Stirring the Pot Page 3
2. The bracelet kind of worked like the tapping I described above: it focused me on the fact that I tend to complain mindlessly. So I started to complain more deliberately. I feel better already.
3. A Certificate of Happiness is something I can award myself!
In the end, it’s hard for me to say that I truly regret any challenge or therapy I’ve done in the name of self-improvement. Wait—actually, see this page for my feelings about juice detoxing, and if I were you, I’d not eat Chiclets off someone’s ass. There was actually a self-help angle involved in that episode (none of your business), but you cannot remove that kind of imagery from your mental hard drive no matter how much tapping you do.
THE WHINE-FREE SPRITZER
Another way to quit whining? Ditch the wine and stick with the hard stuff:
Ingredients:
3 ounces (decent) bourbon
2 ice cubes
1 ounce soda water
Girls’ Night In
RECIPE FOR SUCCESS
Ingredients:
Several bottles of (decent) wine
You and your closest girlfriends
Disguised Pizza (see this page)
Netflix
Directions:
Open the bottle to allow it to breathe. If it doesn’t look like it’s breathing, give it mouth-to-mouth.
If I were to make a list of the great loves of my life, several on the list would be women. No, I’m not coming out in these pages! I’m simply saying that some of my female friends have loved me more and known me better than some of the men I’ve palled around with.
For all the excitement and intimacy that goes along with a romantic relationship, sexual attraction can cloud your judgment, and sexual tension can build resentment (not to mention resentments over dirty laundry, left-up toilet seats, and the other annoyances of cohabitation). With family members, for better or for worse, there’s baggage. But with certain girlfriends, you can take off the mask you wear during the day—wife, girlfriend, daughter, mother, colleague, Girl Scout, or bitch—and just be you, which may be a little of all those things, but not just one. Girlfriends are happily leaned on. Which reminds me that all the talk about leaning in to our careers and our goals in life somehow misses a big part of the point: leaning on each other is the way to get ahead! Best girlfriends pick each other up when they’re down, celebrate each other’s successes, and coach self-forgiveness after major fuck-ups.
Given that outpouring of mushy girl-adoration, it’ll come as no surprise to you that girls’ night is a date I hold sacred on my calendar.
In my two tens (see this page for an explanation), girls’ night meant girls’ night out on the town. Short dresses, high heels, candy-colored cocktails with fruit skewers or umbrellas. Good tunes, good times. We’d get dolled up, go dancing, and protect each other as we explored the hell out of the world.
Even if the club we went to was dead and no one bought us drinks or the guy we liked wanted someone else’s number, it didn’t matter because we were together. We were invincible! Put together, the three or four of us were a six- or eight-legged, glossy-lipped, sexy beast. Girl power! (So the next time you see a pack of young girls out on the town like that, resist the urge to think that their tipsiness or their seeming availability means that they are shallow and careless. Trust me, they are less on the prowl for men than they are on the prowl for adventure. They are celebrating their freedom, their femininity, and the safety they feel when together. End of lecture!)
Now that I’m older-ish, girls’ night in is the thing for me. Being dressed to the nines in a trendy nightclub has its merits and I still go that route from time to time, but I’m less into the pounding dance beats, laser lights, and the jackasses who try to take a selfie on their smartphone with me.
Now when I get together with my girlfriends I want to wear sweats or pajamas, eat good food, drink really good wine, and indulge in great conversation. And then I want to ice the cake by binge-watching an entire season of a television show featuring handsome, chivalrous, or devious Englishmen, or the vicarious drunkenness of the movie Bridesmaids. The concept is still the same—we are celebrating our freedom (because Lord knows it gets harder and harder to coordinate as we all get busier with kids and careers), our femininity, and the safety we feel in each other’s company.
How many more ways can I say it?
Hands down, girls’ night in body-slams almost anything else in the cage match of fun.
Girls’ night in is a staycation from my daily troubles. It’s more rejuvenating than a trip to the day spa and more nourishing than ninety minutes of hot yoga.
I look forward to girls’ night in more than Black Friday sales or Chris Hemsworth films.
It’s Christmas without all the shitty seasonal coffee creamer flavors and pressure. (A side note to the person who approved the creation of eggnog latte creamer: if you won’t quit, you’re fired!)
DISGUISED PIZZA (AKA PEAR GORGONZOLA FLATBREAD)
Ingredients:
1 ball of store-bought pizza dough (per guest if you’re not dieting!)
1 pear
A handful of Gorgonzola cheese
A handful of arugula
½ lemon
1 tablespoon olive oil
Salt and pepper
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
Using a little flour so that your hands don’t stick to the dough, stretch the pizza dough into a flatbread shape and place it on a sheet pan or pizza stone. Thinly slice a pear, then line pear slices up on the dough all pretty-like. Sprinkle Gorgonzola cheese over pear slices. Bake in the oven for 10–15 minutes. While that is baking, clean the arugula and squeeze lemon juice over the greens. Add olive oil, salt, and pepper. Toss. The flatbread is done when the cheese is melty, the pears tender, and the crust golden. Top the hot pizza—whoops, flatbread—with arugula.
