Now the publishing world will have to tape me seriously.
How to Get Ready for School in As Many Steps as It Takes: The teenage girl's guide
1. Set your alarm for 6:30ish, but don't get out of bed until your mom has come in to wake you up at least three times.
2. Dig through the piles of laundry covering your floor, chair and bed to find the perfect outfit. You'll know it when you see it.
3. Yell, "has anyone seen my black t-shirt?" to no one in particular.
4. Accuse everyone in the house of being responsible for the fact that you cannot find the right t-shirt, even though the floor of your room looks as if a t-shirt bomb has just exploded over a field of t-shirts.
5. Borrow a black t-shirt from the drawer where your mom keeps her black t-shirts.
6. Wait until the last possible minute to paint your nails.
7. Wait until the last possible minute plus one to announce that your shoes are missing.
8. Emphatically deny that they could be anywhere in your room even though just beneath the t-shirt layer, it looks like a scene from Apocalypse, the Shoe Sale.
9. Reenact the scene from Cinderella as your mom brings out one pair of shoes after another from her closet.
10-14. Reject them all, using your eyebrows to communicate a range of feelings from horror at your mom's taste in shoes, to pity for your mom's inability to recognize her complete lack of taste in general, not counting the shirt you are currently wearing.
15. Remind your mom that you are out of money in your lunch account.
16. Could somebody get you a Chai latte? Because your nails are wet.
17. Call a friend to bring you a pair of shoes. There is no way you would be caught dead in your mom's shoes. Not counting the three or four pairs under your bed.
18. Announce that your mom needs to hurry because you are going to be late for school. What is she even doing?
19. Could somebody get you two more Chai lattes? Because your nails are wet and you promised Julia you would bring her a Chai latte.
20. In the car, suddenly remember that your hair is still in the two braids you slept in to create a wavy look. Emergency! You must get your hair out of braids before anyone sees you! Tell your mom to slow the car down! You need more time!
21. When your mom tells you the braids look "fine", shake your head in disbelief. Make a mental note to never, ever, ever, accept her advice on anything related to hair. It's like she's never even been to high school.
22. Ask, Have you ever even been to high school?
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Picket fences hid widespread laundry operation
If there is one thing I know about the suburbs, it is that things aren't always what they seem.
From the outside everything may look tidy and above reproach, but inside? Your neighbors are having sex with their gardeners. Or running a large scale marijuana franchise out of the master bedroom.
But whose grass is really greener?
That's what Peyton Price set out to discover.
For years now, she's been following us in the car pool line, digging into our flowerbeds and peering into the smoke-filled back rooms of the PTA. She has stood on the sidelines and looked into the lunchboxes. She knows what's hiding beneath our couch cushions.
She knows what's taped to the front of our giant refrigerators: Orthodontist 3 p.m. Don't Forget! Is anyone ever going to empty the dishwasher?? It's a rhetorical question. She knows that too.
My point is, Peyton Price knows things, if you know what I mean.
And now, she's telling all in a little pink book that lays it out, three lines at a time. In haiku. I'm not saying it's true. And I'm not saying it's not. I'm just saying it might be a good idea if we tried to buy up a few copies. Like maybe all of them.
Click on the pretty pink book for more details.
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Gratuitous Selfie Tuesday
Return of the sun over the car pool lane. Greater Chiberia, March, 2014.
I do not trust this warm band of light streaming across my cheeks, but I allow myself a fleeting, sun-ish moment of what passes for hope in these parts.
It snows later that same day.
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How we live now
I know what you're thinking.
You're thinking, put down that spray bottle, Suburban. Nobody cleans the house for a kid home for spring break.
But I'm not doing it for him.
I know as well as you do that he has probably already invited a dozen other 19-year-old boys to come over and spill Chipotle all over the furniture in the basement.
I'm doing it to send a message. And that message is this: Things are different.
We eat from plates now. Sometimes even in the kitchen. Dirty laundry goes IN the laundry basket. It's something new we're trying. Clean laundry goes somewhere else. We're still working on it. But you probably have noticed that entire sections of floor are almost shoe free. And the kitchen countertops? We know now that we have them.
See how we live now?
