5harknado

After a disappointing fourth chapter, can Sharknado 5: Global Swarming redeem the franchise? Let’s find out!

(My brother and I used to walk past this dingy tobacco storefront “Smoke Shop” in Manhattan, but the sign had pipes instead of esses. Every time, one of us would point and say, “Pipe-moke pipe-hop.” This movie is Five-harknado, and I shan’t call it anything else.) 

We open with Nova–she who, at the end of the last film, rode in(?)… on(?) the Eiffel Tower to Niagara Falls. Dressed in biker gang leather, she rappels into a cave, folds her map a la Romancing the Stone to find the spot she’s looking for, and analyzes a bunch of shark hieroglyphs on the walls. She radios her colleagues. What do you need?, they ask. “Fin Shepherd.”

Well, he’s in London with his wife April and young son Gill. (Tara Reid’s eyeliner is soooo thick and her lips are soooo pink and her hair is soooo blond and she is on soooo many beta blockers.) They’re meeting with Chris Katan, a British liaison to NATO? Or something? Nonetheless, Fin helicopters to Stonehenge to meet Nova. She points at the cave art. “Sharknados have happened before,” she says. Ah, this fits the right-wing swing these films have taken. It’s not climate change causing our problems; this is all within the arc of geologic history.

Back in London, Chris Katan tips the top hat of a Winston Churchill bust to reveal a button that opens a doorway to MI6. There, Clay Aiken, doing a surprisingly great British accent, shows off pen-bombs and whatnot, just like Q in the James Bond universe. He gives these technologies to April and Gill, who as far as I remember do not use any of them. Chekhov’s pen-bomb, people!!

In the cave underneath Stonehenge, Nova and Fin do some Indiana Jones shit with boobytraps and counterweights, and the cave floods really fast but also slow enough for them to run out and climb ropes up the cliff. They jump into the helicopter as Stonehenge gets blown to smithereens by a storm with a purple laser in the middle! It sucks the chopper up–oh no!

The UK’s version of Hoda Kotb reports solemnly on the news, and her lower teeth are all misaligned, and I love real-people teeth. Everybody quit with the fucking veneers already. 

April, you’ll remember, is part robot so she catches Fin’s helicopter, which has been spitted out… in London! The purple laser storm? It’s a portal! Keep that in your back pocket.

Chris Katan’s leg gets eaten, and Nova drives a double-decker bus with Bret Michaels rocking out on the front, before the London Eye gets blown off its axle. April uses her rocket shoes to fly up and stop it from hitting something I can’t remember. Fin jumps on a shark and rides it bucking-bronco style into Buckingham Palace where he meets Queen Charo, and cue the opening credits! This gets me every time! I said to the guys, “But we’ve been here for hours!”

Gill gets sucked up into a purple laser storm, but his parents are unruffled. “We’ll get him back,” Fin says. You might think him overly optimistic, but remember: His dad, David Hasselhoff, was rescued after chilling on the moon by himself for a couple weeks, and April gave birth inside a shark, so Fin has reason to keep his chin up.

Then Geraldo Rivera pilots a dirigible, and I’d like to restate my previous claim that these movies were written using Mad Libs.

Robo-April spins with a ski above her head to make a tornado to fight the sharknado.

They dogsled into it and–hey look, Gill’s flying around up there!, but they can’t catch him before the storm dumps them in the ocean in Australia (portal, remember?). Tony Hawk skateboards on top of the Sydney Opera House…

Me: “I missed a plot point.”

Dave: “Plot?”

Olivia Newton John, in what can only be described as a mixed-mesh outfit and violent purple lipstick, fixes April by removing and replacing the entire lower half of her body. She’s like an unhoused hermit crab there on the table for a sec. Not only does ONJ patch her up–she gives her a full 1980s makeover that would have blown my 12-year-old mind: hot pink streaked Shih Tzu hair, tight black pants, gloves, gingham(!) bustier(!), and hot pink fur jacket. She looks, and I cannot state this strongly enough, ridiculous.

Me: “Guys, I need help with an analogy. [Blank] have more sexual chemistry than Ian Zering and Tara Reid.”

Matt: “Two cotton balls fucking. I heard that on a podcast.”

Dave: “Me and my boyfriend pillow.”

The lovebirds get sucked into the portal again and end up in Brazil, and Tara Reid’s pants are saggy in the crotch because she’s so skinny. Tiffany New York Pollard tells them in an Eastern European accent–maybe she’s an Estonian expat living in Rio, what do you know–that they can actually create sharknados if they have a relic that looks like a giant blue porkchop, which she does, but it gets stolen by Greg Louganis while they’re looking the other way. They chase him but get rebounded out of Christ the Redeemer’s hand into the portal, which plonks them out at the Colosseum. Despite making it to the county spelling bee in 7th grade, that is one of those words I have to look up every time–how many Ls? One S? Two? Is there really not an ‘i’ anywhere in the word? In my notes, I wrote colliseeeyum. 

They meet Pope Fabio. Fin says, “Forgive me, Father, for I am Fin,” and the Couch o’ Queers has to pause the movie to catch its breath. 

Nova dies dramatically, and that’s too bad because she was literally the only good actor in the whole production and her tits were gorgeous.

Fin and April’s adult son gets killed in Kansas, and the couple try to cry at each other for a minute before moving on. 

