While My Boyfriend Was Sleeping

What I write after Joe and Henry go to bed

To my readers,

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Hello Lance lovers,

You lovable, quirky lot.

It needs to be said that I write 50 percent for me and 50 percent for you.

If it weren’t for you, I’d be a proper lady, a reserved lady. Actually, I’d be a Luddite, blissfully unaware of social media and the stronghold it has on everyone’s lives. I’d be a true technophobe, which means on top of being inept at operating my remote control, I’d also be inept at Facebook. But a blogger who rejects Facebook is like a sitcom actor who renounces television.

Facebook is how I’ve reached many of you.

Just when I think I should keep my stories to myself, one of you sends me a sweet note that says something like, “I love your blog. I enjoy your stories. Your writing makes me laugh.” Or, “I appreciate your heartfelt sentiments on the subject of cockroaches.” Or, “I once accidentally used my dad’s toothbrush too.” Or, “Where can I find the shoes you wore for your wedding?” Or, “I also love the smell of my dog’s paws.” Or, “I sent my friend a link to your exploding television post. Her husband recently installed a ginormous flat screen in their living room. She’s about ready to blow it up herself.”

Your feedback warms my heart.

Two readers on opposite sides of the globe once wrote me near-identical emails describing near-identical dreams they had about me. Both readers dreamt they had visited me in Florida and I forced them to sleep outside in a tent. Maybe it’s because I love tents. (Last year I posted a series of stories about camping across the country with the pug.) Or maybe it’s because I’m actually a miserable Broom-Hilda who gets off on torturing house guests.

I’m not, but man did I love these coincidentally perverse dreams.

If it weren’t for you, I’d write everything in my journal and lock it away from the rest of the world. I’d keep stories and inane observations to myself — or I’d just bore my husband with them.

A friend recently told me she seeks out Lance when she’s feeling sick or sad. She pulls up posts when she’s curled up in bed with her laptop and a runny nose. Lance is like her pint of Häagen-Dazs.

How flattering is that?

So thank you loyal readers. I savor your compliments (and even your insults).

I do not have a stat counter or any kind of fancy analytics device to track who you are, where you are or when you read. What matters to me is that the stories mean something to someone somewhere. The freedom to write for a nebulous audience invigorates me. Each time I write a post I feel like I’ve rolled up a message, stuffed it in a bottle and tossed it out to sea.

The message washes up much quicker this way. If I were really a Luddite, you’d have to wait years (and live by the ocean) to read something new.

My urban rooster

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Sneaky synchronicity has reared its fateful head again!

And in addition to this, I’m pleased to report that I have a new animal spirit guide.
Behold: my rooster.

I’ve written about meaningful coincidences and animal totems before.
The last time I wrote about synchronicity I was on vacation in the Florida Panhandle trying to figure out the significance of seeing butterfly nets. And the last time I wrote about animal spirit guides, in particular my frog spirit guide, I got a tongue lashing from Natasha up in Alberta, Canada.
This time it’s cocks.
Someone in the neighborhood has a rooster. How else can I explain the barnyard opera I’m hearing in the morning when I walk the pug?
The first time I heard it, I froze in my tracks. 

Could it be? I asked myself. A rooster crowing in the City of St. Pete? I wrote it off as a Basset Hound and continued walking the obstinate pug.
Again it crowed.
I looked down at my pug to see if maybe he had heard it too, but he was uncharacteristically uncurious and continued about his sniffing, pissing and grunting. So I let it go – until Thursday morning, when I heard it again.
Well, I’ll be damned, I said. A goddamn rooster living in the city!
When I returned to the house with this knowledge, I had to tell Joe.
“Must be someone knows you’ve got problems getting out of bed in the morning.”
He grunted. Rolled over on his side.
“A rooster in our neighborhood! How exciting! First tomatoes, now this. Man, it’s like I’m back home again.”
To further illustrate my point, I started mimicking the cock.
“If it’s not a rooster it sure sounds like one,” I said as I shuffled to the kitchen to make Joe’s usual turkey sammie.
Five minutes later, I went digging for a little card to stick in his Tupperware container. I’m lame and sappy and sometimes put notes in my fiancé’s lunch. I’ve got this box of random note cards with one note card for every day of the year. They’re tiny – the size of a matchbook – and therefore function perfectly as embarrassing lunch love notes.
So I reached into my box of 365 note cards (at this point there are about 300 left) and I pulled one at random. Now remember: no two cards in this collection are alike, making what happened next quite impressive.
On the front of the card was of course, a devilish rooster. But I reckon you already knew that.
So now it seems a rooster is my shepherd, signaling the end of the tree frog’s reign.
As for what exactly the rooster means, I found this:

