francis

I am sitting on a bleacher in a Catholic middle school and I really hate Catholic schools.  They are Catholic-spewing factories producing children who grow up supporting a structure that deny high management positions to women, protect pedophiles within their own ranks, and condemn anything and everything gay.

I am here to watch my grandson, a product of public schooling battle those papists in their Mary-blue gymnasium and a crucified Christ hangs high on the wall looking mournfully on the scene below, red droplets on his pale cheeks.

I am sitting with the other heathens and I glance over at the home cheering section and they are sitting above us on the upper bleachers wearing expensive boots. Their kids just seem bigger and their uniforms fit better and I think they're blonder. Catholics are like vegans, they think they are better than everyone else and all though vegans are better than everyone else Catholics are not.

I grew up in the Catholic school system.  I put on a navy blue jumper and a white blouse with a peter pan collar and I was off to memorize longs lists of saints' names and learn the number of years saying "Jesus, Mary and Joseph" would carve off my purgatory sentence.

Frequently it seems the opposing team has a really tall kid, a genetic mutant or some poor slob who keeps getting held back to insure a winning season, those Catholics are not to be trusted. All this kid does is stand there and raise his arm and he deflects every one of our balls headed for the ill-fated basket. They are beating the holy crap out of us although they would argue that their crap is holier.


And now comes Francis to the head office. His simplicity is refreshing, his attention to the impoverished masses a relief, and he pays his own hotel bill, all good.  Bottom line, women are screaming for a voice in this crazy hierarchy.  I feel Francis will be another disappointment, albeit a softer approach.
 

glory days

I am home from the pool, 100 minutes in the lap lane. Yesterday, ninety minutes and the day before two hours. There were a couple of runs and some weight-lifting sessions earlier in the week and I know these are the glory days.

 As I enter the second year of my seventh decade I show no signs of slowing down although I do more swimming, my gentle joint-friendly routine and less pounding on the pavement.  What, you say, make the insanity stop? I can't and you wouldn't either if you saw what I consume. I eat like a starving African and yesterday started with an egg mcmuffin and ended with fried bread nuggets and in between there was a buffet and the scourge that settles upon us every spring, those damn girl scout thin mints. Drinking seven gallons of diet coke a day also contributes to the expanding of my abdomen forcing me to hunt up the really stretchy sweatpants, the ones with the bleach stains from kneeling on freshly scrubbed floors. I blame my overindulgence of comfort food on the fact that it's March frickin' tenth and there are seven more inches of snow coming tonight.  I would drown an army of those pesky girl scouts for one hour of sunshine.

 I'm not sure how long I can keep this up and there is a residual fear underneath the blanket of endorphins floating through my brain.  And it's saying, you're getting old, you're getting weaker, you are now useless. As if to counteract this eventual condition I add minutes to the routine, a kind of insurance that I think I can, I think I can do more. We are all aware of the octogenarians and older farts who continue into advanced age swimming the English Channel, performing in triathlons, hoisting impossibly large barbells.  But these people are looked at by the general population with a twinge of nervousness, like Siamese twins they are freaks of nature. I encounter that look every weekend when college students teach swim lessons to little kids in the same pool I do my laps. As I round up my second hour they're waiting for me to collapse, I just know it and some of them are laying bets on it. Just for that, POW! another ten minutes!  Groan, I won't be able to get out of a sitting position for the rest of the afternoon.

Dawn, circa 2052

 

raisin bread and dope

 

I am in California sitting on Susan's patio surrounded by Mexican pots and her long-suffering plants. It's 85 fahrenheit and my plan is to get seriously sweaty raise my body temperature to the max and then jump into the unheated pool. I ignore the fact that nights in this latitude drop to 40 degrees and then wham! I am in the water and then desperately trying to get out, my frozen limbs refusing to work. "F-f-f- . . ." I stammer and Susan was on her feet ready to do what I don't know, she looked bemused, she looked worried and I had purposely jumped in the shallow end in case I needed saving and resuscitation.



