190. The Cleaning Game

Since yesterday’s Genius Plan (GP) regarding cleaning did not go over so well with The Husband, I decide to ignore child labor laws and enlist the help of my son Tall in my never-ending quest for a spotless and pristine semi-picked up home. I even coined a term for this new system: the Child Aid Plan (CAP).

I envision making CAP like a fun game, so he’ll participate willingly.

“Tall, guess what!” I say with the same tone I might announce we had front row seats to Penguins on Ice: the Disney Adventure Live. “You and I are going to do some mandatory house cleaning right now!”

He takes the remote and pauses his show. “No, thank you, Mom,” he says politely, not yet comprehending the scope of mandatory. “I think I’ll finish watching this ‘Penguins of Madagascar’ marathon instead.”

Before I have a chance to beg, bribe, or psychologically torture him by throwing away his uneaten Halloween candy, my four-year-old son Short appears out of nowhere and declares, “I’ll help you, Mommy!” If this were a cartoon, he’d be wearing a super-hero cape with a giant letter “C” for cleaning. Since this is not a cartoon, his cape had an “S” for Superman (or sucker, depending on your perspective).

Short tugs at the Velcro holding his shiny polyester dress-up cape shut, and deftly removes it with a flourish. “I do it! I help you, Mom! I know how to clean!” He carelessly deposits the cape and a wrinkled granola bar wrapper in a small heap on the floor.

His enthusiasm echoes through the air like radio waves. I am instantly affected as well; we are both excited to get started.

“Okay, then, Short,” I say with fervor, as reach for his discarded yellow super-hero cape and granola bar wrapper.

So what if Tall wants to be a couch potato? I can grant him a brief reprieve this time, I think; I know Short and I will get a lot done working in tandem.

“What’s first, Mommy?” grins Short, like a new-hire employee who does not yet realize he’s beginning a dead-end job.

I look around, trying to assess the messiest area. This is like deciding which ocean is wetter, the Pacific or Atlantic. “Well, let’s start with the living room.”

Short walks in, taps his brother on the shoulder indicating he should move over, then picks up the pillow Tall had been leaning on. Short proceeds to expertly fluff the pillow with his little fists and put it back.

I could not be more impressed if Short had just rattled off the names of all our previous Presidents in chronological order.

All those many times (okay, five) that I cleaned the house are paying off in this Osmosis Moment. Short has obviously picked up on my superior cleaning techniques by witnessing me in action.

He stacks three books neatly together. He meticulously rearranges decorative seashells in their large wooden bowl. Next, he grabs a stray shoe and leaves the room.

Mistakenly thinking he has clocked-out for an unauthorized break, I call down the hall after him, “Where are you going?”

“To put my shoe away in my room where it belongs,” he answers confidently.

Wow. Internally I chastise myself for not thinking of this CAP idea sooner.  “Brilliant!” I say to no one in particular.

Short soon reappears and I tell him I’m going to get the vacuum. I go downstairs to the basement where I vaguely remember seeing The Husband put it once a few months ago. If you were a vacuum, where would you be? Think like a vacuum. Storage closet? No. Furnace room? No. Laundry room?

The shoulder-height pile of dirty laundry temporarily distracts me. Multi-tasker extraordinaire that I am, I seize this opportunity to start a load of towels.

In the five minutes that I am forgetting what I went down to the basement for in the first place, Short’s true Gifted Cleaning Abilities emerge: the entire living room has been picked up.

“Ohmygosh!” I blurt out upon seeing the room again, struggling to contain my disbelief. Then, with a regrettable absence of self-editing, “Tall, did you help him?”

“No, Mommy, Tall did not help me!” Short clarifies, momentarily miffed. “I did all by myself,” he nods proudly, Washington-Adams-Jefferson-Madison-Monroe.

I look around the room, my eyes searching for vestiges of the multitude of Lego’s, shoes, books, Halloween candy, stuffed animals, magazines, sweaters, papers, and other assorted junk that only moments ago littered the living room landscape. The room now resembles not so much a real family’s living room as a Designer Showcase House that has just been staged for its photo shoot.  How long was I in that laundry room?

