pseudostoops

I’ve just said goodbye to my inlaws after a five-day visit, and suffice it to say I am ready for another weekend to recover from my weekend.  We had a lovely time, actually, filled absolutely to the brim with activities and family togetherness.  But I know I can’t be the only one out there who is never fully relaxed when there are houseguests of the inlaw variety staying in my bedroom while I sleep on the futon in the guest room.  (Please tell me I’m not the only one.)

I love having people in for the weekend, and I love weekends that are full to bursting with fun and activities, but they sure have a way of throwing the following week off-kilter.  Right now the only food in the house is leftover potato salad and some pickles, I’m down to one pair of clean underpants, and I accomplished exactly zero on a work project I’d hoped to address at least a tiny bit over the weekend.  Oh well.  Such is life.

The highlight of the weekend, comedy-wise, came during a rousing family game of Apples to Apples.  For those not familiar with the game, the basic idea is that one person reads a green adjective card that says something like “happy” or “outrageous” or “timeless” and the rest of the players choose a red noun card from their hand that they feel best aligns with that adjective (like for “timeless,” some submissions included “Romeo and Juliet,” “Niagara Falls,” and “Frank Sinatra.”)

We were playing last night with my mother and father-in-law and my sister-in-law and her partner.  My father-in-law, a rather buttoned up ex cop, draws “playful” as his adjective.  The rest of us look to our hands, select the cards we feel best align with “playful,” and turn them in.  One by one he reads out the submissions, and it’s immediately clear that none of us had anything good for “playful,” and we’ve all decided to just use this round to dump cards.    “The Godfather!” “New York!” “Rust!” (That was mine.  I mean, who hasn’t had some good times with rust, am I right?)

Then he gets to the last card.  He pauses, as the word kind of catches in this throat:   “Whips!”

Sister-in-law, her partner, John and I all totally lose it. Mother-in-law turns bright red, says “no!  oh dear!”  which only makes us laugh harder. And my father-in-law, bless him, considers each card carefully, thinks for a minute, and finally says “you know, I think the most playful thing in this group would have to be the whips!”

And that’s how my sister-in-law’s partner got her first green card of the evening.  Welcome to the family, kid.

John recently got a pair of chukka boots that he can wear in the winter that go with both work and school outfits- apparently wearing his shiny dress shoes to class made him feel a little silly.  John was not familiar with the term “chukka”, so when he was describing to me what he wanted and I said “oh, like chukkas?” he said “what? What are Chumbawumbas?”

And now he calls them his Chumbawumba boots, and I have that absolutely insanely annoying “Tubthumping” song in my head on a weekly basis.  Thanks, John!

As much as I regret the fact that I have had a mid-90s one-hit wonder earworm for the past three weeks, I actually love these little mishearings that become a part of a family’s personal vernacular.   My sister in particular is famous for these.  When she was little, whenever she wanted to go sledding, she would demand that my mom get out her “snowsnoot,” a word my family uses instead of “snow suit” to this day.  She’s also the queen of the Malapropism- we still tease her about time when, as a preteen whining about some grave injustice that had been done to her, she said “I hate this family! I always get the short end of the shaft!”

There are others: we all call my grandmother “Gummy” because my oldest cousin couldn’t say “grammy” correctly, and when we’re feeling something is particularly unfair, we’ll say that it “bites the baboon” (my sister’s childhood mishearing of “bites the big one.”)

Any good ones in your family?

* From the classic Friends scene:

Last week as I was driving to dinner at a friend’s house, the “add fuel” light came on.  I knew, I absolutely KNEW, that I had enough gas left to make it there and wait to fill up on the way home.  And I was running late.  And there was a 7-week-old baby at that house, and that 7-week-old baby butt was not going to pat itself, you know what I’m saying?  And yet: I almost pulled in to every gas station I passed on the way to their house.

Why?

Because when I was 16 I ran out of gas. Once.  Four blocks from my house.  And my parents, who had to drive FOUR WHOLE BLOCKS to bring me a gas can so I could rescue my 1991 Ford Explorer from the middle of Elm Street, have never let me live it down.  I still hear “remember that time you ran out of gas and stranded the car on Elm Street?  Man what a bonehead move hahahahahahaha!” at least twice a year.  FOURTEEN YEARS LATER.

And because I once ran out of gas that one time, I still freak out every time the add fuel light comes on in my car, convinced that I must stop immediately to avoid further cementing my reputation as “the girl who runs out of gas.”

