It’s also important to note that, when my dad was pulling a bottle of pills (yes, a bottle of pills) out of the pocket of his cargo shorts, a tumble of grape stems fell out. How long they’d been there, neither he nor I wagered a guess. I just picked them up and threw them in the rest stop garbage can. When it comes to my dad, it’s sometimes best not to ask questions.
Like why he would toss three loose plastic hangers into the trunk of my car on top of his luggage (a half-filled duffel bag and a grocery bag of toiletries/manuscripts). I pulled the hangers out and started folding his crumpled t-shirts. He said, “I must learn to fold those things.”
I said, “I tried to teach you about five years ago.”
He said, “I know! I can fold towels. You taught me to fold towels. I just haven’t got a hang of the shirts.”
Moreover, my father is alternately insomniac and snoring, so sharing a motel room with him is a goddamn mess.
When I say insomniac, I don’t mean the staring-at-the-clock/quiet-general-fretting kind. I mean futzing around, rattling pill bottles, and, if possible, breaking coffee makers.
And when I say snoring, I don’t mean the regular-tempo honk-shoo of the cartoons. I mean an arrhythmic, confusing series of sounds, not a cacophony like it used to be, but something like
1. a silent intake of breath;
2. a series of 5-8 short uhs (imagine someone pretending to burp) 1-3 seconds apart;
3. a long silence, during which an auditor would certainly assume death;
4. a final exhalation, satisfied-sounding like the one someone might make after passing a fart that’s been held in too long;
You may remember last year when I took a road trip with my father, my two dogs, and a 14′ canoe. Guess what I did recently (hold the canoe)!
Dad didn’t disappoint this year either. Before we even left, he was trying to carry hot coffee through the house, while the dogs made figure-eights around his legs. “Behave!” he told them. “This is the living room!”
Then we got on the road…
Dad, finger in the air: To tweet is to stupidify. I have spoken.
…
Dad, trying to explain his recent orthodontic procedures: …pinion, implant… I’m searching for a one-syllable word. Like a good American.
…
Dad, as a car passed by with “Just Married” painted in the rear window: Idiots.
…
Dad, gesturing at a bunch of idle construction equipment, as we drove through a downpour: Why aren’t these guys working?
…
Dad, post-Taco Bell: …Mexican-type reverberations up through my solar plexus.
…
Dad, at a freeway dragonfly: You corrupt, suntanned, white-Mercedes, lane-skipping…!
…
Dad, in Middleborough, Massachusetts: This is “The Cranberry Capital of the World”, it says. Not “Southern New England’s Garbage Dump”.
…
Dad, to a crotch rocket rider who nearly tagged my fender: You’re a statistic waiting to happen, you little twat!
My mom visits and gives her foster granddog a present: a soft blanky (“because she’s so snuggly”) with a picture of a doggy and a kitty on it. The doggy on the blanket is not a pit bull. We discuss the fact that they probably don’t make blankets with pit bulls on them. A quick google search proves us so very wrong.
You can even get a pit bull slanket (90% fleece, 10% treacle).
My eyes!
Day 5
I awake at 5:20 to the familiar backwards-gulp sound (uh-ggg, uh-ggg, uh-ggg) of a dog fixin’ to thow up. I jump out of bed and flip on lights. Redford’s fine; Violet’s fine. Tulip has yorked a big pile of grassy mess onto her new blanky. I let her outside for a while, clean up the mess, and open the window to air out the room. Then I settle down on the couch, hoping to go back to sleep for half an hour. Tulip curls up in the crook of my knees and shnores. I lie there listening to the birds shriek at each other until my alarm goes off.
When I go out in the evening, Tulip goes in her crate with no padding over the plastic tray because it’s in the wash from the barfing. While I’m gone, she eats the damn crate tray.
Aside from seven poops of an undesirable viscosity, Buffy seems to suffer no ill effects from
her glass-eating episode.
