Islay Girl

Ouch, the day after

OK, so yesterday kind of sucked. Even though I knew (and have suspected as much over the past few months) that the HH would eventually find someone naïve and demented enough to sleep with him (see: IslayGirl at 26), I had a hard time with it being so obviously presented.

“What?! You’re not pining away over me? What’s WRONG with you?”

It reminds me of seventh grade (no one part, just the entire school year) when you feel all “Don’t look at me! I’m hideous! Hideous!” and that scene in "When Harry Met Sally" when Sally finds out that Joe is getting married and Harry asks her if she’d take him back and she says, “NO.” *sniffle * “But why didn’t he want ME?”

The best thing about yesterday (aside from the Wee One coming home) was when I ran into the Thinking Fashionista at the Chance and she gave me a big hug and told me how much she missed me at work last week.

Ouch.

There are times when it’s very, very important to rise above. Times when you realize just how far you’ve come, and how beyond all that you are.

This is not one of those times.

So, today, I drop the Wee One off at the HH’s house – you remember the HH, he’s the parent who never seems to have time for parenting.

We get there, the Wee One bounds out of the car and the HH comes to the door, in shorts, a T-shirt, and bare feet (it’s supposed to be 85 today). We say hello, and as I’m hugging the Wee One good-bye, I see the HH’s feet.

The tops of his feet have what can only be described as RUG BURNS on them.

But I don’t realize this right away, and say, “Wow, what happened to your feet?!” thinking it was a hiking injury or new shoes mishap. He looks down and says, “Ermmm.”

(This is where it gets awkward.)

Thinking back to my college years and that scar on my back that just won’t go away, I suddenly realize what these must be. I look at him and half want to laugh, half want to cry.

Painful silence ensues.

IG “Well. I’d better get going.”

HH “Yeah.”

Now, if I were in a Better Place and was ready to Move On, For Real, this wouldn't bother me. I could laugh and point and say 'Whatevs. Poor woman. Doesn't know what she's in for." And there IS a part of me that does feel that way.

But there's another part of me that wants to separate him from his reproductive organs and make him go live on a deserted island. And, most importantly, never ever see the Wee One again.

But don't tell anyone I feel like that. Because when he drops her off today I'm going to blithely offer him some Neosporin.

John Cusack, where art thou?

I have a thing for John Cusack. I think he needs me in a visceral, deeply emotional way and just hasn't realized it yet.

Play six degrees of separation with me. Or something like that.

1. I lived in Evanston. He grew up in Evanston.

2. I think he's cute. He probably thinks he's cute.

3. I can't seem to make a relationship work. He can't seem to commit.

4. I was born in June. He was born in June.

5. And I've just realized he looks a lot like my ex-husband. Hmmm.

The HH:

John Cusack:

You'd think I would have noticed something like that before now, wouldn't you? Ah, the journey of self-discovery.

IslayGirl the Enchanter

Sorry, I haven't posting because I've been on a crusade to fix my finances. Which conjures an image something like this:

And what does that look like? That looks like me adding the same column of numbers over and over again and hoping for a result that doesn't end up in a negative number when compared with income.

Remind me whose idea it was to get a divorce and halve the family income?

Really, the divorce isn't the problem, the problem is that I used to have a job on the side. That job disappeared last summer. The income from that job exactly equals the amount I'm in debt. Someone forgot to mention to IslayGirl that when your income decreases, so should your OUTGO.

No, really, it's all good. As long as you like ramen. And off-brand mac and cheese. No, it's not that bad. I think it's figured out.

Suze Orman would be proud.

I thought I had a cold.

But no, I have this:

I never had allergies until I moved to Phoenix. Just when I try to find things to like about this Godforsaken town, THE CITRUS TREES FLOWER.

Excuse me, I'm going to go find a backscratcher to get at that tickle in my throat.

The customer is always right.

Customer service in Phoenix is not the best. My theory is that it’s a combination of Californication (Heeeyyyy, man, what’s your hurry?) and the nihilistic knowledge that No, There Is Nothing Else For Me. This Is My Life.

(Special aside: The preceding is merely a gross generalization for blog purposes and in no way is intended to demean anyone in the service industry who DIDN’T screw me over in the past week. I have done my time in the service industry and know how hard some of these people are working, for little recompense.)

OK, back to the story. I have three Scotties desperately in need of a good grooming. In Phoenix, it’s difficult to find someone who can groom a Scottie so they look like Scotties, not Schnauzers or Poodles or Labs.

So after several failed attempts, I got a recommendation from a friend of a friend who knows someone who, under cover of night, grooms Scottie dogs at a chi-chi pet boarding place in Paradise Valley.

This groomer extraordinaire is an independent contractor here. So, back in February, I call and talk to the appointment person about how it works, how much it costs, etc. I wasn’t ready to make an appointment, in part because the person I spoke to seemed a little confused and new to her job, and I figured I’d call back and get someone else.

