What the Meek Really Inherit

I've put off this topic long enough. It's time to meet it head-on with some hard-core musings. Subject #33 is "things passed down to me." Right away you're thinking, oh, inheritances! I wish. Where do we get off describing it as stuff handed DOWN anyway? That implies it came from above, and honestly, most of the stuff I've received has been a lateral move. Meaning the people aren't dead yet. The implication is they will die some day and you might as well take it now. The only thing (and by thing I mean a physical object) I've actually inherited so far is a desk, built by my grandfather and willed to me by my Uncle Ron. I believe he wanted me to have it, but at the same time, I remember agreeing to take it from the items available in his basement. It was sort of heavy and light pine. My grandpa hinged the top so you can actually remove it and fold it for easy transport. I sanded it and re-stained it a dark cherry, but it still has all the original hardware. I'm glad I have it because it reminds me of two people I loved dearly who are now on the other side. But it's hard to think of it as "passed down" considering it was brought up from a basement and taken further up into our loft (three flights). It's probably now closer to Ron than it is to me most days. I don't like to think about anybody dying, let alone what happens to their stuff afterwards. But my parents have been down-sizing a lot lately, even though I believe they are hundreds of years from passing. I don't know why they feel compelled to get rid of all their stuff now other than they're tired of staring at it or dusting it. For those reasons, I too might consider acting on my will while I'm still living. It's no fun to be willed something that doesn't exist anymore after the person passes. "Um, it says here you would have gotten the coin collection if he hadn't sold it on eBay because he didn't want to keep hanging onto it just for you until he died." If you hand stuff out while you're alive, you can see how much people appreciate it. My mom distributed her Christmas decorations cleverly at our last Christmas gathering. When I say last, I mean most recent. Not the last one forever and ever! But of course, the last one featuring my mom's Christmas decorations. She numbered them all with tags and then had an impromptu drawing. I drew numbers 3, 14 and 21. I got the wooden figurine ornaments, a small wreath and a stuffed snowman. I also voluntarily claimed three ceramic angels and a bubble blowing elephant. I'm sure I melted at the time and laid claim to a few more items that will emerge forevermore in my house at Christmas because I am too sentimental. I mean, I see a rubber Christmas tree with arms and legs and I just can't bear to let the little fella go. He matches the rubber reindeer on ice skates!! My mom is very practical. I imagined her thinking in her thick German accent, "Vee no longer need zees tings. Und aus! Macht schnell!"

I don't walk around expecting to inherit anything, really, but I am understandably surprised when stuff comes my way and I can actually call and thank the person. Maybe it's my German heritage. We don't like to keep stuff around too long. Just taking up space like that. Move it through! Give it to someone who can still use it. My aunts are over 70 and in recent years I have received a couple of treasures from them that have "me" written all over them. One is a giant blue vase that's almost as wide as it is tall that resembles a sea shell of sorts. This comes from Aunt Pat, my dear Godmother. The other is a t-shirt of a very fat expressionless cat that says "I Am Smiling." The t-shirt is framed. This comes from Aunt Gisela, from whom I may have inherited my sense of humor. I am content with these items and deeply appreciative. I find meaning in them and my sentimental side cringes when others upon first sight say, "Where the hell did you get that?!" I mean, hey, they're from my people for God's sake. Back off. I feel special. They thought of me! Never mind that weeks later, through the grapevine and a series of overheard remarks I learn that my sister once again scored the china. Aunt Gisela sent her china home with my parents to give to Tess. In the same car as my I Am Smiling framed t-shirt. My sister is hoarding china. Maybe through no fault of her own, but every time I turn around, whole sets of china are making their way to my sister either before death or after death or for all I know in someone's very last breath. "Please give my china....to.....Tessie....." Seconds later, "Please give....my fuzzy dice....to.....Susie..." Her basement has to be filled to the brim with china. She could have a dinner party for China. But I'm not complaining. At least I don't have to worry about giving it all away some day. If I were her I'd tag it all and hold a drawing next Thanksgiving...

