He Doesn’t Have Any Rules to Live By

Every so often, my dad and I take a trip together. But sometimes, he just comes down to stay with me for the weekend. We sit and talk—he talks mostly. We go out to eat—he loves the Thai place. He uses my internet while I go to the gym. And he says funny shit I jot down.

**********

He showers, shaves, and changes into a clean shirt before breakfast.

Dad: How do I look?
Me: Good.
Dad: Not radiant?

**********

Dad, who loathes all organized sports that are not Formula 1 racing, begrudgingly agrees to accompany me to a Durham Bulls game, upon the promise of hot dogs and people watching.

Dad, re the mascot Wool E. Bull, who is dancing on the field: Do you suppose he just has to get really high before he goes out and does that?

**********

Dad: I’m scared of going to the doctor next week.
Me: The ear doctor?
Dad: Yeah.
Me: You’re scared of going to the ear doctor. Why?
Dad: What if he looks in there and says, “That’s the biggest ear cancer I’ve ever seen!”?

**********

Violet’s asleep on the doormat. Her feet start paddling.

Me: Aw, look at that. She’s having a dream.
Dad: She’s running away from the veterinarian.

**********

I back out of the driveway.

Dad: You’re a carbon copy of your mother. She doesn’t strap in until she’s moving forward either.
Me: You don’t buckle your seat belt until I yell at you about it!
Dad: BUT I HAVE NO RULES TO LIVE BY!

**********

Dad, to the dogs: You are satisfied with dog biscuits. I, however, would not be satisfied with dog biscuits. So, you get the dog biscuits and I get the chocolate.

(a little later) You may, if you like, snuggle with my armpit. You may not have my chocolate.

**********

Dad: I do one thing at a time. So I can worry enough about it.

**********

Dad, reading from the newspaper: “Ospreys are in full-on courtship.” Full-on courtship?! We know what that means—big bird on top.

**********

Dad, dropping then picking up a bottle of meds, to Redford: No! You could swallow a handful of my nitro glycerine pills and BLOW UP. If somebody shakes you.

**********

Dad, when I arrive home later than expected: I thought you might have been in a crash.
Me: Sorry, I just got caught up at the gym.
Dad: That was my second thesis.

**********

Dad, gesturing at my neighbor’s house: You ever see any movement around that place?
Me: Not much.
Dad: Think they just sit around and get stoned all the time?
Me: Yeah, maybe.
Dad: …Sounds kinda nice.

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#YesAllWomen

I wrote this is 2010, after a man, who had found me on a dating website, “done some recon”, and started reading my blog, made a sexual comment on a post. Here it is, excerpted and slightly edited for clarity:

I think every woman has had some experience where she has felt sexually threatened—it puts us on edge. It makes us more sensitive to the next comment, touch, sound, movement.

The son of my music teacher, when we were both about 9 or 10 and waiting in the car while his mom ran into the grocery store, started poking me in the chest and, when I covered myself, poked me between my legs. When I protected that part of me, he’d move back to the top. I kept telling him to stop. He laughed. I didn’t tell anyone that until a few years ago, when all of a sudden, it bubbled up and spilled out in a deluge of tears.

Guys groped me practically every day in the Mexico City subway when I lived there. One pinche cabrón came up behind me, stuck his hands down the sides of my overalls into the front of my underpants.

In 2002, in a crowded NYC number 6 train, a young man pressed his hard-on up against my ass and started breathing in my ear. I was pinned up against the door and couldn’t move.

In 2009, a dude followed me, jerking off, as I was hiking Occoneechee Mountain with my dogs.

There’s more, but I’ll stop. And I won’t even bother enumerating the verbal assaults I’ve received, though they are often no less scary.

My response, as an adult, to these experiences is to scream things like, “WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU? YOU’RE FUCKING SICK!” Except on the 6 train. Get this: I could see his reflection in the window, and I was pretty sure I had met the guy. I don’t know why that made me feel even more powerless, but it did. I just evacuated the car at the first possible moment.

Adventures in Eldercare, Part Deux

This is probably the last time I’ll be able to relieve my mother of her eldercare duties, for a while anyway, so I drive up with Dad, and they take off for the Berkshires.

Some things are the same.

“Here are the dogs!” Denture-smacking. Cribbage shit-talk. Laughing at weird things: “‘Armed officer sends school into lockdown‘ ha ha ha.” Uncle Russell still steadfastly refuses to glue his upper plate in and often takes it out and sets it on the coffee table while he gums his dinner. One night I hear a tickety-tickety and look up from my book to find Redford trying the dentures on for size. Thank god he didn’t bite down very hard.

