Dear Sir:

I would very seriously reconsider leaving my toothbrush and toothpaste on the side of the sink in the same spot where the foamy handsoap is, particularly when your 3 1/2 yr old daughter is learning to wipe her bottom all by herself.

Just a thought.

Love,
Your wife, who doesn’t cotton to the idea of toddler fecal germs on her toothbrush.

Dear Wiry-Haired Tiny Dude:

I am glad you’re spoken for. Why’d you feel the need to put it on your car tag? Is because you are so unattractive and tiny that you feel more secure having the free world know, via your personalized tag, that some poor gal will bed/wed your scrawny, wants-to-have-a-goatee-but-can’t-quite-manage-it ass?

More power to her.

Do the world a favor: stay with her foreverandever amen.

You know the Disney media empire has sucked you in when this happens: McPantses was in the den this morning having her standard at home breakfast before she gets to school (read: daycare) and has a real breakfast. Standard brekkie = cup of dry cheerios with spoon (the better to scatter them about the floor with) and cup of milk (organic, of course). She was working with stickers (mommy works with the pomputer and McP works with stickers and scissors and crayons and markers and lots and lots of paper) and watching The Wiggles and she called me into the den to see what those crazy Aussies were doing.

“Look at what they’re doing, mommy!”

“Hey, that Wags, he loves to tango,” says I.

As if on que, my husband starts singing, from the vantage point of dishwasher-emptying in the kitchen, “He calls it Wango” like he’s trying out for the opera.

McP and I were still in the den and we just looked at the kitchen and back at each other and made funny eyes, signifying that daddy is, in fact, pretty silly.

And, pretty silly he is. A month or two ago, one morning before work he came sailing into the den wearing boxer shorts and a towel around his shoulders. He told McP that he was Super Daddy and put his arms out like he was flying around the room.

She stopped him with a look and said, “You are not a superhero and that is a towel you’re wearing and not a cape.” She was quite troubled about this gaffe on his part, I think.

Properly chastised, he gave up and went to shave.

He got a Father’s Day Card from her with a dad portrayed as a superhero, complete with tights, cape and chest emblem that said SUPER DAD!

We like our running jokes at my house.

Minor petty annoyance: people who go out in their pajamas. I do not mean those who straggle outside at 7:30 a.m. in their pajama pants to get the trash can to the street before the garbage men come*. Removal of chicken carcass in trash, which will surely start to stink in the hundred degree weather very soon, is more important at that hour.

I mean the girl who stood in line in front of me at the coffee shop this morning. We live near a small, private liberal arts school and I know that college students run around in their jammies upon occasion, but it bugs the hell out of me. Can you not put on a pair of “yoga” pants**, at least? Why must you scuff into the coffee shop in your plaid (blackwatch, if you must know) flannel bottoms and a pair of slippers? I do not care if you live within walking distance. Put some damned clothes on.

And to the girl behind me in line that day, your very old sweatpants, complete with elastic at the bottom, that were so short they climbed halfway up your calves, aren’t acceptable, either. Clogs and knee socks didn’t help.

Is it really that much of a chore to take off your jammie jams and tug on some jeans? Is it really? Can you not change clothes before your first java jolt? Don’t you have to pee before you go out? You’re already pulling down your pants for that, right? Why not go the extra distance and pull up an item of clothing the public is meant to see.

And don’t get me started on kids in pajamas. After kids reach the age where all of their clothes stop looking like pajamas, dress your children to go out. Please. You dress yourself, don’t you? Take an extra ten minutes and dress the kids, too. In the event that you are, say, rushing to the hospital for some reason, you’re excused from this requirement.

* This happens to us at least once a week. We seem to remember about half the time to get the trash can to the street the night before. The other half of the time, someone in pajamas runs out to get it to the street.

** Sweat pants for the new millennium. Even if they don’t have the telltale elastic band around the bottom, they’re still sweat pants. I hate them. I admit it: I still have sweat pants and I wear them in the dead of winter, but not in public.

Edited to add: I just realized that I sound like a very old woman in this post. Great.

If you are under a certain age and are, say, still paying off oddles of school loans, you might, like me, occasionally furnish your house with curb findings. I am not too proud to pass up a coupla nice end tables (really, they’re nice!) just because they used to belong to a coupla potheads down the street.

The end tables are lovely. One of them is missing a substantial chunk of wood on one side, but we keep it turned so you can’t see that. The potheads were evicted, as is everyone who lives in this rental house, it seems, and they left lots of crap behind, including some nasty eighties-style black metal and glass furniture with gold accents. I left that stuff on the curb along with other pothead eviction detritus (Cap’n Crunch boxes, pizza boxes, etc.).

Oooh, they also left the gas on in their kitchen when they stole the gas stove, so a few days after they left, all the neighbors on our street and the next street over were wandering around asking each other, “Do you smell that? What is that?” Glad the spouse didn’t light up a ceegar that day and blow us all sky high.

When you take from the Curb Furnish Gods, it’s only right that you give in return. I gave a hideous sixties veneered breakfast table and six equally hideous chairs. We drug that table and chairs out into the street and left it, fully set up with the chairs around the table and the two (not one, but two, for heaven’s sake) leaves that went with the table propped up against it. Someone could have had a lovely dinner at midnight on the curb. We did this at about 11 p.m. on a Saturday night two Decembers ago, right before Christmas.