Five Things You Don’t Want to Hear at a Class Reunion
1. Weren’t you a dude?
2. Weren’t you voted Most Likely to Succeed? What happened?
3. What class did you teach?
4. So what time do you have to report back to your parole officer?
5. I was sad when you broke up with me, but I eventually got over it. Listen, my helicopter is here, so I need to go. Good luck with your door-to-door costume jewelry business. I’ll check you out on Pinterest!
Drunk and Disorderly in the Age of Social Media
Texting or tweeting is hard enough when you’re sober. First there are those tiny little buttons on your phone. And in my case, big old clumsy thumbs. Recipe for disaster right there. Add the fact that I’m usually in a cab or walking down the street or trying to pretend I’m listening to you while trying to type, and you get some crazy-ass messages.
Add alcohol to the equation? Well, if you think I’m uninhibited when I’m sober, you ain’t seen the half of it.
When I’m drinking with friends, they usually help keep my thumb diarrhea in check. Text policing is just another thing that good friends do for each other, after all. Where I run into trouble is after they’ve dropped me off or when they’ve all gone home (or when I’m drinking alone). Some recent examples of my late-night outreach to the friends I have been drinking with:
“CAN U COME OVER AND BRUSH MY TEETH?”
“OH NO. Cunt find batteries for vibrator. Do u have AAs? Cum quick.”
Or this beauty that I sent to my agent:
“Thoughts on expanding career. Go with me. What about playing Meryl Streep’s daughter who decides to end her life, but its funny? If not Streep, maybe Cher? Make a note to look up A-listers who can play mom to me. never mind, I just made the note myself and stuck it to the phone so I wont forget. But, seriously, lets keep thinking outside the box. Because my box isn’t getting younger. Hah!!!”
Or this one to Evan’s teacher:
Dear Ms. West,
I luv you so much. Don’t be afraid to talk to me outside of class.
You can call
me Jenny. Or anytime.
Kisses,
Jenny
Or this to a local dog shelter:
Dear dog people,
Please stop sending pictures of sad-looking dogs. It makes me so sad and even though they are cute and sad I can’t take another dog, because you know how it is. So stop. Please stop it because I am crying now.
Jenny
Or this email to myself:
Subject: DON’T FORGET: READ THIS WHEN YOU WAKE UP. Go get the morning-after pill.
Love, me
Seven Things I Wish Someone Would Invent
1. An app that can detect your blood alcohol level through the keys on your phone. When you’re texting late at night (see previous chapter) it will block your message and politely ask in a computerized voice, “Is sending this [angry rant/indecent proposal/picture of your ass] the strongest choice you can make right now?”
2. On a related note, how about a device that allows you to erase any message you have sent—text, email, or voicemail—if it hasn’t been viewed or listened to yet? Sure would cut down on my drunk dialing. Wait, has that already been invented? Somebody send me a message!
3. Did you ever see that Michael Douglas movie The Game? Someone hires a company to trick Michael Douglas’s character into thinking his life is in danger and that he’s gotten mixed up in a dark, dangerous world. The hoax is amazingly elaborate, and it’s done to make MD reconsider what a dick he’s been all his life. Well, I’d like to hire a company like that, a whole team of actors and stuntmen and hundreds of people in on the scheme—but I wouldn’t use the service to mess with people like in that movie. Instead, I’d hire them when I needed breakup help. I don’t mind being made the bad guy—just find a way to make the person I want to ditch think it’s all my fault and not his so that he’ll walk and I won’t have to!
4. I know stolen cars can be recovered through Lo-Jack, and pets can get a microchip so owners can locate them when they get lost. I heard somewhere they make them for kids now, too. But how about a tracking chip that could be inserted in your boyfriend or husband without him knowing? A little something I could stuff into the olive of his next martini? Or put in his toothpaste? Or slip painlessly up his nose while he’s sleeping?
5. While I’m wishing and hoping, how about something that makes anything from Star Trek possible … like a beaming-up device that would allow me to skip my commute, or at least a warp-speed attachment for my car?
6. The world also needs a roofie detector. They should be built into cocktail straws and put in every bar. If someone slips a roofie into your drink, the little wand thing would immediately send a text to the bartender so he or she could be sure you don’t leave the premises, and it would also send an emergency message to the nearest police department. Take that, pervy strangers!
7. Last but not least, is it too much to ask for someone to invent no-hangover alcohol pills? I hate having to make such an effort to get my buzz on (all that sipping is such hard work). I want to swallow four vodka or tequila pills and then avoid the frying-pan-to-the-forehead feeling the next day. I know there are pills already available that would do the trick, but I want my no-hangover alcohol pills to be totally legal and FDA regulated (because the FDA always knows what’s best). Oh, and these pills should be zero-calorie and made from all-natural ingredients. I’ll buy stock in your company if you’re working on this.