She and I go to an adoption event in the afternoon. When my mom and I speak about it beforehand, she says, “Are you hoping she will get adopted or won’t get adopted?”
“Both,” I tell her.
Normally, these shindigs are held in front of pet supply stores to capitalize on foot traffic, but today’s is at a kennel/pet resort. The people who stop by are definitely interested in getting a dog, but those people are very few. Like, four. For now, Buffy doesn’t get adopted. I’m OK with that.
Day 2
Buffy keeps vaulting the fence to go after that meddlesome mini-poodle. This last time, she doesn’t come directly back when I call her. I fuss for a minute, and she comes back. I don’t like the direction this is going.
Day 3
Lots of wrestling. Redford is always the Monkey in the Middle.
Because of her safe-breaking skills, I take up locking Buffy in her kennel and then closing the spare bedroom door when I leave the house.
Day 4
I forget part 2 of the process in the morning. Guess who spends the whole day with full run of the house and greets me at the door when I get home from work.
Later, I peer at my bedspread, right up by all the decorative kindling pillows. None of my dogs have ever been allowed in my bed, including Buffy. Apparently, when the cat’s away, the foster dog will make herself very comfy, or so says the oval indentation filled with grey fur I find there.
While on the phone with my sister, I flop into the green chair with the mismatched pillow. Buffy stands between my feet for a moment, facing me, then reaches up with her front legs* and wraps them around my waist. After I hang up, we just stay there, hugging each other, for another ten minutes.
*When I explained Violet’s injury to the vet the first time, I said the left leg. She said, “Left hind leg?” I thought, “Of course. I said her leg, not her arm.” I always want to call my dogs’ front legs their arms.
Day 5
I latch the side door of the crate from which Buffy keeps escaping and shove the crate between the sofa and the closet door.
Ha. Trapped.
The daily grammar warm-up I give my Honors classes happens to be about dogs, and I find myself telling the students all the Buffy stories. Talk about student engagement. I let them know she’s up for adoption. Several kids express interest, and I tell them to get a note from their parents if they want to meet her. At the end of fourth period, one of my students says, “Ms. Scott, what if two kids brought in notes from their parents at the same time? Who would get her?” I let her know that the foster organization makes the adoption decisions. (The next day, she tells me her parents said no.)
Back at the homestead, while I’m effusing about what a good dog Buffy is to my sixth graders,
she scoots the crate out from between the sofa and wall and wriggles out.
At least she’s closed in the bedroom.
I ask Facebook how I determine if my dog is a superhero. One friend suggests taking off her glasses. Another asks if she disappears inexplicably when there’s trouble only to reappear when the situation has been handled. A third said, “Cape. Duh.” Alas, none of these things helps, but she does eat glass, leap high fences in a single bound, and escape from impossible traps. She’s not quite faster than a speeding bullet, but close, especially when she takes off after the mini-poodle.
Day 6
I put her in
Redford’s crate
which is larger but has locking latches. While I’m at work,
she pulls the entire front wall of the crate in on herself and jumps over it.
Also, I DID NOT RAISE THAT BLIND. I mean, it’s the kind you can push up on and it’ll stay, but still. Still.
I realize, if I made a movie, I could title it The Crate Escape. Har har.
Day 7
On the neighborhood loop, a dude shouts, “Hey, you wanna breed the little one?”
I reply, “I don’t believe in breeding dogs.”
He says, “I believe in making money,” and gives his buddy a high-five.
My friend invites me on a road-trip to Atlanta. I must find weekend lodging for three dogs. I email three friends, asking them to take one dog each. Two accept; one is out of the country and offline.
Day 2
I go on a 4-mile walk with my sister, Wa, and her two older children (7 and 9). Though my foster is a little timid, all-sized humans think Buffy’s adorable. We coach Little Dude to use a quieter, lower voice and not make sudden movements. We have only moderate success.
The subject is brought up, not by me, of their adopting her. I do nothing to discourage this discussion. I suggest that, as my sister is a runner, a pit bull might be a more effective deterrent to a would-be assailant than a can of pepper spray. And more fun to cuddle with at night.