My natural cynicism creeping in, I ask cautiously, “Sweetheart, how did you clean everything up so quickly?”

Short misinterprets my skepticism as approval and runs over to hug me. “I show you, Mom,” he says helpfully, as he pulls at my sleeve, leading me to the front entry closet. I nervously open the door.

As I feared, all the items that had previously cluttered our now-pristine living room have been hastily shoved inside this already overcrowded closet. Old tennis rackets are married to broken umbrellas and sharing space with torn magazines and borrowed sweaters and their illegitimate brightly-colored Lego children. Stuffed animals look on in disapproval. Library books and dirty baseball bats hover above us precariously, threatening to fall at any moment. With Herculean effort, I shut the creaky door.

Every Parenting book I have ever read is flashing warning lights in my brain: You can’t be mad at him: he’s only four; he was trying to “help”.

I bite my lip. Then I say calmly, “Short, I don’t understand. Why did you cram everything in here?”

He's eager to share his cleaning knowledge. His smile is now so wide I can see every baby tooth in his mouth, each gleaming white Chiclet, when he says cheerfully, “I watch exactly the way you clean the house, Mommy, and now I know the right way to do it, too.”

MOV
(“Mom Observes Vestiges”)

189. Breakthrough

Dear Diary,

Today I hatched a Genius Plan: I’m going to tell The Husband that from now on, he can choose ONE DAY per week to have a clean house. Not one day per week for me to clean the house; no. I should clarify here. One day that the house will be semi-picked-up. But “clean” sounds better, so we’ll go with clean.

Knowing The Husband, he’ll want specifics (he is an Analyst, for goshsakes, that’s what he’s paid to do: dissect information into an unrecognizable pulp of raw data). He’ll most likely say something like, “what’s your definition of ‘clean’?” (but remember, between you and me, what I really meant was semi-picked-up). So then, just to make him happy, I’ll itemize what my new Genius Plan includes:

• Making our bed
• Washing all dishes in the sink and/or near the sink or kitchen vicinity
• Doing all laundry, including putting it away (this should be worth two airline tickets to Tahiti, right there)
• Straightening random junk that happens to be lying around (things like the kids’ drawings, newspaper articles I’ve obsessively saved, take-out menus, and those pesky bills that the mailman religiously brings us)
• That’s it (isn’t that enough? there are only 24 hours in a day)

So, with this fabulous Genius Plan (GP), I will be off the hook from (what other people consider daily) chores a glorious six days per week. Woohoo! Why did I not think of this sooner?

(Even re-reading this makes me seriously question why my third grade teacher, Mrs. Young, opted not to place me in the Gifted Class.)

Here’s the really awesome part: The Husband, instead of being disappointed and disgruntled six days per week, can just EXPECT A MESS and set his exceedingly high standards aside (to give you an idea of his radical demands, he thinks I should rinse out my cup after I use it—I know! how did I marry such an unreasonable person?). Instead, with the new GP in place, he can be deliriously overjoyed on the one special semi-picked-up oops, I mean clean day.

Oh, I hear him walking through the front door right now. I can’t wait to tell him the GP! I’ll report back later how it goes………………

MOV
*****************************
Diary,

Predictably, The Husband was not as enamored of the new GP as I was. Bummer. When I explained the system and simply asked him which day he preferred for the “Clean Day” (remember—not cleaning day), he said with notable sarcasm, “Monday through Sunday.” Ha ha, obviously he doesn’t “get” the concept. Then he brought up the fact that he goes to work all day and why can’t I just straighten up the bare minimum amount (his idea of minimum was everything on my itemized list but—gasp!—daily) and then he reminded me that I have three and a half free hours per day when Short is at preschool and what was I doing during that time? (Well, duh: blog.)

The way I look at it is: Tall is almost seven. That is seven long years that I have been doing a billion trillion loads of laundry and dishes and snacks and bottles and and and. I think I deserve three and a half hours to do whatever I deem important (hint: not cleaning). When I say this to him, he says (not unkindly), “Sweetie, we just got that really nice exercise bike and put some expensive free weights in the basement. Why don’t you use some of that time to work-out?”