The Chicken or The Egg

My recent trip to The Container Store was a revelation. Apparently, stuff made to hold other stuff is very popular. I wish I were more organized. People say I'm organized, but that's usually right after I've cleaned out my backpack at the airport and am able to quickly access a pen for the stranger in the seat next to me. If he'd been on the earlier leg of the trip and I didn't have a three-hour layover, the pen would have been covered in nacho cheese dorito dander and probably not functional. I think I have an organized mind. Like I know where stuff is in my brain and how to access it, even if some things are farther back on the shelf than others. But outwardly, when it comes to physical things I have and where they go, it's a bit of a crap shoot these days. Early in life, I was pretty good at having a place for everything and everything in its place. I was very particular about how things lined up on shelves and the color coordination of items in my closet. I used to carefully stack my Christmas presents as I received them, folding up the wrapping paper for possible re-use. I loved Legos. I would play Tetris for days at a time. I loved solving puzzles. All of these things suggest I enjoy order and the satisfaction of finding an exact fit for something loose. Let me just tell you how things have changed. My desk at work is a great example of my new "if I can't see it I won't remember it and it no longer exists" approach to organization. It is a clear sign I have crossed the 40 mark. I am actually afraid to file. That's why all of my files are stacked on my desk or on the floor to my right. I'm even more afraid to go through these files and eliminate what may no longer be needed. What if I still need it?! Like these handwritten notes from 2005 listing what I needed to do on Tuesday (no known month or date). Did I call the plumber? Did I pick up cat litter? These are in the margin of notes from a meeting about IP addresses. This folder is labeled I.T. Better hang onto it a little longer. Just move it to the bottom of the pile. Other stuff I'm staring at right now on my desk: two empty milk chug bottles, three empty water cooler cups, a small 20GB flash drive, a Sharpie, two business cards - one is a new dentist I've been meaning to call for four months, the other is fellow comedienne Chantal Carrere's - a cute picture of Meg, a Bliss card that says "How beautiful it is to be alive!" by Henry Septimus Sutton (I'm gonna Google that guy), a rolodex with Kirsta Grapentine's business card up, my office phone, my Bad Cat calendar, a rubber tree frog, a box of mini-dv tapes for a camera I no longer have, a box of business cards, post-its that say "Oh, Boo-Frickin'-Hoo Have a Cocktail and Get Over It," Burt's Bees chapstick, a second Sharpie, an automatic pencil sans lead, a pen, three grow your own tree kits, a lined notepad on top of a clipboard, an LPGA ball marker, a third Sharpie, mints, two golf booklets by Cindy and Allen Miller written in 1990, Norwegian coins, a tape dispenser, my cell phone, a James Brandess mouse pad and of course, my laptop. How big is my desk, you ask? I guess too big. If I felt encroached upon, maybe I would put some of this crap away. But then I would wonder where I put it. I think it comes down to labeling. I've thought about it over the years, and while I would thoroughly enjoy getting containers and drawers and cabinets and see-through boxes and an entire wall of shelves for three-ring binders and photo boxes and pencil boxes and CD/DVD towers and little bowls for stray coins and paper clips, I am horrified by having to categorize. I'm really good at contents. I can tell you what each individual thing is and what it means to me. But if you want me to group these things together so they can go in the same box with a lid on it and then you want me to write in one word what's in there...we could be here a while. As you might imagine, moving is torture for me. Well, normal moving, I should say. The kind of moving where you put all the stuff from the kitchen in several boxes, wrapped neatly for a safe journey. Maybe you take a polaroid of the dishes before you put them in the box and then you tape the picture to the outside of that box. It takes freakin' forever and the light's never right for the photos and some of the boxes are only half full cuz all the stuff from just that one room doesn't fit together. My kind of moving is torture for others. I start out great - the first few boxes actually have things from the same room in them. Then I branch out because I'm more concerned with how stuff FITS in the box then whether or not it relates to anything else in the box. You'd be surprised how perfectly full you can make a box when you have the entire house to pull from. I usually forget to take the picture until the box is either A.) full, at which time I take a picture of the open box and what's on top, or B.) taped up, at which time I take a picture of the taped up box and tape the picture to the box to remind me that there's stuff in there from everywhere and I should just open it to find out what! And all of the boxes follow my simple labeling system of what room the stuff mostly came from, which is helpful when re-distributing the boxes on the other side. Helpful if you are moving from, say a dorm room to a dorm room (all boxes say dorm room). Not so much if you are moving from a dorm room to a house (all boxes say dorm room). I think I can be good at labels. And I can be good at filling boxes. But not at the same time. I excel at either one or the other at any given moment. Right now I can think of several good labels. Office Supplies. Printer Cartridges. Sharpies. But the box for the Sharpies is too big. So I'll throw in some paper clips, pens, blank disks and two lanyards I just found in a drawer to top it off. Now I need a new label. Office Supplies? But not all my supplies are gonna fit in there, so I'm gonna need a bigger box. Then I'll have to change my Sharpie box to something else. I think my approach to organization is a lot like my approach to writing. I can come up with really good titles all day long. But heaven forbid if I should actually write the book or screenplay behind the title. Conversely, I have written numerous chapters for books and scenes from movies or plays that have no title. Collectively, I have organizer's block AND writer's block. I am just one big Chinese finger puzzle. Someone needs to pour me a cocktail so I can get over it. And figure out which comes first: category or content? the label or the box?!

