I've Got Sand In All the Wrong Places (2 page)

We're not casual users anymore. I'm now growing “cosmic cat grass” on my windowsill, which is semi-legal in New York.

It's medicinal, okay?

But Mimi has the tolerance of Seth Rogen, because the vibes remain harsh.

Pip is normally calm and submissive, but now I see how anxious he's become, especially when the cat is nearby. Last week, I came home and found what looked like a scratch wound on his back.

The worst part is, this drama has manifested a secret fear I have about my ability to mother. I've always imagined myself having a child, specifically one child. I was an only child myself, but secretly, I have another reason:

I'm afraid I'll play favorites.

How can you not? But maybe it's the way I'm wired. I'm very loyal, I love fiercely, and my brain naturally categorizes things.

For instance, Mimi is my beloved cat.

But Pip is my baby.

My mom said she'd be happy to take Mimi back, but I can't give up on her. I do love her, and there was peace between them for so long, I have to think we can get back there.

And this morning, after another rough night, when I was browsing cat-behavior books online and feeling hopeless, Mimi leapt into my lap and began to purr.

She has a favorite, too.

 

Little Black Dress?

Lisa

The Internet exploded over a dress, and my first thought was, who cares?

Until I figured out that I did, very much.

We begin when somebody on the Internet circulated a photo of a cocktail dress with horizontal stripes. The caption to the dress photo asked, What color is this dress?

I thought they were kidding, because the stripes were obviously black and blue.

So what?

I didn't really get it, and I certainly didn't share it because it wasn't very interesting. On the Internet, I only share really interesting things like adorable pictures of kittens and adorable pictures of puppies. On occasion I share adorable pictures of baby otters and baby squirrels, and occasionally a baby monkey.

If you're two months old and covered with fur, I'm your girl.

The only person I share anything with on the Internet is Daughter Francesca, and she shares with me, too. Whether by nature or nurture, her tastes are similar, and so we often generate an electronic stream of adorable baby animals, crossing each other in email, undoubtedly colliding in the ether, but none of them hurting each other, because they're cute and cuddly and soft.

I didn't share the dress with her because I didn't care.

Then I noticed online, specifically on Facebook and Twitter, that not everybody saw the dress as black and blue. Some people thought it was white and gold. At first I thought they were kidding, so I went to look at the picture again, and oddly enough, the dress started looking white and gold to me.

Which was scary.

I didn't understand, and I like to understand, so then I started clicking on the articles about why we were all seeing the dress in different colors, and the articles explained something about rods and cones in the eye, and I got the gist, which was that everybody's eyes are different.

But then I started to notice online that people were taking sides. The people who saw the white-and-gold dress started finding each other online, and the people who saw the blue-and-black dress got together, and they formed teams, since they already had team colors.

And then, as the Internet would have it, they started yelling at each other, online. The white-and-gold people thought the blue-and-black people were wrong. The blue-and-black people thought the white-and-gold people were wrong. Then there was a third group who thought that this was too much yelling over a dress and it was really boring and it didn't make any sense.

I confess that I was in the last group.

I saw both colors, so I didn't like either team.

Plus I had better things to do in general.

Like my job.

I'm supposed to be in front of a computer writing a book, making my quota of two thousand words a day, and I'm happiest when I do that and don't find myself drawn into Internet feuds over clothes.

Then somebody online said that we should stop fighting about the dress because we all had more important things to worry about in the world.

I nodded yes.

Then I realized I was wrong.

The way everybody reacted to the dress is exactly what we should be worrying about in the world. In fact, it mirrors everything we're worried about in the world.

We tend to group around into teams, over shared beliefs. I think that's part of a human need to belong, and that can be a wonderful thing. Nothing feels better than sitting in a cheering section where everybody's wearing the same color jersey.

We are the champions, my friend!

But sometimes, we think that if the other team doesn't see things our way, the other team is wrong.

We forget that the difference in perspective is simply a difference, and not all differences are wrong.

Everybody's moral rods and cones are individual, and we will always see the world in different ways.

The important thing is to respect the views of others, even when we secretly think they have no idea what the hell they're talking about, or are completely and obviously wrong, or might even be out of their minds because the facts are so clear to anyone with half a brain.

It's a lot to learn from a dress.

Imagine what shoes have to teach us.

 

Ho Ho Ho

Lisa

You might be reading this book in the summertime, but it chronicles a whole year in our lives, both the good and the bad, and beginning with the holidays, both the naughty and the nice.

What gets you in the mood?

I'm not talking about
that
mood, I'm talking about a holiday mood.

For the record, what gets me in
that
mood is Bradley Cooper, but I have a feeling I'm not getting him for Christmas.

Ho-ho-horny.

The holidays are upon us, and we're all performing the three hundred tasks required thereby, primarily shopping. So this year, to make my life easier, I had the great idea to do all my shopping online.

But, like many of my allegedly great ideas, it had a downside.

What happened was that my tour for my last book just ended, leaving me no time to go shopping, so I'd thought all online was the way to go. And I've just been online shopping for two hours, on the computer at my desk, where I sit every day, tapping on the keyboard, seeing no other human beings.

If you don't count a dog in a sweater.