It's not 100 percent true. Or any percent, if you want to get all technical. But my theory is this: We have an opportunity to reset the bar as to what constitutes an acceptable level of household disorder. It's a fresh start. Fresh-ish.
Because it's harder to spill the contents of an overstuffed burrito onto a floor that has been freshly vacuumed. And no one wants to be the first to put a half-eaten plate of food onto a freshly-cleaned kitchen counter. A teenager who walks into a house where he can see his reflection in every solid surface is going to hesitate before he dumps the unwashed contents of his suitcase onto the floor. [EDITOR'S NOTE: We have since learned that this is actually not true.]
Before you know it, a couch that doesn't crunch when you sit on it will start to seem normal. We lived like that once. I'm pretty sure. It's possible I am thinking of some other family.
For more inspiration in a spray bottle, check out SK on Queen Latifah today.
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You are in big trouble, possibly.
The Life Cycle of an Empty Threat
That's it. I've had it. You're done. Do you hear me? You are NEVER, EVER, EVER doing something EVER AGAIN. Also, there is NO WAY you are going to do that thing that you were looking forward to doing. That thing is SO NOT HAPPENING. You can JUST FORGET ABOUT that thing.
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Really? Do you REALLY think you're still going to be able to do that thing? Because you could not be more wrong. There is NO WAY. Not after what you did.
You still owe me an apology. For what you did. I hope you don't think I have forgotten. Because I HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN.
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Yes, but what are you EVEN apologizing FOR? It doesn't count if you don't even acknowledge what you did.
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Christ, do I have to remember everything? You're in trouble. I remember that. You must have done SOMETHING.
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Fine. Go. Whatever. But next time? Next time you do whatever it is that you did? You are going to be VERY SORRY. I mean it.
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Gratuitous Crawfish Tuesday
I am dreaming of New Orleans today, where the streets are paved in crawfish, daiquiris are sold by the gallon, and where my favorite sister-in-law has probably collapsed beneath the weight of her shiny, plastic beads. It's not that I don't miss you guys every single day, I just miss you more today, crawfish.
Just kidding. I am of course referring to daiquiris.
From the sister-in-law archives: Mom will always love me a little bit more
From the N'awlins archives: How to Pay for College with Witchcraft
A better idea: Let's dance.
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Top 10 List of Confessions to My Family Members
10. Sometimes when I say I have to go to bed early, it is just an excuse to get away from you and read in bed. 9. Sometimes when I say I have to go to bed early but I am really just going upstairs to read in bed, I don't even read anything. It is enough just to get away from you. 8. Sometimes, when you accuse me of never answering my phone I think, "Gosh, what if they were trying to reach me with some kind of emergency?" And then I laugh so hard. 7. Sometimes when you call or text me with food requests and poster board emergencies, my second thought is "I should really be grateful that poster board and spicy chicken cravings are what pass for emergencies in my family." But my first thought is usually, "Are you fucking kidding me? How much poster board can one family need?" Because seriously. How much poster board can one family need? 6. I only go to the grocery store when we are out of wine or olives. And sometimes capers. I know you already knew about the wine and the olives. Now I'm just coming clean about the capers. 5. You know how when you text me from college, or work or high school gym class just to be sure that I got your previous five texts asking me to look for your wallet, mail your retainer ASAP!, buy poster board or pick you up from school because you forgot that your period comes every single month? I don't really mind that much. 4. We really do have a money tree in the backyard. I just told you we didn't so I wouldn't have to explain the real reason we take so few family vacations. Also, picking money is hard work. 3. Remember that time when the tooth fairy left you nothing and I explained that your tooth value was tied to a weighted commodity futures index fund that also included agricultural products, oil and metals? That was not entirely true. 2. Remember how when you were little and your father and I said we had to go through all of your Halloween candy to be sure it was okay to eat and then it turned out that none of the Twizzlers and only about a third of the Snickers bars were safe to eat? Your father ate all of the Snickers. 1. It might seem like I complain about you a lot, but the truth is, I wouldn't trade you for
anything many things.
from the archives: Parenting is an art and we are all out of poster board
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Gratuitous Cupcake Tuesday
There is a certain point in the long and dreary Midwestern winter when you are left with no choice but to give up.
