Dolla Dolla Make You Holla

I’ve got The Crabbies. Not to be confused with The Crabs. Yuck. So Sixties! I’m talking about The Crabbies, The Grumpies, feeling Torqued, GETTING’ AGGRO, BRUH.

It’s pretty hard to get me down or rile me up, so I know this is serious, friends! People are growing weary and there seems to be this heavy blanket of negativity around the resurgence of COVID as well as this broader awareness of racism. I avoid the news and try to inject doses of joy wherever I go, but it’s been draining.

The angst usually crests around 5pm. Cooking has never been much fun for me. I’ve made peace with this chore, even though I have to talk myself into it almost every time.

Me: Come on. It’s time to get dinner started.

Also Me:

It’s a thankless job that I would mostly avoid if I had my druthers. Food is simple when I’m on my own: oatmeal, smoothie, occasional apple with peanut butter, repeat. Other Fus are more complicated, but I feel proud that I’ve gotten pretty adept at serving my family nutritious meals over the years. I’ve come a long way from the inedible combinations that Albert was subjected to when we were first married.

These days there is a 95% chance that the food will be delicious, AND ALSO a 90% chance that at least one Fu will not be happy with the fare, which makes the task thankless and stressful. It’s often helpful to bribe myself with a glass of wine.

The kids used to reliably clean up after dinner, but something happened around age 17 when they just lost their flippin’ minds. It eventually became easier for Albert and me to clean up the kitchen ourselves than to face daily angry outbursts or lengthy bouts of whining and snuffing at the end of each evening. Lazy parenting, I recognize this. I respect your decisions; you respect mine. We all gotta do what we gotta do.

All I’m saying is that, if I found that the dishwasher got emptied, my first thought would be that a robber probably broke into our house and stole all our clean dishes. Not that another family member had been kind enough to put clean dishes away. That would be preposterous.

It is comforting that I know FOR SURE that they know HOW to clean up after themselves. Rumor is that they do this in other people’s homes. They are doing a great job of Soiling the Nest so my heart won’t break into a million pieces when they don’t live in my house any more. Thanks, guys.

This boring dinner chore eased up quite a lot after our nest began to empty. By the time just Audrey was at home, dinners got pretty simple. Then when our nest cleared out in 2018, cooking became much less of a burden. Cooking for two is way less complicated than cooking for five, plus Albert and I could go out to eat one or two times a week without spending a hundred bucks a night.

That ease lasted for about a year. I’m back to cooking for four every night. Thanks, COVID. Little did I know that my last meal out on March 12, 2020 would be a six-dollar tofu banh mi (with extra cilantro--it's practically a side salad!) at Pho Lavang. It ripped up the roof of my mouth and dripped garlicky sauce from my fingertips to my elbows. Delicious! But I would definitely have indulged in a Thai iced tea if I had known it would be my last meal out for the year!!

Restaurants are beginning to open back up in Oregon, but I’m holding off for a while. Eating out is generally a treat for our family. Of course, there were occasional dinner emergencies, but we don’t go out to eat JUST because we don’t feel like cooking at home. When we invest energy and expense to eat out, it is for enjoyment, and I just don’t feel like I could really relax and delight in a meal WHILE ALSO WORRYING about getting sick….and/or getting other people sick…at the same time.

I did venture out with a friend this week for coffee. The sun FINALLY came out for a couple of days, and we sat outside with our icy refreshments. We were approached by a young man about 10 years old. He rode up on his bike and confidently asked whether we would give him a dollar if he showed us a magic trick.

I was disappointed, because I had ZERO cash on me! Fortunately, my friend is much more prepared and organized, because we were treated to this adorableness for just a small fee.

What was so delightful about this experience? The sunshine? The friendship? The coffee? The surprise? The enterprise of this charming little man? Maybe it reminded me of a time when my kids still wanted to share things with me and when I had still had something to offer them that they found to be valuable. I think that age between about 8 and 10 years old is my favorite so far. Sweet and uncomplicated.

Turns out my friend DIDN’T have a dollar in her purse. She only had a five. When she offered it to the young man, he immediately balked but ended up accepting it graciously with a big, cheeky grin. This little encounter has been making me smile all week.

I’m working really hard this week on a cure for The Crabbies. Paying attention to positive experiences like coffee and a magic show with a dear friend is a biggie. Passing up on negativity has helped a lot as well. I have been thinking about this TED Talk by one of my favorite comedians, Michael Junior. The whole 20-minute talk is super enjoyable, but he starts talking about a shift in mindset around 14:00 from “getting a laugh” to “giving a laugh,” which shifts his task from “working” to “generous giving.” Nothing really changes except the attitude.

This is the job I’ve given myself this week. Oh, wait. Let me rephrase that! This is WHAT I WANT TO DO this week. I want to consider dinner as less of a chore and more of an offering of nourishment and gratification to my family. While appreciation would be a nice bonus, I offer this gift with no strings attached.

Good grief. I’m kind of exhausted just considering this. It’s going to require some effort. And maybe some magic. And maybe also a glass of wine. Wish me luck, friends!!

Do you set goals for yourself? Big ones? Small ones? How do you set yourself up for success? Send me your best tips!!

 Wishing you a successful week, friends!

Thank you for reading!