Rooster (aka Cock): Rooster is a symbol of resurrection and sexuality as he heralds in the dawn of a new day. Often, good news is at hand when Rooster appears in Dreamtime. However, watchfulness is key as the dreamer must be ever aware of being overly arrogant or cocky. Rooster reminds us to avoid fighting at all costs. The lesson is to respect others while honoring ourselves, or we just might find ourselves ensnared in a ruse of our own making.

Or this:

The Rooster is a solar symbol and represents sexuality. Those with a Rooster as a Totem may have had past lives as early Christians or ancient Greeks. A Rooster totem brings enthusiasm and humor and a sense of optimism. The Rooster is a totem of great power and mystery with ties to the ancient past and clues to your own hidden powers. It is the enemy of evil spirits and can bound them with the light of day.

Cockadoodledoo! I already love this totem way better than the tree frog.
—
PS. The misguided rooster above was photographed by McBeth. For more evocative storytelling pictures like this, visit McBeth’s Flickr photostream. She photographs vexing toothbrush packages, puzzling road signs, tea bags and much, much more!

A Tale of Two Toothbrushes.

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And now for a story.

My sister Heelya is particular about her teeth, which is understandable. She’s had so many teeth drilled we joke that her mouth is a member of OPEC.

Because we didn’t have dental coverage growing up we rarely saw the dentist. He was a haggler anyway, or at least that’s what my dad said.
Of my two sisters Heelya spazzes out the quickest over things like germs and toenails. My dad likes to joke that my youngest sister PK should’ve been a doctor. She was always operating on the family, always carrying around a satchel of medieval looking tools, offering to fix our skin ailments, ingrown hairs, blisters, that sort of thing.

It was disgusting. I partially blame my Opa who owned the exact same kit – a zippered pouch of metal nail files, clippers, tweezers, and whatever other crevice digging devices might accompany such things. PK coveted the pouch as a little girl and whenever we visited my grandparents she would help herself to it in the cabinet with the bath towels and immediately start picking at her feet blisters. She was a figure skater so blisters ravaged her feet.

Soon she assumed ownership of the best tweezers in my house, the ones my father filed into daggers with points so sharp you could pierce the skin in one pinch, or kill an intruder under hostage circumstances. Regardless none of this has anything to do with the story I’m about to tell.

We all shared one bathroom – me, PK, Heelya, my mom, my dad and on weekends whatever friends had spent the night. Our toothbrushes never fit in one of those cup things with the holes in it. No matter what cup thing my mom purchased there were only four holes in it. God friggen forbid someone use the same color toothbrush, the same no-name brand Reach toothbrush and risk mistaken brush identity. 

I pity my sister Heelya, but she should’ve known better when she purchased a blue toothbrush. My father had a blue toothbrush and unlike the time we all decided to label our toothbrushes with masking tape and my father labeled his Jerry Maguire because it was 1996 and all his girls had crushes on a pre-douchey Tom Cruise, unlike that time this time his blue toothbrush was not labeled.

For weeks, maybe months, my sister Heelya would wake up for school and brush her teeth with the same toothbrush my father had used to brush his teeth three hours earlier. By the time she grabbed the brush the bristles would be dry. She was totally clueless.

Until one day, she woke up earlier, reached for her brush and realized it was wet and the bristles were flattened. Over her morning bowl of cereal she asked my father, “Dad, what toothbrush are you using?”

Story goes he walked into the bathroom, reached for what he thought was his toothbrush and said, this one.

“Omigod,” my sister shrieked. 

Or so I think this is how it ends. When I called my dad this morning to confirm the details he said, “Yeesus Christ. Did your sister call you complaining about some kind of mouth virus?”