Some things are different.

His hearing aids whistle and squeal nonstop now. Between that and the denture-smacking, at least I always know where he is.

Also, Mom has started putting out a sign for him

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so he doesn’t accidentally double up on his meds. His Alzheimer’s pill enables him to be more accurate in counting his cribbage hands, but an extra dose makes him… frisky. Once, after a double dose, he walked up behind an in-home care person as she made brownies, pinched her rear end, and told her he wanted to sample her goodies.

His vocalizing has ramped up too. Now it’s not just repeating newspaper headlines. It’s repeating them and repeating them and repeating them for 15 minutes at a time sometimes. If I had a dollar for every time I hear, “Drug treatment center gets new life,” I’d probably have enough money to put him in a nursing home.

“Disney club hits high note” is uttered almost as many times but with “high note” spoken an octave above the rest. It makes me giggle. The first 50 times.

Sometimes he repeats phrases so many times and so quickly that they become unintelligible. “Twelve fifteen,” he says after glancing at his watch. (It’s 11:10.) “Twelve fifteen, twelve fitteen, twelve fittee, twalvittee, twalviddeetwalviddeetwalviddee… twalviddeetwalviddeetwalviddee.”

One thing about Russell is he’s… well, I won’t say obsessive-compulsive, but he’s definitely fastidious. He likes things to be tidy and in their place.

He mentions the piles of newspapers in the garage and how much they bother him. I suggest we take them to the town dump, and he likes that idea. About half of the load will fit in my trunk, which I figure is perfect, in case Mom is saving some for the wood stove or decoupage or something. I carry great stacks to the back of my car. He squares the corners of every pile. On the drive there, he mentions the dump sticker. Crap, I forgot you’re supposed to have a sticker on your car to get in.

We pull up to the gate. I smile sweetly at the guy sitting on a utility stool outside the shed and explain the situation: my mom took her car on vacation, I’m caring for my great uncle, here’s his street address. “Well, you can’t go in unless you have a dump sticker,” says the man.

Is there anything more frustrating and pathetic than a peon wielding the tiny bit of power he has? “Maddening,” says Russell. Agreed.

We turn around and go home. Russell wants to unload the newspapers in the driveway. I tell him I don’t know when Mom’ll be home, and I don’t want them to get rained on. He’s very frustrated. I distract him by handing him a rake and the yard waste can. He starts picking up leaves and sticks, and I unload all the newspapers back into the garage. It’s fine. Later I find out Mom will put them under the mulch in her gardens to keep the weeds down.

He’s restless. I’m listless. He needs a thing to do, but I don’t have the energy or knowledge to give him orders. Fortunately, two light bulbs have burned out, so we simply must take a trip to Stop & Shop to buy new ones. At home, he replaces them and is sated for a while.

“When are these folks coming back then?” he asks. My parents.

“I don’t know,” I say. Really, it can’t be soon enough for either of us.

I remind myself once again that my mom has done this for nine years.

Chicken Wing Parable

“But I’m trying, Ringo. I’m trying real hard to be the shepherd.” -Jules

Violet’s collar popped right off. She realized she was loose within a split-second of when I did, too late for me to snatch at her neck. She took off towards the busy two-lane, and I shrieked. Redford was already back in the car, so I slammed the door and ran away from the road, in the direction of the field next to the gas station, knowing she’d follow. She did, but kept a wide berth—she wasn’t going to give up her new-found freedom that easily.

I called her and caller her, and she ran around sniffing the rural southern Virginia smells. People were driving really fast down the straightaway in front of the convenience store, and at one point, when she banked roadward, my pitch hit panic-level.

Just then, a man in a one-piece, zip-up, navy blue mechanic’s suit, long straight ponytail hanging down to his shoulder blades, face covered in a bushy beard, came striding toward me, arm outstretched. “I’ve got a chicken wing! Will that help?”

Yes, I said, thank you.

Violet was bowing and barking, dashing forward and sprinting away. The mechanic squatted and wagged the wing in her direction. She scurried up, snatched the wing out of his hand, and bolted. He looked at me and laughed.

“I’m sorry! She’s so naughty,” I said.

“That’s OK—I got another one,” he said, and headed back to his car.

This time, he peeled pieces of it off and tossed them to her. Violet would run up just close enough to gobble down the meat and then gallop away and bark playfully.