Day 3
In the medium-dark of the house, I mistake Violet, who is sitting on the living room floor, for Buffy, who I believe to be peeing on the living room floor, and terrify them both nearly to incontinence by clapping and “Ep”-ing.
Day 4
I remember that both Violet and Redford learned to ask to go outside by ringing a bell hanging from the doorknob. I rig up a cat toy bell-ball with a hair ribbon to the back door. I ring it each time we go out.
Still unable to get ahold of my third friend, I email my sister, a currently catless cat person:
I know you’re tremendously busy right now, and even if you weren’t, know that it’s absolutely, positively OK for you to say no to this. I’ve found slumber parties for Redford and Violet for this weekend, as I’m hoping to head to Hotlanta. However, I was hoping Erika could keep Buffy, but Erika’s in the Carribean, and I’m not sure when she’s coming back.
Buffy can absolutely go to the kennel—no worries—if you don’t have the time/space/energy to keep her.
Also, in no way is this a ploy to make you see how adorable and sweet she is so you’ll keep her, unless you fall in love with and adopt her, at which time I will say I planned it all along.
Love you!
ame
Wa agrees. Yay!
Day 5
Buffy pees on the floor first thing in the morning. I stop her mid-stream, ring the bell, and take her outside.
Day 6
During the dog-sitting tutorial for my small relatives, we throw a tennis ball around my sister’s yard. Buffy races after it, sprints back, drops it at our feet. We throw it again; she delivers it again. Repeat 50 times. Unlike her foster brother and sister, who know only to race after it (unless it stops before they get to it, at which point they meander in another direction because what’s the fun of chasing something if it’s not moving?), Buffy plays real-live Fetch.
Day 7
I distribute pit bulls all over Durham. At the last deposit point, whilst I’m telling my friend, “Redford gets confused by carpet. Sometimes he p—“, he pees on her carpet.
I head to Atlanta with my girlfriends, and commence fretting.
One of my bits when I hosted the Monti StorySLAM on Tuesday (oh yeah, I hosted the Monti StorySLAM again last week) was that Coach Dave kept harassing me about signing up for an Olympic weightlifting meet, and you could all go ahead and wipe that skeptical look off your faces because that didn’t mean this fatty would be trying out for the Olympics. It simply meant a competition of three attempts each at the two Olympic lifts: snatch and clean & jerk.
I hemmed and hawed and made excuses about not having lifting shoes. Then my birthday rolled around, and my family got me
Pendlay Do-wins! Lollipop laces provided by my sister-wife. (Photo by Coach Dave.)
So then I dug my newly-clad heels in about the world’s least flattering garment, the singlet. (Just google ‘singlet’; focus on the athletic ones, not the sparkly ones you see at Pride parades.) Well, then this gym in Cary scheduled a “developmental meet”, which means yes on shoes, not necessarily on singlet.
I still hesitated, but Coach Dave, he’s a wily bastard, and he knows me. He said, “It’ll give you something to blog about.”
I guess some people, when they sign up for a competition, follow some sort of plan to prepare. I went strict on the Pretend It’s Not Happening program. Coach Dave watched some lifts, Coach Phil at CrossFit RTP helped me work on my snatch for an hour and a half [insert punch line] last week, and my buddy Liz gave me some pointers and wrote me out an extensive list of tips on yellow legal paper. Other than that, I just kept CrossFittin’ and whistlin’.
Meanwhile, my support team was rallying. My dad was thinking about driving down the mountain for the meet. My friends were conspiring about a banner. My sister was going to bring her kids. But on Thursday, when I realized I was starting to hyperventilate a little bit about the whole situation, I sent out the following email:
So, with going to Boone last weekend, the stray pit being put to sleep, the StorySLAM, and getting a foster dog, it’s just all too much. I’m still going to go and participate in the meet this weekend, but I’ve decided that no fucks shall be given by me that day. Therefore, I would not mind if you saved—nay, I would encourage you to save—your fucks for giving to some other event which might require given-fucks.