Last week I finally get around to calling back. I get same Clueless Person, but she seems SLIGHTLY less clueless and asks all the right questions, booking us for an appointment with the Elusive Edwin, Scottie Groomer to the Stars.

This morning was a rough morning. I’m still on vacation, but I use that term loosely because I have a cold (thanks Wee One!) combined with allergies (thanks orange blossoms!) and I couldn’t get to sleep last night because of the streaming eyes, sneezing and the two cinder blocks that seemed to have taken up residence in my soft palate.

So. I get up, I get on the road with the dogs to the Apex of Canine Beauty, which is halfway across town, and it’s rush hour.

I get there without mishap. I go into this place, graciously letting the Nancy Reagan lookalike with the poodle go ahead of me. I give my name to the girl at the desk.

Reception person: Could you spell that?

IG: I S L A Y G I R L

RP: Hmmmm.

IG: *first inkling of disaster* Today is Wednesday, right?

RP: Yeeessss *looking at computer screen, tapping frantically*. We don’t have you in the system. Anywhere.

IG: Ok. I called last Wednesday, we discussed Elusive Edwin, SGTTS, talked about how you couldn’t fit us in before Easter, I said that was ok, I gave you ALL MY INFORMATION.

RP: (panicking) It’s OK, it’s OK, we’ll make it right! We’ll fix it!

IG: (Silently thinking CP seems like a fear biter)

Meanwhile, a guy at another computer starts looking for the reservation, with some unnecessary emphasis on the computer keys.

Surly Other Person: We have you (bang, bang) in the system for boarding (click bang bang) at the end of May for two dogs.

IG: I didn’t make a boarding appointment. I don’t board my dogs. And if I were going to board them, I’d board all three.

SOP: Well, I have that you called February 19 and I talked to you.

IG: I have called this place twice, and both times I spoke to the same woman. Both times about grooming. I never even inquired about boarding.

SOP: Well, that’s not what it says here. (With challenging level of surliness.)

IG: *Gives OP a look that would turn stone to magma*

(Pause, during which all that is heard is canine whining. And SOP doesn't turn to molten rock.)

SOP: So, you’re saying you don’t want the boarding appointment?

IG: No. Considering I didn’t make it, no.

Bitter! Table for one!

Pon de Replay

Apparently it’s Nostagia Week here at Islay Girl (Vanna, can I have a cassette tape and a cell phone the size of a brick!).

I was reading about REM performing at SXSW last week, and how this next album is the best they’ve done in a while. I started listening to some of their early/mid 90s stuff and all of a sudden it was 1995 and I had just separated from my first husband (yeah, I know. I’ve packed a lot in) and I was living in this wonderful old four-flat in Evanston, Ill.

I had no furniture because he had taken most of it (but I got the bed and the Kitchen Aid mixer, dammit!). I had no money because when we split up I was only working part-time (I thought we were on our way to parenthood, not family court).

In addition to the mixer I also got the stereo, and I would sit in my empty living room and listen to “Nightswimming” and just feel so light and peaceful and centered. Even with the craziness swirling around me, I was so relieved to be able to just listen to the damn stereo (he always complained that I had the volume too loud).

I love that music can ~do~ that: pull me out of myself and give me hope in the future and resolution about the past. It’s amazing, really, that three or four or five minutes of orchestration can change everything.

And when I get lost, as I inevitably do, hearing those songs pulls me back to what I thought was important in the first place.

Does it work that way for you? Unless, of course, you're moved by "Back That Thing Up." I can't help you there.

put DOWN the bunny

Can't.
Stop.
Eating.
Chocolate.

Red-brick colored spectacles

Phoenix in March and April is an amazing thing. It’s dry. It’s warm. The songbirds haven’t fled for the north and the bougainvillea are just coming back. I’m supposed to be cleaning the house in preparation for my mother’s arrival tomorrow, but the Lure of the Patio is too great to ignore. I pop on my bikini and my SPF 30 and blissfully zone out in the back garden (translation: postage-stamp sized patch of earth pocked with holes from dogs digging to China, with view of power lines) for an hour. Even with the non-resort view, THIS is why I like Phoenix.

After pretending I'm back at school (I went here for undergrad, and most Sundays were spent standing at the edge of the pool with an ignored textbook open in front of me, Hi-liter in one hand, dietCoke in the other) I go back to cleaning the house.

As I’m cleaning, I think more about school. School was good. At the time I knew it was good, I knew that I was absurdly lucky to have the opportunity to vomit on my LL Bean Blucher Mocs every Thursday evening (because we all know that in 1989, Thursday was the new Friday).

Our school was a teeny-tiny liberal arts university with the dubious honor of catering to the best and brightest of south Texas, and thanks to its pre-Title IX Division I tennis program, it also hosted the best and brightest who couldn’t get into Stanford.

