The Right way to do Laundry

David and I are doing laundry at my parents' place. It’s such a lovely day that we decide that we’re going to hang the clothes on the line to dry. After about 5 mintues, from within the house, I hear shrieks from my female relatives.  My mother, Granny, Gran and Aunt Bea are all in the kitchen.  My Mother’s voice assaults me from across the deck.

“Heather!  What are you doing?” my mother yells to me.

“I’m hanging up the laundry.”

“You don’t hang up laundry that way!”

“Pardon me?”

“You don’t hang up laundry that way!”

“What way?”

“One sock, one towel, one t-shirt…”

“What?”

“You have to hang things up in groups.”

“What?”

“You have to hang things up in groups.  All the t-shirts, all the socks, all the underwear…”

“Who says?”

“It’s just the way it’s done!”

“Why?”

“Because it makes a nicer looking clothes line.”

“What, are the laundry police going to come out and give us a ticket?”

“Don’t you get smart!”

“All I want to know is who decided that this was the way laundry has to be dried?   I mean, does it dry faster your way?”

“You are not too old for the wooden spoon young lady!”

My mother still threatens me with the wooden spoon.  If I swear in the house, she’ll threaten.  If I’m too sarcastic, she’ll threaten.  If I make a face …  you name it, if I’m 'sassy,' she’ll bring out the spoon.  The thing is – I don’t actually remember her ever using the wooden spoon. I just remember hearing about the spoon.

Let me give you an idea about the type of person my Mom is.  She is the classiest woman I know, even when she’s leg wrestling.  My husband challenged her to a match and she kicked his ass!  She’s one of my best friends.  Not everyone has the privilege of having a friendship with their mother.  I do. Not only do I get along with her – I actually choose to spend time with her, especially when she’s singing obnoxiously at the top of her voice “I am the CHAMPION!  I AM THE CHAMPION!!”  And then doing her half-assed attempt at a fist pump.   

"Whu-whu-whu-whu-whu!"

And you know, no matter how old I am, no matter how much knowledge I have, my Mother will always know more than I do.  Because she did it all first.  And I’ll always turn to her and ask for her advice.  Sure, the details of the advice may not be exactly what I want to hear, but I know that regardless of generation gaps and differences of opinion, a lot of these things that she tells me?  Are exactly what I need to hear.   And what’s scary?  It really does make a nicer looking clothes line.

*This piece is an excerpt from my show How to Leave Adolescence at 30 written in 1999.  As I stumbled about in our laundry room this morning - it seemed appropriate.

Does the clumsy end?

I trip.  I fall.  I run into things.  Have done since I was wee.  I could make falling up the stairs an Olympic sport.

My Mom calling the Doctor's office, "But it won't stop bleeding!!"

"I'm sorry Ma'am, unless it's mostly severed, it'll have to heal by itself."

"But there's so much blood!"

"Ma'am, unless the tongue is barely attached, we can't really do anything."

***

"MOOOOOOOM!!!  Heather's bleeding to death!" screams my brother Michael.

"Again?"

"I can't tell if she still has a leg!"

***

Kim Hickey's father, as I was waiting for Kim to get ready to catch the bus.  "Run into any poles lately?"

"Pardon me?"

"Kim told me that you ran into a pole yesterday at school."

"I did?"

Kim, coming out of her room,  "Heather, you ran straight into one of the support poles yesterday."  She turns me toward the hall mirror.  She lifts up my bangs off my forehead.  I am bruised.  I have no recollection of the event having occured.  This might explain why my brain, she doesn't work the way she should.


***

The custodian, looking at my position, shaking his head.  "How did you get there?"

"I was sliding down the railing."

"But how did your leg get there?"

"I think it slipped."

"I'm going to need a crowbar."

***


"Heather!  Watch out for the...!"

"HOLY MOTHER OF..."

"Are you okay?"

Rubbing my breast bone, where I have just run into a parking meter.  "Sweet merciful...."

***

The triage nurse, "You're lucky you didn't break your neck."

"Usually I'm a very safe diver.  I was just trying to take my bathing suit off when I was in the water."

The nurse looks at me.

"It was going to be a very effective entrance."

***

"What did you do?"  David asks. 

"I gave myself the heimlich carrying this stupid chair."

"How is that even possible?"

"I was distracticated."

"How were you carrying it?"

"Like this."

"Only you."