She has a small bag of medicinal marijuana squirreled away in the cupboard left over from her 60th birthday party. On that night the girls got stoned and giggly watching their upper arm fat jiggle and two of the guests laughed so hard they wet their pants. They didn't have rolling papers so Susan wrapped the stuff in raisin bread and swallowed it whole. In our earlier racier days she and I were quite fond of the weed and we talk about finishing off that bag. I know Big Dave would disapprove although I never met a white man more in need of a joint than that husband of mine.

I remember the last time I got stoned.  It was New Year's 1995 and I was at a lame party eating dried veggie chips. I was at the end of a very sad relationship and then the guy shows up unannounced wearing a shirt I had given him the year before and what did all this mean, I pondered. I was suspicious the dude was seeing other women and later I would discover this was correct. So I threw all his stuff out on the front lawn to get rained on except his grandmother's crocheted afghan and the Victorian light covers, I wanted those. But back to the party. I got so stoned I had to cancel a dinner engagement as I was too paranoid to leave the house. I spent the evening talking to my jade plant.



great dental work


 

leaving again

Leaving for San Diego this morning and I was in Jamaica just last week, my desperate expensive need for warm green weather. I am almost finished packing and the meat will go in last. Like any good Iowan visiting a former Iowan I will have frozen bratwurst and chuck roast in my baggage. You can't get good meat outside the Midwest, maybe Texas but they'll be seceding from the Union soon and then we'll have to pay import taxes on the stuff.  Hopefully, my luggage will not require additional screening but if it does some unsuspecting airline official will need to deal with those bloody animal parts.

I am sitting at O'Hare pushing slimy vegetables and rice around a styrofoam dish. I usually don't eat Asian in airports because it tends to be too shiny, an overload of cornstarch and water.  Flying retards my digestion so I avoid those Beach Burritos and giant Nathan hot dogs. All that carnivore mange would do a tango in my belly and the poor slobs surrounding my plane seat would pay the price.

I am watching a young matron and the toddler is attached to her by a long purple leash and the kid looks oppressed. There is a furry brown monkey toy where the leash attaches to his back but it is still a leash, you insensitive barbaric cretin of a parent.

There seem to be an abnormal amount of young children booked on this flight and why aren't they sitting in some classroom. This whole home school thing is just getting out of hand.

Husband actually looked glad to see me go. I don't blame him, into his third month of retirement and I scream hari-kari at his balled-up napkin on my kitchen counter, my solitude seriously compromised. Look upon me gently dear reader, there is an intruder in my home.

one last note from paradise

Big Dave blooms where he is planted and the resort is no exception. He comes alive, alive I tell you in the midst of unidentified strangers, all of them drawing strength and vitality from each new handshake and how do you do. I on the other hand feel that same energy draining down my legs and out the tips of my toes with any social encounter and then I have an intense need to go back to my room and revive my rockets.

 

Dave stays on stage all day and has volunteered for reggae dancing class, straw hat weaving, glass-bottom boat viewing, and a game requiring participants to throw water balloons at fully clothed people. The guy is dizzy with excitement over the very socialness of this place and today he is going to be a guest at some person's wedding. He is willing to trade beach time for free cake and I don't share that opinion.

Did I mention the man flirts? But then all men flirt, and not with just women. Bosses, bowling league buddies, the guys in front of them at Starbuck's and the list goes on. Men need to get the edge no matter what the social alignment.
This guy has three older sisters who swear the sun rises and sets on their golden boy and he has a low gravely voice that oozes Barry White. If we're sitting in a crowded movie theatre and I ask him to pass the popcorn every female head in the place will swivel. Really.