When I arrived in Texas for the first time, I felt an overwhelming sense of culture shock – on the plane a middle-aged man in a Stetson called me Little Lady, told me he had a daughter my age and he wanted to escort me to my hotel. Even in my extreme naivete I knew that could only lead to bad things. Like mechanical bull riding.

But school turned out to be an oasis. Kind of how the Wee One walked into the first day at Very Expensive Day School, visibly relaxed and shot me a look that said, “See? That wasn’t so hard, was it? Can’t you see this is where I belong?” Little entitled twerp.

And Entitled Twerps are exactly what most of us were at school. Well, OK, I won’t talk for my peers, but I was (and they were too, but you didn’t hear it from me). We got angry about NOTHING. Social justice to us was when the cheating boyfriend got his comeuppance in the middle of Mabee Dining Hall.

And the thing is, I embraced it. I know that sounds shallow, and it probably is, but after a lifetime of moving every 18 months, and never fitting in, and never having a clique to keep others out of, I was part of the reviled, the entitled, the overeducated.

We had maids at school. Maids we complained about. Unlike Hermione taking on the cause of the house elves, we whined. They let our doors slam when they came in TO GET OUR TRASH EVERY DAY. They didn’t clean the bathrooms well enough (can you imagine cleaning up after a bunch of barely civilized teenagers?). Now I would get down on my knees and kiss the feet of the woman who would take on my bathrooms. Well, ok, maybe I wouldn’t kiss her feet, but you get the idea.

One of my fondest memories of school was at the end of the semester, when the money remaining in your food account wouldn’t roll over – you had to spend it, and most of us would employ the catering menu. I think this is where my addiction to diet Coke began, because I would order 3 cases to drink during finals. That and a serving tray of 100 rice krispie squares. Sure, you ~could~ have ordered healthy things like 100 finger sandwiches, but those would just go bad, wouldn’t they? But the rice krispies, no. Just as Styrofoam-like on the seventh day as they were on the first.

But those days are long gone. Fifteen years' worth of long gone, actually. Whenever the alumni notes come out, I call my best friend from college and laugh and point at the self-aggrandizing among us who mention their triple-doctorate, the thesis of which was defended during the back labor of naturally conceived quadruplets, but that time is still a wonderful gift of a touchstone for everything that came after.

Saturday Swim

This morning we were up at the crack of dawn. And by ‘we’ I mean the Wee One, who was up before I could focus my eyes properly. I vaguely remember hurling a pillow in the direction of the dogs and begging the Wee One to go watch cartoons in the other room.

Two and a half blissful hours later I awoke to the sound of my Treo reminding me (nay, imploring me) to take my meds. I leapt from the bed knowing that the imploring happens daily at 8.30, and at 9 a.m. on Saturday the Wee One engages in the ritual of Phoenix-area Upper Middle Class Spawn, swimming lessons at a Very Nice Family Swim School.

The social strata at the Saturday Swim Class is absolutely rigid. There are the Scottsdale Jews, who don’t talk to the Agnostic Super Successful Gen-Y’ers who don’t talk to the Traditional Working Yuppies. The ASSGYs are different from the TWYs in that they achieved success and children much younger. My guess is that the TWYs spent their 20s reminding themselves that they could be whatever they wanted, while the ASSGYs just went out and did it all before the ice caps melted and we all developed gills. The SJ’s have seen it all (having grown up in The City) and really don’t have time for anyone else’s social conventions, they’re too busy with internecine judging. I head one SJ this morning talking about doing shots of Jose Cuervo at Sanctuary with the rabbis from his synagogue while simultaneously slamming less alcoholic members.

The ASSGYs are young and baseball-capped. The moms are impossibly dewy despite their four children, one of whom who seems small enough to have been born in the car this morning, and the dads are appealingly scruffy, not having shaved but somehow still being well-groomed. They all look as though they have recently had sex. The TWYs are older and tired and probably have almost as much equity in their houses as the ASSGYs. They have not recently had sex.

We arrive, barely in time, and I sink into a chair. I nod to a TWY mom from the Wee One’s old Montessori school, I wave to a dad from the current Expensive Day School. Socializing complete, I turn to the view.

The pool is separated from the waiting area by a 14-foot floor to ceiling glass wall, and all the parents and grandparents (I forgot to mention the grandparents. A lot of the SJs and the WHYs seem to bring along grandparents for the Weekly Viewing of Progeny) sit obediently in the white resin patio chairs, alternately waving to the kids on the other side of the wall or talking on their cell phones.

It’s almost like a zoo. Or the meat case at Whole Foods.

‘Hey! Guess where I am! Very Nice Family Swim School! You wouldn’t believe the kids they’ve got on display today! There are a couple very rosy 3-year-olds you might like … Or how about some misbehaving overindulged toddlers? The kid who always pees in the pool is on special.’