They sharknado-portal to Egypt. (Guys, would you believe I’m leaving out so much because I am. I’m skipping Japan entirely, OK?) Turns out the relic can be used as a button to open a crypt that contains a sharknado-controlling machine, but I don’t know, there’s a tsunami and an explosion, and April gets blowed-up. Fin finds and cradles her head, and the eyes open, ugh.

Cut to a devastated world. Fin, carrying a bindle, seeks someone… anyone. A vehicle pulls up; Dolph Lundgren emerges. “Dad!” he says to Fin. Get this: Gill survived the purple laser storm and made the Egyptian sharknado-controlling machine into a time machine. Now he’s back from the future.

Was it good? Of course not! Was it better than 4? 100%.

Sharknado 4

Matt and I were both worried about Sharknado: the 4th Awakens! The third installment had been so delightful that we wondered how the producers might top it. Was our worry justified? Read to find out!

It opens with a Star Wars-esque blanket of text spooling off into the night sky telling us it’s been five years since the last sharknado. Tech company Astro-X, led by Silicon Valley maverick Aston Reynolds, has used their revolutionary technology to prevent new storms.

Ngl, my notes are fuzzy on this one. The next thing I wrote was literally: It’s tricep

I think I was referring to Ian Zering’s muscles as he chops wood in Kansas, where he lives with his mom and the son that got pushed out of a very vulvic slash in a dead shark by Tara Reid at the end of the last movie before she got chomped. Fin (IZ) is a farmer now I guess?

Remember how Fin’s dad (David Hasselhoff) sacrificed himself in space for his son and the world? Turns out he was chilling on the moon and got rescued!

Now we meet Aston Reynolds, the Elon Musk stand-in, who has used some of his ill-gotten gains to build Shark World Hotel, a hotel in Las Vegas with a giant pool full of sharks. What could go wrong?

Fin goes to Las Vegas–I remember not why–with his Very Sexy cousin Gemini, and his cab driver is Carrot Top, complete with giant novelty glasses and a giant novelty flask. Stay with me here: Did you know there are two different schools of clown? There’s classic circus clown, like Barnum & Bailey, twenty clowns in a VW Beetle-type stuff. And then there’s European clown, which is a true theatre art that requires deep study and vulnerability. Twenty years ago, I saw a show in New York called Slava’s Snow Show, and it was one of the most profound theatre experiences I’ve ever had. All that to say, I’m loath to call someone a clown in a derogatory fashion, but trust me when I say Carrot Top fully transitioned from comedian to clown, and I mean that in the most derogatory fashion. 

Tom Jones shows up, and boy has he had some work done. If you stood him in Madame Tussaud’s, he’d pass.

Fin and Gemini are being very sexy to each other, and it would be hot except they’re cousins, so I feel uncomfortable, although that might be your porn search term, and I don’t want to kink-shame you.

Fin’s grown son calls his dad from a plane. He’s about to get married, and then the lovebirds will skydive to the ground, as one does. Only problem? A storm forms and sucks up all the sharks from the hotel! They swirl in the air and fall to the ground, where a bunch of Chippendales dancers punch, kick, and pelvic thrust them. 

Fin goes to the top of the hotel, does not catch his parachuting son, but does catch his new daughter-in-law. They are in a car(?) at the top of the building(?), and they drive down a spiral-shaped sign(?) being carried on the storm(?) to the ground(?). They jump into a ship(?) in the moat around the building(?) and swordfight with sharks(?). I have concerns for any people who dropped acid before watching this movie. Like, have they healed?

AND THE OPENING CREDITS ROLL. What the actual fuck.

There’s somebody very skinny running in a black hoodie–you can’t see their face–and it turns out to be Tara Reid! She was rescued by her scientist dad, Gary Busey, and is now a cyborg. Gary Busey had told Tara Reid her whole family was dead and vice-versa.

TR: “You lied to me!”

GB: “You weren’t ready!”

For what, Gary.

Gary. For what.

Aston Reynolds begs Fin to save the day because his technology obviously no longer works, so Fin visits a country store that just has CHAINSAWS in big letters across the front. He also has isotopes so that’s good. You need isotopes to stop the -nados, and there are so many kinds! Oilnado, firenado, icenado, cownado. 

You guys, so much happens. My notes are just a list like:

  • David H sucked into storm in antique car
  • Tara Reid catches car above head
  • Paul Shaffer busking
  • House falls on Stacey Dash (In addition to a bunch of Star Wars references, there are a ton of very clunky allusions to The Wizard of Oz.)

There’s like 92 more items just like that I’m gonna skip. 

Just know, the movie ends at Niagara Falls, and literally every character gets eaten, and there was a moment when I shouted, “Turducken! Sharksharken! Sharkwhalen!” Do with that what you will. 

Given that, in this franchise, getting eaten by a shark is less a tragedy and more a momentary inconvenience, pretty much everybody’s saved, and we’re all set for movie #5.

So, yeah, it obviously wasn’t good, and it wasn’t bad in the right way. But this little tradition means I get to leave my kids with a babysitter on a Saturday afternoon and scream at a TV with my three favorite gays, so I left with nothing but delight in my heart.

Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!

Geoff was under the weather (pun intended), so Dave, Matt, and I were on our own for Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! 

Fin sprints through DC trying to… save someone? Escape? Make it to BOGO sushi? No, he’s gonna be late to a ceremony at the White House honoring him for all his shark-related heroism.

Cut to Florida–Tara Reid is pregnant! And walking with her mom, Bo Derek, who looks bored.