***

"HOLY CRAP!!"

The room turns my way.

"Sorry... sorry!  Carry on, it's okay."

"What's wrong?"

"I might just possibly have opened my ass on the metal arm of the chair.  I'm good, I'm good.  There's no blood."

***

Encased in my sweater, pretending to be a ninja, I prepare for a surprise attack on Rissa, flinging my arms open wide.

"OW!  OW!OW!OW! OOOOOOOW!!!"

"What did you do?" asks Rissa, eyebrows raised in a near-maternal expression.

"I hit the corner of the stupid newel post!"

"Were you trying to be dramatic?"

"It was going to be funny!"

***

"Why are you on the floor?"

"I slipped."

"Why?"

"I was chasing the cat."

"In your socks?"

"It needed to be done."

"Let me get the drywall out of your arm."

Do not take me into natural light...

When did I get to be so freaking hairy?  I should be in one of those carny magazines with the caption Hirsute Heather as I wear some Victoria styled gown bustled to a steam-punk length and a fascinator to show off my spectacular facial hair.   There is something about the quality of the sun in the summer months.  It's like a night club at 2:00 a.m., when they turn the lights on and you realize that the sexy chick you've been plying with tequila sunrises all night, is actually Ernest Borgnine.

Natural light is horrifying.  I'm not big on waxing.  I shave my lower legs (shin & calf) fairly regularly and I've got one of those epilady things that rips the hair off other parts of your legs - kind of like a garburator but for leg hair - but I forget to use it.  'Cause let's face it, most people don't spend all their time thinking about  leg hair until they are out in public.  If I contort my body to get a good glimpse of the back of my legs, I might put out a rib. NOT looking is really for my own well-being.   Besides, in the safety of your own home, leg hair usually ain't so bad, but when that natural light hits you - that's when this gal of mostly Scandinavian DNA begins to resemble Zorba the Greek.  Stanley could seek out Livingstone on the backs of my thighs. Please devote a moment to visualizing miniature explorers on the back of my legs with machetes.

I heeded my mother's advice for many a year and did not shave above the knee.  The tops of my thighs were mostly blond and not terribly bothersome.  A few years back, to spice things up a bit I shaved... pretty much from the pelvis down (more on the pelvis part later).  They say it's an old wives' tale that if you shave it'll grow in darker.  I am here to tell the old wives weren't making that shit up, because my thigh hair is now no longer blond - it is black.  I'll be sitting on the beach - and I'll glance down and then have to stifle a shriek of horror and surprise.  HAIR!  As far as the eye (or least MY eye) can see.  And I'm in a freaking bathing suit, exposing it to the world at large.  That's when any sane being would just ignore it.  Noone else is going to be close enough to see it.  It's not like people are wearing science fiction "Follicular Glasses" to zoom in on the wild hair on the locals at the beach.  But there I am, shaded in my little half tent, using the nails of my thumb and first fingers as impromptu tweezers to tear out the offending hair, thereby drawing attention to the fact that I have now devolved to ape state to the entire beach front.

I did the Brazilian thing a couple of times - denuded myself of all the hair down there.  I sought out a Russian aesthetician on Yelp who was highly acclaimed, who bent me near in half to get literally where the sun didn't shine.  David, accustomed to the way women are supposed to look like from the canon of adult films, was thrilled.  (See that?  My husband is one of the millions of men in the world who have been conditioned into thinking that having access to what looks like a pre-pubescent pelvis is sexy.  Shudder.)  Me?  Not so much.  I felt like a plucked chicken and about as sexy.  Does this Brazilian make my labia look fat?  PLUS?  There was NO friction.  My body didn't know what the hell had happened to it.  AND (but wait there's more) after having had all the downtown muskrat hair ripped out, when it did come back in (after that incredibly itchy, make-you-look-like-you-have-crabs waiting period), some was missing.

In peri-menopause, I now have this downy coating of mostly (thank freaking God) blond fluff on my face.  When I'm in the bathroom, if there's natural sunlight beaming into the room - my face sort of sparkles with the blonde down - which is a good contrast against the splotchy skin discoloration that has also come upon me at this stage in my life.  Sort of looks like I've been mottled with freckles then dipped in baby chick down.  Rissa, of course, adores it.  "Your face is so soft..."  She'll play with the longer hairs (the ones you don't see until after a social event) around my jawline.  "It's like you're glowing Mummy.  You're so beautiful!"  Perspective shift.  It's then that I usually do my best to re-fucking-lax and get over myself.  That's also when I usually vow to wear sunglasses in the house so that I won't notice all this shit.