I adore you all,
ame
And that worked. I did not give a fuck. Until Saturday when I walked into the place. It was so quiet in there, and there were people in chairs watching, and the women in the first session (tall, skinny ones; itty-bitty ones; really fit ones) were putting up some big numbers on the board. Like, way more than I could. I mean, I knew calling what I was doing “competing” was fallacious, but I didn’t want to look like a charity case.
At that point, I got all weepy, and poor Coach Phil had to shush me and tell me it was gonna be OK.
The situation was bad. Earlier in the week, I would’ve been satisfied to hit a Personal Record at the meet. Now I had a new goal: not to shit myself on the platform.
I weighed in, 77.2 kg (170 lbs), and rolled around on a foam roll for a while. Coach Phil helped me warm up. My cheering squad did not heed my emailed advice.
Get it? teAMY… Team Amy, but combined. There are multiple advanced degrees in this picture.
Snatches first. There was one woman in my session whose three lifts were all smaller than my opener, so she went. Then I was up. I hit my opener at 33 kg (72.6 lbs) and my second lift at 36 kg (79.2), but I missed my third. I can’t even remember what it was…37? I got it overhead but crumpled underneath.
Several more women (all of them at least 20 pounds lighter than me) went, lifting enormous amounts of weight over their heads.
After that came the clean & jerk. I hit them all: 42 kg (92.4 lbs), 46 kg (101.2 lbs), and 49 kg (107.8 lbs). (Phil had wanted me to do 51 kg (112.2 lbs) because it would’ve been slightly above my PR, and I should’ve listened to him. Those clean & jerks didn’t feel very hard.) Most importantly, I did not shit myself.
Again, the real weightlifters came next and lifted some real weight.
The organizers totaled everything and called up the winners by weight class. As I was the only competitor in the Over 75 kg group,
I won first place in my weight class. (Photo by sister-wife.)
The lesson, children, is this: Sometimes it pays to be the fatty.
The fortune-cookie fortune that rides around in my wallet, occluding my face on my driver’s license photo, says, “Look for the dream that keeps coming back. It is your destiny.” I think I put it there two years ago.
The Independent Weekly ran this horoscope for me a while back:
Even if you’re not sick, you need some medicine. What kind of medicine? The kind that can transform what’s pretty good about your life into something that’s really great; the kind that will super-animate your merely average efforts and blast you free of any lackadaisical attitudes you’ve come to accept as reasonable. This medicine won’t come in the form of a pill or a potion, but rather will be produced by your own body if and when you slip away from your comfort zone and go out to play in the frontier. Be your own doctor, Libra. Break your own trance. Crack your own code. Escape your own mind games.
It’s been on my fridge since May 2008. I moved last year; it must’ve come with me from Hillsborough. I don’t know—sometimes these newsprint divinations, these cookie runes, they speak to me, and I just hang on to them.
As I was tidying up the other day, I found a fortune on a very dusty dresser that said, “You will be lucky in love.”
And I scoffed. I did.
I said something like, “Psh.”
Being 36 and single in this society makes one feel decidedly unlucky in love.
But I really am trying to be more thankful these days, so I thought, OK, what if I take romantic love out of the picture? If I take romantic love out of the picture, I’m a leprechaun-rabbit’s-foot-four-leaf-clover-heads-up-penny in love.
See, there’s my family: my dad, who is my greatest advocate (and provides much amusement); my mom, the offerer of sage advice, even if she doesn’t remember giving it; my sister/best friend; my brother-in-law, of the Magic Lawnmower Sauce and other timely rescues; my brother, the shifter of paradigms; my sister-in-law, an unsuspecting classmate at Carolina who I badgered for seven years to marry my brother before she finally gave up and did (I must tell that story sometime); and their progeny, including a nephew I got for Christmas! (When I told a co-worker that, he did a double-take. He thought I said I got an Eff You for Christmas.)
