Sandy calls me from the road.

Sandy: In an hour, I’ve gone three exits. I blame the transit strike.
Tata: Sweetie, you’re in Philadelphia. The transit strike is in New York.
Sandy: I’m stuck in sympathy traffic and I don’t think I’m going to be at your apartment in half an hour ago.
Tata: That’s okay. My batter’s rested and Grandma’s crepe pans are heated to an exact temperature that makes the palm of my hand – held three inches aloft – feel like Mama’s gonna show it to you.
Sandy: You’re out of you mind. You know that.
Tata: Yeah, but I’m making manicotti and no union-busting presidential hopeful and his never-went-without-a-meal mayor are going to stop me!
Sandy: You’re a doofus!
Tata: Am not! Am not…okay, I am…

It’s after 7, and the day has already been long. My day job starts at 7:30 a.m. I get up before six. Last week, the universe gave me a gift in the form of hunky Gilad Janklowitz. In the eighties, I used to get up early and jump up and down four times a week to Gilad’s Bodies In Motion. Last Monday, I found my morning yoga program had been replaced, and the replacement was Gilad’s new resistance training show Total Body Sculpt. I stared at the FitTV logo and murmured, “Um…I didn’t get you anything…”

When I got to the radio station, Bill was playing a song in the small studio. Last time in the small studio, we shared a mic, it was awkward, and the radio signal cut out for about nine minutes. I rearranged the chairs and the weights holding the door open. Bill pointed toward two microphones. He didn’t know which would work. We’re used to working with full and meaningful eye contact. Maybe that’s how other people do radio-give-and-take, maybe not. When the song ended, Bill mentioned the song’s name and I laughed.

Tata: Bill darling, tell them we’re in the small studio.
Bill: We’re usually facing each other but we can’t here.
Tata: So we’re going to play Radio Marco Polo.
Bill: Marco!
Tata: Polo!
Bill: Marco!
Tata: Polo!

We giggled like toddlers in footie pajamas. I do this blabbity-blabbing about forty-five minutes once a week, for brain-fun and for my friend. How professionals do this day in and day out is beyond me. When I go back to my office, my tongue is always tired and my mouth is dry. My co-workers are far too polite to mention my Tuesday carp impressions – either that, or fish mimicry has gained unexpected popularity in pop culture.

By the time Sandy calls, I’ve cracked eighteen eggs in six-egg dishes and added water, added salt to flour and mixed wet and dry ingredients. Then batter rests for half an hour. During this half hour, the cook’s mistakes in the form of little lumps of flour float to the surface. It is tempting to keep beating the lumps, but, like pigeon-toed younger brothers re-beating batters only makes them tougher. Still, I’m not opposed to tormenting my siblings, and after both crepe pans are hot enough, I magically transform from doofus into crepe making machine, and about two hours later, I’ve turned out dozens of crepes in four piles, cleaned up the dishes and tucked everything into the fridge. I am extremely pleased with myself. Miss Sasha calls.

Miss Sasha: I want to bake cakes.
Tata: I don’t suppose there are local laws against it…?
Miss Sasha: Funny! The other day, Gramma must’ve been very bored in Heaven.
Tata: What?
Miss Sasha: Suddenly, my fondant is smooth and my cakes are beautiful! Everything comes together!
Tata: Remember how I used to tell you you never know how what you study will come together? You study ice skating, piano and social sciences, and – BOOM! – one day you’re Secretary of State. I studied the Bible, gymnastics and the label on the scotch bottle, and look at my illustrious career! Stop laughing! Why can’t it make perfect sense that you should bake cakes when at four you complained if my socks clashed?
Miss Sasha: I want to bake wedding cakes.
Tata: Call Grandpa. He studied grammar and basketball with nuns.

Yes, I am beyond stupid. This morning, my hands have Crepe Cramps from gripping pan handles like I was born to it – but hadn’t in a few years. At work, I wear fingerless gloves to stave off the soreness. My department makes the mistake of demanding I attend a teleconference meeting and try talking with grownups. After an hour, everyone knows that I am struggling to remain conscious.

