The Fabulous Ex-Husband’s(tm) current wife Karen proposed some time ago that we – she and I – take a gardening class. Most current wives of ex-husbands would be planning a prank with a woodchipper, but Karen is an absolute blast. We exchange Christmas presents. She’s the cuddly Grandma my grandson Panky will admire as he’s driving me to the liquor store. See? That works out for everyone.

Last summer, I made a feeble attempt to find classes, and by feeble, I mean I sat at the keyboard and whined, “Where are you, classes?” Actually typing words might’ve helped but I wasn’t ready. I was moving. We were working on the kitchen. A Republican was in the White House. It was just the wrong time for me to try concentrating, but a few weeks ago, I got a little more serious about classes, and by more serious, I mean I whined at Siobhan, “Where can I find gardening classes?” She found them for me by typing words and pressing that enter key. Me, I’ve been so afraid to commit.

The unnamed university where I sometimes work but seldom pay attention for the last 23 years offers classes like container gardening, vegetable gardening made easy and wreath making. That last one sounds too much like work, but there’s another class that sounds interesting called cold frame growing. Apparently that thing we call our greenhouse – it looks like a malnourished jungle gym after a slip cover accident – is a cold frame. Perhaps we could learn a more sophisticated method of keeping our sprouts warm on chilly nights.

In a rush of unexpected maturity, I signed up. I’m sorry to startle you like that. Later, I’ll do something to make up for it like re-route traffic by the municipal building using orange cones and a German shepherd. The time is right for you to find classes where you are and to grow your own food. Type some words. Press enter.

I’m having a teeny problem with frustration.

Pete: Did you talk to your sister?
Tata: My sisters are so stupid!
Pete: Ah, so you did talk to Corinne?
Tata: I’m not speaking to Corinne so I don’t shriek about how stupid she’s being. Which is pretty stupid.
Pete: Well, how about Anya?
Tata: Anya is being stupid and I’m not talking to her because I’ll tell her she’s so stupid!
Pete: All right, then. Is Daria feeling better?
Tata: Daria can hardly talk. She’s got antibiotics but she almost coughed up a lung when I told her cigarettes and whiskey on her night table would make that rasp glamorous. So she’s stupid, too!
Pete: Would you like to make the salad?
Tata: No. I’d like to sulk, then pout, and later, I’ll try to fit in some brooding.
Pete: You don’t want to make the salad?
Tata: I’m stupid, right? Pot to Black Kettle! Come in, Black Kettle!

X’s We’re Desperate has repeated on the mental jukebox since I read Lux Interior died a couple days ago. Why not a song Lux wrote? Ya got me. Maybe watching Congress dither while America burns has got me down. Probably. Siobhan’s cruising around the Gulf of Mexico, but she’s never too busy to email celebrity gossip.

Tata: Ya drunk?
Siobhan: No, but I’m 15 feet from where Sarah McLaughlin and her daughter are swimming in a small pool.

When famously depressed Canadians are fine, what am I so fidgety about?

I’ve zipped my lips about blog politics for a good reason: mostly, I don’t get it. I’m much too self-involved to understand the characters in As the Blogosphere Turns or I forgot soy milk again and the coffee in my office is super weak. I don’t even have a blogroll. That would sound funny with a Scottish accent: I dunnaugh een hae a blogrooool. Please see skippy, whom I personally adore, for why today matters.

I.

Daria: Why are you calling me at 10 p.m.?
Tata: Because that happens to be now.
Daria: No, why are you calling me at 10 p.m.?
Tata: Did you know that between meals other people stop eating?
Daria: I did not know that.
Tata: It rings – like – a distant bell, doesn’t it?
Daria: Yeah, maybe I’ll put my snack down and think about it.

II.

Three-Year-Old: What’s this?
Tata: It’s a garden stake with a friendly face. It keeps your plants company.
TYO: It doesn’t scare the birds?
Tata: No, sweetheart. A face in the garden doesn’t scare birds.
TYO: What about scarecrows?

III.

Tata: I am a genius and I know this because I am an idiot!
Leilani Goldberg: D’ya ever take a number to have a talk with yourself?
Tata: Okay okay okay so you know how my hip flexors have been tight like angry fists and causing me fairly consistent and debilitating agony?
Leilani: Yes…?
Tata: So the other night, I get off the rowing machine, which usually buys me about two hours pain-free, and suddenly I have one of those blinding revelations that makes you feel brilliant and stupid at the same time. Ready? ‘While my muscles are warm, why don’t I stretch my hip flexors?’
Leilani: And what happened?
Tata: No pain for a whole day. I’m a genius! And I’m an idiot! Because I have known since we had baby teeth that stretching is the answer but did I get down on the floor?
Leilani: The floor is your friend.
Tata: I’m surprised my friend took me back.

IV.

Tata: Pete, dinner is spectacular.
Pete: Thank you!
Tata: I’m glad you quit that hideous restaurant. That place always made you angry.
Pete: I’m thinking about working as a personal chef.
Tata: That’s good. Your cooking deserves a wider audience, and if it doesn’t get one, dahhhhhling, I will become that wider audience.