And then my friends, who make every day awesome, who inspire me and make me laugh, who know better than me, who let me stay at their houses even though I can be a disaster of a house-guest, who do silly things with me, who like me despite my being self-absorbed, impatient, and mean-spirited. …I could link/name-check all day. If I didn’t link to you, I’m thinking of you, and if I haven’t yet written about you, there’s a very good chance I just haven’t figured out how to express how dope I think you are. Man, I love you fuckers.
And of course, two of my very favorite people, Violet and Redford, who I love so much it sometimes startles me.
I’m pretty sure all these people and dogs love me back in equal measure, but even if that ain’t the case, I suppose I’m lucky in love regardless.
You know, I was born here. In North Cackalacky. I was born here and raised here. My mailing address was a rural route and box number (until high school when they changed it all for 911 purposes…and even then it became Old Highway 421—is there a redder-neck-sounding road?). I went to Carolina. I hated Dook with an appropriate passion.
But I always felt a little like a fraud. My parents were Yankees. I had been to Bulgaria by the time I was six. My family was not Southern Baptist. I’ve still never shot a gun.
So I’m pleased to tell you, I cooked collard greens in pork fat for breakfast this morning.
That is, I pretend that I’m not competitive when I can’t compete, which is, like, all the time at CrossFit. But I am, in my head, competitive. Sometimes.
Last week, we were supposed to find our new one-rep max for dead-lifts. No way I’m as strong as a couple of my girlfriends, but I hit 248 that day, and I was really proud of myself, first because it was a 35-lb. personal record, and second because my form was really good up through 243. Two forty-eight was ugly, but it still counts.
Usually for all matters CrossFit, I comment on the CrossFit Durham site or Facebook page, but that night, I posted on my own wall:
I feel like even my non-CrossFit friends should know that I dead-lifted 248 pounds tonight.
Status was Liked. Props were conveyed. Yay, me.
But one comment made me go into full-on Ivan Drago mode. It was from my cousin, who said:
Nice work! I did 200 lbs a couple months ago. Not sure what I am at now since I couldn’t go today.
This particular cousin is six months younger than me. We rarely, if ever, see each other these days because she lives on the other side of the country, but we grew up as summertime besties at Grandma‘s house.
And I was always ferociously jealous of her.
She was beautiful and vibrant. Flawless skin. Body that could stop traffic. She laughed at everything, all the time, including herself (something I’ve had to work very hard to learn). Her family went on cruises. Her clothes were just about the coolest, not that I could borrow any of them because I was always half again as large as she was. She grew up, got married, had two ridiculously cute children, and is now a total MILF who goes on Mexican vacations with her hot husband. Both of them do CrossFit out on the west coast.
Now, back up a second: a month ago, the Universe offered me a particularly jarring lesson about being jealous of people. A 40-year-old acquaintance who still got carded when buying beer and her husband who, in a friend’s words, was so handsome you could hardly look at him, well, he committed suicide, and now she gets to raise two kids, one of them with special needs, on her own.
So intellectually I realize that You Just Don’t Know About People, ergo You Shouldn’t Be Jealous, but when my cousin posted that comment, I just thought, “No. You get everything else. You don’t get this one.”
And I immediately started planning my next trip to the gym and my workout regimen because I was not—was not—going to let her dead-lift more than me.
The problem is that there’s no such thing as healthy competition in my disordered brain, and it went, in about six seconds, from “work on dead-lifts” to “eat paleo and lift every day and lose 50 pounds” to “shove Peanut M&Ms in face at kitchen counter”.
A little later, I realized that this competition (a) was decades-old, (b) lived entirely in the real estate of my crazy-ass brain, nowhere else, and (c) made me feel bad.
This is the part of the story where I tell you that this realization lifted a weight off my shoulders. Changed my life’s paradigm. Set me free.
Would that it were. Nope. I’m still petty and shallow and jaundiced.