Tata: My horoscope said I would have trouble with words today.

This is followed by sounds of twelve people in three counties trying desperately to stifle themselves. Four fail and snort across county lines. Minutes later, an esoteric point on library vendors and databases gives me stabbing pain behind my eyes.

Tata: This conversation makes me…want to kill myself…

These breathing irregularities should be addressed by a physician. The next time I get confused and no one’s listening, I say, “Points are better communicated with sock puppets.” No one hears me. I slip off my shoe, pull my sock over my left and and squawk.

Tata’s Fist: So I sez to the guy – I sez, I sez –

My co-workers may need antibiotics. It’s an unbelievably long meeting. Half an hour later, the guy sitting next to me says something I object to. My right hand, gloved for warmth, pops up from the armrest.

Tata’s Right Hand: Bark! Bark! Bark bark bark!

My boss pretends to be upset.

Boss: Hey! Put that puppet away!
Tata’s Right Hand: (sulks) Poo!

Tonight: I make sauce.

Tata: Mom, you’re too frazzled to talk to me. Go to the post office. You’re not making sense.
Mom: You obviously called for some reason.
Tata: I did. Call me when you get back.
Mom: What is it you want?
Tata: When you get back, can you please read me the recipe for the crepes in the manicotti?
Mom: Why?
Tata: What? I’m going to make manicotti.
Mom: For Christmas? You sure have a lot of free time.
Tata: What? Mom!
Mom: I don’t have time for this right now.
Tata: Bye! Good bye! I’m hanging up now!

I glare at the phone and curl my lip to hurt the feelings of a plastic appliance. If I let her, Mom will tell me for the next half hour how she doesn’t have time to talk to me. Because Mom can turn a half-hour trip to the post office into a three-day ordeal, if I ever want that recipe I’d better call Miss Sasha. And speaking of Miss Sasha, on Saturday afternoon, I told her I’d always resented the way she and Mom ordered from the L.L. Bean catalog together. When Miss Sasha has babies, they’re going to have black onesies with red anarchy logos and fishnets for pre-school, where they will be the coolest kids if it kills me.

Saturday night, Paulie Gonzalez picked me up in the giant 1968 Ranger that rattles my windows from half a mile away. I’m not kidding. The previous owner buffed all the paint off every nook and cranny so the truck is all black matte primer and sinew. It is as badass as badass trucks get. It is too badass for seat belts. The radio is mounted crooked where Paulie made it fit.

Tata: I LOVE the truck!
Paulie: Great. The gas tank’s right behind you.
Tata: Catching fire would put a serious crimp in our evening plans. Can we have a minimally crashy evening?
Paulie: Do you have change? We’re taking the Parkway.
Tata: How can you ask that? Your truck sounds like a tambourine! Nobody else has any change anywhere. Because you hate pocket change and throw it over the seat, little children stare at gumball machines with mounting despair.
Paulie: Good. It’s time they learned to steal.

It’s like there are two Paulie Gonzalezes. One jets around the world, preventing hackers from swiping money and information. The other should never be left with children whose parents do not want their darlings to learn how to properly grip a crowbar. You can’t look at him and judge which one you’re talking to. I’ve seen him change his oil wearing Bruno Maglis. We drive down to Asbury Park, which we both love, on the Parkway, which we both hate. The Parkway is for nice people. We are not nice people. When a Honda full of young women in pastels take too long to find seventy cents, Paulie beeps the horn. Because the truck is gigantic and the CD player is blasting – of all things – Randy Newman, we barely hear it. The young women in pastels spin in their seats and in horror to learn how the Queen Mary docked behind them in the exact change lanes.