Isn’t it funny, the things that you do that become a part of your family’s history of you?  The things you can never live down?  I swear, I am usually a highly competent person, but a majority of my family’s favorite stories about me involve some catastrophic screwup.

Like the time I backed out of the garage while the garage door was still closed.  That was a good one.  Or the time a friend and I were too lazy to make cookie dough so we bought one of those Pilsbury ready-to-bake giant cookie  things, except I forgot to take off the cellophane before popping it in the oven so our big cookie came out with a shiny plastic outer layer that said “RemoveThisFirstRemoveThisFirstRemoveThisFirst.”

That friend still signs her Christmas cards to me “RemoveThisFirst.”

Please tell me it’s not just me, that all families torture each other in this way.  They do, right?  Or am I the only one whose parents still gleefully remind her of that time when she was 14 and spilled an entire bottle of forest green nail polish on the white carpet?

I am convinced that every family has its own particular set of strange traditions, inevitable crises, and other oddities that surface at Thanksgiving.  They’re the best part of the holiday, aren’t they? Here, a selected list of ours:

• Every year, my mother makes a wild rice dish.  Every year she forgets to add raisins.  Every year she forgets to set it out on the buffet with the other sides.  Every year, she laments that no one ate it.  EVERY. SINGLE. YEAR.  If I didn’t know better, I’d swear it was a comedy bit.  “I forgot to put out the rice!” “No shit, that has never happened before!”
• I add salt to the potatoes in secret.  I actually post John as a lookout at the kitchen door and do it as fast as possible so no one will see me do it.  Because if they saw me, they would not eat the potatoes.  Except you know how mashed potatoes taste without salt?  LIKE PASTE.
• Forty-seven half-filled water glasses all over the house, with at least three people an hour asking “is this one mine?”
• Three kinds of cranberry sauce for a family of five.
• Similarly, three kinds of potatoes.
• Also, three kinds of stuffing.
• No, I’m not exaggerating.  We are picky.
• The once-a-year, only-at-Thanksgiving, musical version of grace before the meal.  Sung off key.  At different tempos.  By two people who know the words, one who kind of does, and two who just blatantly make it up.
• Dream Whip.  I know.  God, I know.  If I could change that one, I would.
• And finally, my personal favorite because it is SO RIDICULOUS and yet SO US, we have got to be the only family on earth who every year has to make a trip to the grocery store on Thanksgiving day to buy emergency lunch provisions including, I SWEAR TO GOD, sliced turkey for sandwiches.  Because, you know, we’re not going to have any of that lying around the house in a few hours or anything.

So yeah, mine was great.  How was yours?

The internet tells me that traditional gifts for this occasion are fruit and flowers.  So John, this is for you:

Kumquats. Kind of an inside joke.

Happy fourth anniversary, my little kumquat.  Even though we see each other for about 30 minutes a day these days (if we’re lucky), I still enjoy those 30 minutes more than any other part of my day.  I love you.

k

John’s birthday was this weekend, and when he woke up on the actual day, he looked at me kind of mournfully and said “I’m in my late mid-twenties now! I’m so old!”

And then I kneed him in the nuts.

Sometimes it is not awesome to be married to someone three years younger than you, is all I’m saying.

Anyway, I had planned to take us out to a nice dinner in the city for a nice birthday dinner on Saturday night, but our college football team threw a wrench in that by playing an evening game that was actually being broadcast in our market (very rare) that John really wanted to watch.  And while I would have probably skipped the game and gone to the delicious fancy restaurant it was, technically, John’s birthday, so I acquiesced.

So instead of dinner out we got fancy takeout sushi from one of our favorite places.  I was a little bummed about this originally, but may I say, after Saturday I highly recommend fancy takeout for special occasions.  We get takeout pretty rarely, and when we do it’s usually from cheap thai places or pizza delivery.  Takeout fancy sushi is an entirely different animal.  It feels so decadent, sitting in your pjs, drinking your own favorite wine that you bought at retail (not restaurant) prices, watching your college team get beat in an absolute heartbreaker.  No waitress to interrupt your conversation, or make you feel guilty that the two of you put away five huge rolls in 10 minutes flat.  Heaven.

And it turned out to be a very good thing that we did not go out, because if we’d been out, I never would have seen the commercial for what has to be the greatest product ever created:  The Chia Obama.

Oh yes.

Christmas presents anyone?

Seriously, family members: do not be at all surprised if, under the tree on Christmas morning, you find a strange ceramic pot in the shape of our president’s head that promises to grow your very own green ‘fro.

