Yes, I said “duty.” Stop laughing!

Last night, Sister #2 – Anya – had a baby girl. Today, I picked a green energy provider and sent off my request. You see the connection, ’cause you’re brainy. That’s why we love each other. Now give back my Chapstick, you scene-stealer!

The other day, I saw a thing – yeah, I see a lot of things; some of them can be seen by other primates, too – predicting that in fifty years, the Arctic ice cap might completely thaw in summers. My first thought was everybody’s first thought, “Shoot, I’ll be pushing up daisies.” Then: “Fifty + forty-two = less than Grandpa’s age! Will I be able to backstroke?”

Well, then. That adds a little urgency to the situation, doesn’t it? It’s not just my kid, grandkids, nieces and nephews living in Waterworld; it’s everybody. I might as well label myself “granny shark bait.” And you, too.

How’s that NJ Clean Energy look now, kids?

Larry snores amusingly as I write. A breeze rustles through trees overhead and across the street, over the river. My windows are all thrown open on a warm November evening. I am so happy with life! We can divide my weekend into two categories: movies and stuff!

On Friday, Lupe picked me up and we drove down to Montgomery to see Capote. I like the place in Montgomery. Parking is miserable but the theaters are very small, the films are of a higher quality than in general release, and nobody will play Spot the Plot with a laser pointer. If you could smoke and drink gin I’d be there every night. I’m sure my next two husbands are lurking on the premises.

The little theater was full. Lupe and I walked toward the front. Behind us, other moviegoers climbed over one another to get to two-togethers or even threes. In recent years, previews have often been better films than the movies they summarized so I look forward to them. My favorite preview in current rotation depicts Jake Gyllenhall and Keith Ledger as cowboys in love. Can I buy tickets to that in advance? Better yet: can the film’s stars come to my house for a private screening?

I am a fan of movies full of explosions and films suffused with human drama. Capote is based on events between November 1959 and April 1963, but you don’t have to know what they were. If you relax and go along for the ride, Capote is a monster roller coaster. If Philip Seymour Hoffman isn’t nominated for an Oscar there is no God. Lupe doesn’t remember if she read any of the books Capote mentions; I read those books and remember owning or having owned them. The set dressers made an important point about living at that time in that everyone high and low had piles, shelves and rooms full of beloved books.

Saturday night, Siobhan and I squeezed ourselves into a theater with a shoehorn to see ShopGirl. The place was packed. The average age of audience members was well into the seventies. Behind us about five feet, three old, old women talked through the movie.

Siobhan: Did they annoy you?
Tata: I assumed they turned down their hearing aids and forgot.
Siobhan: I would’ve killed them but they were already so close to death.

If you’ve seen a Steve Martin movie, you know his scripts are funny, smart and poignant. There are some minor missteps, but they hardly matter. Bring tissues. Don’t wear mascara. We left feeling elated and chattered at length about curious details.

It’s been years and years since more than one movie in theaters interested me. It is so exciting to see a bunch out at the same time. It’s like the Hollywood crap factory broke and some great ideas leaked.

*****************************************************

Putting together an apartment is work! I’ve got art on every surface. I’m an artist. People have been giving me art since I started playing with PlayDoh. Last weekend, Paulie and I brought over my bookcase. I pulled my books out of boxes and had Book Placement Joy! Joy! Still, my living room looks like a crossword puzzle and my bedroom would be fertile turf for a scavenger hunt. The kitchen has become so wonderfully mine that last week, my co-workers found cookies in the breakroom.

Laughing Boss: Why did you bake?
Tata: Because I could!
Laughing Boss: What? Did you bump your head?
Tata: I wanted a cookie! Everyone must have one!

If you think because I have a fabulous kitchen I’m taking one for the team and putting on fifteen pounds you are sorely mistaken! No, the team’s taking one for me! I baked. Dunk this, squids! Still, some things have been missing – a microwave, for instance. Over the past month, I’ve had these conversations.

Tata: Tonight, I’m going to a major retailer to buy a microwave. I saved up! I’m rrrrrrrrready!
Daria: I’ll lend you mine! We have an extra one downstairs. Sometimes we use it for popcorn.
Tata: Ah…
Daria: While you save up, you can use mine and by Christmas – maybe – you can get one.
Tata: Uh…sure…
Daria: Don’t worry! I’ll convince Tyler! Everything’ll be GREAT!
Tata: Oh. Thank you.