I have been worshipping a false idol...

WARNING: This post is about... ahem... grown up toys

The Hitachi Magic Wand
(insert angels' chorus)

Several years ago, David got me a present.   The cadillac of  'personal massagers.'  Variations on this design have been used in adult entertainment since the 70s.  If you've seen an adult film, you've seen  this toy in use.  It is the best 'personal massager'...   IN. THE. GALAXY. 

Sceptre-like in design - I truly feel like a queen while using it.  Surprising and adaptive, it is better than self-pleasuring,  it is like having intimate relations with another person.

You know how it is when you get any new toy.  You play with it a lot.  I played with it a lot.  Let's just say that my hands would vibrate for a good half hour after I'd had some 'relaxation time.'  You want to test out the toy's limits.  You know, for scientific purposes.

Dear Diary, today I saw the face of God 12 times.  

I love my Hitachi Magic Wand.  LOOOOOOOOOVE it.  Used it so much, I felt a little guilty.  Like I was maybe cheating on David.  I'd go to bed when David was still working and by the time he joined me I was in a sated puddle of bliss, still clutching my sceptre, my entire body vibrating.  He'd try to pry it from my hands and I'd offer my best Charleton Heston,  "FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS!!!"

Thing is (why does there always seem to be a 'thing')...  I think I might have uh, drowned my... man in the boat.  The Magic Wand is a powerful toy.  I can only use the low speed.  The high speed would have me clawing the ceiling fan, screaming hysterically.  But here's the sad but truthful news folks: physical pleasure with the Magic Wand, though SPECTACULAR, has meant that physical pleasure without it, is harder to attain.  The lady bits get over-stimulated, making it harder to achieve the big bang sans regal sceptre.  The same way that watching porn for guys gives them unrealistic stimuli, thereby making the sexual act more difficult to enjoy with an actual live partner, so too does the Magic Wand accustom a lady's lady bits to expect a level of stimulation that is nigh on impossible to achieve with regular body parts.  Basically, I've been screwed.  Figuratively and literally.

So please, I beg, heed my warning ladies.  Though you will want to spend all your time with your new toy - DON'T.  If you use it as your 'go-to' for too long - your body will begin to shut down.  Give the sceptre a rest - spend some hands-on time instead - your lady bits will thank you for it.  And even better, it won't take your partner 45 minutes to get you anywhere close to blast-off, which means that you'd still have time to watch another episode of something on Netflix.

Immaculate conception is back!

I woke up in back labour the other day.  I was a titch surprised being as I hadn't realized I was pregnant.  I was having slight discomfort through the night, in that half-awake/half-asleep state where you're pretty certain that you're dreaming it all.  But then as you really wake up, you realize that the 'something's not quite right' feeling that you'd be grappling with throughout the night?  Is actually back labour.  Even more baffling?  The fact that you haven't been pregnant in 8 years.

I might have gotten a little growly as I left sleep behind.  "What the FUCK is going on?  This is not freaking possible!!!"

David gave me a "Huh...?  Wha...?"  Then pat-patted me on my low back - whereupon I may have screamed a bit - then we were both pretty awake.

"I'm up!  I'm up!" says David.

"I'm having back labour!!"

His eyes got really wide.

"Did you forget to tell me something?"  He feels my flat stomach.

My stomach is also cramping.  I wince as I roll onto my side and leave the bed.  I walk at the pace of an elderly tortoise to get to the bathroom.  Then it all becomes clear.

"It's okay!"  I yell.  "I'm just bleeding to death!"

Turns out, as I make my way through peri-menopause, I'm experiencing ALL the symptoms associated with menstruating.  I have never had back cramps - not once - not even in labour with my two pregnancies, but on this particular morning, with this period I get all the bells and whistles.  I mean, what the hell, right?  Sure, throw me a curve.  Migraines with my cycle - nope!  Not until the last time around.  Bring it on you bastards!  If this is a menstrual throw-down I'm fighting back!!