Bars in New Brunswick serve a variety of odd purposes: art shows, rehearsal spaces, political hotbeds, live music, memorials and wakes often fill the drunken community centers of a town without other places for its people. Over the years, I have spent a lot of hours with the people in a couple of places in particular. At Asbury Lanes, Sharkey has engineered an excursion of people who’ve never seen one another in daylight, and some of us haven’t seen one another in ages. I am overjoyed when about twenty of us arrive just as the Supersuckers plug in their guitars. We can’t say “take the stage” because though there is one, it’s in lanes eight through eleven, and in lanes one, two and three, rockabilly freaks who look like they only take off their bowling shirts to get more tattoos are bowling. The women have black hair, bleach blond hair or red hair, so in that respect the room looks like an Italian funeral, but that’s where the resemblance ends. Tattoos. Tattoos everywhere. Everyone’s got ’em. I decide I need a new tattoo for Christmas, because according to Jewish law, it’s really tacky to get them for Hanukkah.

Everyone is decked out. Paulie and I make the mistake of trying to get a drink at the bar, where apparently nobody’s supposed to do that. We spend most of the Supersuckers set watching the bartenders serve about ten customers. One odd character stands behind the bar next to pre-poured pints of beer. She picks one up and extends her arm toward patrons who invariably shake their heads and make “What, are you kidding me?” faces. By the time we get beers and get out of the bar, the Supersuckers are closing their set with my favorite smutty, audience-participation-required anthem Born With A Tail. The bowling alley goes relatively quiet for a long while, then the Reverend Horton Heat plays for two hours.

Two. Hours.

I dance dance dance dance dance and halfway through that wish I could borrow someone else’s feet. Asbury Lanes sells buckets of tasty tater tots that are hot as lava. I wait five minutes after someone offers me a tot and still burn the roof of my mouth. I do not care, however, because the tater tot is delicious. The audience surrenders any pretext of good behavior. How people get drunk in a bar where getting a beer is a half-hour affair is beyond me, but some people are indeed tanked and stumbling. Paulie shrugs, “Two-beer drunks.” Ah! Women of all shapes, sizes and stocking styles climb up on the bowling alley tables and gyrate. In truth, these are my people, and I love this place. When the Reverend says goodnight, we feel seasick and relieved at that always strange moment between band music and house music. The brownie troop breaks up, but some of us have rooms at the Berkeley Carteret, which is just as well because it’s December and the police have taken up positions on every streetcorner in New Brunswick and Highland Park, to offer comfort to the communities and ticket people doing 26 m.p.h. on Easton and Raritan Avenues. Paulie knows this well. His truck sports a peeling red REJECTED sticker from the mobile inspection station the Highland Park Police erect because it’s Tuesday and my wife won’t blow me at a location guaranteed to tie up traffic for five towns. We stay at the Berkeley Carteret, which seems to be an odd wormhole between the guido-mob and hip hop-kid universes. The forced air is so dry I dream about the Sphinx. From my window, I watch people walk at the freezing edge of the Atlantic. With happy dogs.

Fortunately, Dad changed his mind and decided to organize Christmas Eve dinner. Everything I have to prepare will be done ahead so I can chase him around in my Oscar-nominated, familiar role: sous chef. I suppose I should mention this to Mom, who generally avoids being in the same room as her longtime ex-husband, and I probably will. If she calls me back.

Please sign the petition, because voting rights should be transparently clear.

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Numbers and I are friends-of-friends. We wave when we pass on the street but it’s not like we talk on the phone all the time. Numbers and Daria are great friends. She balances the family checkbook to the penny and the chitter chatter about little stuff. I don’t get it, myself. Siobhan keeps trying to explain Poor Impulse Control’s statistics to me. I get all squinty and confused and then a pig flies by when I understand something, like that – if I understand the numbers – about two hundred visitors a day fluff their tutus here at PIC, though about seven or eight dance in the swan chorus – the comments, if we must. Don’t be so literal!

I keep baking cakes and the visitors keep coming. How about you introduce yourself? Did we date? Have we traipsed around the net together? Are we kissin’ cousins? Simply gorgeous strangers?

My bet is you’re here for an outrageous reason and I’m dying to know what it is. Quench my thirst for knowledge, you wild charmer. Who are you, and what’s on your shinysparkly mind?