And:

Tata: So about the microwave…
Daria: I’m lending you mine! It’s downstairs!
Tata: How…um…thanks…

Yesterday, I got really confused and decided that around noon today I’d go to a major retailer. I never spend wads of cash on myself so I had to work my way up to the microwave by tooling around the laundry aisle and letting myself be confused. Then I took forty minutes picking make up and lurid nail polish colors. Then I walked around and around and around curtains and area rugs. I picked up a power strip in Electronics but couldn’t bring myself to spend $100 for a little TV for my bedroom. Disney’s Cinderella was on the screens. I still know all the words and sang with Gus Gus. Please resist the urge to think of me and pumpkins.

Mmm. Seedy.

Finally, I stared at my microwave oven options for more than fifteen minutes, then picked one. The box was nearly as big as me and difficult to lift. It filled my cart’s basket. After that, I had to be really, really careful what I found two-for-one and hope they were flat things I desperately needed.

So. I plugged the microwave into the power strip and polished my nails a metallic blue and applied lipstick and put away all the problem-solving items I’d stuffed into that cart somehow, then into my trunk somehow, then into my apartment somehow.

Then I scampered around my apartment singing, “Who do I want to be when I grow up? Me! Me! Me!”

This is my fifteen-month-old niece making a break for it! She is clever! She is wily! She wears the Bunnysuit of Supreme Adorability! I don’t even like children all that much (except in a white wine/butter sauce, but that’s not important right now). Yet I couldn’t quit squealing with glee and resume my surly ways for half an hour after I saw the photo. No one’s sure but I might’ve even briefly quit complaining. It’s all a blur!

Flee! Flee!

Miss Sasha is in her charming twenties so I have no school-age children to fuss over, except secondhand. And I’m selfish enough to want decent care when I get to the Old Punks Home, where we’ll all wear torn-up black nightgowns, compare tats and shout, “ANARCHY!” until suppertime and Matlock. A few years ago, when friends who taught grade school mentioned it in passing, I stumbled on two programs. Box Tops for Education lets you choose a participating school anywhere and support it financially. Labels for Education has a similar program, more focused on supplies and equipment. The thing is: you can participate in both programs for the same school or different schools. All you have to do is give the sites a look-see, decide what you’d like to do and what level of involvement you’d like. I collect labels for a teacher I adore in a not-wealthy school system. The box tops are a different story. I collect them for a public school in New Brunswick you just know is underfunded.

Collecting these labels and box tops is an absolute cinch, since you buy some of these products anyway. Just put a shiny little gift bag in one corner of your kitchen counter and toss them in. When you have a bunch, put them in an envelope. Hand them to your favorite teacher! Mail them to your school’s coordinator. This might cost you $.37, but if we all do it, it could make a big difference to the kids who will someday wipe our butts.

Plus, I now realize that I want a bunnysuit. With a fiery passion, I want that.

As I asserted yesterday on Running Scared, though my parents (Abner and Louella) were roughly Miss Sasha’s current age when I was born, they adapted a feminist approach and raised me to believe I was the smartest person on earth, my talents were endless and my future as big as I wished it to be. My babydoll was brown, not petal-pink. There was no discussion of my wedding, my husband, my babies; we talked about graduate school. The school system bought into this fantasy despite abundant evidence that I was not, in fact, the smartest person on earth. I was one of those self-conscious show-pony kids: trotted out by the school when it called the local papers for some odious display. To this day, I can’t think of Joyce Kilmer and that fucking poem without thinking of fourth grade and the Somerset Spectator. I was the gifted and talented program in my school until I refused to talk about my family while my parents (Jean-Claude and Amelie) were breaking up. For a long time, I bought the bullshit and was sincerely confused when I encountered someone obviously smarter than I was.

Just a note to parents (hypothetical Billy Joes and Bobby Sues): don’t foist this smartest-person-ever crap on your kids. Statistically speaking, it’s staggeringly unlikely, and your precious will devote pointless hours and hours to figuring out if they’re deranged or you are.

Tata: At least once a day I slap my forehead and wonder why I did something that stupid.
Corinne: Does that leave handprints? ‘Cause I’d like to see that!

