That Time Everything Sucked

   In August 1980-something, Jim and I packed up everything we owned and headed for Houston, Texas. We packed  his motorcycle and everything  we owned in a UHaul, including the cat, and latched my  newly purchased Toyota Celica, with new tires and also packed, and headed south. Newly graduated from college, Jim was heading to work for his cousin. I was along for the ride, having stalled out a bit on my English degree at CU Denver, and thought a change of scenery might be nice.
   We stopped in Arlington, between Dallas and Ft. Worth, at a Ramada Inn. We took the cat and the guns and a suitcase of clothes into the room with us, and I slept poorly. When we woke up, the UHaul was gone. Vanished. Whoosh. Disappeared.With my car latched behind it.
   The UHaul with all of our sad, earthly possessions was now gone.
   My clothes.
   His newly purchased work clothes.
   The bed.
   The Dresser.
   A satchel with everything I had ever written.
   My high school letter jacket.
   His motorcycle.
   Towels, underwear,
   Leather jacket.
 
  You get it.
  Gone.
  Left with nothing but a cat, a suitcase and each other, we stood in the hotel lobby with the police and were told this was a "ring", they'd been hot wiring UHauls. Yet nobody was watching ours, so....cool. Thanks. Welcome to Texas, kryssi.
 
   Okay, I'm not going to bore you with police reports, or that Jim's motorcycle was used in a liquor store robbery in Dallas, or that renter's insurance doesn't cover you on the road, or that Prudential will consider you uninsurable for a year after getting all of your shit stolen, or the graciousness of family  or  or or....only that it sucked. Hard Core.  I was in an unfamiliar state with my boyfriend's family. Jim had a job, I did not. I had to find a job, we had to get an apartment, I had to buy clothes to go on job interviews, we had to figure out functioning with one car since he had his dealership car and mine was stolen, I had to figure out how to register and pay for college at UH as a non resident.
   Then, one day, I received a phone call from someone I did not know. The satchel with all my writing was found by a jogger (oh ya, the UHaul had been stripped, the car was stripped and our sad possessions strewn about a wooded area in search of some kind of gold the fuckwad thieves seemed to think we had.) My address in Lakewood was in the satchel, they tracked me down. They then mailed me the satchel, in Texas, out of nothing but kindness. These people did not have to do that.

   And so, in conclusion, all in all, to sum up: Thieves are fuckwads. Life sucks a lot. Adulting is more difficult than you imagine when you're 18. And as angry and bitter as you'd like to spin and blame and trouble deaf heaven with your bootless cries, some rando with a heart will find your satchel with your poetry and journals and "novel", and mail it to you.

  I submitted those pieces from my "novel" to Edward Albee a year later, and was accepted to his playwriting class.

  That's all.