About that time, a yokel sauntered over, pushing his giant beer belly in front of him.

“How long yew had ‘at dawg?” he wheezed.

What did that matter? “Seven years,” I said.

“Yew had ‘at dawg sebb’m years, and hit won’t come to ye?”

“Not all the time,” I replied.

He lumbered back to the convenience store.

The mechanic and I spent another couple minutes tossing bits of dark meat to my obstreperous pit bull. Finally, she decided—as she does—that she’d had enough fun and ran up to me. “SIT,” I said, mean face on. She sat. I hitched her up. “Thank you so much,” I said to the mechanic and headed for the store. “Come on, let me buy you some chicken wings.”

“Naw, don’t you worry about that. I had a hot dog already. I’m just glad your dog didn’t run out in the road,” he replied. And he got in his two-door domestic and drove away.

I thought about the incident the rest of the day and in the moments before sleep that night. Maybe it was a “let everyone be your Buddha” situation, or perhaps some Being John Malcovich self-absorption, but I started pondering how I play each role of that scenario in my life.

Where am I Violet—playful but willful, and limited in my trust? Basically, whenever I have to deal with people.

Where am I me—thwarted, overwhelmed, paralyzed? Career.

Where am I the yokel, asking unhelpful questions and offering disempowering rhetoric? I don’t think I do this to others, but my entire inner monologue is unhelpful questions and disempowering rhetoric, particularly but not exclusively about being single.

“How old are you again?”
“Thirty-eight.”
“You’re 38 years old, and you still don’t know how to find or maintain a romantic relationship?”
“…No.”

And where am I the guy with the chicken wing—open, helpful, generous?

I don’t know, but I’m going to try real hard to be that way.

__________________________________________

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Too Many Assholes

Dad: (surprised) I didn’t run into too many assholes today.

**********

Me, trying to find some relatively healthy road snacks: How about lima bean hummus?
Dad: No hummus of any kind.
Me: No?
Dad: Gook.
Me: But it’s delicious gook.
Dad: GOOK!

**********

My dad’s plumber’s cleavage is a chronic problem. It’s not just a coin slot when he sits down; fully half of his ass shows, much of the time.

Dad, patting back pocket for his wallet: One little thing.
Me: Pull your pants up.
Dad: Two little things.

**********

Dad, to Redford whom he is resisting feeding people snacks: Would it help to know that a hungry dog is a healthy dog?

**********

Dad’s reading the New York Times. Redford bashes into it like a high school football team going through the cheerleaders’ homecoming banner and puts his head in Dad’s lap.

Dad: You think that’s funny, don’t you?… Well, so do I.

**********

Tear It Up comes on the radio.

Dad: Is there any music that goes along with this?

**********

Dad, re Violet: She looks like she’s worried about the stock market this morning.

**********

Dad: I’m trying to make order out of chaos… Who said the leopard can’t change his stripes?

**********

Dad, futzing around on my mom’s iPad: What happens if I press this? Nothing. What happens if I do it again? Nothing.

**********

Dad: So I took an Ambien and made a cheese sandwich.
Me: You have got to learn some transcendental meditation.
Dad: Ohm… Ohm… OHMYGOD, I DON’T WANNA FACE TOMORROW.

_______________________________________________________

If you want to hear more from my dad, amongst other things:
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Dad-isms

I’m about to spend some time with Dad (post forthcoming, I’m sure), so I pulled up the note in my iPhone where I tap in all of his quips. Behold, I found several that I’ve collected over the last few months. Happy Saturday, everybody.

Dad, re the county charlatan: He’s using a walker these days. Too bad he doesn’t walk out in front of a cement truck.

**********

Dad: This black dog. She’s giving me peace of mind. I’m giving her peace of mind. We’re giving each other peace of mind.

IMG_7204

**********

Dad: Are you within earshot?
Me: Yes. What’s up?
Dad: There’s something interesting on the internet.

**********

Dad: Don’t go too far away. I have wisdom to give you.

(later) Well, I guess I’ve given you all the wisdom.

**********

Dad: I’d probably be better off in life if I let you do all my thinking for me.

**********

Dad (a lifelong atheist): I’m going to say a little prayer.
Me: Ha.
Dad: I’ve become religious in my old age.
Me: Oh yeah?
Dad: Not really. But I keep reminding myself there are things we’ll never know about. We say, “It’s all in God’s hands.” As if we know what that means.

**********

Dad, to the dogs, after a discussion with me of whether democracy works: You dogs always back the right candidate. Me.