Despite your best efforts, it will eventually drive you to your knees, where you will be forced to dig for the car keys you dropped into 19 inches of snowfall in subzero temperatures.
When that happens, it won't really matter that you are wearing new boots or that underneath the clothes that are underneath your clothes, your underwear is the color of the tropics.
But why should you have to suffer when there are cupcakes? There are almost always cupcakes around here. I am starting to think of them as food.
From the cupcake archives: Like Buttah
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Snow, actually.
I put my car in reverse and shoot all the way out to the road, navigating the path between the ice mountains in one clean swoop, much like an Olympic skier. I had a really good run yesterday too, but today, I can picture myself on the podium.
I am high-fiving myself for my Olympic caliber driving-in-reverse skill when Mr. Kamikaze gestures toward the glaciers at the mouth of the driveway.
"I widened it for you," he says. "Did you think you were getting better?"
yeah, I did.
Photo: The freshly-shoveled driveway as Valentine's Day tribute.
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Going places.
It is no surprise to discover, alla fortune cookie, that I am one of those people who will "go places in life."
People are always telling me this, and I have to assume, despite the superfluous punctuation, that it must be true.
Some days it seems as if there is no end to the "places" I go. Places like "Panda Express," where the girl and I order three styrofoam serving boxes full of starchy Asian fast food that we bring home to eat/spill in "the living room" while watching television "on the couch."
We argue over whether or not it is acceptable to eat directly from the styrofoam serving box and also whether we should watch the Winter Olympics or another episode of The Vampire Diaries, which some of us maintain is pretty much the same episode over and over and over again. It goes "nowhere."
We end up watching vampires because only one of us actually knows how to operate the remote. One of us, who is 16, eats directly from the styrofoam serving box while the other one, who is not, uses a plate, which she washes and puts away afterward, because that is sort of a rule in our house, in the sense of "something one of us likes to say a lot."
We cover ourselves in blankets and watch bad television as the snow comes down outside. We eat a lot. We are a mother-daughter eating machine.
There are no leftovers, except for the extra box that we thoughtfully filled and brought home for Mr. Kamikaze, who is out working "somewhere," and we even eat part of that, even though one of us had argued against going to "Panda Express" in favor of making shrimp alla marinara from The New York Times recipe, which would have meant going "nowhere" and, looking back, was never going to happen.
We didn't need a fortune cookie to tell us we were going places.
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Flamingo Wednesday Thursday. Whatever.
We are up to our flamingos in snow. I would like to apologize for the quality of the photo, but the truth is, I don't care.
I could do better, but that would mean going outside again, taking off the lens cap, adjusting the focus, depressing the shutter - all at a distance of about 75 feet from where I am currently sitting. Which might seem like a small effort.
But here is the thing about winter in Greater Chicago: There is a point at which you are lucky to sustain the will to live, let alone manage to care about something like photo quality.
And that point was last winter.
You may think you've heard everything there is to say about the so-called "Chicago winter" from both sides of the debate. But the truth is, there is no debate. The people who write those columns about "the beauty of winter" or about how bone-freezing wind chill builds character? They're not even real.
The majority of those columns are commissioned by the city's tourism shills and produced in third-world sweat shops, where polls show 100 percent of the region's actual residents would prefer to be right now. The rest of them are phoned in by newspaper columnists on vacation in Miami Beach as a way of irritating their colleagues who have frozen in place waiting for the train, which, incidentally, is running 20 to 30 minutes behind schedule because transportation officials know that 19 minutes on a train platform in -20 degree temperatures leaves commuters with sufficient hand strength to text a complaint.
Along with things like most of your body parts, the other thing that freezes over in the winter is your motivation to do anything about anything. Even complaining starts to feel a little ambitious. Every one of those stranded commuters is making plans to complain. But eventually, somewhere between minute 19 and minute 25, they become so desperate that when the train shows up only 35 minutes behind schedule, they are grateful.
The worst thing you can actually experience in the winter in Chicago is a spark of hope.
These are the days in which everyone you see wears an expression of unconditional surrender. Neighbors communicate in grunts and eye rolls. People shovel their sidewalks and driveways with the enthusiasm of prisoners on a rock pile. Don't try to pitch your story of character building to these people unless you are standing at least a shovel-length away.
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