Yes, my dogs wear sweaters this time of year, not only because I'm too cheap to turn up the heat, but also because they look completely adorable.

Plus I like dressing them in their sweaters because it makes me feel like I have children I don't have to send to college.

So to me, dogs in sweaters count as human beings.

Anyway, as regards online shopping, I got almost all of it done. I think I got pretty good deals, too, because it was so easy to switch around to the different websites and compare.

There was no rush for a parking space.

There were no long lines to wait in.

There was no begging a salesperson for a cardboard box.

There were no other shoppers, harried and exhausted, walking in circles around the mall, going through the same thing I was.

But now, two hours later, the disadvantage is completely obvious.

I'm not in a holiday mood.

There is no holiday mood, anywhere in sight.

Why?

There was no rush for a parking space.

There were no long lines to wait in.

There was no begging a salesperson for a cardboard box.

There were no other shoppers, harried and exhausted, walking in circles around the mall, going through the same thing I was.

In short, I saved myself the time and the trouble, but the time and the trouble were exactly what put me in a holiday mood.

It turns out that a stress-free holiday is no holiday at all.

Maybe I have to hate the holiday to love the holiday?

It got me thinking about online shopping in general, and lately I've been thinking about that a lot, especially having been on book tour. It comes as no surprise to anyone that there are fewer bookstores in the world. Plenty of wonderful independent bookstores have closed, and even a big chain bookstore like Borders is now a thing of the past.

What worries me is that bookstores could become a thing of the past.

And if bookstores become a thing of the past, then it's only a matter of time until reading becomes a thing of the past.

And if that happens, I think we are worse for that, as a society.

It may be obvious as an abstract matter, but I realized that many other types of stores could go belly-up, if I keep shopping on my butt.

So I taught myself a lesson:

Vote with my feet.

If I want to live in a community that has bookstores and all other kinds of stores, as well as local people happily employed in those stores, I have to go out and buy stuff.

I'm putting on my coat and going shopping.

I look forward to the cranky shoppers, the waiting in lines, and the fighting over the parking space.

And I'm wishing you and yours a happily stressful holiday.

 

Not a Creature Was Stirring

Lisa

Wanna hear what I got for Christmas?

Tularemia.

Don't know what that is?

Allow me to explain.

Rewind to a few days before Christmas, when Daughter Francesca came home for the holidays and was about to build us a fire, so I got in the car to go buy firewood since we didn't have any split logs.

I may be hardy but I don't know how to split logs.

I'm not a lumberjack, I just dress like one.

So I hop in the car and take off to the store, but I'm thirsty, plus I had a canker sore, which considering my pain threshold, feels like childbirth.

All week, I'd been painting my tongue with every canker-sore remedy they sell. I am the biggest baby on the planet, especially for mouth things, because they interfere with talking and eating, which are my hobbies.

To stay on point, I was in the car driving to the store, but I had left an open bottle of water in the cupholder from the day before, so I picked it up and took a gulp.

It tasted funny, but everything tastes funny, seasoned with Orajel.

Also it felt heavy, but I figured the water had frozen overnight.

Either way, I wasn't looking at the bottle, I was driving forward on my mission, with the task-oriented determination that women manifest at the holidays.

We get things done.

Stay out of our way.

Anyway, I drank the last of the water, tilting the bottle up, which was when I saw two black beady eyes staring back at me.

From inside the bottle.

The eyes belonged to a dead mouse.

In other words, there was a dead mouse inside the water bottle.

And I had drunk all the water.

Which the dead mouse had been marinating in, for a day.

Eeeewwwwwwwwwww!

I started spitting, nearly avoiding driving off the road, and found myself at the traffic light, screaming inside my car.

People in other cars looked over, but figured it was just another task-oriented woman at the holidays.

Then I did the only sensible thing, which was to call Francesca and wail, “I drank a mouse!”

And she said, “Eeeeeeeeeewwwwwwww!”

Because I raised her right.

Don't ask me how a mouse got inside the bottle, or in my car. All I know is that I felt like barfing, but instead I hung up and kept driving to the store, where I bought the firewood and a bar of Hershey's chocolate with almonds, which I ate instantly.

Not the holiday surprise I was hoping for.

Chocolate being the remedy for all things.

And also the cause of canker sores.

But never mind, I needed to feel good right away.

By the way, I also took a picture of the mouse in the bottle, because I knew no one would believe me, then I threw the bottled mouse away.

On the way home, I got a call back from Francesca. “Mom,” she said, “you should call a doctor about the mouse.”

“Why?”

“I was reading online that you can get bad things from drinking water contaminated with a dead mouse.”

“Like, what? Nightmares?”

“No. Seriously, the mouse droppings in the water can cause disease.”

“Really?”

I didn't believe her at first, but it turns out, the answer really is
really
.

I will spare you the details, but suffice it to say, 'twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, a creature was stirring, but it wasn't a mouse.

It was me, sitting on the toilet bowl.

All Christmas Eve.

Because of a mouse.

On Christmas morning, I called the doctor, who put me on a major antibiotic. He said that drinking water that contains a “mouse carcass” or droppings can cause an array of diseases, though they weren't generally seen in the Philadelphia suburbs.