A few months ago, our friend Smallchou gchatted me in the middle of the day:

“If there was ever a time to buy pseudostoops.com,” he said, “this is probably it- there’s a craaaaazy sale going on and you can get the domain plus a year of hosting for practically nothing.”

Well, whenever Smallchou tells me to do something tech-related, I usually obey.  After all, the man created an iPhone app that got featured on those ubiqutous ads that are on the back pages of all the major magazines and newspapers these days.

Suffice it to say, he knows a lot more about this stuff than I do.  Plus, I like shopping for things on sale.

So I bought pseudostoops.com, then didn’t think too much more about it.  I sort of mentioned to John that I aspired to learn how to code in Wordpress, so that I could build my own site, but I knew that project was going to (a) take a long time (b) be very frustrating for me and (c) probably end up looking sucky, so I didn’t do anything about it for a while.

Fast forward to four weeks ago: my birthday.  John is an exemplary birthday-planner, and when I woke up on my birthday, there was a neatly-wrapped stack of presents sitting by my bed.  He told me to open them in order, starting with the top.  So I opened, in order: socks (tradition: he always gets me socks for every occasion, a carryover from my teaching days when my personal fashion sense was expressed largely through silly socks); an amazing fleece jacket to replace the one I had that was literally falling apart; and a duffel bag (he called that one a “Homer bowling ball gift” because we’re both using it for an upcoming trip- we really needed a new bag).

Then, at the bottom of the stack, I noticed a note.

“Open my laptop right now,” it said.

Puzzling.

I started to get out of bed, and he reached down to his side of the bed and pulled out his computer.  I opened it up, and what should I see?

This website, fully built.

I mean, seriously, is he a champ, or what?  He figured out how to use wordpress.org, he designed it, and he even put “happy birthday to pseudo” in the tagline.  He doesn’t blog, doesn’t always get why I like doing this, but he knew it was important to me, so he secretly spent hours building something I’d offhandedly mentioned that I wanted.  He’s going to have a hard time topping this gift next year.

For the past few weeks, we’ve been playing around with some small changes, figuring out how to migrate the archives over here, and this weekend, we decided it was ready to go.

So now here we are! Welcome to the new pseudostoops!  We’re going to be making some minor adjustments, probably, as we go forward, but from now on, this is where you’ll find me.  Change your feed readers, bookmarks, etc.  And feel free to leave a comment for John telling him what a nice husband he is for doing this.

I cashed the check, and wrote them a newsy note thanking them and giving them life updates.  As many of you noted, I’m certain that they were not trying to be snarky jerks with the note, that it was just an ill-conceived and poorly executed attempt to reach out.  They are nice people, just a little brusque.  (My godmother, for example, once counseled against going to law school in Chicago, also known as the city where I grew up, because “God, Chicago is such an effing backwater, you might as well go to law school in Nebraska.”  Helpful!)

Am I the only one who feels like a total moron when writing chatty letters with life updates? It feels narcissistic, to assume that people are going to care where I went on my three-day weekend or what my plans are for this summer.  I know that family and friends want these updates, so I’m working on getting better about writing more regularly, but I struggle to write them without feeling life a doofus, is all I’m saying.

Speaking of feeling like a total doofus:  I had the first ticklings of a cold on Saturday morning, made worse by all the dust I kicked up doing our annual spring cleaning.  How did I respond to those tickings of a cold?  Did I take to my bed early, rest, push fluids?  No! Instead I went to a bar where a friend and I were cohosting a birthday party, drank more adult beverages than I have consumed in a single evening in at least a year, and ended the night with an embarrassing, if predictable, Very Serious Conversation with a friend, complete with crying from both parties.  Needless to say, I woke up Sunday morning with a full-fledged case of Death By Headcold.  If you need me, I’ll be the one snurfling into a kleenex and pounding gatorade.

OY, you guys, the week I had last week.  Just, oy.  The SHORTEST day I worked all week was 15 hours, if that gives you any idea.  And I was working off-site, so I had to drive, and there was much gnashing of teeth as I sat in traffic every morning and evening.  Plus, as an extra-special treat, my car broke down on Wednesday as I was driving home from work at 10pm.  I dragged myself to the shop at 5am on Thursday to get it fixed in time to drive to work, and then on Thursday afternoon, less than 12 hours later,  a kid smashed into it as it sat helplessly in the parking lot of the school where I was working, so now it needs to go get fixed again. It got to the point, honestly, that when the very-essential-to-our-project printer ran out of toner as we were wrapping up at 8pm on Friday night, all I could think to say was “where is my plague of locusts?  I’m ready! Bring it!”

