I've Got Sand In All the Wrong Places (13 page)

My garden isn't growing that well, but my garden room is getting bigger by the minute.

You may remember that I have been thinking about renovating the kitchen so that I could see the garden. Presently, when I sit and eat at the kitchen island, I'm facing the aluminum backsplash to my oven, which takes up the entire wall and at its cleanest, hosts my own blurry reflection.

No woman wants to eat watching herself eat.

Especially when the blurriness adds two inches all around, so that it's either the best way to stay on a diet or the fastest route to clinical depression.

There are two windows on that wall of the kitchen, but they flank the oven and are too far apart to see from the kitchen island, so I have been thinking about just replacing the whole wall with French doors and adding a patio, so I could not only see the garden, but step into it.

Cool, right?

And since it was a tricky job, I hired an architect who drew up some plans, and a contractor to price it, which was when I got sticker shock.

It would not be cheap.

Again I revisited the question of whether I deserved it, but the more I thought about it, I thought, not only did I deserve it, but I deserved better.

Or more accurately, I realized the project was going to cost a lot, and if it was going to cost
that much
, then maybe I should put a roof over the patio and get more use out of the room.

Oddly, it seemed the most practical to spend more money.

This would be the same rationale that makes me buy bigger quantities of things on sale, sometimes even things I don't want.

Because it was practical!

But this time it wasn't something that I didn't want. It was something that I wanted after I started thinking about it. And then I couldn't get it out of my head.

Please tell me that I'm not alone in this.

It's like when you paint the living room, then the dining room looks crappy, so you have to paint that, too.

Which is something that I've also done.

By myself, I might add.

I once painted the interior of my entire house on a Memorial Day Weekend.

Yes, it was a small house.

And a very memorable Memorial Day.

Anyway, you see where this is going, with respect to the garden room.

I knew it would mean that I had to draw up new plans and get a new price from the contractor, but if I was going to do it, I wanted to do it right.

Plus I had resigned myself to the new higher costs. Financially speaking, I was over the dog, so I could get over the tail.

So I called up the architect, and he sent a junior architect from his office, and we discussed my new wish to build an enclosed porch. I told him exactly what I wanted it to look like, and he agreed, then went back to the office to draw up new plans.

Happy ending, right?

Not yet.

A month later, they sent me the plans, not for the garden room that we had agreed to, but a little “alcove,” which didn't have any French doors or other things that I had wanted and we had agreed to.

I didn't understand.

And I felt a little nervous about it. And angry. I couldn't process what had happened, and I knew that these drawings were going to cost me a fortune.

I confess that I didn't know what to do, at first.

I had a talk with myself and decided that I had to assert myself, so I called the architect and we had a big conference call and I asked him what had happened. And he said very politely that he had decided that the garden room I wanted wouldn't look very good on my house, so he had simply decided that I should have an alcove instead, which is what the drawing showed.

My mouth went dry.

My heart beat harder.

I tell you these biological details because I want you to understand that I'm not always the tough girl you may think I am, or even that I should be. I felt intimidated and strange, but I didn't say any of that on the phone. I merely said that I wished he had solved the problem differently, either by calling or emailing me before he had these drawings made up, and he apologized.

That was nice, but I told him I wanted to think about what happened.

We hung up, and the more I thought about it in the ensuing days, I got madder and madder.

At myself.

I felt wimpy.

I felt as if a man would have handled the phone conversation differently than I had, maybe even yelled or made a point more forcefully.

I never yell, except at the dogs, and they don't listen.

And even though the architect apologized, I knew that in the end, it would still cost me money.

I wondered if the architect would have even done that to me, if I had been a man.

I wondered if this was sexism, or just merely individual ways of conducting business, but by the third day of rumination, I decided it didn't matter.

I called another architect, and he came to the house yesterday.

I told him about the garden room, and he told me he thought it would look wonderful.

I asked him if he would have done what the first architect had done.

He answered, “No, you just weren't listened to.”

And I thought,
Bingo
.

I had forgotten what it feels like to be ignored, ever since my divorces.

No one's around to ignore me anymore.

And I love it.
☺

I feel better and even optimistic, going forward with my new garden room. I lost money with the first architect, but it was a lesson worth paying for.

Sometimes you have to fight for your happy ending.

 

Bachelorette Bouncer

Francesca

As a bridesmaid at a bachelorette party, you are part-dance-partner and part-security-guard to the bride-to-be. You want the bachelorette to have a VIP experience, and you are the velvet rope. But in order to do that, you have to master the art of bar sign language.

Last weekend, ten friends and I celebrated my BFF's bachelorette at a beachside bar. On the dance floor, we formed a protective circle around the bride-to-be, ready to wrangle, distract, and if need be, repel incoming males.

It didn't take long. That plastic tiara and sash is like the Bat Signal for single dudes.

A man came up behind one of our friends and put his hands on her hips. No words, no introduction, just a butt grab.

Classic creeper move.

She swiveled out of his reach to give him a hint, but he simply stepped forward and replaced his hands. Then she turned to face him and shook her head. He pouted—does that work on any woman that's not a guy's mother?—and attempted to draw her in again.

She held up her left hand and pointed to her wedding ring.

The caveman gave a nod and walked away. As if the faraway husband's proprietary claim was more compelling than the live woman's refusal.

It's the bro-code of troglodytes.

Trog-code.

We need a similarly effective gesture for unmarried girls. Maybe I could just point to my bare ring finger, and that could be the accepted sign for “my fake husband says I'm not into you.”

Then there was a weird couple who kept “bumping into” us. The man was dancing with and kissing his girlfriend, and yet he simultaneously tried to grind up on each of us.