Road Trippin'

My brother in law’s name is Sherman. He’s the only Sherman I know. He’s a mysterious guy. Not much of a talker and doesn’t take too kindly to even the most friendly questioning.

He was planning on driving up from Northern California for Father’s Day now that my FIL is living up here. That’s almost 700 miles away, about a 10-and-a-half-hour drive without any stops. And he couldn’t come up for Sunday, so he was planning to arrive Friday night and leave Saturday evening. He’s a beast that way, like a long haul driver on blow. He leaves after work and arrives in the middle of the night so he doesn’t have to spring for a hotel room or a plane ticket.

Almost ten years ago, Albert and I rented an RV for a road trip to Southern California with the kids. Our first stop was a wedding in Ventura for Albert’s high school classmate. I picked up the 30-foot beast from the RV rental lot on a Friday afternoon. Albert got home from work a little early, we ate a quick dinner, and we hit the road for the 1,000-mile drive to Darren’s wedding which was taking place Saturday around noon.

The RV had a queen sized bed, a shower and toilet, a full kitchen, and comfortable seating, so there was no need to stop. Albert and I alternated napping and driving, fueled by Diet Coke and Cheez-Its for the 20-hour duration of the trip. My stomach is churning as I remember the nausea from too little sleep paired with too much caffeine. What an adventure.

Albert has a long-standing dream of selling all our belongings and travelling the country in an RV. I wasn’t that enthusiastic about this idea ten years ago, but now I am dead set against it. It is a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad idea.

Living in an RV is not much different than living in a house, except that the dwelling is much less comfortable and the boring chores are much more complicated. Cooking in an RV is like trying to prepare a meal for your family in a preschool kitchenette. Except you use regular human sized plates which you have to wash in a little dollie sized sink.

Also, we non-nomads are just not used to storing poo inside the house for days, allowing it to slosh around until we happen upon an opportunity to pump it out. So gross. So unnecessary.

And there’s no privacy. As it is, I hide in the closet of my big house to get away from the people I adore. I’m not excusing her behavior, but I feel a ton of compassion for Andrea Yates, the lady who was convicted of murdering her children in 2002. She and her FIVE CHILDREN were living in a motor home at the time. All the children were between the ages of two and eight. FIVE of them. In one motor home.

I would definitely not sign up for a marathon drive like that again, and it astounds me that Sherman does this pretty regularly, whether driving up to Portland or down to Southern California.

So Sherman was planning on a Father’s Day visit, but my FIL scolded him a little. Why drive all that way just to spend less than 24 hours? Why not come another time?

Uh….Father’s Day? It made me sad that my FIL didn’t acknowledge this even though I kind of get it from a parent’s point of view. You know how I feel about that rip-off called Mother’s Day and other “holidays” that are mandated by our bossy social structure. My FIL has been worried about COVID as well. Seniors have been hardest hit, and he worries not only for his own health but about bringing the virus into his community.

But as a daughter, I would be pretty sad if I were willing to drive 11 hours after work just to see my parents for a day….WHICH I WOULD NOT, bee-tee-dubs….and they dismissed that as a silly idea.

My freshman year in college, I lived in Berkeley, and it was my first real time away from home. I had no idea how to take care of myself, how to make decisions, how to BE. I was unmoored, anxious, and terribly homesick. It wasn’t hard for some friends to convince me that it would be a great idea to rent a car and drive down to Southern California to pay a surprise visit to our parents.

We left after class on a Friday and arrived around eleven o’clock that night. I was sooooo excited and absolutely CERTAIN that my parents would be so shocked and delighted to see me!

Shocked? Yes.

Delighted? NO.

As a parent of young adults, their reaction makes a million, zillion times more sense to me now. My kids are approximately three hundred and ninety-five percent smarter and more prepared to live than I was at that age, and I STILL find myself habitually worrying about them.

This is what Brene Brown and Oprah call Foreboding Joy. Two of my faves discuss the reason that joy is the most terrifying, difficult emotion we experience as humans. Why? Because many of us look at our kids and realize that we feel a love that we didn’t even know was possible. And a split second later, we worry, because something terrible might happen to this precious child. It’s scary to feel that joy, because it opens the door to fear that it could all be taken away.

I spent about 24 hours at home that weekend and was disappointed that my parents were only medium happy to see me. They explained to me much later that they were alarmed when I arrived. I had roused them from sleep and they immediately worried that something was very wrong.

Come here a minute. Will you hold this BIG BAG OF DUH for me?? The scariest shit goes ALWAYS down in the middle of the night. I know this now.

Even after they were assured that nothing was wrong, I was so jacked up on arrival that they admitted later that they thought I might be “on drugs.” Now, many of you know my kids. They are THE BEST. And as fleeting as the thought tends to be, I immediately suspect “drugs” when my kids are acting weird. And they act weird often. Is this a typical parent’s thought? I have no idea.

But each time they catch me off guard with some behavior, and I am able to assure myself that they are not indeed “on drugs,” I put a little more confidence in my pocket so that I panic just a little bit less the next time they do something unexpected.

Sherman didn’t end up coming this past weekend. We had a quiet day with some cocktails, a nice dinner, and a Costco apple pie for dessert. No muss. No fuss. No drugs.

Wishing you all a wonderful week, my friends! As always, thank you for reading!