DAY 103: THE JUAN TABO BRANCH LIBRARY

     Before the City of Albuquerque built the Juan Tabo branch library close to our house, Mommy had to drive us to the Erna Ferguson branch slightly further away.  My sister and I loved going to the library each week to select the books we'd get to take home with us.  During one of the weekly visits I got so excited to show my mother the book I wanted to check out that I started running through the stacks only to end up hitting my eye on the corner of a table that stood at the perfect height to cause some major blood shed and a scar above my left eye that still exists to this day.
     Fortunate for me, Mommy had locked her keys in the car that day when we arrived at the Erna Ferguson branch.  As blood gushed out of face my mother tried to find a coat hanger to jimmy open our car door.  I remember lots of blood on the library's white tile floor and Mommy ushering me into the bathroom to make me a cold compress out of wet, library paper towels.
     I was glad when the City announced the opening of the new Juan Tabo branch library.  So was my sister and our friend Shelley.  They heard that t.v. cameras would be at the opening.  I didn't care so much about the cameras as I did the new library I'd get to explore and not have to fear getting hurt in.  The Juan Tabo branch was supposed to be much more kid friendly than Erna Ferguson.
     The Saturday of the library opening I decided what to wear carefully.  I wanted to christen the new library with my favorite, fancy, ivory party dress.  Mommy had sewn it for me for special occasions and this seemed like the perfect one for me to wear it to.  My sister and Shelley didn't wear their party clothes or even seem to care about the books we'd get to check out.  They were camera hungry.
     From the minute we entered the Juan Tabo branch, Shelley and my sister hunted down the t.v. cameraman.  I'd run into the every so often as I browsed the new shelves of pristine books.  We eventually left the library that afternoon, when my sister triumphantly announced that she'd gotten on camera.  But that night when we watched the library footage on our local station there were no shots with my sister or Shelley waving at the camera.  Instead, the cameraman found a little, brown-haired girl, in an ivory party dress with lace trimmed sleeves, alone in an aisle of childrens' books as she knelt down to select one and then sat on the floor to start reading it.  I guess it pays to be a reader...

DAY 102: MOTHBALLS

     My family in India uses mothballs to store their clothes and to keep out mice.  If I stayed with tradition I'd still be using them to store my sweaters and other wool clothes.  But I've moved on and use cedar blocks and cedar spray in my closets and drawers.  I learned my lesson in college.

     When I packed up all my winter clothes in Ann Arbor to put in storage for the summer after my sophomore year, I generously sprinkled moth balls amongst all of my boxes.  Come August the moving company delivered the boxes to me and my roommate's new apartment.  Turns out you don't really need to use moth balls in Michigan to store your clothes for a mere three months; unless you want all of your friends to call your apartment "grandma's place" or ridicule you about how your comforter smells like an old folks home.  I was only twenty years old and had a major complex.

     Plus, it didn't help that when I went home for winter break that year, Dad had started using mothballs all over the house to "preserve" it since I was't living there full time.  He overused the mothballs in every nook and cranny he could think of.  He even put them in my bathroom sinks and the air vents.  Imagine coming home to relax from all the finals you just took only be fumigated by the strong stench of mothballs wafting through the air vents of your room when the heat came on.  Not fun.  And damn near impossible to breathe.  

     While we're on the topic--if you think that the new "lavender" scented mothballs will be ok and not stink up your sweaters.  Think again.  I tried those cute looking mothballs in the lavender colored boxes which contain the individualized packages of two mothballs in a white paper looking sachet and ended up airing out half my wardrobe for weeks before I could even think about wearing one of the mothballed items.  Uggg.  From here on out it's cedar blocks all the way.  If I ever build a new house I'll make sure it has a cedar closet or a zero sum moth population in all directions.

DAY 101: ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT

     I miss my mom today plain and simple.  I wish I knew her as an adult.  I wish she was here to have conversations with me and I could ask her questions.  I feel jipped.  I didn't get enough time with her.
     When my sister and I talk about our mother we refer to her as "Mommy" never mom.  I think it's because we were both so young when she died.  I was 10 and my sister was 7.  And when she was diagnosed with leukemia we were 7 and 4.  At those ages we still called our mother Mommy and we've really never stopped.  It's as if that time stopped for us on that day in 1986 when she died and no matter how far away we get from it we can't really grow up/or never were able to grow up in any sort of normal way because our lives were altered so dramatically.  I mean if she never got sick and was still here, I can bet you good money neither my sister nor I would still be calling our mother Mommy, she'd be "Mom."  No women in their 30s call their moms "mommy," it'd just be too weird.
     Anyway, it doesn't really matter what I'd call her, I just miss her.  

DAY 100: THANK YOU ROB LOWE

     Thank you Rob Lowe.  And no, it's not because you're easy on the eyes.  It's because I stated reading your book Stories I Only Tell My Friends.  You write well and your story is already engaging me.  Your book has inspired me to get back into writing my half-finished memoir about my Dad.  I need to finish it.  Because of you, I've been writing things down all day and might bring out my micro cassette recorder tomorrow--so many good ideas I need to capture!
     So Rob Lowe, I don't know you, but I like you and I'm really enjoying your book.  Hopefully, when mine's finished and published it will find a way on to one of your bookshelves like yours is (will be when I'm done with your book) on mine.  Until then happy writing and happy reading to us all...