But now I am pounding on the door of a restroom and no one bothered to leave a sign saying this a faulty door, it jams and cannot be opened from the inside. I can hear my significant other chatting up the cute little Asian chef a few yards over, or is it cheffette? And she is a coquettish thing, all doey eyes and plump pouty mouth. He can't seem to hear my shrill screams over her soft lilting voice but at least I remembered to bring my drink.

traveling habits of the deranged

The big guy is watching me stash our used hotel towels behind the door and collect all the glasses and there were a few and arrange them symmetrically on the bathroom counter. I wipe up the toothpaste spills and smooth out the lumps on the comforter-covered bed.  "You know they pay people to do this," is his comment but I cannot, I will not leave a hotel room in any kind of disorder. I am the product of  an OCD germaphobic brain and I wouldn't think of apologizing for this. I would never expect any human being to clean up my filth and if everyone felt this way then world peace would follow quickly, assuredly and permanently.

 I learned this from my mother. I'm pretty sure she had cleaning products at the bottom of her suitcase whenever she traveled. I come from a long line of proud women who worshiped bleach and my father is of the same vein. In his precision-packed Marine suitcase he would have bed linens, his personal war against creepy-crawlies in those foreign beds.  Back home I would be collecting their newspapers and mail each day and they left their house as if they would be returning in ten minutes instead of ten days. Half a blackened banana on the kitchen counter, dried-up drumstick in the fridge already five days old, cottage cheese two weeks expired.  My parents suffered from bellyaches and intestinal problems all their lives and I theorized  mild food poisoning was often the cause.

I awake the first morning in lovely Jamaica and stretch before the patio door, singsong waves and pinkish clouds in my sight, perfection. My solitude is seriously challenged when Thong Man, every resort has one, does his yoga exercises on the pier outside my window. His favorite pose seems to be bent over with bare ass aimed in my direction and swinging his right arm in a large arc like a gigantic elephant dong. but he is easily dismissed, silly narcissistic goose that he is. He will spend his day on the nude beach with the other silly narcissistic nudist geese out of sight, thank god. But there is one more group on campus of which I am leery.

And that would be the group from Wisconsin, arrived just this morning. You can hear them coming from a great distance because they can't seem to have a conversation unless it is in the very high decibel range. They descend on the pool, my sacred area and announce in loud blaring tones, "pool volleyball, NOW, deserters will be shot." Their quivering bellies above their Green Bay Packer swim trunks are starting to seriously redden but they have no awareness of this due to their huge consumption of the native Red Stripe beer and they have two-litre beer mugs which allow them to make less trips to the bar.

It is time for me to retire to the isolated end of the beach, look for more sea glass and ponder the problems of the world.

Mimi's shoes

Ah Jamaica, the only place an adult male can carry a sky blue tote covered in pink hibiscuses and get away with it.

I have survived my first night at this all-inclusive resort. I do not come easily to these kinds of places. They attract individuals who flock to noisy class reunions or join bowling leagues and wear matching shirts or god forbid, sign up for bus trips to St. Louis, all distasteful to me on so many levels. My nature is heavy on the introvert side and I just want to sit in my room overlooking the ocean and suck my thumb.

Due to my extreme discomfort about this situation I drank too much lick-coour last night and I'm not sure what I did on the dance floor but people are congratulating me for it today. "She looked so meek and mild when she first got on stage," I hear a gent from Minnesota tell my husband and husband is beaming, jeesh, whose side is he on. They are unaware I am sitting under a towel behind very large sunglasses a short distance away feeding leftover toast to the starlings. "Where did she learn to dance like that?" he asks. I want to shout out, "convent schools, you cretin!" but why do that and risk revealing my hiding spot and more uncomfortable questions.

I am at the pool bar waiting for my margarita and the woman next to me strikes up a conversation and she is French.  Mimi, of Mimi and Pierre and she has children ten years younger than mine, three of them and last week these parents and children spent a week at another Jamaican resort. "Those kids wanted to do notheeng but sit on the deck and dreenk and I was worreed they would fall off and go splat," she said in fairly good English. Now M&P are here minus children and Mimi's neck is covered in oriental tattoos, ouch that had to hurt and they translate into facts about her own personal self.  She has volumes of dyed curls cascading down her back and very tight vulgar clothing and who can blame those three drunk children.