. People I barely know. Even – and especially – Some People. I told Some People It finally hit me just as offhandedly as I'd mentioned the five-month miss. With half-assed apologies for the pop flies I lobbed in his direction, unexpressed gratitude for the expert (if awkward) fielding, and a very clearly spelled-out, keep-it-if-it-kills-me vow to bench the hot mess for a little while. 

After all, considering the wild card I've turned out to be in that particular major-league game…

It seems the only Regular thing to do.

How Many Licks?

I smoked a bunch of cigarettes, okay?

I lasted three and a half weeks. That isn’t bad. Then I took a cosmic licking and the marshmallow center of my hard candy shell came out like a pop star in Provincetown on the 4^th of July.

Like a vengeance, in other words.

And also not much of a surprise.

I don’t think I’ll get into much detail about the cosmic licking. Let’s just say that filing for divorce after a year and a half of chasing paperwork takes an anti-climactic five seconds to do, costs $120 you probably should’ve thought about ahead of time, and elicits unwelcome congratulations from everyone you tell, even when you’re only telling by way of an explanation as to why you’re not your usual eat-a-peach, the-world’s-my-oyster self.

Well, not from everyone you tell. It doesn't elicit any response at all from some people – Some People whom you decided not to tell but accidentally included anyway on the “I just finally, officially filed for divorce” text message that was supposed to only go to out-of-staters. You deserved that deafening silence, though. Because you hadn’t told Some People anything else about the divorce (or the marriage, or much of anything else about your past, for that matter) up to this point, anyway, so you can’t blame them if they don’t know what to say. Come to think of it, they probably deserve credit for at least not offering knee-jerk, cliché congratulations.

Also? Sigmund would probably say that slip was no accident, after all. But what does he know about texting, anyway? He’s been dead since, like, rotary dialing was cutting edge.

And then the bank — 

Let's see. How can I put this so you’ll understand how frustrating these past few months have been, without getting into the sordid details of how our quail-size nest-egg got all scrambled...? Aha! 

A. Bank of America is an elephant.

B. Everyone who works for them is blind.

I wanted to carry that analogy a little farther. There’s a joke in there about climbing trees and ropes and walls, I know there is. Plus something about dung beetles, I’m sure. But I promised myself I’d post this before I went to bed, and I can’t reach either of them from where I’m sitting at the moment. Not that anyone would notice if I didn’t. But still. I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. And, well, you know…

So that happened, and then what else? Oh, yeah.

By way of distraction, I went out with a couple friends that night. To the biker bar in Arundel where I work. And found out that the guy who asked me for my number last week – the guy who was supposed to at least distract me from the damn Kid for a while – is actually already dating someone else.

So I shot him, lit myself a cigarette from the smoking barrel of my gun, pushed through the double-swinging saloon doors and strode off in my cowboy boots into the night.

No, no. I'm joking, of course. I don't really wear cowboy boots, sillies. I wear Fryes.

Really, I lasted two whole more days after that. Two twitchy, weepy, five-(then-six-then-seven)-pounds-overweight days, over which I developed a nasty habit of sending increasingly-crazy-sounding text messages to Some People who still Did Not Respond until finally I cracked and called him.

Them, I mean. Some People. You know: Them.

They didn’t answer, and that’s when I cracked. Skittered downstairs for the spare pack in the freezer, grabbed the big fireplace lighter off the counter by the candles, ran out to the front step and smoked before I had a chance to change my mind.

Six cigarettes. Right in a row. Onetwothreefourfivesix just like that.

And then?

Some People called.

I don’t think I’ll get into much detail about the conversation. Except to say that it was very wet, satisfyingly productive, and it cured the crazy nasty habit for a while.

Just like the cough I had to put up with all over again for the next few days.