As you can imagine, his proposed Exercise Plan (EP) went over just about as well as my GP did with him: not very. Is he calling me fat?!? Or is he implying that I am fat?!? I have a mirror that can do that for me, thankyouverymuch, it is not The Husband’s job to reinforce what that damn fun-house mirror already tells me every day (“You’ve gotten a little chub-o there, MOV,”). Duh. I already know that. It’s actually The Husband’s job to murmur helpful and endearing things like, “Everyone knows jeans shrink 3 sizes in the dryer, Honey; you have not put on weight, our dryer is merely set too hot.”

Regrettably, we have scrapped my divine GP as well as The Husband’s less-than-stellar EP. Reluctantly I admit that Mrs. Young might have been right on her assessment of me after all.  So, effective immediately, we return to our previous system that has served us so well these past seven years: chaos.

MOV
("Move Over, Vacuum")

187. Queen Of No

“Will you please help us pass out fliers next Saturday?”
“We need a volunteer for Room Mom, can you do it?”
“Wow, that last party you hosted was fabulous—can you host a gathering for our local political candidate?”

No. No. Nope.

It has gotten to the point where people have stopped asking me (and thank God for that).

Why do so many moms suffer from that pesky and debilitating disease, Must-Please-Everyone-Itis? The most common symptoms are as follows:

• The vile head nod. You go around nodding all the time, people think you are saying yes.
• The brief pause. For the uninitiated, a brief pause shows doubt. Doubt means you’ll do it even though you don’t want to.
• The quick hello (just to be friendly) at the drycleaners. This will be interpreted as, “she has time to pick up the dry cleaning, therefore she has time to be a Cub Scout Leader.”
• The “let me just check my call-waiting”. That is (clearly) the kiss of death. It means that every phone call is important, every person trying to get your attention is important (hint: they’re not).

To combat the above, I force myself to be rude on a daily basis. Watch and learn:

(Running into acquaintance at Starbucks)
Acquaintance: MOV! Great to see you! Hey, I was thinking you could chair that art committee project………
Me: No.
A: But….. but….. you don’t even know what the project is?
Me: No.
A: “No,” as in, you don’t know what it is, or “no,” as in you don’t want to do it?
Me: Both. Bye!

See? So what, she has a bad opinion of me? who cares? I don’t even know her name. (Bonus: all my Tuesday afternoons that would have been gobbled up by the art committee project remain blissfully free.)

The Husband is even in on the act now. We don’t always answer the door. Could be a salesperson trying to sell us Jesus. Or, the phone rings, and sometimes we don’t answer it. This drives my sons, Tall and Short, positively batty.

“Mom! That’s the phone! You’d better get it—it could be Important!”

Guess what? No one has ever called to tell me I won a million dollars. Voicemail was invented for a reason, and that reason is so I can finish watching my precious TiVo’d episode of TopChef. On a Tuesday afternoon, natch.

MOV

186. I Am Paying You, Right?

So I’ve scheduled my biannual professional house-cleaning, and the cleaning lady will be here any minute.  I’m doing what I always do right before she arrives: clean. I’m in the kitchen, scrubbing away, when The Husband walks in.

“Did Sonya cancel?” he asks innocently.

“What? Why would you say that?” I brush a stray hair out of my face with the yellow rubber glove.

“Well, it’s just that I thought we hired her to do this deep-cleaning, but then it looks like you’re cleaning. I don’t understand.” He blinks.

“Sweetie, can we have this discussion another time?” I say, as I tap at his feet with my mop, “Really, I’m under kind of a time crunch here. Can you please move? You’re in my way.”

“We are paying Sonya good money, you know. She’s not doing this for the love of Windex fumes,” he continues.

“I don’t want her to see the house this messy,” I respond as I pick a calcified orange peel off the floor.

