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Tag: frumpy middle-aged mom

  • Frumpy Mom: Are you ready for Halloween?

    Frumpy Mom: Are you ready for Halloween?

    It’s time for my annual Halloween column, but I promise it won’t be too gory. I’m not a big lover of blood and guts, and I find it terrifying enough to make it through all the freeways required to get virtually anywhere these days.

    So let’s talk about blood. Seriously, I’m just talking about the kind you donate to the Red Cross when they bring one of those bloodmobiles to your neighborhood.

    Just the name bloodmobile actually gives me the shivers, but I have been inside one more than once.

    The good news: They give you a cookie and some orange juice. The bad news: They suck your blood. See, I told you this would be a Halloween column.

    I used to donate blood once upon a time, but then two things happened.

    The first was that I started fainting. And not on the spot, either. I’d wait until I left the vampire mobile and was shopping for groceries. And then I would pass out. And I’d wake up and the store employees were calling the paramedics and it was all about as embarrassing as it gets.

    These fainting spells only happened when I donated blood, but after a few more tries and a few more of them, I decided the free cookie just really wasn’t worth it.

    And it was all in vein. (All you would-be copy editors out there, that was a joke.)

    Then, as you likely know, I got cancer. It’s amazing how few people want your blood when you have cancer. Well, except for the people in the doctor’s labs, and they don’t just want a quart. They want all of it.

    I go in for testing and close my eyes tightly, because I don’t want to see them filling vial after vial of my vital fluid.

    And I always compliment them profusely if they get my vein on the first try. I should probably bring some candy to hand out.

    I’m actually quite accustomed to this procedure now and it doesn’t bug me. You just develop a tolerance for certain things.

    Like, I didn’t realize until the first time I walked in for a radiation treatment that strange men were going to be seeing my bare rear end. All of it. Every day. I asked  if I could have a female technician and they said, “Oh, you needed to request that at the very beginning. Now it’s too late.”

    Pretty quickly, I got used to strange guys seeing me naked, which served me well as I made the rounds of the 17 doctors I had in those days. I suspect that I could walk down the street nude without much trauma.

    In regard to blood draws, my daughter Curly Girl has been giving blood since she was 18,  just because that’s the kind of person she is. However, she has a tendency to be slightly anemic, so sometimes they nicely kick her out and she leaves disappointed.

    I actually won’t be here for Halloween, because I’m going to Guadalajara for Day of the Dead. I go to Mexico for this commemoration as often as I can, usually from around Oct. 30 to Nov. 3. The big days of celebration are Nov. 1 and 2.

    I’ve been going to different places for 30 years, and I’ve seen it change greatly. It’s celebrated now in more parts of Mexico than ever. It’s lovely to see families celebrating their deceased loved ones and it’s Mexico, so the food is great.

    This always leaves the quandry of whether to decorate my house for Halloween. Because I love to decorate and have way too many decorations crammed into orange-and-black bins in my garage.

    But it seems a little bait-and-switch. Hey kids, yes, my house is all decorated, but I won’t have any candy for you. I live in one of those neighborhoods where people give out entire candy bars, meaning I want to dress up myself and go get some.

    When I first moved in, we were swamped every year with trick-or-treaters who knew our neighborhood was a good bet. In fact, I used to have to frantically run to the store for more candy at 8 p.m.

    But now it seems like kids are going to other events, like parties or trunk ‘n treats, and not knocking on doors as much. Which begs the question: How much candy should I actually buy? This is vexing.

    I won’t be here to hand it out, but other people will. Maybe. I only buy candy I don’t like, so I’m even less inclined to appreciate leftovers. I used to bring it into the newsroom, because newspaper reporters will eat anything if it’s free. I mean anything. But now I work at home.

    Hmm. Such a dilemma.

    Marla Jo Fisher

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  • Frumpy Mom: This is a real trashy column

    Frumpy Mom: This is a real trashy column

    Can someone please explain something to me? Because I’m obviously too dense to understand it.

