It's There. It's Nice. Don't Use It.

                 One day, about thirty years ago, curiosity got the better of me, and I used the heart-shaped soap in my grandmother's bathroom.  It was precisely the color of the sink, toilet, bathtub, and hamper, and coordinated beautifully with the floor and wall tiles (Grandma had the mid-century trend of the perfectly coordinated bathroom down cold.  This thing was a work of art, and its teal sister upstairs was just as amazing.).  It even had a little brass plaque in the center engraved with the name of the scent of the soap (Coty?  Was it Coty?).  That soap smelled nice, and I told either my mother or my aunt about it.  She was scandalized, and pivoted our conversation so that Grandma wouldn't find out.  "That soap is for looking, not for using."

                This is still a decorating skill I have not mastered.  How do you select soap that you want people to not touch?  Is there a store I just haven't been into yet?  Is this something you receive as a trophy when you master placing a lit candle in your bathroom that will be discreet, but also not light anyone's hair on fire?  Did this just pass me by, due to my dislike of strongly scented candles, room fresheners, and other corporate attempts to make my bathroom smell like plastic roses?

                Also, in a small bathroom, where does one put the guest towel that no one is allowed to use?  How do you communicate that?  Does everyone else just know, or do you stitch on some deeply uncomfortable tassel fringe that looks dry clean only?

                At this point, I just kind of warn people that I'm lacking in social niceties, but that there will be good cheese.  I have aspirations, though, which is why I spent a good amount of time today looking for a soap version of the Maltese Falcon on Etsy.  There aren't any (yet).  I really hope that when I do find it, it's scented with Drakkar Noir, so I can tell who ignored the engraved plate that I plan to install on it.  All who smell like a would-be cool kid at a middle school dance did not heed the little plate that reads "For looking, not for using." 

                It will be located next to the guest towel, which will be encrusted with enough rhinestones to render it unusable as a towel, but absolutely stunning when the lights (all of the bulbs will be functional at the same time, dammit) hit it.  My guest towel will be so glittery that my sister will try to open a roller disco in my bathroom. 

                My hostessing prowess will reach new heights.  Only then will I feel brave enough to light a candle in my bathroom without any warning signs on the door.  The candle will come from one of those places at the mall that's full of stuff that looks like it came from Pier One about five years ago, but the clerks are super offended if you point that out.  It will have a scent name like "Crisp Paper," but it will smell nothing like old books, which will be how it landed on bathroom duty in the first place.

                And the cheese will still be good.

                For serious, if anyone finds a Maltese Falcon-shaped soap, let me know.  My internet searching prowess is failing me.

                Also, I'm going to need to borrow someone's BeDazzler, because heat-set rhinestones are totally not going to stay on terry cloth.  Should I make the rhinestone design be a Maltese Falcon, so the theme is continued?  Does this mean I finally have to get rid of the painting reproduction I got on clearance at Target when I was supposed to be only buying socks that I use to justify having blue towels in a pink bathroom?

                I should probably stick to the warning instead.  I'm already calling most of these people to give them notice about the fact our living room is covered in Lego sets.  Most people's expectations of us plummet as soon as they hear about that bit, anyway.

                Does anyone offer a seminar in Remedial Classiness?

That Harvest Gold Glow...of Frozen Fruit

                 I belong to a group on Facebook that celebrates the wacky things that can be found at thrift stores and garage sales.  There are some truly bizarre things to be found on the secondhand market.  They're not all necessarily necessary, or tasteful, or a good idea in any way, but it's fun to see what other people find.

                Lately, there's been a trend of people showing off their collections of mid-century Pyrex, or their restored-to-the-1970s kitchens.  My sister and I were discussing this trend the other day, and how it sometimes confuses us.  I missed the post where someone was bragging about locating a harvest gold refrigerator, but my sister was floored.  Who on Earth would want that?

                I pointed out that the more average person last saw a harvest gold refrigerator in the mid-1980s, before it got replaced with something newer.  The people who were so excited to find this fridge never knew the game of carefully placing produce to prevent freezing, or the dubious thrill of discovering the soda that had found its way to the back and was now the only kind of slushie you were going to score any time soon (We have soda and a freezer, reasons your mother.  There is no reason to spend two dollars at the gas station.).  These sentimental folks only dealt with the fridge in perfect working order, rather than something that was "still perfectly good, just with a couple little quirks."