“The house looks fine; I'm sure she's seen worse.  She's a cleaning lady. She cleans. It’s her job, remember? Honestly, if you're going to do it all for her beforehand, why don’t we just save the money?” he interrogates.

“She does a better job than me,” I say, as I set down the Q-tip I was detailing the faucet with so I can look him in the eye.

“You’re crazy.”

“Don’t call me crazy. And here, I need you to vacuum the living room.” I motion for him to take the vacuum. He does what I used to do as a flight attendant when a passenger asked for a pillow: ignores me and walks away.

I go into the bedroom and start stripping the sheets. I take the picture frames and spare change and perfume bottles from on top of the dresser and shove them all in a drawer, my rationale being that now Sonya can dust without things in her way. I pick up a stray pair of tights and put them in the hamper.

I hear The Husband go out the front door and then come back in. Then there is a weird noise in the living room, a noise like someone stomping dirt into the carpet.

I walk in the living room and witness The Husband stomping dirt into the carpet.

“What are you doing?!?” I screech, dumbfounded.

He has ceased stomping, and now he’s doing some sort of dance, a Dirt Dance.

“You’re getting the carpet even dirtier than it already was!” I say, barely masking my exasperation.

“That’s the whole idea. This will give Sonya something to do. This way she’ll really deserve her tip,” he grins, and I detect a sinister gleam in his eyes.

“What's your problem?” I ask, my voice full of resentment.

He gives me an unexpected hug. “MOV, I love you. You and I clean the house 99% of the time. Why do you hire a person to do a job, and then you do the entire job for them? Don’t you think that’s insulting?” He walks past me to the kitchen and starts making noises in there, too.

“You’d better not be making any dishes dirty!” I yell.

“I’m not, don’t worry, I’m just getting a snack,” he answers. Why doesn’t he offer me a snack? I've been so busy cleaning that I’ve run out of time for breakfast.

I look out the window and see Sonya’s car pulling up. I glance at the clock and realize I need to leave right now to be on time for my dentist appointment.

“I gotta run; I’m late!” I call out to The Husband as I remove my rubber gloves. He meets me at the door just as I’m putting on my jacket. He gives me a quick kiss.

“Here, MOV,” he says, offering me a small bag. “I packed you a snack for your drive to the dentist.” He winks at me.

Huh, that’s weird. Since when does he pack me a snack? “Uh, okay, wow, thanks,” I say rather ungratefully, not really knowing how to respond.  Then, as an afterthought, "I'm sorry I yelled at you.  You're right.  She's a professional, and she can certainly do her job today." 

I get in the car. Come to think of it, I am a little bit hungry right now. Maybe he packed me a roll or an apple? I open the bag, and staring back at me is the giant bag of Oreos.  Does he not realize I am going to the dentist?  Wait--he actually said, "for your drive to the dentist".  

I hesitate:  I didn't bring a toothbrush with me.  But I am hungry.  The Oreos are calling to me, "We're full of empty calories!  Come on, yummy!"  I sheepishly eat two cookies in rapid succession.  Then I accidentally catch sight of my blackened and sugar-coated teeth in the rearview mirror.

I guess the dentist will be doing his job today, too.   

MOV

180. I Choose Candy

So, unfortunately, I have become one of Those Mothers. You know, the ones who wait until the very last second to buy the Halloween candy because of their (in my case, justified) fear that they will eat all the candy themselves?

Last night, The Husband and I had the same conversation we have every October 30th. It went something like this:

The Husband: Did you buy Halloween candy yet?
Me: No. And why is it my job anyway? You can’t drive to Target?
TH: Oh, come on, don’t be ridiculous! You know I’d buy the wrong kind and then you’d be mad.

It’s true: he would buy the wrong kind. I drive to Target and am immediately sorry—there is not a parking place to be had. Uh-oh. When I finally do park on top of someone else’s car, I walk in and realize that every customer in the store is doing what I’m doing: panicking. Moms and dads and toddlers and babies and grandmas and teen-agers and twenty-somethings—everyone is here and accounted for, shoving each other out of the way in a futile attempt to locate the “best” costume or the “best” candy. It is October 30th; let’s not fool ourselves, there is no “best” left. There is not even a “second-best” or “eight-best” or “fifteenth-best”: no. There is only worst.