When the American Family Association went to Ford demanding Ford quit advertising in the gay press I admit I thought Ford would cave. After the Microsoft debacle, I thought Ford would let itself be bullied. I mean, shoot. Who should be less fearful of what Intelligent Design believers boycott than scientists and engineers? Yet, Microsoft crumpled like a Dixie cup under Aunt Annie’s fanny before finding the gumption to defend itself. So I didn’t hold out much hope for Ford, and initially, they did not disappoint me. Ford caved, too.

Brilliant@Breakfast reminds us that John Aravosis and AmericaBlog are three for three this year against the bigots who want gays and lesbians to live in fear and shame, if gays and lesbians must live at all. Pam declares Ford – eventually – kicked the Donald Wildmon and AFA to the curb, and good for Ford, good for gays, and good for the rest of America. It’s about time we stopped catering to bullies and fascists.

Love is love is love. It’s not the body that matters; it’s the person in the body. Time to get over the idea that other people’s love affairs affect us in any way whatever, be it Daddy-Daddy matches or Nick and Jessica mismatches. If we have time to care about these things, we need a hobby.

How about restoring old Fords?

Please sign the petition, because voting rights should be right as rain.

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Dad is a decisive person weighing his options.

Dad: InExcelsisDeo’s son graduates from military mechanic school in Pittsburgh on the 23rd.
Tata: That date can only have been set by a man whose wife wipes his nose, and to whom he doesn’t listen. Fucker!
Dad: Do you kiss babies with that mouth?
Tata: What did you say when you heard about it?
Dad: “What fucking madness.”
Tata: Moving on, then…
Dad: Your brother Todd comes in from California on the 30th and stays until the 2nd.
Tata: Really? I knew he’d be here at some point.
Dad: And Dara has to have Christmas with her mother and be back to school on the 2nd. I can only make one trip. What are your plans?
Tata: Gluttony and sloth. Tell me when and where, and I’m there.
Dad: My problem is I promised my sister I’d make Christmas Eve dinner, since she will be out of town until appetizers are plated.
Tata: Don’t worry. My sister, my cousins and I will do it.

OH MY GOD! Did you see that coming? Because I didn’t!

Dad: How’s the apartment?
Tata: I’m considering piling the remaining boxes in front of a vulnerable window and calling it my burglar alarm. I may leave it for my grandchildren to incinerate when they cart me off to the home!
Dad: Serves ’em right! Bastards!
Tata: They’re cashing my social security checks! I would!

So Dad’s staying three hundred miles away for Italian Christmas Eve. This morning, panic set in when Auntie InExcelsisDeo agreed to let the Girl Gang do the cooking because there just isn’t any other way that doesn’t involve folding our arms and blinking forth Emeril. I call my cousin Sandy, eight months older than Miss Sasha, most of a foot taller and 100% more local. Sandy’s temporarily bunking in at Auntie InExcelsisDeo’s family compound in South Brunswick, which gives us access to modern on-site refrigeration in the absence of the homeowner. And salmon!

Tata: Your sister told your mother who told my sister who told me that she, your sister Monday, wanted to make the chicken and polenta.
Sandy: Monday wants to eat the chicken and polenta.
Tata: What do you want to cook?
Sandy: I can’t cook.
Tata: Fine. You’ll make Edith’s bean salad. We’ll make the manicotti together. You’ll make shrimp pose seductively in a circle.
Sandy: WE’LL COOK TOGETHER?!
Tata: Are you in traffic?
Sandy: Bumper to bumper.
Tata: You are a danger to yourself and others. Doesn’t your boyfriend have a Costco card?
Sandy: He does.
Tata: Keep your eyes on the road. If you crash, he might be too busy whining about what a marvelous person you were to go shopping for your family. You’re so selfish!

If you read the stories leading up to Miss Sasha’s wedding, you know Daria, Monday, Sandy and I are now lined up to play a mixed doubles game of YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME! Daria calls.