B. Dalton Bookseller, this is kryssi, how can I help you?

   When I was 21 years old, I made the following statement: "The entrance exam to the human race is too easy." 
    I  repeated this statement for years, and then those trapped behind a counter or at a bar with me, without any means of escape, would be regaled with the full thesis. "You should have to work retail at Christmas, and wait tables to pay your rent. No spouse or parental help. You don't get tipped, you don't eat. 'The Customer Is Always Right' and you argue, you get fired, you don't pay rent. That'd fix 95% of what is wrong with this world. If everyone had to do this, nobody'd be a jerk."  
   This was  a long time ago. I'm going to drop hints along the way and make you do your own math, but trust me, Nothing Has Changed over the years.   
   I thought it had. I thought Amazon and its Prime and Target online ordering had killed the Holiday Rush, as video killed the radio star, then I saw cell phone footage of a melee in Walmart on Black Friday and my fears of a collective human maturity were assuaged. Nope. People Still Suck.   
    Yes, it's time to bitch about retail. 'Tis the season. 
    For a bit over ten years, I worked at B. Dalton (Co and Tx), Book Star (Tx) and Barnes and Noble (Co). Most of my retail experiences were in bookstores, with a brief high school stint at Fashion Gal and a trendy stop at Wax Trax. So I fulfilled the first part of my human race entrance exam by the time was 19, and the second by the time I was 22, as I switched between gigs and sometimes worked two jobs, one retail and one restaurant. Just sayin'.
    For years after leaving B. Dalton I wouldn't go near a mall, let alone during a holiday. Once I had kids, however, it became obvious that when it was cold or snowing, the mall contained a warm glow- in -the -dark mini golf, Cinnabon and Target was attached. So I returned. However, I still get anxiety about parking and will not travel unless absolutely bullied. Which is ridiculous, why would anyone bully a grown woman into a mall in December? I'm just sayin'. So, at Baybrook Mall (TX) and Southwest Plaza (CO), the mall employees were not allowed to park in the mall lot in December. I always managed to bum rides from my boyfriend or a friend who had a different shift, because I refused to be treated like a servant and park a mile away and take a bus in to work. This was policy in two different states, so clearly it has a long reach. I also remember being trapped at Baybrook mall during a tropical storm, sitting in the back room of B. Dalton with my colleagues, with no windows or way to know how bad it was out there. Sigh. That's not relevant at all, just a weird memory. Hi David and Wesley!
    Once, at Christmastime, a woman called me stupid. I'm not saying she was wrong. Clearly it was my fault that we had sold out of whatever The Book was that she needed to continue to live her life. We were sold out. Sold. Out. I checked the overstocks, I checked our back stock. She was so angry I finally called to the back room and asked the shipping coordinator if any had been unpacked, perhaps, in the last ten minutes. Alas and alack, it had! With great flourish and  pride, she emerged from the back room with a copy of The Book aloft. The woman thanked the shipping person deeply and sloppily. Once I had the book in hand and was ringing it up, she flatly said, looking at her wallet as she dug out her cash "Clearly you're stupid, she had the book all along." 
   Bitch, I still have the book and it's a hardcover, I could kill you with it. You're kidding me right now. Merry Christmas. I have lived too much life ---well, OK, not "too much" I was in my early twenties---to be treated like this by you. But I will return tomorrow, and someone else who looks nothing like you or exactly like you will treat me precisely and exactly the same crappy way because they've never had to do this for a living.  (There's your theme, my readers.) I wish I could say this happened once, only once, this One Time That I Remember A Very Rude Person. However, varying degrees of being treated like a poorly performing servant, or an idiot who works here because she isn't smart enough for a real job were demonstrated everywhere, every day. They were just worse at Christmas, where malls truly bring out the worst in people
   Oh man, Black Friday. I remember the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, cleaning the store to the nines and pulling newly delivered boxes out to get everything displayed before the end of the day, so we could walk into a ready store on Friday morning at stupid early a.m. There was always a hardcover release for Christmas, and if it was Stephen King you truly hated your life, as his books are particularly thick, and heavy, and don't fit on the little plastic book holder displays provided by the company. So you'd have to get all arty and use your engineering skills to build an interesting Tetris display that won't collapse when some Nim Rod takes a book from the center or near the bottom, because they think they're a magician and this is their version of pulling the tablecloth out from under all the china, except they're not and it isn't, so...sigh, it's fine, somebody call security, I saw a small child near the display before The Stand came tumbling down...
    I recently saw a short video on social media, a young actress portraying all the different customer types. Considering her young age, this calendar year and my advanced years, I expected to watch something I didn't understand. You know, these kids today and their memes that aren't funny, that's what I was expecting. To watch something mocking older people, or making inside jokes for younger people, as these seem to be the choices with these kids today (get off my lawn). I watched it and sat, shocked, as I recognized every stereotype. They have been somewhat updated and altered, but they are exactly the same as they were 150 years ago.
    We've come so far.
     How are these people exactly the same decades after I've left retail? In the immortal words of my beloved Edward Albee "Evolution has ceased to take place." 
    Clearly I already knew this because I'm a teacher. I get treated poorly by the same people for different reasons now. Not directly, my parents are great, but as a society, I am blamed for everything. Funny how that works.
    We have arrived at the personal connection portion of my essay, thank you for reading this far.