I maneuver past a man holding what looks like a giant beetle-goat-hybrid costume (“Sweetheart, they’re out of StarWars Luke Skywalker costumes for Jacob, can he be a beetle-goat-hybrid instead?”). I stare at the vacant shelves in disbelief—is this the first sign of the Apocalypse?

The next aisle over, I find the distinctly unappetizing leftover candies, the ones No One Else Wanted. There are a few ripped jumbo bags of Easter Skittles (I am well-aware that that is the wrong holiday), some sort of generic brand licorice that is clearly a knock-off of “Good-N-Plenty” (“Great-N-Abundant”), Organic pepper-flavored gummy balls (not surprisingly, there are several bags of these languishing on the shelf), some sad little mini chocolate bars with images of skeletons wearing devil costumes, and an abandoned bag of pretzels. As I consider the bag of pretzels, a woman clutching a tree costume grabs them out from under me.

Sigh. What am I going to do?

Target has never let me down before. I push my way through the hordes and back to the front of the store. I quietly ask to speak to a manager. A small boy all of fourteen years old steps forward and says politely, “I’m Toby, the week-end evening Shift Manager,” his voice has not changed yet, it’s high and squeaky and sounds like my six-year-old’s voice, “how can I help you, m’am?”

I explain my situation (summed up in four words: “desperation; name-brand candy”) and he nods sympathetically. Then he turns to a tiny girl who I assume must be his little sister and says, “Heather? Can you radio back to Carl and find out what’s going on with remaining pre-packaged candy in Pumpkin-Land?”

I’m liking Toby more by the minute. After a brief pow-wow with Heather about the crisis that they are now referring to as the Candy Situation, I’m whisked away to some secret back warehouse room entrance. I don’t know if this is a good idea. It’s kind of like seeing Mickey Mouse take his giant (fake) head off: disconcerting. Maybe we should forget about Halloween this year and turn all our house lights off and pretend we’re not home? Could we get away with that, or would genius neighborhood children see through our flimsy sham and retaliate by toilet-papering our house?

Carl, in all his pimply glory, meets us at the door. Toby leans in and says Something Important to Carl, who now looks very somber and serious. Toby turns back to me, hands me a coupon for 20% off and a free popcorn at their snack bar, and says apologetically, “I’m so very sorry for the inconvenience. Carl here has located a last shipment of a few boxes of candy; I hope you’ll find what you’re looking for there.” He smiles, and I notice he has what looks like a Reese’s Piece stuck in his braces.

“Thank you, Toby,” I murmur admiringly. Carl leads me back to the main receiving area, which is stacked full of cardboard boxes. We come upon some boxes that someone (Carl?) has hastily torn open, and there—lo and behold—are several giant bags of Peanut M&M’s and KitKat’s tumbling out. I gasp. It’s like Target had reserved special boxes of candy with the words “MOV’s Favorites—hold thru Sat!” emblazoned on the front.

Carl shakes his head. “I am so sorry, m’am, this is absolutely all we have left. I hate to say it, and don’t take it the wrong way, but maybe next year you might want to consider shopping for your candy a little bit sooner than October 30th…….. say, maybe August or September so you’d have the best selec…..”

I cut him off. “Carl, I appreciate your concern, but this is perfect. I’ll take all the M&M’s and KitKat’s you have.”

After I pay, I drive my SUV around to the back loading dock. Carl meets me at the curb with ten enormous boxes that could each fit a couch. I guess I’m all set for next Halloween, too.

MOV
("Mother Of Vampires")

179. The Curse of Virgo

So there I am, shopping at Macy’s. Suddenly, I notice that of the three navy blue cashmere sweaters I am pawing through, one is out of order. It should go S-M-L, and instead, SOMEONE (not me) has relocated M to the front, so now the order is M-S-L. This is (obviously) unacceptable. I move M back to the middle where M belongs. A woman (cute, young-ish, wearing a silver top and tight brown skirt with a ruffled hem) taps me on my shoulder. “Ma’am? Do you work here? Can you tell me where to find the Ralph Lauren section?”