If that was their sign language, we didn't get it—and we didn't want to.

Now listen, you have to work hard to offend an attendee of a bachelorette party; we're a generous bunch, especially a single one like me.

I was a gazelle faking a limp.

But I drew the line at truly offensive behavior. What's an example of that? Oh say, when a drunk guy sneaked up behind me and started making out with my shoulder.

“Heh-eyyy,” I said, gently pushing him back by his forehead.

He took this greeting as an invitation to throw his arms around me.

“Give me some space,” I said, but the music drowned out my words. So I made karate-chop hands showing a gap between them.

Middle-school dance chaperones got some things right.

He flashed his palms and nodded in what I thought was agreement.

But when I turned my back, he went full-starfish on me—suctioned to my back and seemingly with five arms.

I spun around and acted out each word of, “Stop” (traffic cop), “touching” (bear-claw hands), “me” (double-thumbed point at self).

He feigned confusion and came at me with Frankenstein arms.

I found myself playing charades on the dance floor. “YOU ARE BEING TOO GRABBY. YOU'RE GRABBY.”

Anyone looking would have wondered why I was doing an angry version of the chicken dance in this guy's face.

But he got my message: “GO AWAY.”

(The shove to the chest helped.)

Finally, a guy made a polite approach with a smile and an extended hand, the universal sign for “shall we dance?”

And dance we did. For an average bar, this guy was Fred Astaire, but built like an NFL wide receiver.

I was twirled, whirled, and dipped.

How many of us have endured a clumsy dip? At best, I'm usually doing a deep backbend, supporting myself by my back leg, just trying not to break my neck.

This was a proper dip: unexpected, secure, and a total thrill.

After that, I was the grabby one.

But the final skill of the bachelorette crew is to know when to call it a night. I said good night to my new friend, and I helped round up our giggly, wobbly girlfriends for a final headcount.

As we piled back into our party bus, a friend asked me about the guy, “You gave him your
real
number? Girl.”

A man who can move like that?

I might even let him graduate to words.

 

Tan, Don't Burn

Lisa

I'm trying to understand when suntan lotion got weird.

I remember the days when baby oil and vinegar counted as suntan lotion.

Yes, you read that correctly.

The Flying Scottolines used to go to the Jersey Shore for two weeks every summer, and Mother Mary would mix baby oil and red wine vinegar in a bottle before we left for a day at the beach.

I have no idea where she got the recipe.

Maybe the Mayo Clinic.

Or the Mayonnaise Clinic.

Anyway, we would slather on baby oil and vinegar, dressing ourselves like a salad. I even used to put lemon juice in my hair, so I was certifiably edible.

Of course, with only condiments for protection against the sun, we turned bright red.

And we thought we looked great.

Like Beggin' Strips, with feet.

I don't think it ever occurred to us to use store-bought lotion. We were like Amish, but Italian.

We passed up Coppertone, which came in only one SPF, -5.

And we would never spring for Bain de Soleil, which squirted like orange toothpaste from a tube. It was the fancy suntan lotion, for rich and/or French people.

Not for Bain de Brigantine.

The only problem was, as good as our sunburns looked, they hurt like hell.

We would hurry to the drugstore for jars of Noxzema, which only made us hurt more, though we smelled less fattening.

After the pain subsided, we started peeling, which we thought was totally fun.

How?

Telling you would be oversharing, but why stop now.

By the way, if you're eating breakfast as you read this, please stop. That is, stop eating. You should never stop reading, especially if you're reading anything I write.

Anyway the overshare is that my father's back used to peel the worst of all of us, and so at night, Brother Frank and I would have a lot of fun peeling the skin off his back for him.

Ewwww.Okay, in our defense, this was before the Internet.

There weren't a lot of things to do, back then.

TV only had three channels, and for us, peeling each other's backs counted as entertainment.

Sometimes my dad's skin peeled off like eraser rubbings, but other times, it came off like potato chips.

Score!

I'm not trying to gross you out, I'm telling you this because I was reminded of the eraser rubbings last week, when I started to use one of these newfangled suntan lotions, all with an SPF higher than balsamic.

One was a lotion that claimed to be “lightweight,” so I slathered that everywhere.

Because I want to be lightweight.

Especially if all I have to do is put on lotion.

But ten minutes later, I happened to touch my arm, and I noticed that there were eraser rubbings everywhere I had put the lotion.

Which made no sense.

I'd used the lotion so my skin wouldn't peel, but the lotion was peeling.

And without any of the bright red fun.

So I washed it off. Then I tried another kind of suntan lotion, which I sprayed on. By the way, I don't know when spray cans started being okay. Maybe it's kosher to destroy the ozone layer to keep it from destroying you.

This second type was a “sport” suntan lotion, and my idea of a great sport is spraying myself with suntan lotion.

The can allegedly had “AccuSpray,” but when I aimed it on my back, the lotion fogged everywhere, coated my hair, and glued my ponytail to my neck, which is always a good look for a single girl.

So I washed that off, too.

I ended up with the third kind of lotion, called Water Babies.

It was “Pediatrician-Recommended,” so I think it was perfect for me.

The SPF matched my age.

Bain de Senior Citizen.

 

Protect the Candle

Lisa

I just hung up the phone, having said no to going out to lunch.

And about an hour ago, I said no to a speaking engagement that would've been wonderful.

And yesterday, I said no to somebody who wanted to invite me to drinks and dinner at a local golf club.

Do you think I'm being negative?

On the contrary.

I'm being positive.

Because I've come to realize that my time really is precious.

Not only in monetary terms, but more in its scarcity.