    First, here’s some background: We’ve lived in our nondescript little tract house now for 17 years of leafy suburban bliss. Lawnmowers and leaf blowers are the only sounds on the street, except for the barking of our dog, Lil Wayne, who’s determined to kill or at least maim every delivery man who approaches our doorstep.

    My handsome young adult son, Cheetah Boy, has lived with me most of this time. We moved here when he was 10 years old, onto the kind of street where the neighbors sit in lawn chairs in their front yards and wave to people walking their dogs. (Dog walking is a major competitive sport here.)

    It was quite a contrast from our former life in a 100-year-old shingle bungalow, in what writer Joan Didion would have called a “senseless killing neighborhood.”

    See, after years of being a cop reporter, sent out at all hours of the night to rough neighborhoods to cover the latest crime spree, I had developed a skin like elephant hide to all sorts of mayhem. Gang shooting at midnight? No problem. Knock on doors and interview the neighbors while hoping no one breaks into your car. Move into a dense, tough neighborhood? Piece of cake.

    When my kids were little and commented that they’d just heard a gunshot, I’d insist that it was just a car backfiring. Although I did find it a bit worrisome that my small children recognized the sound of gunshots. That probably wasn’t good, right?

    We lived there because that was the only place I could afford to buy a house, plus I love historic homes. We had a huge front porch where I enjoyed sitting every night, usually with a glass of wine. And there wasn’t a single drive-by shooting during the first seven years I lived there.

    But then, in 2006, a man was shot to death directly across the street from my house shortly after the kids had come in from playing in the front yard. Now, try as I might, even I couldn’t ignore something like that. Or pretend it didn’t happen.

    I panicked and immediately began searching for a safer place to live. I went back to all the neighborhoods I’d first looked at before I adopted my kids. In those early childless days, I couldn’t imagine living in boring suburbia, where the only redeeming feature I could see was that there were grocery stores nearby.

    “I’m just getting kids. I’m not getting a lobotomy,” I told myself back then, as I drove and drove, acquainting myself with every square inch of the city. I mean, there weren’t any cool coffee shops or bars to walk to. No Thai restaurants or vintage stores. Who could possibly stand to live in such a place?

    But this time, I had a different attitude. Now that I actually had the kids, the idea of convenient grocery stores loomed much larger in my imagination than a cool hipster coffee shop I never had time to visit anyway, because I was too busy going to Scout meetings and Little League games.

    After a long-yet-frantic search, I finally found a fixer-upper I could afford on a quiet, tree-lined street. There was a National Blue Ribbon school two blocks away and a high school nearby. No more driving anyone to school. Hooray. I think I would have moved to Dante’s Inferno for that.

    And, weirdly, no one ever seemed to shoot off guns there, not even on New Year’s Eve.

    Cheetah Boy and his sister have always had chores to do because kids must learn to take care of themselves. His most important chore was putting the trash cans on the curb each Monday night for pickup early Tuesday.

    It’s really not hard to be reminded to do this when you see all the neighbors’ cans out front, awaiting their fate.

    By my calculations, we have now lived in this house for some 884 weeks (assuming there actually are 52 weeks a year, which I really can’t be sure now due to my pesky chemo brain).

    That means that on 884 Mondays in a row, my otherwise clever and talented son has failed to remember to put the trash cans onto the curb. I have to remind him every week, at which point he grumbles and (usually) does it. Yes. Every week.

    So here’s my question (and, yes, I know some of you never thought I would get around to it.): Why can’t my son remember to put out the trash cans? Pretty sure if there were a video game about trash cans, he’d remember to play that. Or a TikTok with trash cans. He’d watch it. It’s just the actual real-life things he fails to recall.

    Just for reference, he also forgets to unload the dishwasher and put a new roll on the toilet paper holder.

    I’m just not sure what to do about this situation, which is why I’m turning to you, total strangers. You’ve helped me out in the past.

    How do I get my son to remember the trash cans? Do I hide money under the lids? That occurred to me. I’m waiting to hear from you. My email is mfisher@scng.com.



    Marla Jo Fisher

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