Sometimes They Come Back

Did you ever have one of those years where your boss goes literally psychotic and while you’re trying to get her re-medicated and hospitalized your mother dies, and in the week between that and the funeral you have all four of your wisdom teeth pulled, then when you come back to work your still-crazy boss accuses you of having her committed against her will and fires you, then your backup-boss dies, then you figure what the hell, might as well go all-in, so you leave your husband of fourteen years and move to your mother’s empty house in rural Maine, where you meet a Kid and learn to ride a motorcycle and scrape fourteen years of rust off of your pool game, then get drunk one too many times and roll your car and get arrested and lose your driver’s license for a little while, run out of money hard as soon as you get it back, miraculously land two jobs that are each an hour from your house in opposite directions, and all everybody wants to know is why haven’t you finished writing the goddamn book yet?

No? Well, jeez, what have you-all been up to since I left? And where are all your finished fucking books already?

Hey! Hi there! Did you miss me?

Well, if you did, you can thank good old Dr. One Friend for my resurrection, such as it is. (And if you didn’t, you can just about suck it as far as I’m concerned). I was at one of those aforementioned-jobs, see, and bitching to her by text message about the fact that there are no customers in a Christmas Store on a rainy Tuesday in late April, and although I have permission from This Boss to work on the goddamn book in such solipsistic situations, it is not a very Conducive Atmosphere to Getting Work Done, what with all the Elves and Blow Job Dolls* and Baby Jeses** staring at me. So—

Oh my god wait! Hang on! You know This Boss! Some of you do, anyway! Those of you who knew me a thousand years ago, back when I was still Jennifer Walters***. Remember this sad story with a happy ending? Well, that’s him! He! Whatever! This Boss lives in New Hampshire now and owns a couple of stores and I work for him in one of them in Ogunquit, Maine. Ain’t it grand how life works out sometimes?

Sigh.

Anyway, where was I? Oh. Right. So I’m bored and bitching (which I know doesn’t sound like me at all, but there you go) and Dr. One Friend (who’s doing just fine these days, thanks for asking; no arrests or spontaneous Kids or anything on her record) says to me “Start a new blog,” and in two shakes of a moose’s tail**** I’m groaning through my rusty lips and asking Dorothy to pass the oil can.

That’s an imaginary Dorothy, by the way. In this particular instance, at least, she’s just a metaphor. I felt I should point that out because it so happens there is a Real Dorothy in my current cast of characters – although Dorothy does not so-happen to be her Real Name. You’ll meet her later, when you meet the rest of my new crew. Gradually, I think, is the best way to introduce you to that buncha roustabouts. They’re a harlequin herd of horses, I tell you what, but I think you’ll like ’em fine. And if you don’t, I’ll thank you keep it to yourself. Because their collective charms have made me really, truly, genuinely Happy for the first time since I-don’t-really-want-to-think-about-it, and I’ve got a midnight knuckle sandwich here for anyone who’s got a mind to do ’em wrong.

I lost my place again. Tits. Well, at least you know it’s still the same old me behind this curtain, even if I’m on a different stage.

See what I did there? I mixed my metaphors. It was an Oz thing and I turned it into Theatah. That’s because I’m quick like that and I don’t follow Rules. The punches frickin’ fly around this place, I tell you what, but don’t you new folks fret. Stick with me and you’ll be rolling with ‘em before you know what hit you.

Okay, now.

Seriously.

Where was I?

*Technically, they’re called Byer’s Choice, but come on. It’s not like you never thought about it. Unless you never heard of them. In which case, follow that link. Then come back and say it with me: Blow. Job. Dolls. Disturbing, isn’t it? I try not to let ‘em get too close to the noses on the Galerie II dolls (but apparently you have to be a vendor to get into their website, so you'll have to just trust me on their inherent phallicity).

**New plural for Jesus. I made it up. It’s my blog, I can do what I want. Besides...

***…I’m She-Hulk now. Who’s gonna fuck with me?

****You’ll forgive the stupid Maine joke, but when I somehow took a wrong turn on my way to work this morning and had to ask this random surveyor I happened to drive by how to get to Perkin’s Cove, he actually said “You can’t get theah from heah” before shutting the phony accent off and giving me real directions. So I shot him. Which is fine. You know. This is Maine, after all. We like our guns here. And it turned out I was only about an inch and a half from where I was trying to get to, anyway. So what’s one random surveyor, more or less? It’s not like I didn’t tag him, for god’s sake.