B.  Dalton Bookseller/Barnes and Noble, this is kryssi, how can I help you? *

    As I was ascending the fabulous rolling ladder that is the staple of all great libraries and book stores, my right arm loaded with  hard copies of The Frugal Gourmet Cooks With Wine, a woman approached. She stopped at the bottom of the ladder and turned her face up to me. She regarded my name tag, my place on the ladder and the stack of books on my arm and said "Do you work here?" 
     "Nope. I'm under a physician's care, I can't stop climbing these things with 20 pounds of books. Wanna try?"
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       "How are you sold out of the new Stephen King? Didn't you print enough? It's Christmas Eve, why aren't you more prepared?" I wanted to reply "It's Christmas Eve, why didn't you shop sooner?" But it was Christmas Eve, and he was clearly distraught, so I talked him into the recent Bachman book collection, as that was still something of a "secret" and it made him feel like he was in on something. Also it was Christmas Eve, and I've now broken the rule of comedy threes so this wasn't funny.
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       As I am standing behind the counter, directly behind me, to my right and my left, and behind the customer on an island display-he was literally surrounded- are a million copies of The Hunt For Red October by Tom Clancy. The front of the store is awash in this book, it is impossible to miss.
     Customer (looking directly behind me at the book display after walking past the front island display) "I need that book, do you have that book, the one the president read while he was in the hospital? It's about a submarine...what's it called?" He looks down at his right hand at the book on display, the same book he's been staring at behind me. There is a submarine on the cover with a hammer and sickle. He looks back up at me. "It's about a submarine and the Russians?" I smile, it's Christmas and he's probably buying it for a family member. He has no idea what kind of a book it is, or what it looks like, he just heard that the president read it, and therefore he wants it. Clearly I sold him the book, and I was actually truly nice about it, because he was honestly not rude, just clueless. And maybe a little blind. 
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      This other time, the center island was a tantalizing exhibit of the new Jackie Collins book. All of her books were solid colors, except the one with the palm tree. It was likely a marketing thing, it made her books easy to find and less complicated to suss out the themes of titles like Lucky, which was fuchsia with a high heeled shoe under the title for a tease as to what the reader might encounter. I can't remember which Collins book was flashing up front, just that there were a lot of them in hardcover, and they were colorful, and to this day I have proudly never read a single one of them. A customer walked straight in the entry and past the display, hyper eyeball focused on me, laser zooming directly to poor kryssi who's really just trying to get through the updated markdowns before the rush. In case you are not a careful reader, or that I am a poor writer,  I repeat: he walked directly past the Vegas display of the new Jackie Collins book. In my mind's eye, there was a cardboard cutout of Collins standing next to the books. In the most accusatory tone I expect he was able to muster, as clearly he was Very Busy And Important and I was nothing but in his way as he set about his day, "Do you have the new Jackie Collins?" I looked behind him at the splashy, trashy display. He turned his head and looked at the display with me. Then he turned back and blinked at me. "Well? Do you?" He demanded. His tone indicated that maybe I had not understood his words. Perhaps I am from a foreign land, and this job is the only one I could get with my limited skills.
    I wish I could say I said "No", which is what I did on many occasions, but I really did not like this lizard man and I wanted to make him feel stupid. I just stared at the display until he saw it. He was looking, he just didn't see. Once he picked up on my subtle, non verbal cues, his true colors spiked along his scales. He snatched a copy, slammed it on the counter and wouldn't look at me as I rang it up. It's OK, Buddy, I think you're a dick, too. We're even. I have no patience for ignorance coupled with poor manners. There is no excuse. Clearly he was an educated person, he just wanted everything handed to him, easily. He was playing dumb so he didn't have to think and when that didn't work, he treated me like I was dumb. 
  That's everybody's problem Christmas shopping. We are there to serve, locate, hand over, predict, punt, inspire and fix all of your life's failures by easily locating the one book you need, because you don't have the time or patience to figure out the alphabet. Alphabetical by author, Fiction is on the far wall. Go look. I prefer perusing book stores, I don't want the employee to walk me straight to the book and hand it to me. What  if there are other titles by the same author I haven't read? What if there's another book I think of whilst I'm standing here reading the dust cover of this book? When it was Not Christmas, I loved waiting on those people. The ones who lived too far from The Tattered Cover and didn't want to mess with parking down there, but loved books. Those people were my beloveds, my regulars for whom I would special order hard to find books, or put them on the scent of an out of print tome, or discuss Cider House Rules because when someone just shopping for any book to read asked me what it was about I was stumped....boil it down? Really? How long do you have? Man, that's what was great about working in bookstores. Except at Christmas, where nobody wished to peruse. It's like grocery shopping, they want the ingredients to make their gift, that's it. There is no interest in smelling all the spices they've never tried before, just grab the cinnamon and go. Gimme the bestselling novel.
    Gimme what I want.
_____________________________________________________________________
   
Here are two personal faves of mine, not Christmas related but true:
  "Do you have The Catcher in the Rye by John Updike?"
  "Nope. But I have The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger."
  "Who's he?"
___________________________________________________________________

    "Who Wrote Beowulf?"
_____________________________________________________

   With that, in conclusion, all in all, to sum up, I realize that not everyone is capable of working retail at Christmas. There is a reason not everyone does it: it's rough. You have to be helpful but keep your snark and mohawk close at hand. You cannot take any abuse personally. The work toughens you up, and I am one of the most patient retail shoppers you will encounter, unless I can truly see incompetence. Then I have no patience, and the girls will call me on it with "Mom, she's just a teenager, she doesn't know." It's fine if the register blows up or the computer crashes, I'm fine with that. I'm fine with your youth not really knowing how to function under pressure while you wait for a manager. But I am not fine with your lack of eye contact, your inability to smile at me and let me know what went wrong. If you can't handle it, get out. It's a battle zone, and the only way to calm an irate customer with an armload of clothes when your register has jammed, the computer system crashed and the credit card machine melted is to smile and make eye contact and acknowledge their humanity. Yep, this sucks, I'm sorry it sucks, we will figure this out together or I can hold your purchases for you while to shop elsewhere. Or you can be a screaming Ass Gnome, and I will continue to smile and make eye contact because I am a Human Being and we're in this together, get it? I am not your servant. You are not superior just because you are on that side of the register. And do you know how you would know this?
   If you had ever worked in retail at Christmas. Or waited tables for a living.
   Just sayin'.
                                     
*I did not work registers at Book Star, I shelved books from midnight to eight a.m., so no costumer contact.
      