I'm on these freaky pills to try to regulate my wonky cycle - my cycle is still only at the 3 week mark - but I am getting all these new symptoms - so that's a plus, right?  So I've decided that I'm abandoning the medical system now.  I've given it a shot for the last three months - my periods are actually WORSE than when I started.  So, no thanks.  I'll stop with the pills, deal with the inconsistency and then perhaps I won't wake up thinking that immaculate conception is back.  Before I went on the pills, I hadn't had my period in three months - I was okay with that.  This period renaissance?  Not so much.

Living breathing ad for sunscreen.

Edith Vonnegut's Sunblock

I can burn after 2.5 minutes of sun exposure. This is not hyperbole.  The sun in 2013 is different than when I was a kid.  Sure I used to burn if I went completely without sunblock, but it wasn't in 2.5 minutes, I can tell you that.  I lived in California for two years in the early 80s and came back a nice deep... beige.  I ain't a tanner.  I'm a gal who really needs to have the baby sunblock (SPF 50 or higher) slathered all over my person.

Last weekend we entered a sand castle competition in our small provincial town.  We liberally sprayed sunblock 50 all over each other.  David rubbed my back,  I rubbed his back and then Rissa's in turn.  We were good to go.  We gathered our sand gear and trundled down to the beach.  We had a plan.  We were going to sculpt The Mad Hatter's Beach Party .  We would have Alice, the Mad Hatter, the White Rabbit and the Dormouse all kicking back at the beach enjoying the rays.  If we had extra time (HAH!) we would add Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum and the Cheshire Cat, although everyone knows they were never at the original tea party, and if we ran into a true Alice in Wonderland aficionado we'd be laughed off the beach.

We were outclassed this year.  Turns out in the couple of years since we last competed, people upped their game.  Gone were the cheesy sand castles, there were sculptures of Easter Island and Chinese dragons and trains coming out of tunnels.  And although our sculpture turned out serviceably, compared to these "Family Category" prize winners we were a little half-assed.  People would walk by and had NO CLUE what we were sculpting.

"Is it a crocodile?"

NO, it's not a freaking crocodile!  Does a crocodile have long ears and carry a pocket watch?

The White Rabbit in Repose

The White Rabbit, Mad Hatter reclining upon beach ball
NO IT ISN'T A PUMPKIN!
Alice sunbathing

"Oh, look, they're having a Mexican Fiesta!" said one genius.  I swear to God.  Not siesta, but fiesta.  Not to mention that the Mad Hatter's hat looks nothing like a freaking sombrero.     

Ummmmm, helloooooo?  A sombrero has a wide brim?

Okay, I'll be the first to admit that Alice and the Dormouse were a little low profile, and the Dormouse did kind of look a little more like a cat... but there was one family who knew that it was the Dormouse and seemed horrified when we said that other passers-by thought it was a cat.  "Of course it's the Dormouse - a cat wasn't at the Tea Party.  This sculpture is brilliant!"  (That's the point when we praised all deities that we hadn't had the time to add the other Alice characters to the beach party.  It would have been terrible to disappoint our fans.)  After two soul-debilitating collapses on the base of the sculpture, we managed to get the White Rabbit and Mad Hatter back to a semblance of character completion and felt that we had at least finished the task at hand.

Dormouse and Alice

All in all, it was a grand day at the beach.  5 glorious hours in the beautifully balmy, sunny outdoors.  We were exhausted, but felt like we had truly accomplished, if not sand magnificence, then at the very least sand adequacy.  It wasn't until we got back home and got rid of all the sand and grit that we realized something.  We realized the true power of sunblock.  Turns out, David had forgotten to rub in the sunblock on a couple of spots on my back.  Just around the shoulder blades.  I was wondering why I was feeling a little achy and nauseated...  we soon discovered that where there hadn't been sunblock, I (Heather the fish-belly white),  had spent 5 hours in direct sunlight.  You can see the blistering beginning in the reddest patch.  I'm sending a letter to the sunblock company to commend them on saving the rest of my body from the same fate.

Naked in the mirror after 40

If I'm going to get screwed, I'd like to be in on it.  I'm not generally a passive participant.  I don't just lie back and think of the Queen.  If I'm getting well and truly screwed I want to enjoy it.  I want to scream operatically with release when it gets really good.

Naked in front of the mirror, on Saturday morning, I came to the stark realization that I had been royally screwed and I had no recollection of it ever having happened.  It was like I'd been given GHB when I was 12 and woke up when I was 45.