This is the Curse of Virgo.

I don’t want to put all the cashmere sweaters back in order; I’m compelled to, whether I like it or not. I decide I do not want to be mistaken for a Macy’s employee: clearly it’s time to leave. The Sock Department is on the way out, right next to the door. There are three stray pairs of suicidal socks that have jumped from their respective overcrowded hooks to their demise on the dirty floor. Of course I must pick them up and re-hang them (tell me, what choice do I have? it’s the right thing to do). This time it’s a man that taps me on the shoulder. “Selena? You need to get back to the Shoe Department, stop wandering into Socks.” (I am picking up on a distinct hierarchy here, with Socks being waaaaaaaay below Shoes in the pecking order. The way he says “Socks” is exactly like someone might say “expired cottage cheese” or “poopy diapers.”)

I look him in the eye (he has “manager” written all over him) and I say what anyone would say under the circumstances, “No problem, it won’t happen again. Oh, and it’s Serena, not Selena.”

He smiles at me. We understand each other.

I hightail it out of Macy’s and over to Chowder City to get a cup of yummy clam chowder. As I walk up to the counter to place my order with the “To Go” girl, I notice that the stack of paper menus has not only tipped over, but some of them (gasp!) have fallen on the ground. Queen Virgo picks them all up, and arranges them neatly (some were upside down) and sets them precisely on the counter. The waitress notices. She says, “Are you Lisa? Is today your first day as hostess? Manuel was looking for you.”

I laugh, and shake my head no, all the while thinking, If I make small talk with Manuel and he finds out I picked up all the menus, will that maybe get me a free chowder?

(And as a quick aside, what's with me being mistaken for retail clerks and hostesses all the time?  Why am I never mistaken for a doctor or lawyer or Gwyneth Paltrow or someone like that?  Is it time to ditch the "Hello, Kitty" barrettes that were always meant to be ironic anyway?) 

The Curse of Virgo follows me. I try to leave my Virgo-ness at home or in the car, but no. The Virgo Tendencies cling to me like a cheap fleece jacket straight from the dryer sticking to, well, everything else in that load of whites. Virgo-Virgo-Virgo. Nothing messy, nothing out of place.

As you can well imagine, this Virgo Hypermania did not go over so well when I was a flight attendant for United Airlines. The other flight attendants and I would finish up the service and then have a little time to relax in the back galley. One flight attendant might, I don’t know, decide to drink a coke. She would pour about half of the can into her cup of ice and sip it, enjoying the sweetness and the necessary jolt of caffeine. Then, maybe, a passenger would call her over to ask her something important (like, May I have a pillow or Are we passing over the Grand Canyon right now?). I personally had no time for fruitless pillow searches or ho-hum scenic distractions: no. I had enough distraction right here in my own back galley: she had left her coke on the counter.

Was she coming back for it? If so, when? Who knew? Was she done? Your guess is as good as mine. I stared at the (hypothetical) soda (but it wasn’t that hypothetical as this scenario in its countless variations played out on almost every flight). I watched the remaining fizzy bubbles ... stop ... fizzing. The ice had melted down to tiny reflective shards.      

Honestly, what choice did I have here? The choice had already been made for me, and most likely had absolutely nothing to do with being Virgo. That’s right: I threw it away. Blip! Gone. Into the trash.

She would (predictably) come back. Her name was Suzette (or Sophie or Lucy or Frank or Diane or Jeannie or J.J.) and she would say (barely masking the dismay in her voice), “Did someone throw my soda in the trash?! I wasn’t done with it yet! Who did that?”

I would look away. Queen Virgo, guilty again.

Don’t think it ends there; the passengers didn’t much care for my Virgo-ness either. “Can you help me lift my small tote bag into the overhead bin?” a kindly older woman might ask. “Not before you zip it closed and get that stray dog-fur off of it—wow, your dog is a shedder!”