Things I Learned By Being Off Facebook

    It's hard to stay off of Facebook. My daughters are doing The Things and I had to pop back in to at least promote their work. ( GENOA IS DOING ROCKY HORROR AT THE STRATER THEATRE IN DURANGO, HARP IS WORKING AT MASSAGE ENVY IN SWPLAZA AND HAS STARTED HER OWN PRACTICE IN LAKEWOOD)

   Birthdays without facebook are  kinda sad. Truly, I received 8 birthday texts, five from immediate family members. My dad and my inlaws didn't text. I have no idea if they facebooked, but I doubt it, as they aren't the people who would do that. I'm pretty sure my dad just forgot---he decided one year that my sister's birthday ---7 May---was weirdly 7 April, and sent her a card a month early. Perhaps I'll receive a card on 10 November.  What kept it from being sad sad, is that my work husband brought me flowers, my colleagues gave me a "bucket of love notes",  a student gave me candy,my real husband brought me flowers, and my daughter gave me candles and a scarf. Also my mom always remembers, every year, without fail, to mail or drop by a card. Without Fail. Because that's what moms do. Scene.

   I have no idea what everybody's mad about because I'm not on Facebook. I watch the news and make up my own mind. I read my 2018 State Ballot Information Booklet, read my emails from the teacher's union, and made my own decisions.

    I'm searching the house for books I haven't read, and I've started  texting my children about their days.

   I have been cobbling  together fake wood floor stickers with throw rugs to get ready for the appraisal, and I've started emailing the financial people to make sure they're paying attention. This consumes me. I researched fake wood stickers and wrote down which bin in which to find them at Home Depot. The various throw rug/fake sticker options rule my world, I have dreams about different configurations at the lowest cost.

    I went to Home Depot and it wasn't for a show.

   I walk the dogs. They aren't my dogs.

   I drink a lot more. Daily.

  I pick up my phone to get on Facebook and then stare at it, look for a recent text,and play Ballz instead.

   5 people total read my blogs if they are not posted on Facebook.

   My husband and I do not see eye to eye on recent social/political issues.

   Nobody seems to have my phone number.

   I finally made a much needed and long overdue dental appointment. Hoping we're not too late to save my gums, but we'll see.

   I took the first step toward mental health support. For myself.

   My floors are mopped every Sunday, without fail. Sunday  is now "Floor Day". I enjoy it.

   Instead of clicking on Facebook to waste my time, I started smoking. Sometimes, I go to the grocery store and buy ingredients to make a meal. If it's after 4, I open an Angry Orchard Hard Cider and sit on my deck. Sometimes I see what's on TV.

   I have become the Washing Machine Investigator as the machine does not smell right. Running a sanitize load with washing machine cleaner did not help. Running vinegar through was unsuccessful. Running bleach through the bin and the detergent delivery drawer did not work. Tomorrow I'm getting the drill...
 
  So I got that going for me.

  It's been 13 days.

....
 

Using Theatre To Fool Appraisers

   So we have embarked on a refinance journey. We are not people who are going to use the money to travel, or live our dreams. We are the people who are using it to pay medical bills, actually fix the house, and if we're lucky pleasegodplease, buy a new functioning car.
    But to get the refi, we have to have the house appraised. And see..well...ummm...the whole thing is that we didn't intend to do a refi 'cause we started ripping up the last two rooms ourselves. We got part way through the wood floors in the spare room----there was a blog, I'm sure---when we threw up our arms and decided to pay someone else to finish. Which means get a refi.
    Which means an appraisal.
     As you are close readers, you caught the phrase "ripping up the last two rooms", so you see what is coming. There is no floor in the master bedroom. Well, there's a sub floor and some throw rugs. Turns out, that's a problem. The appraisal will cost $500.00, and if they can't "finish" it because there is not a floor, they charge you to come back again. We asked our friend and Financial Guru and he said as long as we cover it, they'll never know. Cover it with what?
     Throw rugs.
     OK, that's not obvious or anything. Really? Mismatched throw rugs all over the floor? I may not be any kind of design person, but I am enough of a theatre person to blanche at the idea. And so I began to think...
       Theatre. It has to look good from the audience, only. What they cannot see does not exist.
       I could paint the sub floor with a wood pattern, but I'm not great at arting, and it would take longer than I have, considering teaching all day and two additional gigs two nights a week. Plus Harper has decided we do yoga, so that cuts into my floor time.
       I could buy 3 matching throw rugs and paint the floor between them. Nobody would know. But then I still have to paint the floor. And there are five cats and three dogs...that's going to go well. I did paint the sub floor white when we ripped it up, mostly to kill the smell. The carpet was...disgusting. 30 years old and the former  owners had small dogs,and we have dogs and cats. I'm shocked I did not have to be hospitalized. I wore a hazmat suit to do the tear out, and I could still feel the ruined carpet in my pores. So ya, I painted the sub floor to lay down a barrier. I kept hearing ALIENS in my head "Lay down a suppressing  fire with the incinerators!"
      So painting the floor to look like wood, or tile, is a great idea, but not one for me, kryssi, who does not paint beyond laying down a suppressing fore with the incinerators.
      Our Financial Guru friend came over to let us know how bad it actually is, and give us advice beyond "throw down rugs". So he came over, we made him a drink and he said lovely things about the general state of our home. He said the lack of doors were not problematic---did I mention we have no closet doors and two rooms are missing doors? We were really into it when the wood floor debacle occurred.  Anyway, we were worried no floor, no doors would be a problem for the appraisal. And we really need this,so we want to do whatever we can to hide the fact that we started and failed. Actually the lack of doors aren't a problem, just the lack of trim around one of the door frames.
       Then the master bedroom.
       Sub floor, painted white, a few throw rugs, dog toys.
       He said "throw some rugs down".
       UGH!!!
      I have to pull up the carpet tack trim around the edges because "That's a clue that there is no floor, he'll see that." But he won't see that the mismatched rugs are covering a sub floor?
      Then I got an idea.
      There's this sticky stuff you can put down and it's a floor pattern. Like shelf paper but for floors. Fake Floor Stickers, I'm not kidding. Home Depot carries them. I know this because I'm a theatre kid. And I have no idea who would buy this stuff except theatre kids.
      I can get some fake wood stickers online for $10.97 for 20 square feet. It would cost $40 to do the room. The rugs would run us  over $200.
      But Jim can't find it at Home Depot, and we don't have time to order it.
      But....The Dollar Tree has shelf paper that is a wood pattern. If we borrow two more rugs and buy one that matches the one we have, I can sticker around the edges and in between.
      The appraiser will never know we don't have a floor.
      Now, tell me again how a theatre degree is a waste of time?