My Lips are Sealed

I'm trying to remember the last time I wore lipstick. For the record, I haven't abandoned it altogether and I do look forward to my late 70's when I can slather it on and not really get all caught up in accuracy. I like make-up. I like eyeliner and mascara and a little dot of cover-up here and there and maybe even a dash of powder on my nose. I don't do blush anymore, which is actually a good thing because I'm not really sure I ever got that right. I studied pictures of Sheena Easton and Pat Benatar, even those girls from Heart, and I just could not get my results to match. It always looked to me like my face was on fire or that an embarrassing moment had struck me in all the wrong places. The giant blush brush was sort of fun, but hard to control. Basically the whole side of my face got hit and then there'd be a mad dash with a washcloth for corrections. I was trained by my mom and sister. They did try to help. Cheek, cheek, forehead, chin, a little on the nose. I was more like cheek, ear, fumble the brush, bangs, other cheek, too much nose, why chin, I've got a game, can we order pizza afterward? I don't know why everyone wants cheeks so rosey anyway. I've discovered shoving your face in the freezer for a few seconds can get you there in a pinch. You can also get there with a pinch. Lipstick is supposed to bring even more color to your face. I find it attracts too much attention. Case in point: my confirmation ceremony in 8th grade. Never mind I just got new glasses, still had braces and was wearing a powder blue t-shirt that matched a lengthy Little House on the Prairie skirt. My hair was out to here and my boobs were not. Such a pretty girl...let's get some color on those lips. That'll help. The only part about wearing lipstick I ever enjoyed was the part where you clamp your lips down on a tissue or toilet paper or a notecard. You smear the lipstick on, then you scale back on your initial commitment with a few smacks. I did a lot of smacking and then I would just wipe it all off with the tissue and be totally satisfied that my lips looked redder. I guess I'm more of a lip "tinter." This is much better if you think about crime scenes. No one's ever gonna find me because I left traces of a Lancome gift with purchase sample from Elder Beerman in Jackson, MI circa 1997 on a half empty wine glass or on a few cigarette butts outside a window... I don't wear it much anymore because I think it would be weird to all of a sudden start up again. People would notice. I suspect even strangers would raise an eyebrow. I'd walk into the post office and I think the woman behind the counter would think I was making fun of her. I'd feel sort of clown-y. Plus I hate the taste and how after a couple of hours it's sort of crumbly on your lips. It's like glue-sticking what's in the crayon sharpener to your mouth. When it gets like that, you have to re-apply. Which would mean I'd need a mirror. And a tissue or a piece of paper or a junk mail envelope. And someone to tell me it looks good. Women who can re-apply without a mirror and simply fold in their lips and pop them out again amaze me. They're all set. They can even answer a cell phone and push the baby at the same time they're doing it. I would be covered in red. It's just not my style. I'm more of a chapstick person. I can put it on without a mirror (well, not cherry) and probably while parallel parking. Plus, if you put chapstick on a pig, it's still a pig, but it's not worried about looking like a ho...