The first time I was written up, unpleasant words like, “judgmental” and “disrespectful” were bandied about, as in “The passengers are complaining that you are being judgmental.” I would roll my eyes and sigh, “They're wrong, I'm not being judgmental, and by the way, I resent you writing me up, and your pencil is not very sharp, why don’t you sharpen it?  Also, I'm curious:  did you even go to college, because I don't see a degree on that cubicle wall.”

The Curse of Virgo, as you can ask any of my many friends born between August 22nd and September 21st is: we like everything perfect. No, it’s more than that. We demand that everything be perfect. If things aren’t perfect, well, then you’re just lazy.

Fear not, though, my lazy friend! Queen Virgo is here to save the day, organize your kitchen and purge your files: it’s what I do. I have this innate sense of the way things should be, the way things could be, the way things must be (hint: they're all the same way—my way). It takes every ounce of my being, every fiber of my soul, to not pick up the dollars in the Starbucks tip jar and line the George Washington visages up the same way and put the dollars back into the jar. (Really? You would give the poor girl a wrinkled dollar that looks like it went through a particularly defeating spin cycle? Why not a crisp dollar? I’m not saying you have to iron it, but please think about it for next time ... ).

You know what would make my life soooo much easier? If everyone were a Virgo like me. My friend, M, who is my co-worker at the high-end kitchen store, is also a Virgo. He tells me there are classes for “Former Reforming Virgos.” Huh? (I guess one good thing about a class full of Virgos is: no one’s late.)

What do you mean, I ask M, reforming Virgos? I happen to like myself and all my quirky (some would say “cute”—that would be what I would say, while others might use a word similar to “annoying”—The Husband might say that if polled) ways.

“Well, I don’t know how to break this to you, MOV, but not everyone is as enamored of Virgos as we Virgos ourselves.”

“I don’t really understand where you’re going with this ... ”

M leans in; he has a secret to share.

“MOV, you know I think you are great, but other people, they just, well, they mock Virgos.”

“What?!?” I screech. My mind is numb: why would someone purposely ridicule a Sweet Helpful Virgo like myself? I can’t fathom it.

M continues, “You know how Virgos are obsessed with order and neatness? Well, I hate to tell you, but the rest of the world seems to be consumed with chaos and messiness.” He frowns an exaggerated frown to get his point across.

But is he making it up, the part about the class, I mean? If there is a class, should I take it? Would that be akin to a self-imposed intervention? What is so horribly wrong about being a Virgo?

"You know, MOV, I took the class, twice.  It would really help you.  I have completely let go of that whole clean/ neat/ perfect Virgo thing.  It's like I'm a new person."  He smiles broadly then does his best "Price Is Right" spokesmodel gesture, showcasing himself to reinforce that, yes indeed, he is truly a New Person. 

This lovely and exquisite hand gesture violently knocks M's scalding hot coffee all over the back counter and immediately drenches a stack of important fliers (10% Off Coupon!). I do what I do best: grab a sponge and clean up the mess that has now dripped onto the floor. M doesn’t notice: he’s too busy frantically drying the fliers with paper towels, one-by-one, lifting the fliers into the air and flapping them around like warning flags in a vain effort to make them pristine and dry once again.      

MOV
("Messy Or Virgo")

178. Politically Corrected

So my friend Donna mentions that she started volunteering every morning at a public school in an adjacent town. I ask what her specific job is at South Depressingville Elementary, and she says she's the Parent/ Teacher Liaison (her task is to get more parents directly involved in the education process). Donna is originally from Barcelona, so she’s fluent in Spanish which is the main reason they need her: to translate.

When she's done telling me about this latest selfless philanthropic venture, I say, “Donna, I’m so impressed. What a great thing to do. What exactly inspired you to take this on?”

Without hesitation, Donna replies, “I’m doing it because the kids are poor.”