Two nights ago, I fell asleep after 11:15 and slept until a piercing, omnipresent whining noise woke me. I looked at the clock but don’t remember what it said. I jumped out of bed and stumbled around the apartment trying to locate the source of the sound. After a minute or two, the sound stopped. I climbed back into bed. I looked at the clock but don’t remember what it said, and fell back to sleep.

A short time later, a piercing, omnipresent whining noise woke me again. I looked at the clock but don’t remember what it said. I jumped out of bed and stumbled around the apartment trying to locate the source of the sound. I realized the sound was coming from outside my apartment and threw open the door. One of the something-detectors was squealing, then stopped. I climbed back into bed. I looked at the clock but don’t remember what it said, and fell back to sleep.

Soon, a piercing, omnipresent whining noise woke me a third time. I looked at the clock but don’t remember what it said. I jumped out of bed and stumbled to the front door to find the sound. I threw open the door, and stared at the squealing detector. Where were my neighbors? Why didn’t they come outside to find out if they were in danger? I went back inside and grabbed my ladder. Standing atop the ladder, trying to pry the detector open, I realized this noise has awakened me for some period of time around 2 a.m. every night for days, possibly weeks, and when I went back to bed, I simply forgot.

Wide awake and freaked out, I couldn’t go back to bed. I spread out on the couch and flipped channels. I settled on something but couldn’t really pay attention. Half an hour later, I curled up inside a frou-frou quilt so only my nose stuck out. When the alarm rang before 6, I called out and climbed back into my bed, certain that noise would not roust me out of bed again. I was right about that much. When I woke up, it was after 11 a.m. I called the landlord and pleaded for someone to put that device out of my misery.

This morning, I go back to work. My co-workers ask, “Do you feel better? Are you okay?”

I tell them: noise, device, every night, forgot. Uniformly, they hoot: this never happens to them! They remember everything! Am I sleepwalking? Have I gone ’round the twist?

In the back of my brain, I believe I should have the answers. In the front of my brain, I think sock puppets are fun! If I’d gone to Harvard like I was supposed to, I might be an undersecretary at the United Nations now. I might be an executive at a major international aid agency. And if I were, and found myself on a ladder at 2 a.m., hammering at a device that inexplicably wasn’t annoying my neighbors, my high-priced hospitalization would make Page Six.

Instead, I do half an hour of stand-up every morning about stupid last night.

Last week, Leonardo di Caprio was on Oprah, talking about global warming. Oprah speaks for millions of purse-string-holding women around the world. So it was astounding to hear Oprah – hopefully playing Devil’s Advocate but it was painfully difficult to tell – ask, “I don’t know much about global warming. I hear these words and my eyes glaze over. What does global warming have to do with me?” The idea that women haven’t connected the dots between those children they fetishize and obsess over and planetary changes is so big and so astonishing I had to stop hating her guts to find room to hate her show’s viewers with the kind of scorching, corrosive hatred one devotes to people who insist everything’s fine as they stubbornly sail the boat you’re standing on into the iceberg.

God damn it, global warming has everything to do with you. And me. And you have to do something constructive about it. And so do I. A few weeks ago, a co-worker approached me for the third day in a row to ask my thoughts on Hurricane Katrina. I expressed horror and dismay in terms that peeled the outer layer of skin off her face. Then this:

Emily: They’re going to have to build new refineries to compensate for all the lost oil.
Tata: The oil companies know that building a refinery has like a thirty-year window of return. Anything built now will cost more to build than it will return in its lifetime.
Emily: You mean because nobody wants a refinery in their neighborhood? Of course, you’re right but someone will have to live with it.
Tata: No, because of peak oil. Have you heard of this?
Emily: No.
Tata: As I understand it, the earth contains a certain amount of oil. We have extracted the majority of it and from now on, oil will become more difficult to extract and we will extract less and less of it until we run out.
Emily: What about the Arctic? There’s oil in South America!
Tata: Yes, and those supplies would have been exhausted long ago if they were easy to tap and not fundamentally dangerous in some way.
Emily: What are we supposed to do? We have to have oil.
Tata: If I owned a house I’d have installed solar panels last year.
Emily: If only they’d build more refineries…

On Sunday afternoon, I read the <a href="
http://www.njcleanenergy.com/residential.html”>NJ Clean Energy brochure that arrived with my October PSE&G bill. It wasn’t easy. For three hours, some sort of domestic situation transpired loudly right outside my bedroom windows, abating when the cops arrived and starting up again when they left; lather, rinse, repeat. Though what I could see was two people shouting – which is annoying but not threatening – I called the police to restore peace and quiet. The damn brochure didn’t offer much information. I fired up the computer and took wild guesses about the providers’ URLs. It’s long past time to go as green as possible. I’m poor, and putting what little money I have where my mouth is.