What Goes Around

I am green. At least I try to be. I wash my garbage, separate it by material type and give it to the city in a blue bin every Monday. Plastic, glass, aluminum, paper. I rinse out my whiskey and wine bottles, my beer and soda bottles and cans, my jars of jelly, salsa and mayo. I scrub flip top plastic containers that once held a salad or a dozen wings and I re-use them to hold other things. More salad, more wings. I pick the cheese off pizza boxes and dust off the crumbs. I've considered blow-drying the grease stains. I can tell I'm old because I used to just throw everything in one garbage can. Now I have the blue bin, a paper handled bag, a plastic grocery bag of plastic grocery bags and the garbage can. Whenever I consume something, disposing of it's wrapper gives me pause. If it's paper I wonder what kind of paper. If it's plastic I search it carefully for a recycling symbol. If it's aluminum, I rinse it out or ball it up. I check for a return fee and then throw it in the blue bin anyway, recalling the old guy in the mini van who raids our stash every week for returnables. I don't know if he knows we know, but I don't want to cut him off if it's putting gas in the van. And then I think, if it's putting gas in the van and you can smell that van coming five minutes before it arrives and long after it moves on, now my goodwill is messing up the atmosphere. I probably have black lung because I'm recycling. But I don't want to be rude. He's gotta make a living, too. And I really don't want to take the returnables to Stop and Shop myself. The last two trips were a disaster - damn those can cruncher machines that always break down or fill up on my third can when I have 103 more to push in. Have you met the guy who "maintains" these machines? When you do, tell him I'm still waiting. I also confess to leaving brands the store doesn't take in the rejected can return. It only holds so many and all of them are mine. I apologize for any inconvenience, which is what the digital display says to me whenever the machine breaks down. I mean well, but I just don't have that kind of time. Recycling at home and supporting a stranger works out better for me. It's all the rage to be green now, and it pains me to think of how willy nilly I once was with garbage. I imagine how much waste one person can be responsible for and I remember seeing a report in the news on it. Some guy decided to carry his garbage around with him for a week - whatever he generated he had to hold onto in a bag. What would be in my bag? Well, this week: giant empty plastic tray with lid from chick-fi-la which once held nuggets for 25 people, four wine bottles, a fifth of Dewers, a fifth of Tangaray, a fifth of Jack, a mini-keg of Heffeweizen, several beer bottles, several soda bottles, several soda cans, several crumpled up cocktail napkins, shrimp skins and tails, gift wrap, tissue paper, junk mail, cake box, frosting cans, an entire roll of used paper towels, a broken hanger, two pairs of holy socks, scooped cat litter and whatever I swept off the kitchen floor just before the party. I'm sure I'm leaving a lot out, but now that I recycle, I feel better about a lot of that crap at least coming back my way some day. I honestly don't know how it works and sometimes believe that stuff in the blue bin is secreted off in special trucks but driven to the same dump in the end. I don't know what goes into making a bottle that holds alcohol, or how many of them get recycled to make more bottles of alcohol, but I think something can be learned from the plastic water jug people. You buy a jug, and then you just refill it until it gets smooshy or gross. Then you buy another jug. And you recycle the old jug. If I had one big bottle of Jack, polished it off, then went down to the liquor store and just refilled it, think how many times I could do that before that bottle had to be recycled. Think of the space, the energy, the time, the resources, the money I would be saving everyone if they did not have to keep making so many individual bottles of Jack in a variety of sizes - nips, half pints, pints, 5ths, gallons, and "is this size legal?" Even beer bottles and cans, for that matter. Let's all just go down to the store and get refills. Think of the friends you'd make! The world would be a much happier place, you wouldn't have to wash your garbage and we could get rid of those damn can crunchers once and for all. I'm pretty sure we wouldn't be putting anyone out of a job by eliminating those.