IMG_7709

My dad for President! Redford and Violet say so!

Better Coffee Rockefeller’s Money Can’t Buy

I’m so tired. So, so tired. Like, same kind of tired as back when I mainlined gluten. Could I be making a baby? How early in a pregnancy is the begone-with-ye-I-must-sleep-for-a-fortnight feeling?

Come to think of it, glutenday got away from me a bit this week—I’ve had bread several days in a row. :/ Maybe that’s why I’m draggin ass?

…Though it could be because my jerk-brain’s been rattling me conscious at 4:30am lately.

…But it might be that I put the kibosh on caffeine the day of my insemination.

…Or maybe… maybe my body’s exhausted from growing a baby. I don’t want to count any chickens though! (One… two… threefourfivesixseveneight.)

**********

How long does it take to detox from caffeine? I’m dying. I’m dead. Put me in the ground so I don’t stink up the joint.

Would it be so bad? Just a little bit? I spend the afternoon googling. From AmericanPregnancy.org:

caffeine & pregnancy

When I tell a friend at the gym about this dilemma, she mentions “the NASA study with the spiders”. What?

I go home and look it up:

spiders on drugs

Mother of! I’d be better off toking.

I decide to suffer through my fatigue. Woe.

**********

My resolve lasts 12 hours. Jerk-brain has roused me once again several hours before my already-obscene wakeup time, and I just can’t. just can’t. just can’t face the idea of molding the minds of 110 twelve-year-olds in the state I’m in. I make 3/4 decaf and just 1/4 caf, and tra la la, tra la la, and a heidy heidy ho! I feel like a million bucks!

Wait. Does that mean it was caffeine-withdrawal and not baby-growing? Now I feel like two bucks. A two-dollar bill. Queer and not that useful.

**********

Everyone keeps asking, “So?”

I don’t know yet. Not-as-nice nurse said to wait ’til Day 12 and, if I don’t get my period, to pee on a stick.

It’s Day 8.

Come on—BE DAY 12, BE DAY 12, BE DAY 12.

Swim

As there is no motherfucking way I’ll ever be able to do it myself, I text my friend who’s a nurse:

IMG_8383

He comes over, and I’m a giddy mess.

Me: Hiiiiiii, do you need gloves?, I have gloves, and here’s the thingy, whatdoyoucallit syringe, the instructions say—wait, here are the instructions.

Him: I don’t need the instructions.

Me: Right!, No!, you have a degree in this stuff!, you know how to flick it, air bubbles and whatnot, so the instructions, they say to use alcohol swabs, but I don’t have alcohol swabs, but I do have alcohol and swabs.

Him: That’s fine.

Me: (reading from instructions) “Choose an injection site on the stomach, preferably around the belly button, but at least 1 inch away.” (lifting my tank top) Here I guess, hahahahahahahaha, I’m freakin out.

He washes his hands and rubs an alcohol-soaked swab over a spot an inch away from my navel. I make the mistake of watching him squirt the tiny drip out of the syringe. Uhhhhhhhhh. He pinches my belly fat and sticks me. All done. High-fives. Hugs. He leaves.

He texts me a minute later from the car. Our mutual friend who gave him a ride over has just said, “I bet this is the first time you’ve hoped to get a girl pregnant.”

**********

Four people offer to accompany me to my appointment. I turn them all down. I guess I just feel like, I’m going to be a single parent, I better get used to being alone.

I show up to the clinic a few minutes early and sit in the waiting room while they thaw the sperm. The same nurse from the most recent ultrasound takes me back to a room and says, “Naked from the waist down. I’ll be right back.” I don’t like her as much as the nurse who did my first ultrasound. First-ultrasound nurse said “undress”, not “naked”. Plus, second-ultrasound nurse is just not as nice.

Second-ultrasound/not-as-nice nurse comes back in and shows me the vial. It’s tiny, an inch and a quarter long maybe with a circumference slightly larger than a pencil. She points out my donor number on the sticker and says flatly, “There’s ten million in here. That’s good.”

She explains that it’s going to be like getting a pap smear except maybe more uncomfortable because they can’t use any lubricant during insemination. I put my heels in the stirrups and slide my butt down to the end of the table. Not-as-nice nurse inserts the speculum. “Hm,” she says. She slides it out and tries a different angle. “Well.” Out and back in again. “Your cervix is really deep in there. I’m gonna use a longer speculum.”

“OK,” I say, meekly.