Fin not only makes it to the ceremony in time, but he finds?/buys?/borrows? a tux for the occasion. President Mark Cuban knights him or something–I can’t concentrate because the vice president is ANN FUCKING COULTER. 

The mayor of New York also inducts him into the Order of the Golden Chainsaw, which feels a bit of a letdown after the president’s thing. 

Despite the festive air, Fin can feel it: DC is not safe. Moments later, sharks precipitate–on the streets, into the mall pond. One lands like a baby in Abraham Lincoln’s lap. 

Back in the White House, Mark McGrath and ANN FUCKING COULTER remove portrait paintings from the walls and surf down sharky stairwells on them. Because.

The president and Fin shoot sharks with all manner of firearm. The president tosses a grenade into the mouth of an incoming shark.

Matt: “Ceviche.” 

They jump out a second-story window and suffer no ill-effects just before the Washington Monument demolishes the White House! This is very exciting.

Then Finn, the president, ANN FUCKING COULTER, and somebody else recreate the Iwojima photo but instead of raising the flag they impale a shark. 

Me: “Fish kebab.” (Actually, I didn’t say that–I’m just jealous of Matt’s ceviche joke.)

On the phone, Tara Reid urges Fin to hurry up and get to Florida before she gives birth, which feels doable because it’s like a two-day road trip and she looks like she’s got like four months of gestating left to do, but he hitchhikes the hell outta there.

Some reporter is interviewing Michelle Bachman about the increase in sharknados, and Dave was like, “Remember when we thought she and Sarah Palin were bad?” And we all took a moment to comfort our sweet-summer-inner-children. 

Fin arrives in a ghost town. It’s too foggy to see. Suddenly, people run past–the budget allowed for at least nine extras on this day of shooting! You’ll never guess what they’re running from. It’s sharks! Fortunately, who shows up but a hot ninja-kicking chick with absolutely gorgeous tits and also Frankie Muniz. They take Fin into their vehicle, which is an armored-car-slash-lab with a dissected shark corpse that looks like it was made from Legos. I think they discuss science?, but Frankie Muniz is a significantly better actor than anyone else in this production, and tbh, it’s distracting. 

In Florida, a shark drops in the hotel pool. Tara Reid revs her chainsaw hand and then doesn’t use it for anything at all. Come on, Tara–didn’t you learn about Chekhov’s chainsaw hand in English I? Then Tara and Bo[red] Derek sit at the hotel bar and have a drink. The choices these characters make are just wild.

Fin and Hot Tits are going to fly an old army plane to Florida, while Frankie Muniz stays back to…I’m not sure. Frankie says goodbye by leaning his head lovingly on Fin’s pecs for longer than you would imagine.

Matt: “I WOULD.”

Me: “SUBSCRIBE.”

Fin and Hot Tits crash the plane into a river and COME OUT ALMOST NAKED??? THIS IS VERY SEXY.

Fin calls his dad, who is David Hasselhoff, and he is acting, and he is an astronaut, naturally. He and Fin are going to fly a space shuttle into the storm and use a laser? To blow it up? Fin nods at himself in the mirror. You know what, we should all nod at ourselves in the mirror more often. Then he walks through steam in slow motion in his astronaut suit. We should also do that.  

Tara Reid–pregnant–catches up to her non-pregnant husband and accidentally ends up in a (maternity?) space suit in the space shuttle as it’s taking off, as one does. The spaceship looks like it was made from dollar-store craft supplies. Like, I saw an improv show a month ago where the improvisers were in a “space shuttle” made of four office chairs, and it was more realistic.

Anthony Weiner is in the control room. Every sequel gets its own sex pest! 

David Hasselhoff pulls an Armageddon-Bruce-Willis and says he’s going to sacrifice himself to fulfill the plan because he wants to be Fin’s hero, and this whole couchful of queers is legitimately tearing up about it. 

Tara goes into labor and gets eaten by a spaceshark. Fin jumps inside another one, and both sharks fall earthward and get fricasseed upon reentry. Fin cuts through the side of the one who swallowed Tara and out pops HIS BABY. Tara climbs out, and three is the magic number. 

What an oeuvre! The writer, producer, and director were definitely on cocaine for the entire process, and I approve. 

Sharknado 2

Back when I was fun, I used to go to my friend Matt’s house, we’d watch a terrible movie together, and he and I would individually post our recap-reviews online. But then I had kids so I was no longer fun. Cut to TEN YEARS LATER, and Matt tells me he still hasn’t watched the rest of the Sharknado series because we watched the first one together and he was saving them for me. <sob>

Well! I’ll tell you what I did–I hired a goddamn babysitter and went to watch Sharknado 2 with him and Geoff and Dave.

We open on an image of a plane’s tail cutting through clouds… like a SHARK FIN cutting through WATER. Subtle as monkey pox. I love it.

Only a minute in and we have our first cameo–Kelly Osborne as the flight attendant. She is star struck. There in coach is Finn (Ian Zering), the absolute legend from the LA sharknado, doing a bang-up job of eyebrow acting. Could he sign her copy of his memoir? He passes it off to Tara Reid, who ghost wrote it. Tara Reid is so so skinny. Like her eyeliner looks blousy on her.

Finn looks out the window and hallucinates a shark flying through the air, but no, it must be a PTSD flashback, but NO, IT’S REALLY A SHARK. Cut to the cockpit, where the captain is the dude with the drinking problem from Airplane! Yes! The producers leaned in hard, and I’m loving it. Uh-oh, turbulence. The captain has seen worse.