I am nodding and understanding, but then I think: Wait! Did she just say POOR? Are we allowed to say poor now? I thought we were supposed to say economically challenged or financially disabled or underprivileged or a victim of the current financial crisis ... but poor? Poor’s acceptable now? Huh. Poor does sum it up, doesn’t it. Poor is a powerful word for a powerless people.

The next thing I think is, Woohoo! I guess I can say poor now! And not just as in poor me or Tall, stop hitting your brother—that’s a poor choice or even in the old-stand-by-fall-back poor timing. No. Now I seem to have permission to use the dictionary definition, which is “lacking worldly goods, penniless, moneyless, destitute.”  Imagine: I can say what I mean. I feel liberated.

Wait.  Donna, does this apply to everything in my life now? Has the Earth just had a major shift on its axis and so now people won’t be offended by me talking? What should I do with black? is black okay? Colored must still be bad (I know colored used to be okay). African-American? That always seems silly to me, because unless your parents just moved here from Ghana 5 seconds ago, you’re pretty much American-American. (That’s what I’m going to say from now on when people ask me my original nationality: American-American!) Chances are, most people who go around saying I’m African-American have lived here their whole lives, as have their great-grandparents.

I didn’t even mention Mexican yet. Is Mexican all right? Or do I have to go with the multi-purpose catch-all Hispanic? My sister Oakley gets so mad at me whenever I say the word Mexican (as in, “I asked the Mexican gentleman standing outside the U-Haul place if he could help me move my new couch for 25 bucks”); she says How do you know he’s Mexican? (uh, the Mexican flag on his t-shirt gave it away?)  She says He could be from Uruguay or Puerto Rico or Bolivia or El Salvador, you're insulting him, MOV. So next time I ask the person in question (“De donde es Usted?”); he answers, predictably, “Mexico”.  (And honestly, would I be pissed off if someone thought I was from Canada? eh, no.) 

I am told that even though I think Mexican is a good idea, I am wrong.  Mexican is still, under no circumstances, okay. No. The word I am apparently looking for is Latino. Sigh. Does that mean my Mexican mover-guy is from Latin? As I asked in 7th grade when I was required to take “Intro to Latin”, where, exactly, is Latin? I can’t find it on any map. Am I allowed to say that I'm Atlantic because I live near the Atlantic Ocean? (Granted, I wasn’t born in the Atlantic Ocean, but at least it’s a place I can find on the map.)

What about fat?  Is fat okay? I’m kind of tired of saying heavy or heavy-set or curvy or weight-challenged or even the Ultimate Lie: big-boned. I just want to say fat. I'm not trying to be offensive. Heck, I have days when I feel fat, days when only my “fat pants” fit. I don’t go around saying, “Wow, I feel extra voluptuous today, I will wear my anorexic-averse pants”. Oh, and that begs the question: are we allowed to say anorexic? As in, “he is a skinny little skeleton person, he looks anorexic”? Or is that still off-limits?

Ugly. I guess ugly is never good. We'd better stick with unattractive.

I'd like to have the word lazy back, please.  Not tired, or unmotivated, or lacks initiative, or energy-depleted, or even likes to lounge.  In some cases (okay, many), the right word is actually lazy. 

That brings me to stupid. Can stupid work? because sometimes stupid is just the word I’m looking for (“that driver who just cut me off is stupid!”). We tell our sons not to use the word stupid. We make them substitute the generic and totally-wrong-word-choice “silly” instead. But silly is happy or absurd; silly is not strong enough to be stupid.     

How about mean? “That girl was mean,” seems to be treading into forbidden territory. I have always been trained to say, “that girl was a tad bit unpleasant” or “I think that girl’s not having a good day” or “that girl was in a bad mood”. No one ever tells me it’s okay to say what I’m really thinking: what a bitch.

Greedy. I love that word! When a small child at the park last year kicked my son Short and grabbed a cookie out of Short’s hand and immediately ate it (causing Short to cry, no surprise there), the child's mom shrugged and said matter-of-factly, “Victor is not a good sharer.” Victor is not a good sharer?!? Victor is greedy!

And Victor's mom?  What a bitch.

MOV
("Mostly Offensive Vitriol")