Daria: Did Daddy call you?
Tata: Daddy called me.
Daria: Did you talk to Auntie InExcelsisDeo?
Tata: I talked to Auntie InExcelsisDeo.
Daria: Do you know why he’s not coming?
Tata: He’s coming, just later. Todd’s coming later.
Daria: Stop talking to me like that!
Tata: You stop talking to me like that!
Daria: Don’t be so bossy!
Tata: You don’t be so bossy!
Daria: I’m going to hang up on you in a minute!
Tata: Pot to Black Kettle! Come in, Black Kettle!
Daria: You taking the right half and I’m taking the left half of the buffet?
Tata: I talked to Sandy. She’s psyched. We’re going to cook.
Daria: Oh my God, Sandy’s going to cook?
Tata: We have boyfriends, fiances, cousins and spare moms. With any luck, we will also have other help. It’s going to be fine.
Daria: Are you drunk? They let you drink on university property? Hello!
Tata: We’ll put appetizers on every flat surface and make Monday bake something into dessert-like submission. And fuck anybody who complains.
Daria: My husband will handle the meats.
Tata: …And there’s my cue to hang up.

If I had money, I’d hire a camera crew and a bulletproof director. If I were smart, I’d hide the fondue forks. I don’t, and I’m not, so it’s stuffed mushrooms and a side of SHUT UP AND DICE for me!

Please sign the petition, because voting should be easy as pie.

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Daria calls me at 7:45 a.m. because I’ve been at my desk fifteen minutes and that’s too long. My mind is wandering off. Her calling me is practically a public service.

Daria: So tell Auntie Tartar what you did last night.
Sandro: No!
Daria: You took a shower. What happened in the shower?
Sandro: Nothing!
Tata: He’ll make a great co-defendant.
Daria: He was taking a shower and I went upstairs –
Tata: WAIT! I know EXACTLY what happened!

My sisters and brother know I am precisely useless as a babysitter because the moment there’s a dirty diaper I’m on the phone with Mom and Dad.

Auntie Tata: You have to come home now. Baby’s all yucky.
M&D: We just sat down. We haven’t even had girlie drinks.
Auntie Tata: Leave ten minutes ago and arrive now, please. This mess isn’t going to change itself!
M&D: Awwww!
Auntie Tata: Woohoo! Got a mop?

And Daria knows the room goes all fuzzy and my head spins when the subject comes up and since she is the younger sister with whom I shared a bedroom until we were teenagers she cannot resist an opportunity to make my head go fuzzy and the room spin. If she had an extra hand and free phone service, she’d leave messages for me all day.

Daria: Changing a full diaper. Knew you had to know –

And:

Daria: Poop! Poop! Poop!

So I know without consulting the Magic 8 Ball what Daria’s heading for. The room goes fuzzy and my head spins. I emit little “kek kek kek” noises from the back of my throat.

Daria: So I went upstairs and the room smelled bad. I said, “Baby, what, do you have gas?” He said, “Noooo.” So I opened the toilet lid and there was the poop. I said, “Did you poop in the potty?” I was all set to be excited. He said, “No, I put it in the potty.” I said, “WITH YOUR HANDS?” And then I had to bleach everything.
Tata: AAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG.
Daria: You could see little handprints in the poop.
Tata: I have to go drop dead now.
Daria: I bleached everything last night. Now I have to bleach everything else.
Tata; Waiter…I’ll have a Chlorox straight up. Make it a double!
Daria: Yep. The shower curtain’s my first target.
Tata: …squazzbats…

A hair-trigger gag reflex is inhibiting. Someday, I’ll be the grandma with a martini in one hand and Ron Popeil’s Baby Bott-O-Matic in the other. If I must. But Daria’s going to hear all about it.

Please sign the petition, because voting rights shouldn’t make you yell for Buicks.