Rules. It’s the OCD. I can’t help it:

1. I prefer not to patronize businesses that lobby against my interests or are located in states that consistently legislate against my interests, just as I’d prefer in theory to buy a hybrid American car built in a factory on Route 1 over any other car built anywhere else.
2. It’s impossible to be righteous 100% of the time. Okay? Okay!

The brochure uses a teeny font little old persons like myself can barely see. It offers four options. You’re supposed to choose a vendor, which lists a product, the resources that product represents, cost per Kilowatt hour and the average additional monthly cost (average home = 580 kWh/mo.) Apparently, it’s cheaper to stay dirty. Let’s move on.

Community Energy, Inc.
Product: NewWind Energy
50% wind, 1% solar, 49 % low-impact hydro
1.3 cents
$7.54

At this point, I realized I knew bupkis, possibly less than bupkis. This is NewWind Energy’s site. They have a map of where their wind farms are located in NJ, NY, IL, PA and WV. The site sells fetching posters of windmills. Crap, they’re located in Pennsylvania, home of that fuckpig Rick Santorum. Now I have to look up Wayne, PA and find out if it voted for him. Next!

Green Mountain Energy Company
Green Mountain Energy
50% wind, 50% small hydro
.9 cents
$5.22

Hey, I’m poor. If this checks out, I’m golden. Google “green mountain energy” and you get their site and a boycott site, right off the bat. I realize the limits of my intelligence and research abilities when the site’s dated 2000, and I can’t find anything more recent refuting the boycott site’s allegation that BP bought GMEC and moved to Texas. I…don’t know enough to give these people money with a clear conscience. Next!

Jersey-Atlantic Wind, LLC
NJ Wind
50% NJ Wind, 50% low-impact hydro
2.9 cents
$16.82

Holy crow! That’s three times more than the Texans would kick my ass! Since this company is in New Jersey, I’d like to do business with them – I think! I can’t tell because they just started selling their product last month. My last month’s electric bill was during October, when there was no air conditioning and modest activity in my apartment: roughly 93 kWh = $14.08. With NJ Wind, I would expect to pay about $20. I think I can live with that. What’s my last choice?

Sterling Planet, Inc.
Sterling Select
33% wind, 34% landfill gas, 33% small hydro
1.2 cents
$6.98

They’re in Georgia. Fuck that, no matter how righteous they might be.

As a bear of very little brain, I would be perfectly willing to accept that I don’t understand anything I’ve read. If you do understand this and I’m completely wrong about how this stacks up, please correct me.

Is this the best we can do?

Note: if you’re about to quibble with the solar panels assertion, forget it. Favor nuclear? Don’t bother unless you have a magic wand that makes nuclear waste not-radioactive. As for peak oil: I can never be an expert, but I listen when the grownups are talking.

If there’s a motor vehicle without a coat of paint within 500 feet of me it belongs to Paulie Gonzalez and I am climbing into it. We’re on our way to Mom’s Diner for lunch. He starts the truck. He smiles, but it’s an apologetic look of faint disappointment.

Paulie: Well, I’m sorry you missed out on the beating!

At the reception the night before, I sat down at table 5 between the husband of a New York cousin and the brother of Paulie’s dad’s second wife. She died a month ago. The kids used to take turns staying up late with their uncle so when he passed out on the couch someone put out his cigarette before he burned down the house. Everyone passes around photo albums. Paulie’s dad sits next to Aunt Esmerelda, the wife of Paulie’s dad’s gangster half-brother, who was found in an unfortunate package years ago. The cousins are her daughters. Their husbands are odd looking fellows. Paulie reminds me his father’s other half-brother was a superior court judge in a northeastern state. I say, “It’s all cops and robbers with your family, isn’t it?” He giggles. Everyone is excited! or angry! or exuberant! or anguished! I’m waiting for the centerpieces, at least four feet tall from table height, to fall over and set fire to our fruit cups.