Why Am I Suddenly Telling Stories To My Students?

1 Oct 2018
           So, I'm tasked with teaching poetry this year. Not my passion, not my content, not my anything. I kinda suck at it, to be honest. I have my three poets I love and ...scene. However, since I am not allowed to teach my love theatre, and I wish to pay my bills, I am figuring it out. Sure, sure I could teach plays written in a meter if I wished to torture non theatre kids (many of whom who were assigned poetry by their counselors because it's "easy") with Tartuffe.  And I already did sonnets and that was pretty rough...so, I decided, after doing Shakespeare sonnets, to do children's  poetry via Shel Silvestein and Dr. Seuss. Sounded easier than sonnets.
          It sounded easier...
          Spoiler Alert: These Are Not Children's Poets.
          This is a fact I knew on some level, but did not fully understand until I had to teach them.
          Sons of bitches.
          So, since  I write alongside my students, so they can see poor examples and feel better about their own journey, I was doing the pre-writing verbal vomit process: use a social or political issue that has impacted you and then explain it to children using poetry.
           My verbal vomit and social issue was a memory from the Boulder Mall Crawl in 1980 Something. Dressed in  what I had cobbled together in my closet, based around the weird punk I had been and the "Funky Annie Hall" a professor had recently dubbed me, I was something of a low rent Mary Poppins. Or Winona Ryder in Beetlejuice. Same Thing. Anywhoo, my boyfriend and a few other friends were crawling along, as is the ritual, and some guy behind me grabbed a handful of something that did not belong to him. In case you're not a careful reader- he grabbed something that belonged to me. Something attached. As I was in college and the new, proud owner of a green belt in tae kown do, I promptly connected by elbow to his nose. The few fellow crawlers in the vicinity who saw the exchange--it's a "crawl" for a reason, the mall was packed--gave me dirty looks. I heard someone say "You don't even know if it was him".
            Well...here's the deal, Spanky. Based on your comment, I know that  you saw him, or whoever it was, do it. So if I was wrong, then shouldn't you have pointed out the perpetrator to me? You did not, leading me to believe I had the right guy, and he didn't complain or respond, he just shoved his body into the crowd. Based on this circumstantial evidence, I believe Sherlock himself would have supported my verdict.

             
           I am sharing this for several reasons. I think you are smart, and can sense my subtext.  But I also realized something completely unrelated: these kids know more about me than any of my theatre students did.  I  have a  few theatre kids in the class, and I looked at them and said "I never told stories about myself in theatre, did I?" There was an emphatic "Nope", and a student asked me why? He said he figured the theatre kids would know me well. I paused, because they did know me well, they just didn't know my personal stories. I wondered why. Then it hit me: it was the content. I love theatre, I worship theatre, theatre is not what I do but who I am. There is simply no time, when you are worshipping and inspiring others to do so, for your stupid personal stories.

           In conclusion, all in all, to sum up, that is why I will never be a great language arts teacher.

The Human Condition and Neil Simon

    Without outing too much info that is private, I have a few words.

   We lost Neil Simon, one of our more prolific playwrights, a few weeks ago. I directed the male version of The Odd Couple  at LHS my first year there, and  I used to use both versions in my Intro classes for final scene work, so I know the script pretty well. One of the reasons I chose it for class was cast size, it's easy to chunk out a six person scene for kids who struggle, and two person scenes or the date scene for kids who are solid. It's also "comedy", and the friendship aspect is accessible to all ages.It has everything you need for beginning actors, and on the surface it seems harmless.

   Which is the primary reason I chose it: it looks harmless. Admin doesn't look past the occasional "shit" or "goddamn" to the deeper themes, so it gets a pass.

    Neil Simon, as all great comedic writers and actors, took on the true suffering of the human condition, laid it out as plainly as he could, and made us laugh at it. He made tragic disorders-and suicide attempts-funny. Because we need to not take ourselves too seriously.