She tries all through the winter, across the spring and summer, into late autumn, before she stands and says, “I can’t seem to find it. I’m going to get a physician.”

Shortly, she comes back in. “I couldn’t find a physician.” I think, You’re bad at finding stuff. “So I brought the next-best thing.” It’s first-ultrasound/nice nurse!

Immediately, I feel more relaxed. She’s having some trouble locating the target too, but she sounds like she genuinely wants to know when she says, “You doing OK?” and just radiates general warmth.

“There it is!” Finally. She inserts the catheter and shoots. “Swiiimmmmm,” she calls into my vagina. Speculum out, and I’m done.

Not-as-nice nurse tells me to lie there for ten minutes, after which I’m free to go. As she’s walking out the door, she says, “If you don’t get your period, take a home pregnancy test. If it’s positive, come in and we’ll draw blood.”

I stay for 11 minutes, just to be on the safe side, and head to work.

**********

All day, I have moments when I think I could be pregnant right now. I could be walking around with a zygote inside me. Right now.

The students are dismissed early because of imminent snow. I stay and plan with a colleague, after which the snow is no longer imminent but actual, spend 45 minutes driving the 5 miles home, and curl up on the couch with the dogs.

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I risk giving myself bedsores watching season 8 of Weeds in its entirety.

I haven’t done my 20 minutes of meditation in days, and I realize I may be avoiding it on purpose. I make myself sit, and sure enough, within moments, I think, “What have I done?” and burst into tears.

I’m so scared.

I’m scared of being stuck in this devil-I-know job because it’s safe money. Terrible money but safe money.

I’m scared because having a kid on my own means I’ll never have another romantic relationship. I know that’s a myth, but it’s one to which I can’t seem to unsubscribe.

I’m scared of doing this alone. I don’t think I can do this alone.

Then I remember that my friend came to my house to give me a shot and four people offered to go with me to my appointment. I have to do this alone only if I choose to.

Confirm Order

I go to CVS and hand over my prescriptions, one for Letrozole—to stimulate follicle development—and the other for an Ovidrel shot—to trigger ovulation. I’m absolutely sure the clerk is going to say, “OK, but your insurance doesn’t cover it, so that’ll be one million dollars please.” She tells me they have to order the Ovidrel so just come back the next day to pick them both up. I do, and she hands me the Letrozole—“That’ll be $12” (WHEW)—but the Ovidrel hasn’t come in yet.

IMG_8367_2

The following day, I go to pick up the shot. “There was an issue with your insurance, so we’re waiting on Prior Authorization from your doctor,” the clerk says.

“Prior Authorization?…Isn’t a prescription already prior authorization?” I say.

No, she tells me. If I don’t want to wait, I can pay for it out of pocket. How much?, I ask. A hundred fifty bucks.

I’ll wait.

I get a text 24 hours later that my prescription is ready. Yay! That must mean my insurance people have a light spot in their black souls! I go to pick it up. Sixty-four dollars. The light spot in their souls is very tiny.

**********

I write an email to my doctor saying my #1 donor choice (CMV-positive) is a million times better than his CMV-negative runner up. I need him to tell me again that, in his medical opinion, I should pick #2. He writes back: Nah, do what you like; just sign a waiver saying you acknowledge the slight risk you could contract CMV from the sperm. I sign.

I go to the cryobank website and put one vial of sperm in my cart. A window pops up: YOU SHOULD REALLY BUY FIVE BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT IT USUALLY TAKES.

No. One vial, and fingers crossed.

My total is $890. I click Confirm Order.

**********

Second ultrasound to check if everything looks ripe. Different nurse, same lubey wand. She tells me my uterine lining is 6.9 mm. Ideal is 10, but the Letrozole often thins it. She points the rod toward my right side. On the screen, a black hole opens up amongst the clouds. “Oh yeah,” she says. “Big follicle right there.”

She shifts the wand around and finds another follicle on the same side but says it’s small. Then she checks the left. Again, a big one and a little one.

She says, “That’s exactly what we worry about.” I stiffen. She shakes her head. “What am I saying? You can tell it’s after lunch. I meant, that’s exactly what we hope for. Perfect.” I’m a noodle.

I check out at the front desk. It’s dripping cold rain, so I jog to my car, plop into the driver’s seat, and turn on the engine. Because public radio is having their spring fund drive this week, I have the dial set to a pop station. Justin Timberlike croons, “Cry me a river, oh.”

I text my family: My follicles are “perfect”. Getting inseminated on Wednesday.

And then I cry. A river.

Oh.