                "It has a few quirks" is my family's code for broken, but not broken enough to be replaced, per se.  When I was a kid, we didn't have harvest gold appliances.  My grandparents did, though.  They had the full kit--washer, dryer, fridge, and stove.  Don't get me wrong--we had slightly more modern white appliances, but we still had the area in the back of the fridge that froze produce, and one of the burners on the stove had decided to pursue a new career.  Most of the families I knew had similar situations with their appliances, but where I come from, you don't throw out appliances willy-nilly.  You basically used them until you had no choice but to replace them.  If you replaced them earlier than that (you spendthrift you), you installed the old appliances out at deer camp or passed them on to someone who needed them and didn't care much about looks.

                I'm at least fifty percent sure that the harvest gold appliances were a splurge around the time that my parents and my aunt got married, in the late '60s-early '70s period.  The appliances were still in regular use in the mid-'90s, when I would spend a week or so at their house every summer, so I reckon that they lasted longer than most marriages.  It was a good run.  I think my grandmother was sorry to see them go, because they were total troopers.

                I guess what I'm trying to say is that we don't have nostalgic feelings about these things because they were still in use a lot later in our part of the world.  My mother still has the teacups from her Pyrex dishware, because those things were amazing for dyeing Easter eggs.  It was startling to see Emma Stone served tea in the same design in The Help, because they were still in my mother's cupboard and therefore, not that old.  Totally that old.  Also, the gold all falls off if you put them in the dishwasher, which is good if you want to use them in the microwave, and according to some websites, they contain a concerning amount of lead (feel free to draw what conclusions you will--we know we're odd). 

                We also had a lot of the big serving bowls that people collect as kitsch growing up, and they're still there.  They still work, so they are still earning their rent in the kitchen.  We have joked for years that the average antique dealer would faint dead away to discover how many vintage treasures are still in regular use in the family kitchen, since no one woke up one morning and said, "Well, the casserole dish is fifty years old now, so we have to retire it and shop for something new."  As I type this, I realize that the plate off of which Fuzzy just ate his dinner was purchased in the mid-'90s on clearance at K-Mart.  Still works.  I don't see a reason to replace it.

                I wonder if stainless steel is going to be the harvest gold of our generation.  Will our kids have quiet conversations with us about perhaps considering updating things a little, perhaps with a nice harvest gold appliance suite?  The mind reels.

Financially Stupid, but Emotionally Right

                 A long time ago, I was working in a pretty toxic environment.  As the person with the lowest seniority, I could be called in to work any shift with basically no notice.  The manager had clearly watched The Devil Wears Prada while taking notes rapturously.  I was sticking it out because my family needed insurance, and I was under the impression that I was the reason I just couldn't hack it.  It was an intensely low time in my life, but it gave me an extraordinary gift.

                As I created work to look constantly busy in front of the camera on an overnight shift (management would watch the tape first thing in the morning, as she was looking for problems), I wondered what had gotten me to this point.  I would hem sheets in Hell to keep my family afloat, but this surely couldn't be the only job I could do.  What had made me so desperate that I took this job? 

                I had told myself that the job's eight-hour shifts would allow me to develop my own business, but things had not worked out that way, between the stress and the exhaustion of shifts at different times of the day.  At a break, I made my first freedom chart.  I listed out every single necessary expense for each month--mortgage, childcare, gas and car upkeep, utilities, groceries, debt repayment, etc.  I then listed out what the expenses could be if I backed out of this job--less gas, less childcare, slightly more utilities, etc.  I could see that I couldn't back out and not do any work at all, but that, with careful planning, we could squeak through.  It especially helped that the Affordable Care Act was making it more plausible for us to have insurance without a job that offered it--this might be possible.

                I then allowed myself to dream big, and made a column of what the expenses would be if we didn't owe any credit card or student loan debt.  At that point, I saw, we had a chance to have flexibility and even a future retirement.  It's not like I saw a way out of it, but it was nice to see the numbers for the other side.

                When I started coming home still crying after the hour-long commute, Fuzzy declared that it was time to let the job go.  We would beg our parents for help if necessary, but this was over.  The management responded to my letter of resignation, in which I extended my notice period to protect my coworkers' vacations, by pointing out that they could still fire me at any time.  I refrained from responding, "Would that mean I would get unemployment?"  They immediately switched me to all night shifts, due to a whole variety of circumstances.  It conveniently meant that I could never go to Human Resources with parting observations.