Flipping the Switch

A couple of years ago I walked in on a friend of mine watching a program I could not believe existed. I was horrified. Huge shirtless men and half-dressed women breathing heavily and sweating up a storm. They were given strange challenges that sometimes involved helmets and frequently shown enormous trays of desserts for something called "temptation." These gentle giants cried at the drop of a doughnut, not because they wanted it, but because they thought they still might want it even if they no longer wanted it because now they knew what it meant to want it and give in or not want it and move on. Or something. All I know is, I couldn't bear to watch. Fast forward to this past fall, shortly after my new love affair with the gym had begun, and presto. Or pesto...I saw that same program but with seemingly different faces and somehow more relevant testimony, and I was hooked. They were talking about calories. I know about calories! They were talking about working out. I know about working out! They were all way bigger than me, but I felt like I could relate. I wanted them to succeed. I got sucked into the drama of it all - the politics, the game-playing, the desperate need for immunity each week. I picked a favorite and then dumped him or her in one fell swoop when someone else cried harder. I cried more at this program than I think I have in my entire life. I don't know why. Why do overweight people make me cry? Well, they don't in general. But put them on a scale after they've busted their asses for a week with Jillian and Bob all up in their grill and just three small veggie sandwiches from Subway in their tummy and I watch the numbers flip on the scale through my fingers like a girl. If they've lost more than 4 pounds, I'm relieved. Between 1 and 3, I'm disappointed. Zero, I'm flabbergasted. Plus 1 or more and I reach for a Kleenex. Because they look so crestfallen. Then they reference their families. And they tried so hard. And they just don't get it. And Bob is holding his face just like I am. And Jillian's eyebrows are lowered and she shifts her weight and recrosses her arms. And you can hear a pin drop. Well you could if the dramatic music stopped for a sec. And then the sometimes pregnant, not as pregnant, then way pregnant hostess says, "Kristin. You gained a total of 2 pounds this week for a total percentage loss of well, I guess it's not a loss, is it? Can you tell us how you feel?" Then this sweet hostess starts to cry because she dropped a ton of weight a while back and of course now she's sort of pregnant looking and emotions are running high. And everybody starts crying because it really sucks to see someone who obviously worked hard get absolutely nothing in return for it. And then there's the underlying tone that this poor soul will now fall below the dreaded yellow line and likely be up for elimination in the next hour of the program. But even in the midst of all this, I am more impressed with Kristin than ever. Wiping my tears, I think, hey, that chick stood on the scale for at least 7 minutes while all this went down and she weighs 302 pounds right now. She's in a purple jog bra the size of a mattress pad, wearing spandex shorts stretched to the nines and the thing is, she started at 349 pounds. She's wearing hoop earrings, her hair is styled nicely and she's made several key alliances in the house that could save her from the ultimate demise. She's lost weight; I like her chances even if she gets kicked off because you can see it in her eyes that the switch has flipped. Maybe that's what gets me about this show. People flipping the switch. Making a conscious effort to change themselves completely. Not just lose a few pounds and gain it back. But to literally lose a whole person in a lot of ways. That's a tremendous sacrifice. All the ways you used to see yourself and assume how others saw you are stripped away. It's liberating. It's compelling. Change your body type and see what happens. I don't have that option without maybe a boob job and some serious weightlifting, so I marvel at those who pull it off. I wonder too, I'm not gonna lie, how someone can get to 350+ pounds in the first place and not be in the NFL or WWF. I'm just talking about maybe your bus driver or that woman at the grocery store who's always testing the melons from her motorized cart. I'm not being mean, I'm being honest. I think it takes a very long time and a series of unfortunate events to get to that point, but once you're there, and I've seen it on TV, you can get out of it in a heartbeat. Well maybe 160 of em per minute for 12 solid episodes, but you can burn it all off is what I'm saying. You can get back to average and then some if you really want to. The colorful, XXXXXL t-shirted contestants on Biggest Loser are the walking, then running, then sprinting, then cycling, swimming, hiking, jumping, iron pumping proof of that. They're getting back to who they really are, and I can no longer look away. It's on again tonight. Someone pass me the Kleenex.