A shark hits the wing! Finn freaks out and is subdued by an air marshall. Dozens of sharks swirl in the clouds! The CGI looks like it was done with oil pastels. The pilots get sucked out the windshield! Oh no, who will fly the plane! Finn, that’s who, and he’s comin in hot. Tara Reid is nearly sucked out of the plane, hanging on by a thread, but the air marshall hands her his gun. So smart! She shoots sharks, but one swims(?) up and bites off her shootin hand. Finn cachunks the plane onto the runway.

Finn’s sister and family are in the Big Apple. Mark McGrath is the dad. He and the son head off to a baseball game, while the girls do the girliest thing of all–visit the Statue of Liberty.

Finn details the incoming maelstrom to a crowd on a Manhattan street including Andy Dick in a Spirit Halloween-level cop costume. Only then, after this speech which seems like it could’ve been delayed a bit, he accompanies his wife to the emergency department and delivers her into the capable hands of surgeon Billy Ray Cyrus. This movie is a mad lib. Before she heads into the OR, Finn admonishes his wife not to lend a hand so literally next time. My god. 

Finn’s sister and niece are on the ferry. The girl holds up a pamphlet, which is entirely blank on the back. The props department is staffed entirely with high school sophomores.

The mom’s sorority sisters (I may be making that up) tell her about the plane crash, and they look out to see a synchronized swim team of sharks in the Hudson River! 

Finn has to go to the ballpark to rescue his brother-in-law and nephew so he hails a taxi with Judd Hirsch at the helm. Cut to Richard Kind waxing nostalgic about his time playing baseball at that stadium. Alas, he never hit a homer.

At that point, my friend Geoff said, “What’s this movie about?” and all the bones in my body dissolved.

Tara Reid changes into all black, except for her gauzy nub, and escapes from the hospital to go find Finn. She is so steady on her feet after general anesthesia–OK, queen!

At the ballpark, Vivica A. Fox kisses Finn, but he says “it’s complicated” between him and Tara Reid. I’ll say! Everything about this movie is complicated!

It is raining on one side of the stadium and a beach day on the other. Finn convinces his crew to get out of there. They pilfer bats from the souvenir shop, and VAF breaks hers over her knee! Badass but also strategically questionable! 

Sharks rain down, and Richard Kind sends one into the stands–the home run he’d always dreamed about.

The whole stadium runs out, but somehow only a few dozen of them end up in the subway? That’s probably good though because THERE ARE CROCS IN THE FLOODED TRAIN LINES. They eat people, including Perez Hilton, but unfortunately not Jared from Subway, who is down there just sitting on a bench. Ugh, it’s like when Donald Trump shows up in Home Alone 2.

Finn fights a shark with his commemorative bat and almost dies but then STABS the shark with the bat and comes out of the scuffle with a baby shark (do do do doot do do) attached to his hip. “I need a chainsaw,” he says. “I need a smoke alarm and other hardware items to make a bomb and throw it at the storm.” (Paraphrased.)

The girl group makes it back to Manhattan, but the daughter has a cramp from all the running! No worries, a businessman offers to take them to his office, but then, wouldn’t you know it, he gets flattened by the rolling head of the Statue of Liberty, which just keeps rolling down the avenue like the boulder in Indiana Jones.

On the news, Al Roker corrects Matt Lauer–it’s a sharknado, not a sharkstorm. How many sex pests have cameos in this film? 

Finn’s group ends up at a pizza shop owned by Biz Markie and then gets swords n’ whatnot at a medieval weapons store. Everyone knows that Manhattan is lousy with medieval weapons stores. 

Tara Reid finds a little kid crying in the hospital and says, “Don’t worry, I’m gonna save you,” and then immediately hands her off to a stranger. Tara.

The streets are flooded, so Finn’s crew swing across from the roof of their cab to… the roof of another car? What’s the endgame here? Vivica kisses the teenage nephew in a way that makes me uncomfortable, and the cabbie gets eaten. Am I high? Because I feel like I’m high.

VAF and Finn take a slow awkward elevator ride to the top of a skyscraper where she pulls out a slingshot and he reveals a whole bunch of… bombs? They look store-bought, but when did that happen. They sling a bomb into the storm. It doesn’t work. They duct tape two together. No dice. Finn: “Even the sharks are tougher in New York.” Quadruple bomb! 

Me: “Was Vivica A. Fox’s thong just showing?”

Dave: “You mean her whale tail?”

Finn is back with Mark McGrath and crew, and they’re stuck in a stairwell with sharks at the bottom. Mark looks at Finn and says, “Remember how we used to do?” At which point, my friends and I have no choice but to make jokes about mutual masturbation. But no, they run down, grab the fire ax, and I guess fight the sharks. I’m losing the plot. 

Now there’s discussion of the freon tanks on the top of the Empire State Building. Tara Reid sees VAF and says to Finn, “That’s your ex, right? I can tell she still likes you.” And the mayor gives Finn a chainsaw. It’s like all the footage spilled on the floor and the editors picked it up and scotch-taped scenes together. 

Finn stands on a truck, does a backbend worthy of an 80s hair band rock video and slices a flaming shark in half.

I guess they’re on the top of the Empire State Building now. Tara Reid shlunks a circular saw on her stump and uses her saw-hand to fuck up some sharks. VAF wires the freeon tanks, but the wire is not long enough–she has to hold it together, she’s gonna sacrifice herself! Zzzzzzz! She’s thrown into the air and gobbled by a shark.