    Today's lesson, as it applies to the last eight days of my life, is about Felix.

    Felix is essentially a hot mess. He has physical ailments that are unconsciously self inflected due to his emotional behavioral disorder and OCD. Sinuses, tendinitis, his wife can't wear perfume, etc. He is also a compulsive cleaner, he can't stop cleaning even after it's clean. They hired a maid and he cleaned before and after the maid came. A marriage counselor threw them out declaring that he was a nut. This was written in 1964, long before we were diagnosing any of the issues that Felix so plainly displays. Yet here they are, 54 years later, clearly diagnoseable and not funny when they are in your own home.

     Felix is making a sound like a moose, trying to "clear" his sinuses. Oscar says "Leave yourself alone, Felix, don't tinker". This line is one that stabs my heart every time. OCD and anxiety can lead to "tinkering": picking at your skin, pulling on your hair, other  compulsive behaviors. You can try to use that line on the person you love, but it doesn't work. They cannot stop themselves. It's like having tunnel vision and they cannot see anything else. Sometimes they obsess over pets or moments in relationships, and live them over and over again, unable to let go. If they are fortunate enough to have depression and anxiety as well, they change the story in their head every time they recall it, trying to make it make sense. Because so many times when people do things, out of fear or anger or just because they are selfish, a reasonable person with a disorder cannot make sense of it. So they make themselves sick trying to make sense of something that makes no sense.

     Before Felix enters, the poker boys are discussing the failure of his marriage. "He'll go to pieces. Remember when Frances broke up with him in the army? He started cleaning guns in his mouth".
Later Oscar says that Felix has a "Love me or I'll jump" approach to relationships. This is hilarious because it's too true and too close to home for us to discuss in polite society. That much pain is not to be openly admitted to, if you can't handle a break up then you shouldn't be in society, right? Maybe you need to just man up and get over it, because this type of behavior is funny. We're making fun of you.

   Except that he isn't. Neil Simon isn't making fun of it. Neil Simon felt it and had no idea what to do with these feelings, or how to handle them, so he wrote plays. He's identifying it, not judging. He got us to laugh at the very thing that should kill us.  He is quietly trying to force us to recognize this kind of pain, and to be there for our friends and each other when it hits. And to show us that from the outside, it can be pretty damned funny. Maybe we need to breathe and step outside of ourselves in that moment and just laugh at the absurdity of the whole situation.  Get a good laugh, eat some Ovaltine and go to bed. Genius.

   Carrie Fischer did this as well. My favorite novel of hers Postcards From The Edge , opens with a monologue I used for years at auditions. So much pain and so much humor. "Maybe I shouldn't have given the guy who pumped my stomach my phone number, but what was I supposed to do? ...I threw up scallops and Percodan all over him the night before in the Emergency Room, I thought it'd be rude not to give him my number." Pure genius. We are all in pain in some way, and most of us are nuts, but only a clever few have managed to communicate their pain through humor. And I love them.

   As a teacher I've seen all of the archetypes, and I watch them deal with whatever their issue is, or not. Everybody has issues. Sorry guys, nobody is issue free: nobody. I don't care how your family looks or how successful you are, nobody is completely OK. I worry most about the ones who aren't dealing, who are scurrying for the high GPA, involved in every aspect of school leaving no time to actually address who they are. They look fine, but when you talk to them you can glimpse what is truly at the core. They are driven because they are running, or because they are being pushed. I am not saying that those are both bad choices, but if you aren't aware of which one is happening, you're going to crash at some point. The ones who are self aware, who seek help from counselors and teachers, who appear to be the "hot messes", or who Jim named my "Lost Boys" years ago, those people are the most honest. They acknowledge that It's Not Ok, and they are desperately searching for someone to help them make sense of it all.

   Felix today is hard to understand outside of the time period in which he was written. By today's standards, with so much therapy available and psychiatrists in love with meds, and armchair Know It Alls like myself, he loses his soul. His pain is diminished in the name of making his disorders seem funny. What made them "funny" originally was how they destroyed his life and relationships, and were honestly out of his control. We laughed because we saw ourselves in him, and how can he be so blind? Jack Lemmon understood. So did Tony Randall. Because they played him in the time period in which he lived, and they knew his pain. Thanks to them, so did we, and we laughed because we wanted to cry, because it is ridiculous. The human condition is painful and ridiculous. 

     I'm not sure I got to my point. But I got what I needed off of my chest for the moment. I'm working my way back to humor blogs. I hope to return soon. Maybe from the other side I can channel Neil Simon, or Carrie, or Erma Bombeck and return. It was a lot easier to look at my human condition with humor when it was just me.

   Thanks for reading.

             

That Time I Thought I Could Do A Thing

   The last two years have been wracked with my failures. Which is fine, we all need to fail to move forward. It just sucks when you've crossed 50 and it's still happening and it, by the way, your career that you have failed at.
   Apparently I am a glutton for punishment, as I continue to look for Things To Fail At. Recently I chose Installing Hardwood Floors In The Small Spare Bedroom.

