I'm Not a Bra, You Know

I have a serious post today. That goes against my better judgment, but I want to vent, and you, loyal readers, are the ventees.

In many ways, Mrs. Lefty and I have great marriage. We do, however, have problems. I’ve mentioned money. That has been a source of great stress in the past. Lately, though, we haven’t argued much about finances. She now has her completely separate accounts, and I have mine.

Instead, another issue has risen to the fore. Since the early days of our marriage, Mrs. Lefty has believed I do not support her emotionally as I should. In my defense, I should point out that I am a man, and men never support their wives as the women think is necessary. Men are simply distant, unfeeling brutes who drink beer.

For Mrs. Lefty, though, it runs deeper than that. It began with my parents. She believes they do not like her, they do not think her a worthy mate for their son. It is clearly true that my parents were surprised to learn I was getting married again and they thought our whirlwind courtship was unwise. In fact, they had not really even gotten over the fact that I was divorced. Then, in one single phone call less than a year after my divorce they learned that 1) I had met somebody new, 2) I was dating somebody new, 3) I had flown thousands of miles to spend a week with that new somebody, and 4) I was getting married to that new somebody in, oh, about two months.

I can understand my parents’ shell shock. Mrs. Lefty’s mother was also dismayed. The morning of our wedding, I saw her mother for about the third time ever, and she said to me, “I woke up this morning hoping it was all a bad dream, and this day would never come.” Welcome son-in-law!

But I don’t blame her mother for feeling that way. She would be, with very little warning, watching her daughter and grandchildren move across the country with a man my new mother-in-law barely knew. And, as it turns out, I have great in-laws. I love them to death, and they have been very kind to my son and me. So despite the early awkwardness, the relationship with my in-laws has been good.

Mrs. Lefty, however, feels frequently snubbed and otherwise mistreated by my parents. I have spoken to them about her discomfort. At another time, all four of us sat down together to discuss it. Unfortunately, Mrs. Lefty still feels mistreated and wants me to stand up for her.

There are a couple of problems with this. First, neither my parents nor I understand what they are doing to upset her. Second, Mrs. Lefty cannot quite describe what they are doing, either. She feels disrespected, but can’t describe the behavior. Third, by “stand up for her” she means “go verbally medieval on their asses.”

Hmmm...I see that I have run out of room for today, but haven’t yet begun to describe things. I guess I’ll continue with part two tomorrow.

P.S. As I was finishing up this post, Mrs. Lefty called to tell me she agreed to work for someone on my birthday, which is normally her day off. Oh yes, we also had an apointment with the counselor for that day.

Living with the Lords of Chaos

In the event that you are ever intimate with a person of the opposite sex and particular fluids are exchanged in particular ways, or if you have a medical procedure that duplicates such a fluid exchange, or if you discover a noisy basket on your doorstep, or if you are Angelina Jolie, then you might end up with one or more children.

This turn of events is not all it is cracked up to be.

I was reminded of this fact when I used the pen by the telephone in the kitchen to write down a number. At first, I thanked the Let-Me-Get-a-Pen God for the presence of that pen by the phone.

Normally in my house, the children have taken all the pens away from the one place in the house where you are guaranteed to need a pen and moved them to other locations, including beneath their beds, under the cushions in the couch, inside the vacuum cleaner canister or out to the garden. There are, of course, pencils by the phone, too, but the children have conveniently broken off all the points on those pencils.

So I was happy--no, thrilled--to find a pen by the phone. And this was no ordinary, practically-out-of-ink pen, but THE GOOD ONE. This was the one Mrs. Lefty usually keeps by our computer. It is Old Reliable. So I happily wrote out the telephone number I needed to remember and was about to put Old Reliable back in its place when...

...I discovered that my hands were covered in black ink.