DAY 99: CAR CANDY

     I've decided that if I keep candy in my car, I'll never ever be in a bad mood.  Give me a bag of licorice and all my troubles go away.  Literally.  So why not keep an emergency sugar rush in my car?  Exactly.  The candy of the moment is candy corn--that's the good stuff.

DAY 98: THE CASE OF THE MISSING SLIP

     My half-slip’s gone missing.  Yes, I still wear a slip under dresses and skirts.  Why?  It’s lady like.  It looks better that to go without one.  And, yes I probably should have grown-up or lived in the 1940s.  I don’t like the see-through crap girls wear nowadays, so I wear a slip.  And I don’t like how dresses cling to me or my tights in the winter if I don’t have a slip on, so again, I wear one.

     As a regular slip wearer, when mine went missing it was almost as if the apocalypse happened.  Okay, maybe not the apocalypse but something very upsetting to me.  Then I went into full search mode and overturned every drawer and dresser I have.  No luck.  I didn’t find my slip and had to go to work without one under my dress.  (I’ve been searching for my half-slip for over a week and I still can’t find it.  I am in anguish over this.)

     Talk about major distress.  I felt miserable today with my dress clinging to my tights.  I wore a long sweater-coat over my dress to camouflage the clinginess, but you can still see it when I walk anywhere.  And I walk anywhere a lot.  I got to the bathroom often—still drinking 80 ounces of water as recommended by that 21 Day Challenge (forgot to mention that ended on Sunday, just in the nick of time for me to eat my weight in Halloween candy) and sometimes I just go for walks around my company’s facility for a break.  I even tried the hair-spray trick.  (You know—spraying hairspray on your dress or tights to stop the cling; and then realized I’d used up the all the hairspray in my travel size bottle for the office and had replaced it with water. Nice move.)  But it didn’t work.  Obviously.

     I realize I could’ve bought a new half-slip last night at the store and saved myself this day of cling and the mess that’s now my bedroom.  But I can’t imagine buying a new one when I know there are two in my apartment that I’ve lost in the past month.  How does one lose a half-slip?  Or two for that matter?  I don’t know, but I’m out of my mind over it.  Literally.  I just wrote an entire blog entry about a half-slip.  How’s that for not having your wits about you? 

     Did I mention I like wearing dresses?  I didn’t wear my first pair of jeans until I was in the third grade.  Mom used to sew most of our clothes (No we were not Amish and yes, her home-sewn clothes actually looked nice.  She could do some fancy tailoring.)  and we had tons and tons of dresses.  I finally wore a pair of jeans, a hand-me-down pair from my neighbor Shelly Turner, who’d affixed a Ms. Pac-Man patch to the right-hand-side back pocket of her (my) styling awesome 80s jeans, one day in the middle of third grade.  I put those jeans on knowing I was going to follow a boy—his name was Brad—home from school that afternoon and needed to wear pants so I could climb over fences and walls that he’d for sure make me go over since I don’t think he was that into me.  And he did.  But he ended up coming over the next day to play MacVegas with me on our new Macintosh computer…  Not bad for chasing some boy home from school, huh?  (Told you Apple computers were cool—ours gave me game in the third grade!)

     Anyway, back to my half-slip mess.  I want you to know I tried to wear a full slip with my dress today, but it was too long.  It’s now bed time, there’s no full moon, and I’m still looking for my slip.  I don’t think I can sleep until I find it.  So so sad.

DAY 97: BILLIONS OF PEOPLE

     The world population reached 7 billion yesterday.  Try to get your heads around that.  While you’re doing that I’ll scream “PLANETARIUM.”  I hate the planetarium.  (And if I ever get on the show Inside the Actors Studio, my least favorite world will be “planetarium.”  Similar to how Sean Penn’s favorite curse word was “dentist.”)  I hate how when you’re there and looking up at some pie graph on the ceiling, the guide tells you how the time humans have been on this earth is equivalent to 24 hours or some other very small time increment as compared to the time the world has existed.  It makes one feel insignificant (I’m not disagreeing that we’re anything but insignificant, but a couple hours at the planetarium listening to that garbage makes me feel terrible and has led to my incredible fear of death.  So if I ever have kids their dad can volunteer for the field trips and take them to the planetarium.  There’s no freaking way I’m going there.)

     Back to the 7 billion; that’s a lot of people to consider.  Oddly, the owner of the company where I work recently asked me how many people I thought had actually lived on this planet at one time or another.  I chose not to scream PLANETARIUM in his face, but instead to answer.  I don’t remember my response, but it was much larger than the actual number, which I think is 107 billion. 

     As another aside, some of the powers that be think that the seven billionth person was born in India, since so many babies are born there per minute.  The baby was a girl.  India’s actually appointing 7 girl babies to symbolize the 7 billion.  It’s interesting the country chose girls, and probably a good thing, because many girl children are never born due to abortion. Many Indian families choose not to have girls due to the cultural importance imparted onto male children.  When pregnant women learn of their baby’s female gender they (or their families make the decision to abort) abort the female fetuses.  That’s another lovely topic you might need some time to get your head around.  But I do think that sonograms have been outlawed now due to how common the practice was becoming...