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Auntie InExcelsisDeo: I called your house and a man answered.
Tata: You called my old number! That’s Paulie’s Dad. He moved in after I moved out.
Auntie I.: He said, “Just a minute. I’ll go look.” He came back a few minutes later, “No, she’s not here.”
Tata: That’s hilarious! Wonder where he went! You called because you heard me summoning you?
Auntie I.: Did I? What’s up? I can’t remember why I called you.
Tata: Christmas Eve? Textiles? Got a new pet?
Auntie I.: …No…
Tata: Plumbing repairs? My Dad’s driving you crazy? Vehicular manslaughter?
Auntie I.: …No…
Tata: Stubbed a toe?
Auntie I.: …No…
Tata: I got nothing!
Auntie I.: I’ll buzz you when I remember!
Tata: I’ll be here until I’m paroled…

Last night, a man was executed in California and today the blogsphere erupted in a frenzy of bloody team-bashing. I can’t join this game. I can’t dance on the grave of another human being, no matter who he or she was, no matter what he or she did. And you’d think I’d be entitled to consider the issue as long as I wished and come to whatever opinion I might, morally and intellectually. Nope. Today, bloggers and pundits on both sides insisted not just that theirs was the only position a wise person could hold but that a person who didn’t agree must be morally or intellectually defective.

Yeah. Well. Bite me.

The death penalty in the United States is ridiculous and racist, but that’s because human beings are ridiculous and racist. We can’t fix that between now and the next state-sponsored execution. We can’t fix ourselves, and we can’t fix society. Putting aside the unbearable horror that is executing the wrongly convicted, it is too great a responsibility – for me – to decide that another person should die. Many people argue that the Bible says such-and-such, or the Koran says so-and-so. I know what they say, and they provide certainty for a large part of the populus, but not for me. I’m glad these philosophies help people find moral centers in our difficult world.

Still, the one thing I take away from all my years of study is the very simple Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord. This means I am small and covered with fur, and I cannot possibly know any absolute truth. I cannot know if there is a God, an afterlife, a profound justice, or a call for the blood of the guilty, and I accept my limitations here. My options, then, are limited in pursuit of public safety and bodily security. The option I choose is to incarcerate the guilty. If there is a God, and if God has plans for us, great. I hope God’s plan is a cocktail party where I meet Mark Twain under the table, but if it’s not, then justice is the Lord’s – not mine – to administer.

Some people have dreams under anaesthesia. I do not. During surgery, it’s as if the doctor’s hit my OFF switch, and coming out of it is terrifying because it is not like being ON. It feels like wrestling up from under something heavy on my chest and preventing the drawing of breath. Each time I’ve come out of anaesthesia, I’ve felt like I’d been dead for a few hours. Some say after death, there’s nothing. I’ve already been through nothing. When people argue about pits of fire and demon beasts, I don’t hope for Heaven. I hope for nothing. I wish there were a way to tell if we’re wasting our time, frothing at the mouth about punishments and crimes, but I can’t. And in real life, I don’t have to.

Not every issue requires that I form an opinion. I have the rest of my life to decide what I think, and I may even so change my mind. From Harold Pinter’s Nobel Prize lecture:

Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.

…The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven.

Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn’t know it.

It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.

By way of contrast, this is something I can form an opinion on. These deaths do matter. I don’t wish to trivialize this vast, unmeasured suffering but it makes me sick that this was done in our name, in the name of the American people. It makes me just as guilty as the black ops fuckers who commissioned these murders. There is no justice for these victims in this world. For them, I hope there is an easy afterlife, if there is one, but I can’t wish eternal damnation or the lake of fire or a red-hot fireplace poker up the butt for the murderers. For them, I wish for exposure and light. I hope their children find out what they did and see their parents with daylight understanding.

Mine are the politics of mercy. It is my wish that the arguments, the debaters, the victims and the murderers go in peace, wherever they’re going in this life or what follows. It is my hope that we think clearly and coolly about the suffering we cause and move to mitigate it. If you believe in God, it’s the least service you can offer. If you don’t, your work on earth is certainly cut out for you.

Please sign the petition, because voting rights are a first step toward justice.