But their plan–whatever it was–worked. Sharks are falling out of the sky, and New Yorkers on the street are using the farm tools everyone has for their farms to kill the sharks. 

Tara Reid recognizes the shark that lands next to them–it’s the metaphorical croc to her Captain Hook! Finn reaches inside and pulls TR’s arm out of its mouth and shoots sharks with the gun. Then he pulls the engagement ring off the severed hand and proposes to Tara Reid. That is so romantic except aren’t they already married?

The end.

Me: “Can we do this again?”

Geoff: “Yeah! It’s gonna be hard to wait ten years.”

The Point

Arlo starts asking to go home immediately. “Umm?” he says.

“No, silly, we just got here,” I say. My sister was almost done with the shrimp tacos. I know Arlo won’t eat them, but she always has something in the fridge that he likes. “You want a hot dog?” I ask him.

“Umm,” he says.

“Not yet, buddy,” I say. “We’ll go home in a little bit.”

“Umm,” he says.

An hour later, the rest of us have eaten, but he hasn’t, and he starts to gag. I whisk him to the bathroom. Because of his Nissen, he can’t throw up, but what’s in must come out, so I pull down his pants and sit him on the potty. 

“You feel better?” I say, after he fills it up. 

“Yah,” he says with a giggle. 

“Good,” I say.

“Cake?” he says.

It’s hard to tell sometimes if he’s sick or if he’s just cleaning himself out after a bout of constipation. I don’t always know exactly how much Miralax he’s had; sometimes he pours his water in the dogs’ bowl. 

But he quits asking to go home and eats a piece of lemon cake. That night, he has a pretty gnarly diaper, but he’s in good spirits, so OK.

Approximately twenty-four hours after Arlo’s request to go umm, sharp pains shoot through my belly, short ones at first, growing into a meteor shower of pain in my midsection. I, alas, have no Nissen, and suffer the resulting indignity. The boys more or less put themselves to bed while I lie on the bathroom floor, telling myself aloud, “It’ll pass… It’ll be OK…”

The following morning, I’m not at 100%, but the pain is gone, and I’m even able to eat a little bit. I guess Arlo and I had the world’s shortest stomach virus.

That afternoon, I pull up in car line. Patrick walks over clutching his belly. “My stomach hurts,” he says. 

I remember barfing at least once a year growing up, but Patrick’s almost 9 and I can think of only two instances in his life, both many years ago. That’s why, despite Arlo’s and my woes, all of us are startled an hour later when Patrick projectile-vomits all over himself, me, the couch, the floor, and the bathroom. “It came out my nnnnooooose,” he wails.

But, again, once I Lysol-wipe all the surfaces and he showers, he is basically no worse for wear. I’ll keep him home the next day, of course, but I guess we’re all on the upswing. Thank god. Between the tree falling on my house during a storm a couple weeks prior, and a fucking German roach infestation in my kitchen–disgusting!–I’m feeling sorry for myself. I deserve a break, I pout.

Except an hour later, my nausea returns. I have very little in my stomach, so once that’s out, it’s water and bile. Then just bile. As each wave rips through me, I retch so hard I wonder if my eyes will rupture. The barfing ends at 1:30am, but I don’t sleep–every muscle in my body feels like a blue bruise. 

I had imagined watching movies and strolling around the block with the boys, but the next day, I am supine. When I simply must get up, I moan a little moan with every step. Patrick plays video games for ten hours. I don’t even know what Arlo does. Surely, tomorrow will be better.

At 4:00am, I write lesson plans and send them to my administration and text my sister and brother-in-law: Any way one of you can take the boys to school?

I spend another day unable to do anything but intermittently shuffle, moaning, from my bed to the bathroom, but by late afternoon, I’ve kept down eight crackers and two Tylenol, and I feel well enough to pick up the dudes. 

My vice principal texts to ask if I need a sub for the next day. “Nah,” I tell her.

At 3:00am, I awake with a shiver. I am freezing. The shivers come every five seconds. I turn on the shower as hot as I can, sit down in the stall, wrap my arms around my bent knees, and let the water pour over me. Eventually, I stand and reach for the corner with the shampoo–might as well wash my hair–but the shelf is not there. The wall extends into seeming infinity. For ten terrifying seconds, I’m in an Escher painting. Turns out, I’ve pivoted and am reaching for the wrong corner.

Arlo wanders into my room. “Ear off,” he says. Oh no. I think he’s asking me to turn the pain off in his ear. 

I text the VP: Gonna need a sub after all

I write more sub plans. By 6:00, I’m burning up. I find my cheap thermometer that reads normal as 97.4 and stick it against my temple… 102. Uh, does that mean I actually have a temperature of 103? I take two Tylenol.

My brother-in-law ferries Patrick to school, and at 8:00, I give myself a rapid COVID test (negative) and start calling doctor’s offices. I secure an 11:30 appointment for Arlo, but my provider doesn’t return my message. Perhaps I shouldn’t be driving… The Tylenol have kicked in, so I do. The doc looks in Arlo’s ears and pronounces them “fine.” Yay! Maybe “ear off” meant he couldn’t hear? But then why do they suddenly look fine? Whatever. I’ll take the win.

The urgent care in the next town over has the shortest wait times, so we drive over there. The nurse gives me another COVID test (negative) and asks if I can give her a urine sample. 

“Of course,” I say, but in the bathroom, only a trickle comes out. And it’s the color of sweet tea. Um. 