V.

An ice storm is coming. I feel this in every fiber of my being. Even so there is reason for delight: the seed catalogs have arrived. They bring new magic words: self-pollenating fruit trees. Now is the time to dream of fragrant, sunny afternoons.

Obama Chief of Staff puts a stop to pending Bush regulations

WASHINGTON (CNN)– President Obama has wasted no time handling the Bush administration’s unfinished business.

White House officials tell CNN Obama Chief Staff of Staff Rahm Emanuel sent a memo Tuesday to all agencies and departments of the federal government. The memo halts further consideration of pending regulations throughout the government until a legal and policy review can be conducted by the Obama administration.

Enough about them; let’s talk about me. This morning, after playing my usual game of How Many Fingers Am I Holding Up? and guessing 7, I sat in the attic on the crooked seat of an ancient rowing machine Pete and his brother have carted around and used since they misspent their youth and found enough pocket change to go drinking with the Vice Principal. In fact, every morning, I sit on this crooked seat and row while watching the news because being physically strong has always been important to me, because I will never have the kind of money gym membership requires and if I did I wouldn’t spend it that way, because I can row, which is above all else political. It is political that I have the ability as a middle-aged, lower middle class white woman to take care of my health, and it is political that athletics shaped my physical form. It is political that I color my hair, wear cosmetics and wear clothing that does not restrict my movement. My hair looks fab, by the way, and that’s political. Everything I eat, everything I do, my artwork, my job, the blog – it’s all shaped by politics. This blog has no ads, and that is a political decision; my ability to pay for this blog is political. I’ll never take a bite of a Domino’s Pizza or set foot in WalMart or Sam’s Club, and those are political decisions. I shop at Costco because Costco treats its employees well, and that’s political. Last week, my delightful compañera Jill was kind enough link to yet another of My Little Meltdowns with this note:

Now, my good friend Tata is usually given to blogging about delicious cooking and fabulous decorating and about her highly colorful family and her Coolest Cats in the Known Universe. But you know that a politically-related story is important when Tata gets her umbrage on, and this one takes the proverbial cake…

Frankly, I’m not that nice a person. I’m nice to Jill because I like her, respect her and know she’s smarter than I am, which I like a whole bunch. Writing about my family is political, writing about food is political, taking in stray animals is political, having shelter, creating a home and even falling in love are all political, and we skip over these points often to get to the funny or the tragic. When I write about the selfishness of movement conservatism, it always corresponds to my own selfishness because I am subject to the same human impulses that make people despots and saints. It must correspond, if I’m any kind of writer. Jill knows all this and she’s too kind to say so: when we met for the first time, Siobhan, Jill and I had lunch and went bra shopping and I said nothing about myself because for more than ten years everyone I met had heard about me – whatever I was, everyone I crossed paths with knew me in an abstract sense. Which is political, of course. Seeing myself through someone else’s eyes is political, and educational, and I have so much to learn.

The other night, Pete and I were making dinner.

Pete: Phil’s daughters just went back to school. The younger one, Ellie, who started college in September got kind of date-raped in her first semester.
Tata: Welcome to the World of Women, my dear.
Pete: She got herself into a situation she couldn’t get herself out of.
Tata: No. That is not at all what happened. She was going along and some shithead raped her. She didn’t do anything. She didn’t get herself into a situation. A rapist freaking raped her. He is responsible for his actions. Did she press charges?
Pete: Yep. He got three months’ probation. Phil’s more upset about it than Ellie is.
Tata: Good for her, because shitheads are literally everywhere.

Every microscopic bit of that is political. We may choose to overlook politcal aspects of our actions and identities but they exist and bear examining. Back to me on the rowing machine: my skin color, my free time, my good health, my control over my body including my uterus, my ability to feed myself nutritious foods, my job, my insurance, my sexuality, my desire to feel strong and take care of myself as an adult, my hope that I will someday retire, these are all the results of other people’s life’s work. I am who I am as a composite image of other people’s struggles, wins and losses, and I cannot really know who they are or were, but I have watched and listened, and I know when people are trying to rewrite, reshape or redraw me in an image more comfortable for uncomfortable them. That is what happened every day for the last eight years, one little rule here and one acre of national park land there, one drowned city over yonder and holes in the safety net everywhere, and let’s not forget the cowardice endemic in the creation of a Department of Homeland Security. It’s all political and it’s all exhausting, but at least for the moment, someone is thinking, and not just about himself.

Okay okay okay so last night I’m walking around upstairs, thinking Ta thoughts, going la la la la life’s good – whut? and next thing you know because you’re joining this story late I’m bouncing – bump bump bump! – down the stairs and land on the left side of my sweet patootie. I didn’t bother screaming since I couldn’t possibly scream louder than the bump bump bump! of my butt down the stairs and by the time I thought of screaming I’d already landed and that seemed, you know, pushy. Besides, as my much younger sister Corinne reminded me, we used to do this for fun, which was before I spent half of every day coddling my right hip, so when I landed in the middle of the flight of steps it took about a year for me to narrow down the source of all that pain reverberating through my limbs like church bells through mountain air.