All the usual wedding things happen: the bride dances with her father; they cry their eyes out. The groom dances with his mother; they cry their eyes out. The bride and the groom dance; they cry their eyes out. The groom dances with the mother of the bride; they cry their eyes out. All in all, this is a great event for Kleenex. Meanwhile, Aunt Esmerelda tells a story and ends up with melted butter all over the front of her blouse. This does not detract from her perky charm. When she’s embarrassed I consider slathering myself with salad dressing in solidarity.

Paulie and I wander back and forth to the bar, sometimes outside when he wants a smoke; we’re in the bar during the salad course and we never actually see pieces of wedding cake. We nibble gray-ish prime rib and laugh hysterically at the stories. All evening, the DJ’s keep things moving at a vigorous clip. Just before our dinner plates disappear, I turn to Paulie.

Tata: Am I imagining things or is this a lull?

We take the opportunity to marinate ourselves in gin. After the reception ends, we and the cousins all pile into the bar, where one of Paulie’s cousins winks at me for two hours. I express regret about his twitch. After 1 a.m., I decide it’s time to begin peeling off layers of carefully calculated foundation garments and I make my excuses.

Eleven hours later, we’re climbing into the giant pickup truck with a coat of matte black primer when the bride, groom and a biker chick shout and wave for us to come back upstairs with Paulie’s tux. Nicole opens the door in sweats, hair flying all lover the place. Jimmy nibbles leftover fruit. As charming as these hoarse, hungover charmers are, me getting involved in post-wedding wreckage would interfere with my lunch plans. Diane the Biker Chick lets on that her boyfriend awoke in lockup this morning after Jimmy punched him during the wedding –

Wait. What was that?

The dam breaks. All three chatter at once. After the third time through, Paulie and I gasp for breath, we’re laughing so hard. Getting an account of events in order never actually happens. Diane’s boyfriend was skunk-drunk before the wedding, and during one of the spotlight dances, he collected one of the abuelas and steered her toward the dance floor. During dinner, the wedding party – minus Paulie – ended up in one of the suites upstairs in one giant brawl. In the most unbelievable turn of events outside of pro wrestling or Scientology, the groom took control of the situation:

Nicole: So she tells me Kevin was choking her and she’d just about passed out when she realized she didn’t have to take this and she punched him.
Diane: I punched him!
Jimmy: I said, “Hey!”
Nicole: Diane and Kevin were fighting and they flipped over a coffee table.
Tata: You what?
Diane: We were fighting and we flipped over a coffee table. You know – like flipping over a coffee table!
Jimmy: Did you see her bruise?
Diane: I got a bruise. See?
Paulie: Whoa.
Diane: He’s drunk so I’m telling him, “Go sleep it off, go sleep it off.” Instead he chokes me!
Jimmy: So she punched him!
Nicole: So she tells me that Jimmy came running and to break it up between them and Kevin’s like, “You don’t tell me what to do.” And Jimmy’s like, “No, you don’t tell me what to do!” And Kevin tries to head-butt him!
Jimmy: And kick me in the nuts. He missed.
Diane: He missed!
Nicole: So she tells me Jimmy’s growling like an animal. He’s like, “This is my wedding!” She tells me Jimmy grabs him by the throat and pushes him straight up the wall off the ground. I didn’t believe it!
Diane: He was all gurgling blood and still kicking Jimmy.
Jimmy: I put him down.
Diane: Then the cops came and the DJ helped us fill out the police reports.
Tata: What?
Nicole: He’s great. I’d hire him for anniversaries, too.
Tata: Paulie, I believe that explains the lull.
Paulie: Hey, that’s full service! You can’t get that just anywhere.
Nicole: The best man’s family are all doctors and nurses and they made him change his shirt.
Diane: He was covered with blood. They’re kind of sensitive about that stuff.
Paulie: I thought he was just a putz who couldn’t keep his tux on!

Domestic violence is no joke. Just yesterday, I called the cops on a domestic situation outside my bedroom windows. Still, a good drunken brawl is mostly hilarious when no one really gets hurt and everyone gets cab fare home. In retrospect, the wedding amused us, and I would’ve been fine wearing the butter.