The doctor looks at my lab results and pronounces me dehydrated. He listens to my various organ noises with his stethoscope and then palpates my abdomen. “How does this feel?” he says, tapping on my side. 

“Not great,” I say. Other side? Also not great.

He taps right about on my c-section scar, and I nearly bend in half. 

“You need to go directly to the Emergency Department for imaging,” he says. “That should not be happening.” When pressed about possibilities, he offers a litany of -itises. I’m not fond of the sound of any of them.

The ED is relatively quiet, save the poor woman retching violently into a bag and moaning, clearly suffering from whatever I had a few days prior. Within half an hour, I’m taken back to triage.The nurse leaves for 15 minutes in the middle of my check-in for an “unresponsive in the car, possible overdose” call, then tells me it should “only” be a couple hours before I’m seen. There are real emergencies, and then there’s whatever I’ve got. Back in the waiting room, I do notice a startling number of people who look like they’re not currently overdosing, but they’ve probably had a snootful of Narcan at some point, and I send up a little “thanks” to the universe. Considering my family history and mental illness, my lack of drug addiction is attributable only to dumb luck.

My brother-in-law picks up Patrick from school, and my sister swings by to grab Arlo. The nurse was right–about two hours after triage, I’m taken back to a curtained bed in an over-air-conditioned ward. The doc comes across as eminently knowledgeable and personable. We chat. She’ll order two liters of fluids and a CT scan, but she guesses my gut is just “repopulating” after the virus, and that’s what’s causing my abdominal pain. 

The IV cranks fluids into my veins. Even after two bags, I still barely pee at all. I guess I was dehydrated. Several boring hours later, I’m wheeled into an even-more-freezing room for my CT. Like other scans I’ve had–MRI, sonogram–the CT machine seems like something out of Star Trek. How does it know things?! Before they wheel me back to my spot, the nurse covers me in a warm blanket, and I want to kiss her and do her laundry and buy her a spa day.

With the passing hours, I become more bored but more reassured. If there was something startling on the CT, they’d surely have whisked me into surgery by now. …Right?

The doc finally swings back by. “I’m sending you home,” she says. Yahoooooooooo! “But–”

Uh-oh. 

“–there were some incidental findings that you’ll need to get checked out later.” I have a lesion on my liver (MRI) and a big cyst on my right ovary (ultrasound). They’re probably nothing, but I’ll need to keep tabs on them.Great, another thing for my to-do list! Whatever. I walk out of the ED $1,049 poorer than I was at noon and take deep breaths of the cool night air.

At home, the boys jump out of their bunks when they hear me come in the door. Patrick inquires sweetly how I’m feeling, and Arlo points out my “bandaid” (the gauze and bandage from my IV). My sister heads home. The three of us fall into bed. 

It’ll take awhile for my pee to turn yellow, and for two more days, the idea of eating is unappealing, then I’m back to craving Nutty Buddies like usual. 

Whenever I write something like this, I want that to be it. Do I have to have a Point? The Point is that this happened to me. The Point is it sucked. But the rules of literature say I should learn something from it. I should change or develop in some way. I should evolve or devolve as a person. I should deliver to you, the reader, some universal truth or lesson that you can connect with or apply to your own life.

I don’t know. Be thankful for your health? Drink water? Things can always get worse, until they get better? The American healthcare system will eventually bankrupt us all? 

How about you say. What’s the point? Tell me. But do drink water.

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Helpless

One of my clients dashes out the back door as soon as I open it and heads into the yard for a potty break; the other gets close and then scooches backward, tail tucked. “Come on, Sweet Girl,” I tell her. “I know you have to pee after being inside all day.” But she refuses. “Whatever,” I say and leave the door open when I go outside in case she changes her mind.

I had pulled into the driveway only three minutes before, but suddenly the sky is… different. Three hours’ darker, and the wind–my god, what is happening. It thunders, loud and close. I call the Good Boy, he gallops back, and we duck inside. The lightning and thunder are simultaneous and angry.

The noise that comes next is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. It’s a sound, yes, but also a feeling, like a Mack truck running into the wall. The lights go out. “Holy shit!” I yell. The boys and I gawk out the window, and all we see is a snarl of green and brown. The same door I’d just walked through is blocked by limbs and branches. 

Arlo starts crying; Patrick is clearly frightened too. “It’s OK,” I tell them. “We’re OK.” And I shuffle them into their room. Patrick climbs in his bunk, and I snuggle Arlo in his. 

Every time it thunders, Arlo wails, “Off!” 

“I can’t turn it off, buddy,” I tell him. “I’m sorry.”

I continue to coo at him and rub his back for fifteen minutes until I hear the rain stop. The sky brightens, and I peel myself off the bed and walk out the front door. It’s sunny. The landscape is littered with leaves and sticks. The giant willow oak had indeed dropped a 30-foot branch by my back door. The gutter is bent and dangling. Dang, I think, that’s gonna take some work. 

I circle around the other side of the house and gawk. On my roof is a branch. But see, that word doesn’t really do service to it. The oak itself is at least a dozen feet in circumference, so this “branch” is more like the trunk of a regular-sized tree. I definitely couldn’t wrap my arms around it all the way. And it’s on my roof. On my roof? In my roof. There’s a hole, about the size of a minivan in my roof. The branch extends beyond the edge–the whole soffit’s ripped off–and down into the yard. Two 8-foot sections of my fence are smashed to smithereens.

“Fuck,” I say.

My neighbor Luis comes over. “You want me to get it off your roof?” he asks. “I do this kind of work.”