  Big History -When Jim and I owned the house on Grant, we did some minor renovations ourselves, relatively successfully, before giving in and hiring someone to do the kitchen. Which was a horrifying debacle and made us fear all renovation projects. Because I am a theatre teacher, I can build and design ish, for theatre. I paint hardwood floors or tile on the stage. I paint wallpaper or have wallpaper put on the flats. I do not use an air compressor for nails or staples, as they are a safety issue with students. I do it old school and I do it well enough for it to stand for two weeks, and then I demo the whole thing. When we moved into this house 18 years ago, it desperately needed updating. We carefully selected recommended handy men for the floors and painting and kitchen, and asked a family friend who did staging for realtors to design for us. We believed we would do the big stuff at that time, and come back the next year for the smaller rooms--the bedrooms and bathrooms. Then the bottom fell out in 2008 and most everybody knows Jim was unemployed for 3 years and we almost lost the house. We were able to hang onto it thanks to the grace of family, but the next step reno never happened, as digging out of that financial hole is still happening.

  Immediate History As we are shakily reclaiming our financial ground, we started feeling hopeful.We started talking about it. Last year we ripped out the carpet in the small spare room, and kept talking about putting in hardwood. But the truck needed an expensive tune up and tires. We had to buy a new car for Harp which needed new tires. I bought a new car. We know the truck is probably going to die soon and Jim will need a car. We hope the FJ will last G at least through December. Medical bills are stacking up. Student loans will be coming due soon. But notwithstanding, we have two kids with post secondary degrees and we made a plan to take out some equity and finish the house in September. While we're at it, maybe take a chunk out of the medical bills and help with student loans. Not rich, not buying a boat, just maybe finish the house. After two years of  applying and sounding off, it is heart breakingly clear that I cannot change buildings and Jim likes his job, so we aren't going to take off to Creede just yet. We're here at least ten more years, whaddya say we finish the damned house?
   We chat about these things at the bar with my dad. He volunteers to buy the materials for the floor and tells us "he knows a guy"* who can do it cheaply. I know it won't happen, so I keep drinking and Jim and my dad have conversations about wood floors. I know it'll never happen, but I don't want to upset anyone, so I just smile and nod when the subject comes up. Then one day the wood arrives in my garage, and of course---as predicted---dad's "guy" can't do it. I never said I would. But there is wood in my garage and Jim has said he'd like to try and get the floors done. He looked up How To Videos. And So we begin...


  Now that it's real, I want it done. I have no patience for living in construction, at all, and dammit something in my life needs to be completed. I decide I can probably do this, the video is detailed and I'm a functioning human. Here is a lovely bullet point to guide you:

•   Jim says he'll take off Friday and we'll rent the air compressor, nail gun and staple gun on Thursday night. On Weds when I ask about it, he says he doesn't think we're ready to start so he didn't take Friday off. Neigh Neigh I say, we're doing this, I gotta have control over something,and somebody needs to follow through on what they said or Immma take a hostage.
• We rent the air compressor, given no instruction by the Home Depot employee as to how to use it, because they don't know either. Jim's never used one. I've never used one. Already this is looking great.
• We lug the 400 pound thing up the stairs and turn it on, place three boards and nail them in. That was so easy, we got this!
• The compressor stops.
• We flip the switch, unplug it. It does not come back to life.
• I decide I'll return it tomorrow and text my sister in law, who put in her wood floors recently. 
• Her text back makes no sense to me "They turn off when they're full of air." 