I blame my children. They have the uncanny knack of making it appear as if their sole purpose in life is to create as much damage and chaos as physically possible. Whenever I am unfortunate enough to follow in their footsteps, I inevitably say to myself, “There is no way on earth they could have made a bigger mess.” Then I get to the next room and realize I was wrong. Everything they touch disappears. Everything they walk past collapses into a heap of debris.

Now I know you’re thinking, “Parenting. It’s all about parenting.” To that, I say, “Bite me.” You may also be thinking, “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” To that, I say, “Shove it.”

I suspect that my real children were switched at birth, and some dastardly alien creatures left mutant doppelgangers in their places. My real kids (I’m looking at you, Lindsay Lohan) are living very different lives in some unknown place. They are getting straight A’s, are polite to their fake parents and keep their rooms clean.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Did Hope Just Rear Its Ugly Head?

Mrs. Lefty started a new job yesterday.

It has been more than 3 months since she quit her old job, and we have been running on fumes. I’m not sure how we made it, but we did. (Okay, yes, I do know how we survived, and that big stack of overdue bills will back me up on that one.) And while having another paycheck coming in will bring some relief, it won’t solve Mrs. Lefty’s serious money problems, nor will it solve my codependent behavior with respect to her massive spending.

Thank God for therapy. And beer.

On a brighter note, I did ask Mrs. Lefty to go with me to a Debtors Anonymous meeting. I think she was pleasantly surprised at the diversity of people and their non-judgmental attitudes. She felt many of the stories there echoed her own feelings and fears, and we will be returning next week.

I’m also pleased at the way I handled Mrs. Lefty’s jobless period. Not once did I get angry or frustrated or suicidal or homicidal or bitter or resentful over the fact that while I went to work every day and stressed out over money she stayed home and took long naps, watched her soap operas, read dozens of books and talked on the phone. Not once.

Did I also say that I’m a pathological liar?

Some Great Things to Do

In my continuing quest to improve our quality of life...

• When turning left at a busy intersection, try dialing a friend on your cell phone. It is good fun for everyone when you miss the gigantic openings in traffic through which one could steer both the Titanic and the iceberg. It is particularly great when you fail to notice the light has turned red, and both you and I are hung out in the middle of the intersection.
• While listening to your iPod in public, earphones jammed deep into your ears, sing along with the music. The louder you sing, the better. Those around you enjoy hearing your off key screeching while getting none of the actual music you hear.
• When you are finished with a soda, hamburger, piece of gum, cigarette, child or other object, simply toss it over your shoulder to land wherever the gods will it. If you’re in your car, fling it out the window. The same applies to urine or feces, especially if you happen to be right outside the front of my office building at the time. This is like a giant pinata, and we’re all winners.
• If you are a telemarketer, and your victim--er, potential client--asks, “Is this a sales call?,” say “no,” and then forge ahead with your sales pitch, which technically isn’t a sales pitch, but an amazing opportunity that can’t be passed up.
• Drive erratically--stops and starts, sudden u-turns, drift toward the curb and then back toward the middle of the street so other drivers don’t know whether to go around you or follow you at your blistering eight-miles-an-hour pace. If you want to heighten the effect, get on your cell phone, too.

You're welcome.

A Word about Cats, Part 2

Previously, on Long Relief:

I wrote an 80,000 word rant about cats and their effects on wild birds, and promised more. This time, I will describe my experiences with one particular cat, known by some around the neighborhood as Big Louie.

When we first moved into our house, new windows were still going in. Most of the work was finished, but the screens had not been put back up. We arrived in the late summer, and kept the windows open most of the time because the weather was only slightly less warm than Satan’s waiting room.

The very first morning in our new home, I woke up to get ready for work. I trudged toward the kitchen to make coffee. Halfway down the hall, who should I meet but Big Louie, who had come to say “welcome to the neighborhood.” Needless to say, I chased him out my daughter’s bedroom window before he had the chance to give me the plate of freshly-baked cookies he had brought.