                My mother has always said that people get what they deserve without any help from us, and in this case, it was true.  Within the next year, the difficult manager would be fired for her treatment of employees, and her name appeared on a Yelp review for dressing down employees in front of guests at her next job.  I just wish I could have been in the room to see her lose her power.  They could have sold tickets.  Lots of us would have attended.

                It's been almost eight years, and we didn't always have the best luck, but my list nowadays looks a lot closer to the dream column.  We have a few more expenses nowadays, but they are manageable from month to month.  I actually have a retirement account with a chart that indicates I'm on a good path to retire in my mid-60s, and while the pandemic has been stressful, no one has told me that I am no longer allowed to speak unless completely necessary or that having lit cigarette ashes land on the sleeves of uniforms is always the employee's fault (smoking was allowed on the floor).

                I am so lucky for the life I have lived since walking away from that job.  I have reconnected with my chosen career path, found dozens of wonderful people, and have had the opportunity to truly explore what I honestly want from my life.  To those who are in a mental position like mine back then, I say this:  There are other jobs out there.  They want you to believe that you are not worthy of any of those jobs, but you are.  Keep applying.  Keep making connections.  Get out of Dodge, and leave the smock as you go.

I Need Margo Channing to Sign My Permission Slip

                 Fuzzy has been watching The Movies, the multipart documentary about Hollywood from the beginning of the talkies.  Our "I need to watch that again!" list is suddenly gigantic.  I was sitting in on it for a while last night when they talked about All About Eve and Sunset Boulevard.  Is anyone else a bit shaken to remember that Margo Channing was 40 and Norma Desmond was in her fifties?  Do I only have ten years left before I need to retire to a darkened mansion with a former director as my butler? 

                This meshes with my discovery a few months ago that the Golden Girls were in their fifties.  I think I might be getting old, because that no longer seems as ancient as it did when I was twelve.  I thought they were at least sixty, if not seventy.  It really threw me for a loop that these ladies were not that old.  The entertainment industry really does throw women away early.

                It turns out, then, that I'm the same age as Margo Channing.  Margo Channing is definitely an adult.  I don't think I'm that much of an adult.  I feel like I would probably ask Margo Channing to sign my permission slip for a field trip.  I feel like I would not see Margo Channing as a fellow member of my generation, because she is definitely a grown-up,

                I have owned two different homes with mortgages I qualified for.  I have two children who haven't been taken away by the state (yet).  I have a retirement account, and I can comfortably discuss the merits of different school districts.  My socks always match each other, and I make grocery lists.  I buy stuff other than candy at Costco, and I know my social security number by heart.  I refill my gas tank long before my car stalls, and I have the good toothpaste that rebuilds my enamel--I bought it in a multipack from the Costco, when I was buying stuff other than candy.

                And yet--I don't feel like a grown-up.  I know I don't look like a grown-up.  I wear make-up only when I have to, because I work with clothing and fabric all day, and I don't want to have to remove face prints from them.  I wear my hair simply, because it's not like my hair does much anyhow, and it needs to be out of my face to do what I do.  I don't feel comfortable sounding outraged about the quality of school lunches--they're doing the best they can, after all. 

                I guess the big thing is that I don't see Fuzzy and I doing the "grown-up" things we saw previous generations doing, like bridge games and cocktail parties.  I can't think of a single cocktail I could make without consulting a book, other than a really basic Shirley Temple, as that is what I actually drink.  We don't run organizations, aren't hailed as pillars of the community, and don't have high-powered careers.  We live a simple life filled with the people and events we enjoy.

                Perhaps that's an okay kind of adult to be.

Carrying the Big Book Purse to the Park

                 Kiddo is officially in school, and Tiny and I have been spending the last few mornings in the park next door.  Tiny is getting more and more skilled at climbing stairs and going down slides, and she has even met up with some kids her size.  Life is extremely exciting for her right now.

                I'm so proud of how Kiddo is doing in school this week.  It sounds like she's really focused and working hard.  It helps that she has to do it all in less than three hours plus homework.  There's no time to get bored or lose focus.  I'm interested to see what will happen next year, when she might be in a typical middle school, with class changes and multiple teachers.

                I might not be acting like the best mother right now, though, because I have two new books that I want to read instead of scampering up into the play structure, praying that it will hold my weight (although the little cry of "Come on, Mommy!" is deeply appealing). 