This weekend was spent largely doing things for which there was no time during the week, such as doing laundry so I can have a clean pair of underpants, and shopping for unspoiled milk.

Saturday night we did manage to roust ourselves from the deep divots our asses had formed on the couch to get all dolled up for a charity gig my mom is involved in.  They have an annual gala, and my sister and I usually get invited to help round out a table.  Its fun, and it gives John a rare chance to wear his tux.

True to form, at 3pm on Saturday I found myself wandering in and out of department stores downtown, caught in a futile search for a dress that (a) was not heinous and (b) did not cost $400.  I called my sister to complain about my plight and it turned out she was half a block away, stuck in the same retail hell.  We met up in the hosiery section of Macy’s (she needed some shapewear, a category which would probably help me immensely but of which I am inexplicably afraid) and both decided that we’d just give up the hunt and wear something we already had.  In my case, that meant a very blah, but totally acceptable, black knee-length dress.

I showed up at the event, got a cocktail, and went to say hi to my mom.
“Oh, you girls are so adorable!” she said.
“Huh?” I said.
“You and your sister! Are dressed alike!”

(pause)

“Not on purpose!”

Sure enough, when my sister walked over a few minutes later, we were wearing the same damned dress.  People kept commenting on it, assuming that we’d planned it.  One woman remarked how much she loves it when siblings dress alike.  I like it, too – when they’re FOUR.  Not so much when they’re 28 and 30.  Then it’s just weird.

So that is how I got to spend my Saturday evening sitting at a table at a gala with my sister, dressed as some cocktail attire version of the Doublement twins.

When I was an 18-year-old college freshman, I sent my mother an email. “Dear Mom,” it said,

“I don’t know quite how to say this to you, so I’m just going to say it.  Remember Cory, my RA who lives down the hall?  Well, he and I have gotten really close, and a few weeks ago we started dating.  He’s amazing, I think you’re going to really love him, and I’m really happy.  The thing is, the school has a rule against RAs dating people who live in their dorm, and they found out about it, so they’re going to move me to a room in a dorm down the street.

Don’t worry, Anne [my roommate] won’t have to get a new roommate- they’re letting her keep our room as a single for the rest of the year.  And there was some girl who got homesick and dropped out in this other dorm, so there’s a space available over there anyway.  So starting next Friday, my address will be c/o [Other dorm name].”

Then, because I was 18 and it was a Thursday, I went out with Anne to a party, got reasonably drunk, and totally forgot about the email.  I was young, and happy, and that’s what you did on Thursday in college- you went to parties and got drunk!

It was, of course, April 1, 1997, and I thought it was HILARIOUS April Fools’ joke to play on my mother.  I would now like to go back and kick my 18 year old self in the ass because I can only imagine the aneurysm my poor mother must have had when she read that email.  It was juuuuust plausible enough that it probably never occurred to her that it might be fake.

I had originally intended to call her right away after I sent it, but I think I got her voice mail, and I wanted to tell her in person, and then I went to the party and forgot all about it….

The next morning at 8am I was awoken by my mother, trying valiantly to keep her shit together but clearly frantic, saying in a rush “don’t worry, sweetie, we’ll find a way for you to stay in your current dorm, there’s no way they can make you move, and shouldn’t this Cory boy be the one who has to go, if anyone?”

Oops.

(This email hoax turned out to be especially funny when, two months later, I started dating Rocco, a different RA who was even older than Cory (a 5th year senior to my freshman) who I proceeded to date for three and a half years.  Haha!  Prescient!)

I look back on this little episode and am stunned at my own brazenness.  I mean, if you had met my mother, and seen how she can get when she’s frantic, you would realize that it was a seriously ballsy April Fools’.  I remember at the time, Anne couldn’t quite believe I was going to send it, but I was 18 and feeling my oats, so to speak.

Nowadays, I HATE April Fools’ (I LOVED Swistle’s post it idea, and copied it as soon as I saw it, so I think I fell for fewer this year than normal).  But generally, I am pretty gullible anyway, so an entire day devoted to fooling people like me just seems mean.  I went through the entire day yesterday casting suspicious glances in the internet’s general direction (except for first thing yesterday morning, before I realized what day it was, when I totally wished a friend congratulations over facebook on her FAKE APRIL FOOLS PREGNANCY.  NOT NICE.)

Any of you play, or fall for, any April Fools’ jokes this year?  What’s the worst one you’ve ever perpetrated or fallen for in your life?