Mark Rothko
Red, Orange, Tan and Purple, 1954
Oil on canvas
84 1/2 x 68 1/2 inches (214.5 x 174 cm), approximate size and shape of giant bruise on my butt.

This morning I was supposed to exercise with my friend Leilani Goldstein. She’s a professional trainer but she pities me and finds me hilarious so she pushes us through two hours of really rigorous calisthenics a week and I try out two hours of my comic material. Breathing is optional, of course. Leilani had a scheduling conflict, which was fine by me.

Tata: No, rescheduling is fine. Last night, I sailed down a flight of stairs on my celebrated rump and I couldn’t figure out how I was going to get down on my mat, let alone up in boat pose.
Leilani: You – are you hurt?
Tata: You bet! I can only do plies in my overactive imagination! Wanna try Sunday?
Leilani: You’re going to heal in 24 hours?
Tata: Not at all, but you can still laugh at me while I dead lift like I wish I were.

Meanwhile, Leilani, who is kind and gentle and wouldn’t hurt a flea and used to dance for Ringling Brothers, fails to utter three words in a row without testing the aerobic capacity of her sinuses.

Leilani: I’m so sorry – KTTTTHHHHT! – to hear you – GONNNNKT! – bruised YOUR BUTT!

Yeah. Me, too.

Yesterday, I’d just trundled in from the library where I destroy the dreams of publishers around the world when General Hospital was interrupted by a plane crash in the Hudson River. Now, I know what you’re thinking: putting a plane down in the water is not excellent flying technique, what with the crashing and so forth, but there really can be a variety of opinions on that. For instance, I was trying to make dinner at 3:30 because it was Thursday and Pete and I both work Thursday nights at the family stores and you should not at all attempt to marinate pork chops while watching a marine rescue, my friend. Nope. Anyway, this plane in the water is surrounded by ferries, which are bigass boats, tugs, which are not, and these inflatable hoohaas called Zodiacs, which on my TV look like zippy specks. And somehow I boiled chicken stock and a can of chick peas which I’ve never called chick peas in my life because my family calls them ceci beans and that means we’re saying beans beans and I don’t know why. I spiced this up – whew! – turned off the heat and tossed in couscous, though things happen quickly and we only like to hope they’re for a reason. We can’t know. So we start seeing the same six people climbing up gangways wearing life preservers and you and I both know everyone watching wonders if those are the six survivors but yes and no because yes, they survived but no, it turns out everyone survived – everyone! So I sear the pork chops on both sides for four minutes each while tugboats and the current take the plane south on what is certainly the ride of someone’s life and while the NYPD is full of arrogant armed fucks who’d make Mother Theresa fantacize about wood chippers New York City’s first responders are brilliant, fucking brilliant. The pilot brought the plane down without cracking the fusillage to pieces, which I wouldn’t have imagined in a million years and at a reduced heat, four more minutes on each side before I tossed the chops and the couscous into one of those meal-size Ziploc containers and drove like Jehu to the store, where Pete met me at the door and I said, “This is everyone’s lucky day.”

The full moon is passing, and yet, I am in SUCH A MOOD. My hair is pinned down because otherwise it’d stand up straight. Last week, one of my co-workers told me I’d have to wait for her help until after a big presentation. While there is never a good time for someone to test my theory that I am the Creamy Nougat Center of the Universe, there are also few times when shooting off one’s mouth in the workplace work in one’s favor. Today, I’m going to spend most of my workday trying not to utter any variation of the words, “Why don’t you WAIT FOR ME to feel like kissing your ass?”

Did I mention what I got for those December holidays? I really wanted this!

I’m going to be the most glamorous shopper in the frozen foods aisle making Vroom! Vroom! noises.

Life has changed a great deal since Daria and I were rugrats hiding under the appointment desk in our grandmother’s beauty salon. For instance, at the time, Gram said, “Get up off the carpet. You’ll get hair splinters,” so we’d go play in the basement with mousetraps and bait. Now you can’t get your nails done without wearing a bicycle helmet. For real peculiarity, few things beat the mental image of the family hair salon in which half the stylists are smoking and the other half are delicately nibbling patty melts between appointments and some of them are punching holes in the ozone layer with the thick cloud of Aquanet they’re using to cement Mrs. Becker’s coif into place for the coming week. Mom, the pretty daughter-in-law, washes hair with a cigarette in the ashtray next to the sink. Auntie InExcelsisDeo is a star. Everyone loves her daring and glamorous haircuts, her architectural roller sets and dramatic comb outs. She is in demand, week after week. Everyone talks, but Gram forbids gossip. East Brunswick, even along Route 18, is still a small town and people could get hurt. Gram’s brothers have salons of their own, and some of her nieces and nephews have salons, too. Since I cannot deny my high-hair heritage, I am grateful that ‘burpless’ grass may reduce the environmental impact of that patty melt.