                Bunmi Laditan's Dear God came out about a month ago, but the library only handed it over to me in the last week or so.  I have been following Bunmi's work since The Honest Toddler, which got me through Kiddo's toddler years.  Her view of the world has helped me so much over the last decade, making me feel less alone as a mother who regularly fails at Pinterest and "quality" mothering.  Her exploration of her relationship with religion and the almighty in a series of letters and poems is touching and compulsively readable.  I was about two pages in when I decided I needed to send a copy to my sister, a chaplain in a recovery center.  I think she might appreciate it.

                The other book showed up in the past few days and has been making me laugh inappropriately since--Broken (in the best possible way) by Jenny Lawson.  Jenny Lawson was the first blogger I ever read who was honest about her mental health struggles.  As all the other Mom-bloggers shared lasagna recipes and tittered about potty training crises, Jenny was sharing the pitfalls of living with a brain that sometimes wants to kill you.  In between, she shared the joy of living a quirky, creative life with a patient, loving family who embraces her oddities, as long as they don't show up in the background of conference calls.  I may have let Tiny discover just how good she is at kicking wood chips while I snorted and giggled my way through a conversation between Jenny and her sister on the merits of adopting a bearcat as a pet and the possibilities of her husband being a bearcat in disguise.  Children need to see that their parents appreciate books.

                Am I alone in wishing I could post signs on my toddler?  I feel like that might make me feel better suited when interacting with the other parents.  She needs one that says, "My older sibling picked out my clothes," another that reads, "I almost went to sleep later than my parents last night," one more that says, "I was bundled into a jacket before Mom saw what shirt I was wearing," and finally, "I was offered a balanced breakfast, but I didn't eat any of it.  I now regret this choice."  It's possible that adults need some of these signs, too.  If only we could know what another person's day looked like before they came to us, we all might treat each other better.

                For now, I will be the mother perched on the retaining wall, giggling at the yellow hardcover.  There's a good chance I ate the leftovers of a balanced breakfast for breakfast, and I'm not sure what shirt I'm wearing either.  I guess I should have looked at it before putting on this jacket.

My Garage is Not Full of Toilet Paper

                 This week, we had to do groceries from Target, as our usual store has a minimum for curbside pickup, and there was no way we would be able to come up with that much stuff.  It's a week to work down the backlog of food in the fridge and cupboards and especially the freezer. 

                Back during the early days of the shutdown, we would bypass the minimum by ordering something that would bring the total to the store's requirement, but would be unlikely to be in stock.  It's always a gamble to do that, so we always selected something we would use eventually, like toilet paper, puzzles, or paper towels.  Almost always, those items would be marked as out of stock, and we would get the rest of the order at the curb.  I can't decide if this was dishonest or brilliant.

                I am working on using up our supplies, and I'm very grateful that my anxiety didn't manifest in hoarding.  Every time I get tempted to pile up things like paper goods, I remind myself of a system that has served us well for the last few years:  we buy the next one when we open the last one.  I start scanning the sales flyers for the next pack of diapers when I open the previous box.  It means I only have one backlog box, but I also have a couple weeks to locate my next box.  Same with all the other paper goods--if I still have one on the shelf, I will only consider buying another if the sale is an amazing deal.

                This totally works if I don't forget what I already have at home and if I don't get ensnared by the "spend $50, get a $5 gift card!" specials.  Suffice it to say that we will run out of baby wipes around Tiny's fifth birthday, and my husband gave me a long look as he loaded them all into a dresser drawer.  Awkward.

                Yesterday, I went into San Francisco for the first time in over a year.  We went out to lunch with Fuzzy's brother, then went to see the Frida Kahlo exhibit at the DeYoung.  It felt good to fulfill our promise to Kiddo from last year to go see it.  The museum did a wonderful job of keeping the crowds small, and the patrons were by and large respectful of the regulations.  I was surprised by how few kids were around, considering it was spring break for many local schools this week, but Kiddo and Tiny were decently behaved, though Tiny was wiggly about wearing her mask.  I'll keep experimenting with styles to stay on her face.  Her ears are so little, her hair is so slippery, and her nose is so tiny, though.  It may turn out easier to just put her in some kind of face-covering hat with eye slits until herd immunity is achieved.  She will be the cutest bank robber in the land.

                In-person school starts Monday.  I am reminding myself that Kiddo's teacher is very respectful of the precautions and that her school is likely to be one of the best-prepared in the district.  Kiddo has been reminded that the time in school is limited, so focus is tantamount.  Something tells me that the kids will be so busy looking at each other that not much will get done.  We'll see.