I live in a household of nearly all women and girls, and they think all cats are cute and cuddly, and I should love them. My wife, my daughters, and their friends all told me I should give Big Louie a chance. He’s just a cat. It’s not his fault he’s so lovable that he just had to come in and give me a kiss that first morning.

After a while, the women’s encouragement (some less tactful writers might call it “nagging”) broke me down. Even though whenever I’d weed my garden (a task I do by hand), I always found a nice gooey glob of half-buried cat poop, perhaps it was true that I was being too hard on Big Louie. And since he kept coming around no matter how vigorously I chased him away, I decided to try kindness.

Pretty soon, Big Louie and I developed something of a rapport. I spend a lot of time reading on my back patio, and soon, whenever he’d see me there, he came around for scratches on his head. It even got to the point where he’d crawl up in my lap for a nap.

It seemed as if this story would have a happy ending, two buddies whiling away the hours together. Unfortunately, it was too good to be true.

One day, as we sat together, a starling landed in the middle of the yard. In a flash, Louie leapt from my lap and snatched the bird in his jaws. He rushed around the side of the house with his prize, splattering blood all over the patio.

From that moment on, Big Louie was again no longer welcome in my yard. I am a bird watcher, and my yard has been landscaped to attract birds, not to provide Louie a private hunting ground. Now, whenever I see that cat in my yard--no matter what I’m doing--I’ll rush outside to chase him off. If he’s in someone else’s yard, I’ll leave him be, but just stay out of mine.

Some time after that fateful afternoon (henceforth referred to by the starling community as Black Saturday), I was bringing groceries into the house. Between trips, I naturally left the front door open since I’m not very good at opening doors with my teeth. On my way back outside, guess who was standing in my dining room, drooling and looking up at my parakeets in their cage? It wasn’t Santa Claus, that’s for sure. It wasn’t even Dick Cheney.

Now tell me, if one of my children or my dog or my alligator (funny story about that one; I’ll tell it another day) went into somebody else’s yard on a regular basis, and killed small animals about the neighborhood, and went into a neighbor’s house more than once, don’t you think I’d catch hell? Don’t you think my neighbors would scream at me and possibly even threaten to call the police?

But hey, it’s just Big Louie, and he’s small and cute. What can you do? Cat’s will be cats. Well, let me tell you, there is a double cat standard here, and I don’t like it!

All right, I promise, no more cat entries.

You’re dismissed.

Guess Who Is Ranting and Raving Again

There are some days (like today), when I wonder “what in the world am I doing here?” This isn’t a metaphysical question, but a work-related one. What the hell am I doing in this job?

Yes, there are some upsides to the job. Earning money to buy food and thus avoiding starvation comes to mind. Though the pay isn’t particularly good, the benefits are exceptional. I have job security. I am very low on the list with the title “People to Fire When the Going Gets Tough.” Those are all great things to have, especially when the one thing my wife doesn’t have right now is a job.

Some days, however, the downsides seem overwhelming. High on that list is the fact that I work with a pack of slobbering, underachieving lunatics. I feel as if nothing will get done with a high level of precision and quality unless I do it. Some things won’t get done at all. And it is clearly not good for the company if I am doing things like changing light bulbs because the custodian is afraid of heights. (I’m not making that up, folks.)

Part of the reason I work with people who can’t (or won’t) do their jobs is that I am a poor people manager. I don’t particularly like people in the first place, and my attitude toward the employees I supervise is that they should do their damn jobs and leave me alone so I can do mine. Unfortunately, they don’t want to do their own work, and I’m the one that has to ride their butts if they don’t perform.

The best solution would be to fire the biggest idiots and hire other people who will work. The firing part is proving to be a hassle because our human resources advisor wants to be sure we jump through all the right hoops so we won’t get sued. The hiring part is also problematic because we can’t afford to hire good people, just ones who will work for low pay because they are not good enough to get a better job somewhere else.

What to do? I’ve considered jumping out of my office window. That isn’t an effective solution either, because my office is on the ground floor and I’d probably just sprain my ankle.