One Good Fool

Today is my birthday. I've always felt secretly pleased to have been born on a day for fools. It's like being handed a "get out of being serious for free" card. Expectations are immediately lowered. Levels of amusement markedly raised. I can be a goofball and well, we knew this would happen. The thing is, it almost didn't happen. My mother is charged with telling me my birth story every year (it is tradition), but I wonder if I shouldn't just tell it like I've heard it all these years and see if I'm right on or if I'm not as great a listener as some of my past bumper stickers have claimed. I will likely romanticize it more than she did. I will put in a few fade outs for effect. I will create a sense of urgency that the nurses may not have felt. And my mother's hair will be perfectly sprayed into a beehive I recall from one of her earliest photos with me. Or was it Aunt Susan? At any rate, here it goes...I was born on April 1, 1968 in Fort Knox, Kentucky at Ireland Army Hospital. My Dad was in Vietnam. My Mom was there (heh heh). I believe either on that very day or days before she was driving my Dad's old stick shift car somewhere and got stuck on a hill and the car kept rolling back. It could have been months before. I just know that my Mom can't drive a stick and I can and she always says the only reason is because she was pregnant with me and was stuck on that hill. If only I'd been born sooner! I could've clutched her out of there. Anyway, I digress. The sheets at Ireland Army Hospital were very green, the doctors and nurses were all decked out in green, my Mom's gown was green and the whole place was one big shamrock green building. Hence, my subsequent degree from Michigan State. Mere blocks away was a huge vault of gold (Fort Knox) and a horse racing track. I was destined to be rich and love horses. One out of two is not bad. When my Mom went into labor I was two weeks early. I was not expected to arrive until April 12, which coincidentally, was my Grandpa's birthday. It would have been equally special to share this date with him and quite likely would have excused me from a few minor indiscretions (beer, whiskey, cards, pretty women), but being funny would not have been nearly as, well, funny. I'm told showing up early was not my idea. It was brought on by a series of seemingly repeatable circumstances but in hindsight, not enviable. My mother is a chocolate covered cherry fanatic. They were then, and I believe still are, her favorite. She ate two boxes on March 31. Listen, she was preggers, her husband was on the other side of the world, my sister was running around in diapers, maybe the cable went out, probably it was cold outside, give her a break. Minutes later she wasn't feeling so hot, so my Oma (her mom and in many ways, my beloved second mom) rushed her to the hospital where no less than 12 blood sugar specialists soaped up and put on their surgical masks to consult her about the baby. "Mrs. Fracker, there's a good chance your baby will be born mentally challenged." Fade out. And we're back...it's April 1, about 9:30 p.m. The room is packed with doctors and nurses. Many looks of concern and anxious whispers. My Mom is so matter of fact, I can only imagine her saying, "I will have the baby now" in a thick German accent with her perfectly swooped beehive and then everyone prepping for delivery. Turns out it was a good idea to just get it over with. I popped into the world at 10:00 p.m. weighing in at a cool 6 lbs. 7 oz. or something like that (I still fudge my weight a little, a girl's gotta have some secrets) and a whopping 22" long. Tall for my age then. Not so much now. It's hard to tell at the time if I was mentally challenged. I couldn't hold a pen and Sudoku hadn't come onto the American scene yet. But there's no question I was an April Fool's baby, which my Grandma (Dad's mom) delighted in calling me from that day forward. My Dad found out in code that I'd made it into the world. The overseas call was a bit garbled, but one line came through loud and clear: "Mr. Fracker, your wife Sue Ann had the baby." Since my Mom's name is Helga, this could have been cause for confusion or jail time, but he knew what it meant. They both agreed if I was a girl, I'd be named Sue Ann, for some famous actress at the time whose name looked beautiful on the big screen in the only scripty font available at the time. 10 months later, Pops and I met for the first time in a local restaurant over steaks and fries. Me in my high chair, him in the booth. By way of introductions, I crumpled up my napkin and threw it at him. To this day, that's still how I greet people. I relish being a fool. And I thank my parents for giving me such an auspicious start. Happy Birthday to me...Mom, let me know if I got it right.