earth. Most of these people have the IQ of a pork chop. They don’t want to be enlightened. Not really. Oh, they might
say
they want that, to sound cool and all, but what they really want is to be entertained. Even the smart ones. For God’s sake, my husband loved, and I mean
loved
,
Jackass 3D
and he went to Harvard!”
A tentative
tap-tap-tap
sounds at the bathroom door, followed by an even more tentative “Honey?” My husband. He did
not
go to Harvard. Although he, too, loved
Jackass 3D
.
“What?” I retort, glancing at my watch. I note with dismay that I have managed to get only three minutes and twenty-seven seconds of alone time before the cursed knock.
“I know you’re probably in the middle of the mother of all poops.” I can detect a note of derision in his voice, but he is doing his best to mask it, knows he ought to err on the side of not pissing me off any further. “Want me to take the kids to school?”
A conciliatory gesture. No dice, pal.
“Yup,” I reply. Jonah hates it when I answer him with curt, one-syllable replies. Therefore, I do it whenever I know that he knows that I am displeased with him.
“Are you going to be okay about tonight?” he asks. He is making a concerted effort to pretend to care about my squashed plans.
“Yup.” In truth I have no idea what I am going to do about book club, but I realize that it’s not a crisis on the same level as, say, the polar ice caps melting.
“You sure?”
“Sure,” I snap, rolling my eyes at him through the closed door.
He sighs. I can’t hear the actual sigh, but I know Jonah. He always sighs. Another ten seconds go by. I count them down like Houston approaching liftoff. Just as I think,
Blast-off
, he says, “Okay, then. Have a good day.”
“Fuck you.” I whisper it so that he can’t hear me. “Bye,” I say, aloud, then return my attention to the magazine.
By the time I have finished reading all of the fine print of the competition, I am fairly certain that my house is empty. I am also fairly certain that there is no way in hell I can ever enter this blog contest. I mean, seriously. A blog post a day for fourteen days? That’s
fourteen
ideas, and I can’t even come up with
one
. And anyway, the deadline for the first blog post is today.
I know Jill will be disappointed, but she’ll just have to get over it. As our Grandma Phyllis used to say, you cannot suck water from a stone.
I exit the bathroom, toss the magazine in the trash can, and wander down to the kitchen to find that Jonah has left me about a third of a cup of brown sludge in the bottom of the coffee carafe. I turn off the machine, let Sally out the back door, and head for the fridge. Then I pull out a low-fat raspberry yogurt that is about to reach its drop-dead date and head for the little alcove off the kitchen, where I boot up my computer. I know I have to call Jill and tell her I can’t attend book club tonight because my husband is a fink, but I also know that she will go ballistic, so I put off making the call by going through my e-mails. As usual, I have a ton of spam, and several “special offers” from companies that I subscribed to in moments of weakness but from which I will never buy anything. I delete them all and am left with two PTA notifications, a short e-mail from my father that says “Hey girl”and nothing else, and a long e-mail from my sister, Lisa. She lives in Riverside and is conflicted about whether to have a tummy tuck and a boob lift, which her husband has offered to pay for. Lisa thinks that surgery is a cop-out and possibly a sin, but at a particular age, like, say, mine, or my sister’s, who is eleven months younger than I am, a woman should take all the help she can get. In my opinion,
not
taking help is the sin. Gravity is a bitch. Metabolism slows to the pace of a snail on downers, and the imbalance of hormones causes women’s bellies to bloat to barrel proportions. And once you pass a certain point, there is no going
say
they want that, to sound cool and all, but what they really want is to be entertained. Even the smart ones. For God’s sake, my husband loved, and I mean
loved
,
Jackass 3D
and he went to Harvard!”
A tentative
tap-tap-tap
sounds at the bathroom door, followed by an even more tentative “Honey?” My husband. He did
not
go to Harvard. Although he, too, loved
Jackass 3D
.
“What?” I retort, glancing at my watch. I note with dismay that I have managed to get only three minutes and twenty-seven seconds of alone time before the cursed knock.
“I know you’re probably in the middle of the mother of all poops.” I can detect a note of derision in his voice, but he is doing his best to mask it, knows he ought to err on the side of not pissing me off any further. “Want me to take the kids to school?”
A conciliatory gesture. No dice, pal.
“Yup,” I reply. Jonah hates it when I answer him with curt, one-syllable replies. Therefore, I do it whenever I know that he knows that I am displeased with him.
“Are you going to be okay about tonight?” he asks. He is making a concerted effort to pretend to care about my squashed plans.
“Yup.” In truth I have no idea what I am going to do about book club, but I realize that it’s not a crisis on the same level as, say, the polar ice caps melting.
“You sure?”
“Sure,” I snap, rolling my eyes at him through the closed door.
He sighs. I can’t hear the actual sigh, but I know Jonah. He always sighs. Another ten seconds go by. I count them down like Houston approaching liftoff. Just as I think,
Blast-off
, he says, “Okay, then. Have a good day.”
“Fuck you.” I whisper it so that he can’t hear me. “Bye,” I say, aloud, then return my attention to the magazine.
By the time I have finished reading all of the fine print of the competition, I am fairly certain that my house is empty. I am also fairly certain that there is no way in hell I can ever enter this blog contest. I mean, seriously. A blog post a day for fourteen days? That’s
fourteen
ideas, and I can’t even come up with
one
. And anyway, the deadline for the first blog post is today.
I know Jill will be disappointed, but she’ll just have to get over it. As our Grandma Phyllis used to say, you cannot suck water from a stone.
I exit the bathroom, toss the magazine in the trash can, and wander down to the kitchen to find that Jonah has left me about a third of a cup of brown sludge in the bottom of the coffee carafe. I turn off the machine, let Sally out the back door, and head for the fridge. Then I pull out a low-fat raspberry yogurt that is about to reach its drop-dead date and head for the little alcove off the kitchen, where I boot up my computer. I know I have to call Jill and tell her I can’t attend book club tonight because my husband is a fink, but I also know that she will go ballistic, so I put off making the call by going through my e-mails. As usual, I have a ton of spam, and several “special offers” from companies that I subscribed to in moments of weakness but from which I will never buy anything. I delete them all and am left with two PTA notifications, a short e-mail from my father that says “Hey girl”and nothing else, and a long e-mail from my sister, Lisa. She lives in Riverside and is conflicted about whether to have a tummy tuck and a boob lift, which her husband has offered to pay for. Lisa thinks that surgery is a cop-out and possibly a sin, but at a particular age, like, say, mine, or my sister’s, who is eleven months younger than I am, a woman should take all the help she can get. In my opinion,
not
taking help is the sin. Gravity is a bitch. Metabolism slows to the pace of a snail on downers, and the imbalance of hormones causes women’s bellies to bloat to barrel proportions. And once you pass a certain point, there is no going
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