Friday

•  I get up at 8 am to return the air compressor. G is returning to Durango today, and I don't want to miss her when she comes home to pack, so I wait until 9 to go to Home Depot.
• I lug the 500 pound thing into Home Depot and wait 15 minutes because nobody works at Home Depot.
• Someone emerges. I say "It's broken". They do not ask how I know this, or why I think it's broken, or bother to try it out. They just lug another air compressor at me and send me out the door.
• I lug the 600 pound air compressor up the stairs, hook it up, and turn it on. It runs for a minute, then shuts itself off. I re read my sister in law's text and use the nail gun with the compressor off. It works. AH! I see now, it's not on constantly,it fills with air and then shuts off. This would have been fabulous information to have before I lugged this 700 pound thing up and down my stairs and into my car and out of my car to Home Depot. wasting an hour and a half of my time.
• If you do not hit it directly on the button with the mallot, the nail will not fully submerge into the wood and you have to wrench the exposed nail completely out or the next plank won't line up.
• My walls aren't straight, so lining a 3/4  inch seam along the wall to allow for the floorboards as the video demonstrated, can't happen without causing the entire floor to have a crack running through it. I figured that out 6 rows in, and had to pull out 3 rows to fix it.
• Jim said the leftover wood from the other room would fit with the new wood. The guy at Lowes held up both sample pieces and demonstrated that they would fit together. They do not fit together once on a flat surface, however,  the grooves do not match up. No matter how much you pound.
• I texted my sister in law:"This doesn't match", "The Staple gun jammed" and "This is my Vietnam."  She called her boyfriend, who happened to be in my neighborhood, who came over and unjammed the staple gun (which I couldn't get to work), and explained the air compressor and checked it. All with a patient, kind demeanor of a real handy man who understands "teach a man to fish." I was grateful to him, and I know he and my sister in law both laugh about me. My sister in law texts " You're a mess" with a laughing/crying face. I build sets! I ran a theatre! I am not a mess! What time is it, is the pub open yet?
• I texted Jim photos of the uneven and unmatched wood, telling him no matter what, there is no way the old wood matches the new. We have gaps. It's now noon, I have eight rows done and I hate everything. I also point out that the wood planks will not make it from one end of the room to the other, leaving a nice 3/4 inch gap at the edge. None of the pieces line up that way, no matter how much math or Tetris you try to use. He says he knows, we'll have to cut the pieces to fit in there. Well OK then. Information I could have used.
• Schlepping the planks up the stairs from the garage causes enough nicks and scrapes in both the upstairs and and downstairs hallways to warrant needing paint jobs. I acknowledge this fact in my head as I throw the recent load on the floor and say out loud, to nobody "I'm not doing it."
• Harper is in the living room this entire time, did I mention that? At 1 pm we go to Starbucks, because the pub isn't open yet.
• I discover the longer planks are warped about 90% of the time. Depending on the warp, you may be able to pound the shit out of them to get them in. Some just won't go. They won't. I promise.
• Jim texts to tell me my dad is coming over. I ask why? He said "He's put in wood floors before, he can help" ** 
• My father arrives. He stands at the door to the room, whilst I am standing in said room and machine guns the following phrases at me: "This looks awful, look at those gaps, if this was my house I'd rip it up and start over, wouldn't you, this is a floating floor, what's that tool? Sigh, Sigh. What are you doing tomorrow? I'll come back and do this, this is a floating floor, I'm not yelling at you (he was totally yelling at me) but this is a floating floor it just snaps together and you don't need a nail gun, did you try to match the old wood with the new wood that's not going to work they don't match, why would you do that, it's a floating floor, when I did it with Marty we just snapped them in..." hit that on repeat for ten minutes, you get me.
• While my father is ripping apart my day with his criticism, Harper, from the living room, texts me the  google definition of a "floating floor" and the words "You're doing great, mom." 
• I know that this is not a "floating floor". This is wood, and it requires nails to install. I reply to the rat a tat of my father as best as I can, but I can only repeat the phrases "''cause the guy in the video said to do it this way" and "The guy at Lowes said they'd match", and "Dad, the longer planks are warped, it doesn't matter how much you pound they won't match up."
• Genoa enters the house, head full of steam over the previous night's family issue, adding to the black cloud threatening to engulf me. It's 3.30, the pub is open. I want to go to there.
• I walk away from my dad and sit in the living room chair across from Harp, contemplating just leaving everyone and going to the pub. Or maybe Creede. How much gas do I have?
• I say to Harper "that is not a floating floor." She smiles at me and nods agreement. "You're doing great, mom."
• Dad sits outside the bedroom on a chair, Genoa spins and whirls and leaves in a "Genoa"--very much like when the Tasmanian enters or exits---and I realize I'm going to cry. 
• Harp and I leave to run and errand, leaving dad behind and the garage doors open, so dad has to stay. I don't care. He can have the house. Jim can live with him.
• Jim gets home and tells dad that the Lowes guy said the wood would fit, the video said to use a nail gun and it's not a floating floor. Dad says "Oh, OK."  Just like that. No arguing, no disagreeing. Why? Well, Jim's a guy and my dad's sexist. Next.
• We all go to the pub.
• After the pub, Jim and I rip up the 8 rows I've done and Jim sets the first row against the wall---which he notes is not straight--and keeps saying things like "I see what you were saying" and "You figured out all the kinks for us." I just stare at him "You're welcome" and go to bed.
• On Saturday, Jim does most of the work and we get about 1/3 of the room done before we have to return the rental equipment.
• TWO WEEKS LATER, we rent another air compressor, intending to finish the floor. But Jim notes enough of the longer planks are warped and unusable that we may run out of wood.
• We run out of wood with 7 rows to go.
• Lowes does not have the wood in stock ,it has to be ordered.
• Home Depot does not have the wood in stock, it has to be ordered.
• We go to the pub.

        In conclusion, all in all, to sum up

• I have no control over anything in my life.
• I can add "install wood floors" to the list of things I cannot do.                    

*My dad always knows a guy, and in this case I saw the endgame clearly, as this "guy" is a divorcee from Peru living with my dad because he's broke and has legal issues. He is not going to do our wood floors, and I know that. I don't say as much, but I also don't really contribute to the conversation because when it comes to my dad I get very passive aggressive.
**My father has never installed wood floors before, and never, in our lives, has he been helpful to me. I love him and all, but he just gets mad when things don't go well, like bowling or the Broncos or home repairs.