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Apropos of very little, my friends have been discussing being stationed on Guam. You’d think the place was packed with very young fashion victims and very old men who didn’t know when to zip it.

Hey, my Dad was Air Force and he was stationed on Guam, too. Well, it was a strategic bombing group in the Army Air Corps that became the Air Force. I wonder if you and he met the same hookers.

Roman was a very sensory person and would not have appreciated things like mission statements. It’s nice to have something catchy on your patch: I think the space command’s motto was “in your face from outer space”. But this new mission statement…it’s like a motto from a bad yuppie bar. “A nice place to get schnockered and pretend to be interested in sports TV with no sound while you’re striking out.” It’s cheap and I think it sucks like every bad corporate meeting I’ve attended. It makes me think of the uniforms. I have my Dad’s old uniform and it’s kind of cool. For one thing, it’s wool and constructed like a nice suit. Off the rack, but classy. The new uniforms look cheap to me, like a prison uniform. I mean, if you’re gonna drop 500 pounds of burning phosphorous on a field of people living with bronze-age technology, at least you can be the leader and dress classy. Consider that the modern armed services are comprised largely of poor black people. Now if there was ever a demographic that appreciated fine clothing, that’s it. If they made Marine uniforms from fine, black Italian suits I bet W’d have no problems making the recruitment numbers.

hugs and kissies,
Slappy

This is what happens when comically enhanced rocket scientists become stay-at-home parents and write letters in scurrulous character all day to erstwhile radio comedians and, generally, people who could fashion lasers out of paper clips and duct tape. And me.

Slappy calls me “my favorite octaroon.” His real-life counterpart calls me when the baby’s in the emergency room. Many of my friends and most of my relatives do this: lapse into and out of characters and accents. Thus, nothing Slappy says offends me because from early childhood, I recall the business of imagining what other people might say, and knowing those were not my thoughts. They were a recognition of the world in which I lived and people I would never be.

You’d think I’d be prepared, then, for people who aren’t kidding but I seldom am. Those desperately personal commercials in which black or Latin teens try to convince Mom or Dad that joining the military is a great idea were written by Chris Rock, right? No? How is that possible? Or years ago, I walked up to Easton Avenue to get university keys cut at this old man’s shop that – no lie – was about the size of a cell on death row. Now it’s a hot dog stand or something. Anyway, the first time I walked over there, the old man cut my keys and took his ever lovin’ time about it. He asked if I read books. I said I did. He said he used to read books but he quit after reading about that there Marquis de Sade. I said that must’ve been an interesting reading list. He said – I don’t know what he said. He was a very old man. I was young, a captive – so to speak – audience, and hotter than lava. How pathetic is it to whine, “I used to be HOT”?

The third or fourth time I walked over there he mentioned de Sade again. He asked if I’d ever read that book. I said I hadn’t, which I thought might tamp down the talk. He shuffled weakly around the tiny key shop like Tim Conway character facing a stiff wind. If I patted him on the cheek he might break, but there he was lecturing at excruciating – pardon the pun – length on whips and chains.

Like many men of his generation, he’d been a military man who’d traveled the world and tried to bring something of it home with him. I might’ve picked something from the PX. On Guam.

Please sign the petition, because voting rights should be free, free, free.

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My brain’s pooped. Daria called at 9:30 this morning, not just because she’s the busy mommy of three children under seven but because she’s bossy.

Daria: What are you making for Christmas Eve?
Tata: WWWHA BHEPGHHLLLFHL stuffed mushrooms, maybe?

An ability to converse in our sleep distinguishes my family members from other crazy people. When our maternal grandmother visited from Cape Cod, Daria discovered our terrible secret. Daria waved me into her room where Gramma was napping on the bottom bunk and mewing like a basket of kittens.

Daria: Where’s the gin?
Gramma: Bottom shelf in the refri- refri- next to the olives.
Daria: Can I have a pack of your cigarettes?
Gramma: Aren’t you a little old to start smoking? Take a carton. Catch up.
Daria: Can I have ten dollars?
Gramma: No..zzzzzzzzz.