The first time a doctor told me I needed to lose weight was when I was 12.  I was 5 foot 4 inches and weighed a whopping 120 lbs.  Which is pretty much what you're supposed to weigh when you're 5' 4" tall.  A little less or a little more, but I was definitely in the general area.   I had boobs and hips and I'd already begun to hate them. If I didn't have THESE nobody would bother me.  At the age of 14, I was put on an extra cardio routine to meet my rec coaches' expectations of a gymnast's proper body type.  I wasn't even  a competitive gymnast.  I went to the gym twice a week, my big trick was a back walkover on the balance beam.

In my late teens and early 20s, I wouldn't ever rest my full weight on someone's lap, believing that my considerable heft would cut off their circulation.  I was too round, too fleshy.  I look back at pictures from my early 20s and I was neither.  I looked healthy.  Yeah, I had curves, (see boobs and hips from above), but I was by no means fat.    And yet, at that time, even without a full-on eating disorder, I didn't see my body as something healthy or attractive.

I didn't dip my toes into bulimia until my mid 20s.  I wasn't a card-carrying member - I was more the binge until I felt sick and then throw up to get rid of the nausea kind of bulimic.  Probably only happened about a dozen times, she types dismissively.  But it still happened.  Because I despaired when saw my armpit pudge or my inner thigh fat.

Many women spend much of their early lives (pretty much until they partner up) worried about how they look.  The mating dance is very important.  We buff, we preen, we diet - usually to attract a mate.  (Rarely, in my youth, was I the focus of my efforts.   I am wearing this to look good for me.  I am becoming healthy for me.  It takes a loooooong time before women do things for ourselves.  Some women never do it.  We tend to be so blind to our own wants and needs and even physical appearance that we never emerge from our personal cocoon and spread our wings for ourselves.) 

I hate to say it, but most women are all about snagging the mate.  We are, after all, still mammals, even if our 'higher minded' intellect would prefer not to recognize it. When I was younger, EVERY SINGLE SPRING my body wanted to meet the biological imperative of mating.  Really a lot.  A whole bunch.  And then when I was on the cusp of peri-menopause, I morphed into a 17 year old boy with a sex drive that would rival Casanova's.  Gotta use ALL these eggs up before they go bad!  

Even though society is shifting, that marital urgency is still present.  We'd love to think that we in North America have moved beyond that - but 'partnering up' is still a big freaking deal.   But what happens after you've snagged that mate?  What happens when most of your life has been spent wanting to be seen as attractive to potential partners, what happens after that?  Do you just wake up one morning and not worry about it?  For that first year after Rissa was born - I was not a sexual being.  I was revelling in motherhood.  I really didn't care.  I was too exhausted to care.  It's only now, when I look at photographic and video evidence of that year that I find myself completely horrified.  What had happened to me?  Why was I dressed in sweat pants and baggy shirts?  Did I have no clue that dressing in larger clothes to camouflage baby weight just doesn't work?  I hated myself for caring.  My psyche probably should have shifted - except it hadn't.  Because I'd been conditioned for almost 2 decades to worry about how I looked.  And apparently you can just let that shit go or at least I couldn't.

And even though now, at the age of 45, I'm probably the most fit that I've ever been, I still worry about the extra 20 lbs that I should lose to be at my 'healthy' weight.  I look at my boobs in the mirror - noticing that the left one is slightly lower than the right one - I do my 'mock hunchback' to make them even.  My thighs, my strong and flexible thighs with their extra stores of fat at the top, would probably ensure my survival if my plane went down in the Arctic, but I don't care about that.  I CARE that when I wear stockings, I have  freaking huge bulgy divots in my thighs.  Sadly, it appears that I haven't evolved. Society doesn't tell us how to evolve from sex object to madonna.  In the new millennium, youth is where it's at.  You're not allowed to look 40 when you're 40.  You're not allowed to have lines on your face - smile lines are crow's feet.  Now you have to be a MILF - you have to be vital and sexy and desirable.  WHY?!?  My Mom didn't have to be a MILF.  Until last weekend, she didn't even know what a MILF was.  Thing was, my Mom still got dressed up, made an effort, was still sexy without even really working at it.  Why did it seem so difficult for me to do the same thing?

33 years.  From the age of 12 until now.  I have spent 33 years worried about how I look.  I have focused on what is deemed attractive, to the detriment of health and emotional well being. I have been brain washed by the beauty, fashion and media industries... and by... me.   I think that it's time to snap out of it.  Don't you?