Poke Me
It’s news to no one that there are millions of ways to waste your time online, right? One minute you’re looking for a clever synonym for “useless” on thesaurus.com, and click, click, click … suddenly three hours have gone by and you’ve lived the word in any number of ways: you’ve watched nine previews for movies that won’t be in theaters for another six months, you’ve taken a quiz to see if your boyfriend might really be a narcissist, you’ve looked at the red carpet snapshots of the best- and worst-dressed at the Oscars going back three years, you’ve read an obscure article about the Estonian synchronized swimming team, you’ve tweeted about how inspiring those Estonians really are, you’ve checked flight costs to Rio in the event you decide to cheer on the Estonians in 2016, and you’ve connected with three new people on Facebook that you think you knew in preschool.
And if you’re like me, you did all that when you could have and should have been playing outside with your son.
I’ve tried to curb my surfing/email/Facebook/Twitter/Pinterest addiction, really I have. I know that I should give my son my undivided attention and never miss a moment of his childhood. I’ve read all the books, too, and I’ve beat myself up plenty. But here’s the thing that I know a lot of moms will agree with. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that sometimes little kids are boring. Sometimes their stories reveal their creative and emotional development, but … sometimes the story is really just about a Play-Doh snake. And sometimes, given the choice, even the most inane online crap is more stimulating than conversation with them.
For example, texting with a friend about what might happen on the next episode of Downton Abbey engages my brain to think about European history (what real-life event will they tackle next?) and the nuances of television character development. Talking about the last SpongeBob episode … not so much.
Looking at photos of my friend’s crazy night out in Vegas is nothing if not entertaining. Hearing stories about the kite at school that was painted red … not so much.
Taking online tours of five-star vacation villas? Okay, I’ll admit that this is a slight waste of time, because building a pillow fort in the living room will be another fun way to think about real estate. But seriously, don’t deny me this little pleasure. Isn’t there a way I can do both in the same afternoon?
Of course, the irony is that just about the only thing that can get me to stop surfing, chatting, posting, or Skyping and pay attention to other humans is some good old-fashioned human connection. I need a real, live poke.
And the truly ironic thing is that the best poker in the world is the kid I am studiously ignoring with my online addictions. It’s true, and he now knows it: if Evan crawls up on my lap or tugs on my sleeve and wants to snuggle, I’m putty in his hands pretty much instantly. If he bats his eyelashes on my cheek like a butterfly, rubs my nose like an Eskimo, or gives me a traditional peck, I’m all his. Let’s go build that fort in the living room and roll some Play-Doh snakes. My 4G connection can wait!
The Red Scare
Do all McCarthys get the same lame jokes made at their expense at cocktail parties or is it just me? When I am introduced to people of a certain age (as in anyone older than me), it almost never fails that they chuckle about the possibility of me being related to Joseph McCarthy, the Communist-hating American senator who died in 1957. As though old Joe and I are the only Irish American Catholic dropouts (him from junior high, temporarily, and me from college, permanently) on the planet?
To all those aging jokesters and to anyone my age or younger who knows or cares what Joseph McCarthy did with his time on earth, I’d like to try to wash his image from your mind and replace his brand of McCarthyism with my own. To start, let me try to change what you see and hear when someone says “the Red Scare.” Male reader discretion advised …
Like most teenage girls, I found my mother endlessly embarrassing. I’m not too proud to admit now that she was mostly doing nothing wrong and really didn’t deserve my eye rolling and bitchy attitude. But there was one area of her life that she found embarrassing, too; neither of us could get over the mortification! It was this: she couldn’t get a handle on her periods. On several occasions I had to go into the house to get her a towel so she could get out of the car without scaring the neighborhood.
She once even had a bleed-out in church! She held our family back from filing out of the pews until everyone else had left the building, and then she dashed out the side door with someone’s sweater tied around her waist. Afterward, I tried to keep track of her periods, not so that I could be helpful to her but so that I could
plan to stay the hell away from her at that time of the month! Couldn’t she just wear a frigging diaper when she had her period?
“Just wait until you’ve had kids and this happens to you,” she said wisely (and patiently and kindly—my mom really is the greatest). I wasn’t having any of it—I was a very careful period planner and knew that I would always have a good handle on them and always be prepared. I was sure that I was not going to be anything like my mother in that regard.
Of course, the apple (smashed cherry, perhaps?) never falls far from the tree, does it? My gynecologist tells me it doesn’t happen to everyone, but clearly we McCarthy women are doubly cursed. It’s not that I lose track of when I’m getting them or that they are irregular (yet), but my periods became Carrie-at-the-prom heavy after I had Evan. (Google that movie and watch the blood drip down the walls!) I wish a red blotch on my skirt at church was the worst of my accidents.
To date, here are a few examples of my syndrome in action:
Onstage
During its Charlie Sheen years, I guest-starred on Two and a Half Men. I had several scenes with Charlie. No winging it allowed—I had to be funny and zany and sexy but all on cue, and I had to do it in front of a live studio audience. But on the day in question, my dam broke mid-scene.
I had thought ahead, I swear I had. I was plugged up good with tampons, plus I was wearing a nighttime-strength maxi pad. But nothing ever happens quickly or totally on schedule when you’re shooting for TV (or movies), and I’d just been up on that stage too long. I knew when my defenses had been breached. If anything like this has happened to you, you know the feeling. You know you’ve started to color outside the lines. You know you have to get to the bathroom to refortify, but you also know that any movement to get to the bathroom could be disastrous.