Stunned, I tell him sure, and he heads off to get his chainsaw. I forget to ask him how much.

My brother-in-law comes down with his chainsaw too, and the two of them ascend to the roof and buzz away at it until dark. They barely make a dent.

Inside, my bathroom floor is soaked–rain must’ve poured through the vent–and insulation hangs through a hole in my bedroom ceiling. 

“Fuuuuuuuuuck,” I say. 

I sleep terribly. Mid-August in central North Carolina is beastly, unlivable without air conditioning, but power is out in a huge swath of the city, and Duke Energy estimates it’ll take days, maybe a week, to repair the damage.

In the morning, I duct tape my fridge door closed to remind me not to open it, and we go in search of a McDonald’s that has power. The boys are delighted–McMuffins and pancakes, what could be better?

Back home, I inspect the damage again. Somehow it looks worse than the day prior. Phone calls to my insurance company don’t go through–I’ll learn later they have no power or internet either. I don’t own a chainsaw; I don’t even own loppers. I stand in the yard with my hands on my hips. It’s humid as fuck already, and the sun’s only been up two hours. Tears brim in my eyes. I text my family: I feel so helpless.

My brother texts back: You’re not helpless. You’re doing exactly the right thing under the circumstances. You are a rockstar of competence. Even rockstars have to deal with the early stages of a crisis by going to McDonald’s sometimes.

Just then, my brother-in-law stops by with his loppers and a hatchet. He has to go back to work, but his tools allow me to start clearing. I hack at a limb and drag it to the street. I hack another. And another. And within fifteen minutes, my mindset has totally changed. I think, it could’ve been worse. I think, the roof did its job. I think, that’s what homeowner’s insurance is for. I think, Jesus Christ, I’m gonna get my steps in today.

And I do, I cut and clear brush for almost ten hours. My phone tells me I have walked 9.37 miles. 

The roof will get replaced. The fence will get patched. All I have to do is feed my kids and put one foot in front of the other.

Joan Baez said, “Action is the antidote to despair.” 

Ain’t it though.

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Funmaker

When I was about 8, my brother (10) made up a fantasy game. I can’t remember all the details, but he blindfolded me and my same-aged cousin and led us through a story. It involved walking through an alligator-infested swamp (he snapped at our ankles with kitchen tongs), sailing on a tempestuous sea (he tossed us around in the hammock), and sitting under a magical tree (he climbed up in the branches and rained candy down on us). He did this for absolutely no reason except that, constitutionally, he’s a funmaker. 

One hot day years ago, finding himself without a baby pool, he hauled his canoe out from under the porch and filled it up with the hose so my babies could cool off. On a more recent scorcher, he dragged 40 feet of plastic out of his shed to an incline in his yard, squirted it with Dawn, and set the sprinkler to a narrow parameter. His kids and mine spent an hour slip-n-sliding at Uncle Bruce’s water park. For his kids’ whole lives, our annual trip to New England has involved an elaborate quest involving ciphers, celestial navigation, and treasure–some years it’s literally buried.

He’s a funmaker. 

I, alas, am not. My idea of fun is sitting on my porch talking to grownups. My children, shockingly, do not find my favorite activity fun. And one of them is vocal about how not-fun his life is. 

“What should I doooooooo?” Patrick says, eighty times a day, and then sniffs at my suggestions.

“Go build something with your LEGOs,” I say.

“No. What else?” he says.

“Make a train track.”

“No.”

“OK, if you don’t like your toys, let’s donate them.”

“I like them. I just don’t want to play with them right now.”

During the school year, I can survive the whining by patching together trips to the children’s museum, games of Uno, play dates, and screen time, but after our big trip to Massachusetts in June, I was facing a July of nonstop togetherness. (I recognize the enormous privilege of having a month off with my children… But also <shiver>.)

So I did what parents of my vintage do–I asked my local parent Facebook group for help. Give me ideas, I said. Free or low cost. Little to no prep. 

And they came through! Whole lists of activities, some 5-minute ones, others day-long. At least one person mentioned Pinterest, which I finally joined (what can I say–I’m not an early adopter) and which delivered hundreds of other ideas. The most important comment came from a mom who filled a jar with slips of paper with Things to Do. Most of the Things were fun, but some were chores! A wheel of fortune!

I hoped this was my answer so I scribbled about 100 Things down, a quarter of them chores. I knew, in order to make this work, I had to make the chores tiny, so instead of “clean the bathroom,” I wrote “wipe the bathroom mirror,” “wipe the bathroom sink,” “wipe the toilet,” “scrub the toilet,” and “clean the tub” on separate slips. 

The other stuff ranged from get-your-wiggles-out (“ride your bike to the parking lot and back”) to artistic (“collect leaves and make prints or rubbings”) to sure wins (“30 minutes of extra screen time”).

What an unqualified coup. Here was Day 1:

I figured Patrick would complain about the chores, regardless of how minuscule, but he didn’t! In fact, he said, “Even the chores are fun because I get to pull from the jar.” 

!!!!!!!!!

The next days were a whirl of tiny paper rectangles.

Some items went back in the jar the next day, some the next week, and some were one-time deals.

Arlo got in on many of them, like drawing a Pac-Man board on the driveway:

Any guesses on the slip that prompted this face?:

(It was “go to Pelican’s SnoBalls.”)

So I did it! I made fun! After a couple weeks, the novelty wore off, but Patrick will still pull from the jar every once in a while. And I made it through July without losing my marbles.


