Read Online The Madwoman in the Volvo: My Year of Raging Hormones by Sandra Tsing Loh - Free Book Online Page B

bandage. She looks terrible.
    “What happened to your foot?” I ask.
    She puts her hand up. Her voice is toneless.
    “Remember how excited I was about the couponing?”
    I nod. It was the one activity I hadn’t gotten to.
    “So I read the USA Today article about it, and it turns out what really gets these couponers going is double couponing, triple couponing, and extreme couponing. It’s surprisingly technical. You can’t go on impulse. To rack up those savings, you have to be really disciplined.
    “So I open up my Sunday paper,” she says, “I pull out all those glossy coupon sheets I typically ignore, and I begin cutting them out. I see a coupon for Air Wick, regularly a dollar twenty-nine, today a dollar nineteen. There’s a five-cents-off coupon for a two-pack of rubber bands. Next up, six Irish Spring deodorants for five dollars. And instead of feeling excited, I’m starting to feel sort of sick. Rubber bands? Air Wick? I don’t even want this stuff. It’s depressing!
    “And look at this,” she says. “I clicked on some wrong savings link, and now I’m starting to get all these strange e-mails. Here’s an ad that was sent to me just this morning. It shows—look!—this silver-haired woman who is really really excited about . . . catheter delivery. Who are all these crazy beeyotches? And, oh my God, is this, in just a few short years, going to become me? The thing is that I do adore home delivery, and I can almost, almost imagine how delivery of a personal medical device like a catheter could really provoke some excitement! But maybe I’m just lashing out desperately and losing my mind! Maybe instead of really happy, all of America’s women including me are just really, really insane!
    “So I’m now looking around the house,” she continues, “and instead of happy I’m feeling kind of pathetic. My kids think my singing is terrible. My sculptures look like frozen poo. I can’t even cut coupons without a meltdown—I don’t have one-tenth of the coping power of one of those . . . those cat ladies who collect Hummel figurines. I used to mock my mother for doing that, and now instead of mocking her I am amazed by her because she led such a more limited life but seemed much more happy. What I would give to be made happy by a cat and some Hummel figurines—think of all the money I would save! Who wouldn’t prefer a cat and Hummel figurines over antidepressants? So yesterday when the kids were at school, I’m sitting in my bathrobe playing Solitaire like some addicted lab rat. Jesus the gardener appears suddenly, like this apparition, just outside my home-office window, with his panama hat, leaf-blowing. I am suddenly frightened that Jesus will look up and see his middle-aged First World lady ‘boss’ playing Solitaire while Jesus is actually working for a living.”
    “Sure,” I say. Inwardly I coin a phrase: “Soliterror”—the terror that another person is going to come up behind you and see those white cards floating on that telltale green background. Mr. X used to catch me playing Solitaire when he would water plants just outside my office, and he was as outraged as if I were streaming porn. (“You told me and the kids to leave you alone to write, and you’re sitting at your desk playing Solitaire!” “I’m just warming up to write!” I’d protest.)
    “So before Jesus’s hat can tilt up and he sees me,” Clare continues, “I try frantically to click over to another screen, away from the cards—but I click and click and click and it isn’t switching. Starting to panic, I try to reach behind the computer to actually yank out the power cord. Never mind saving the game, I think . . . it’s all lost! It’s all lost! Do you see? I actually find myself thinking the words: ‘It’s all lost.’ But alas, as I lunge forward I actually fall off my chair, right onto a now-broken plate—that had also flown off my desk—of a Starbucks cream-cheese-and-apple muffin. I am the first