Gone by 10 a.m. the next day. We were pleased.

This past Saturday night, I cleaned out a bookcase that has been overstuffed and in great danger of falling apart for years. We drug the bookcase and its shelves out to the curb at what must be our standard furniture abandonment time (11 p.m.-ish) and it’s rained once or twice since then, but as of right now, the bookcase is gone.

Glad you’re gone, bookcase. I’m sure someone handier than we can whip you into shape, despite the fact that you sagged and buckled from the first day I got you. That could have something to do with the handyman (my dad) who put it together, tho. The day I clear the last craptastic particleboard, veneered bookcase out of this house will be a day for celebration. We only have four left.

Now, what to do about the hundred or so books we need to get rid of? Can’t abandon them at the curb, I don’t think.

(They’re going to a charity book drop at work. Not to worry. Cannot throw away books. Can, however, part with multiple ancient copies of the Tax Code and one freaky, self-published book about Vincent Foster and how his suicide was clearly a murder and the great conspiracy that surrounds it–thanks, ultraconservative Granddad, for the stash of weird rightwingnut books. I only tossed one, but I’m getting rid of most of them. I don’t need three books about how Hilary is Satan incarnate. I get it.)

Mom, on the phone yesterday afternoon: “Do you remember your grandmother’s walnut bed?” Me, salivating in response: “The one in the middle bedroom? The one with the really tall, intricately carved headboard?” Mom says yes and I am immediately daydreaming that she’s having the bed trucked from a state away to arrive at my house, complete with white-glove setup service. I am on my way to becoming one happy camper as I am ready to outfit another bedroom at my house anyway.

Bubble burst… “Well, there’s one for sale in the paper for $600 and it sounds just like your grandmother’s.”

Thanks, Mom. I’ll get right on that.

Dammit.

Dammit squared: I was very aggravated yesterday morning when I called the construction company working on the unoccupied house behind mine to find their phone number was disconnected. They did something that involved stringing two power lines very low across my backyard (very low as in about three feet off the ground). The power lines were left in a muddle just beyond the chain-link fence that keeps dogs and McPantses in, but still in my yard.

I called the realtor listing the house on Wednesday and she was ever-so-helpful when she directed me to call the contractors. She couldn’t give me their number–she told me to look it up. Thanks!

Sooo, I drive over to this house yesterday at eleven a.m., ready to chew ass. I am all worked up for it: I want those lines out of my yard by close of business TODAY so that my child can enjoy the yard over the weekend without fear of electrocution. Plus, I’m afraid the dogs might chomp on them and the smell of deep-fried golden retriever might send me over the edge. Digging the massive trench that a golden retriever burial would require would take a big chunk out of my weekend, too. Bleh.

Three sweaty clueless men working on the foundation of the house stared at me like I was a martian as I started in on them.

“But, ma’am, the phone company was around yesterday and those lines are probably temporary.”

Dammit again. DAMMIT!

“Well, if you see the phone guy, yell at him for me.” I’m sure they laughed at me after I left. I was mottled red from my cheeks to my chest in anticipation of a good fight.

Then I drove around the corner to my street and fought my fight over the telephone with some anonymous Bell South dude whose job it is to deal with dopes like me.

“But, ma’am, I can assure you that if anyone were to touch those lines, it would probably be absolutely harmless.”

I’m sure the local law firm that represents Bell South would so love to know that a random repair operator pretty much told me that my child can play with the wires strung across my back yard. Good Lord.

Repair promised be 6 p.m. Monday. I have argument blue balls and can only hope that the checker at the grocery store tries to charge me too much for lettuce.

Can you read me NOW?

1. Some people have a lot of nerve. You know who you are. On the off chance that you don’t, if you live like Kramer and treat me like Jerry, you have a lot of nerve. Leave me alone. I am tired. Go away.

2. If I can smell your perfume/cologne/scent/general stench and I am not nuzzling in your neck area, then you are wearing too much or need a shower (with soap this time). If you have on so much perfume/cologne that I can taste it when I pass you in the hallway, I reserve the right to vomit on your shoes.

3. If you are a man and you have breasts, are you doing your monthly self-exams? Also, if you’re a man with teats like the rack I saw on an old guy in a tee-shirt yesterday, please tell me why you don’t feel obligated to wear a supportive undergarment (heehee, a supportive undergarment: would that my bra whisper things like “It’ll be okay, dear.”) even though you have bigger breasts than me. I’m waiting for your answer.

4. If you are a man and you drive a Miata, you look like an idiot.

5. If you think you can pick your nose behind the invisible forcefield that is your automobile window, you’re creepy. Quit doing that. People are laughing at you.

6. Irregardless is not a word.

7. If you breathe on my neck when you stand behind me in line somewhere, I reserve the right to back up and accidentally-on-purpose step on your feet. I will probably apologize in an over-bright voice, but I won’t mean it, Neck-Breather.

8. If you talk on your phone very loudly in the bookstore, I will shoot you dirty looks and think mean thoughts and sigh loudly all around you, RudePhoneGirl.

9. If I care what you think about how I choose to do something, I will ask for your opinion. If I didn’t ask, chances are that I don’t care. Got it, Miss Misery Muffin?

10. Fiber is your friend.