Yesterday was the first teacher workday of the new school year. I think one of these years, there will be a shift, but my kids are still little enough that work is a break. During the all-school meeting, the admin team passed around the mic and told us to say one word to describe how we were feeling. I said ‘excited’ because I didn’t want to explain why I was ‘relieved.’

Prenatal Judgment

At the time, I denied worrying about judgment. I said it was my body, my choice, and the fact that I had blazed my twin pregnancy on the internet had no bearing on whether I would abort the “defective” fetus. That was a lie. I shouldn’t have had to worry, but I did.

I was worried, sad, scared, and pissed. Upon learning that the $5,000 selective reduction procedure was not covered by my insurance, I blogged:

I picture the white-haired, conservative Christian senator who I’m sure stuck his dick right in the bill governing what’s covered and what’s not for state employees. “It’s a chiiiiild, not a choice,” I hear him say in my mind. Fuck that guy. That guy who’s never been, and could never be, in this position.

But am I considering selective reduction anyway?

I’m startled to find that I am. I was so sure after the first trimester screening, when it was still hypothetical, that I would just have a Down syndrome baby. Now, I think about the challenges—emotional, physical, financial—and I don’t know.

I don’t know.

Maybe?

Yes.

Yes, I am.

I was. And I was less equivocal than I made it seem. At first, I was desperate to abort Twin A. Over the next couple weeks, things shifted some. I was leaning toward continuing the pregnancy. Part of it was still fear of judgment. The other part was some combination of not having five grand, delusion, and my mom’s reassurance that I would love the baby. 

It baffles me now. The love I feel for Arlo is probably the least complicated love I’ve ever felt. I love Patrick, of course–truly, madly, deeply. I’d take a bullet for him. But his favorite pastime is arguing with me about uncontroversial topics. I just want to love each other and not fight all the time, but right now we love each other and fight all the time. And as much as I’d like to blame his character flaws on the donor, it’s pretty clear he’s my mini-me, and there’s something uniquely irksome about seeing your faults in another person, particularly one you gestated. It’s complicated.

Anyway, Arlo’s first years were difficult, with the surgeries and the feeding issues and whatnot, but once all that got wrapped up (knock wood), loving him became the easiest thing I do every day. Not that I didn’t love him ages 0-3–don’t be an asshole. You know what I mean. But for the last 4½ years, it’s like the only thing on our shared to-do list is love each other. At the school door every morning, he turns back and puckers up for a goodbye smooch; when the bus drops him at home, he spreads his hands, and says, “Mamaaaaaaa!” as if we’re reuniting after a year. He frequently and randomly forms an L with his hand (his approximation of the sign) and says, “Ah lulloo, mama.” I make an L with my pinkie up and say, “I love you too, Arlo.” He says, “Ah lulloo *oo, mama,” clicking the ‘t,’ and I say, “I love you too, Arlo.” We go back and forth like that a few times. He is a better person than I am, and I often feel utterly undeserving.

So how do I explain my ferociously pro-choice stance? After all, I almost feel bad for parents who don’t have a kid with Down syndrome. Iceland and Denmark have practically eradicated trisomy-21 by terminating “deformed” fetuses found on prenatal screenings, and I think, how terribly sad. 

But I don’t judge them. I still believe in bodily autonomy. I think pregnant people should be able to say exactly if and when they carry and bear children. It’s unfortunate that those people will probably never know an Arlo in their lifetimes, but Arlo was my choice before he was my child. Even though I was afraid, I did choose him. I could’ve had that selective reduction. To avoid judgment, I could’ve told people–“I lost Twin A.” Semantics. Five grand? I have an IRA I started when I was 20. Even with the penalty for early withdrawal, the distribution would’ve covered it. 

And it was all moot once my mom said, of me and my siblings, “I love you three equally and in very different ways. I imagine it’ll be the same for you with the twins.” I didn’t know then, but that was it–the moment I chose Arlo.

For a year or two after their birth, I told people, “I’d have another kid if I met a partner who wanted to have one together.” And then, on a certain day I couldn’t point to on a calendar now, my mind took brick and mortar to that door. I was done. If a paramour wanted a baby together, we could get a dog, or maybe a chinchilla, but any zygote that somehow nestled against my uterine wall would’ve been aborted. 

That’s the main thing, isn’t it? Most people have abortions not because they don’t want that particular baby but because they don’t want a baby at all. Some are too young or too poor; many just don’t want to be mothers; and of course, the majority of women who have abortions are mothers. Like me, they just don’t want any more kids.

And now, Roe v. Wade is going to be overturned. [Ed. note: Post published before SCOTUS decision.] Nearly half the states have trigger laws, which will immediately make it impossible, or nearly so, to end a pregnancy.

At 46 years old, my uterus is likely to shake a fist and yell, “Get off my lawn,” to any egg with a dream and a prayer. Moreover, if I went the rest of my life without interacting with another penis, that’d be okey-dokey-artichokey with me. This legal change will not affect my womb, but I am terrified. For my nieces. For my students. For every person who doesn’t want to have a kid, even an Arlo. For our country which seems to be going in a direction we on the left had nightmared. This very much feels like a slippery slope.

I don’t know when I, as a slowly boiling frog, will decide to jump out of the American pot, but it seems like it could be sooner, rather than later. I speak Spanish, and I used to be fluent in Italian–I could get it back. Maybe learn French or German or Swedish? Perhaps we’ll move to Iceland. Let them see what they’re missing. 

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