You can’t have everything.

Daria: Auntie InExcelsisDeo’s on NutraSystem and looks great. Did I wake you up?
Tata: It’s fine. Can we cook for that? How do we cook for that?
Daria: Beats me. Daddy’s bringing mmmppmmmhhpphh and pppphhhhrrbbbb.

Daria frequently forgets to eat in the course of her frenetic day. The sound of my voice triggers the recognition she hasn’t eaten since Tuesday. She is stuffing something vaguely nutritious into her mouth before she forgets again. Because conversation with her is regularly unintelligible, I don’t ask her to repeat. Daddy’s bringing stuff and roasting it. What else do I need to know? Later, I have an idea and call Mom.

Tata: I am proposing a project in which I do all the work. Stop laughing!
Mom: I can’t breathe! What project?
Tata: I’d like to transcribe Edith’s recipes so everyone can have them.
Mom: My recipe box is filled with –

Mom has her own sense of time, order and sentence structure. I’m paraphrasing because if I didn’t condense you’d stab yourself in the eardrums and threaten grammarians. I can’t be responsible for that, however hilarious it might be to watch Mom make someone else suicidal. Or study interjections. In any case –

Mom: My recipe box is filled with recipes in my mother’s, my grandmother’s and your grandmother’s handwritings. I wrote down a lot of other things over the years. I plan to give this box to Miss Sasha.
Tata: That’s really nice, Mom, but there can only be one of those and the rest of us would like to have our grandmoms’ recipes.
Mom: The recipe box is like a scrapbook…
Tata: Do you realize that some insecure women give their blood relatives family recipes and leave out a key ingredient?
Mom: …filled with important memories…
Tata: And Miss Sasha’s blood relatives will carve her up like a spiral ham if the Edith’s manicotti recipe is bland.
Mom: You’ve got a laptop, right?

I’m also pooped because after yesterday’s excursion to Home Depot, I had a pile of DIY art supplies and towels to wash. Everything is educational if you let it teach you stuff. Yesterday, I learned the full wash cycle wrings clothing to within an inch of its life and sixty minutes in the dryer barely smooths the creases. Today, I learned that running towels through the delicate cycle produces as wet as towels can be. My apartment became very humid after that and for hours to follow. I see clearly I’d better take some vinegar to my windows. At one point, Larry, the little black cat bent on stealing your soul, was sitting on my lap when he stood up and growled like an angry dog at…nothing…in my hallway. This went on for a number of unnerving minutes.

Larry: I’m creeped out!
Tata: You’re preaching to the choir, brother.

In between, I drilled holes in the hallway wall and hung a shelf, which I lined with delicate glass bottles. I drilled holes in my closet and hung tap lights so I can pick clothing that might match. I drilled holes in the kitchen ceiling and screwed in hooks left by the previous tenant. From these hooks, I hung the four remaining green-blue Christmas balls that belonged to my father’s parents and the glass Christmas ball my mother’s mother had made when I was born. Yes, I’m tired, but tired and overjoyed.

You know how refrigerators come in boxes? Washers and dryers come in trucks. What will I play in? That is a trick question. The answer is CLEAN CLOTHES!

Paulie: Tata, don’t even plug in that dryer before you buy a fire extinguisher.
Tata: Why not?
Paulie: What’s the tag say? How many amps?
Tata: I’m reading the tag. I see nothing about amps.
Paulie: What else?
Tata: It goes on and on about a risk of explosion. Like, in four languages.
Paulie: …As opposed to the international language of I’M ON FIRE with subtle undertones of AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Oh. Well, I guess I’m off to the Home Depot. But first, I’m going to try something no one of my generation in my family has: reading the manual. Stop laughing! I bought some shiny objects, and I want to use them without combining violently with oxygen myself.

I’d pout…but I have Appliance Joy! Joy!

Please sign the petition, because voting rights shouldn’t go up in smoke.

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