home is burning

Our family recently attended a concert starring humorist Garrison Keillor from A Prairie Home Companion fame. Chelsea and I were pretty convinced that this Garrison asshole, who we had never heard of, would suck ass, so I pulled out a note pad that we could pass back and forth. Here are our conversations:

Conversation One

Chelsea: Danny has a cock. Do you think those two are lesbians? [Drawn arrow pointing to two lesbians sitting in front of us]

Me: It takes one to know one, so you tell me.

Chelsea: Hahahahaha. I think it would take a cock to know one. [Drawn smiley face]

— 

Conversation Two

Me: What’s your favorite meal?

Chelsea: Sweet and sour chicken, puss.

Me: What’s in that?

Chelsea: Sweet and sour chicken.

Me: Have you ever made that?

Chelsea: Nope. Mom makes it. What about you?

Me: Nope, I’ve never made anything but cereal and hot dogs on the grill. Oh, and microwavable pizza.

Chelsea: Yummy. This Garrison guy is lame.

Me: I think he’s great. Funnier than you for sure.

Chelsea: Thanks. He’s funnier than your cock. [Drawn smiley face] Jk.

— 

Conversation Three

Me: When’s the last time you took a shit?

Chelsea: This morning after breakfast.

Me: What in your breakfast made you shit so darn much?

Chelsea: Omelet w/ham and cheese.

Me: That sounds really good, the omelet, not the shit it produced.

Chelsea: Oh, I see.

Me: What does that mean?

Chelsea: Dunno?

Me: Why don’t you know? Are you a lesbian?

Chelsea: No, I like cocks. 

Once a month my Mom receives intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) to help her weak immune system fight off infections and Republicans (Sorry, had to make a really shitty political joke, given that the Democratic National Convention is in full swing).

My Dad, pre-Lou Gehrig’s Disease, sat by her side during each and every one of these IVIG sessions and most of her 78 chemotherapy treatments, holding her frail hand and making sure she remained strong enough to continue the fight. They have always been there for each other over the years, always letting the other know that, no matter what they were going through, they were not going through it alone.

Yesterday, my Dad requested that I take him up to the Huntsman Cancer Institute’s infusion room so he could sit by her side, holding her hand one last time.

Touching I know.

I, with the help of my Dad’s aide Regina, took him up there. We rolled into the infusion room and were greeted by my Mother’s rare smile. I wheeled my Dad to her side and they held hands, just like the good old days when only one of them was terminally ill. 

My Mom and Dad started talking about everything they wanted to do together before my Father’s September 22 death day.

–Go to the top of Snowbird

–Host a party

–Go for one walk every day

–Lay in bed together

I stopped them there.

“I need a pen to write all this down,” I told them.

“Look in my purse,” said my Mom.

I opened up her cavernous purse and began digging around for a writing utensil. Past all the yogurt spoons, note pads, change pouches, and checking books, I found a diaper. I pulled it out.

“What the hell is this? Is this for Dad?” I asked my Mom.

“No. It’s my diaper. I’ve started shitting myself,” she answered. 

“You’ve started shitting yourself? Because of the cancer or what?”

“No, because your Dad and I do everything together.” 

The two looked at each other. My Mom squeezed my Dad’s hand even harder and smiled. 

We haven’t changed our home answering machine message in years, so when you call you still hear my Dad’s chipper, pre-Lou Gehrig’s voice saying, “Hi, this is the Marshall’s. We’re not available right now. Please leave a message and we’ll return your call as quickly as we can. Thanks for calling!!! Bye.”

It’s good to hear my good, old Dad, but the message also reminds me of how much he’s lost in the pass two years, so when the beep hits I usually leave a nasty message for Lou Gehrig’s Disease, before leaving one for my parents.

“Thanks for destroying my father’s voice you asshole. Now we can’t even understand a fucking thing he says. I would tell him to call me back, but he can’t pick up a phone because he can’t move his arms. Fuck you, you dick.

“Anyways, Mom and Dad, this is Dan. Call me back! That’s directed more towards you Mom because you can talk and use your arms to pick up objects, such as telephones. Anyways, hope all is well, even though I know it’s not. I’ll talk to you later.”

I want to change our phone message to something new, something that reflects the weirdness of our situation. Here’s what I came up with:

–Hi, this is the Marshall’s. We can’t come to the phone right now because our Father is lying in a hospital bed, hooked to a respirator and unable to move his body, so please leave a message and we will probably not get back to you because our father is lying in a hospital bed, hooked to a respirator and unable to move his body. Thanks for calling!!! Bye.

–Hi, this is the Marshall’s…. [Followed by a long pause and then weeping noises] Thanks for calling!!! Bye.

–Hi, this is the Marshall’s. We can’t come to the phone right now, so come to our doorstep and hang your cock out of your pants and we’ll get back to you as quickly as possibly. Thanks for calling!!! Bye. [Note: this one was my 17-year-old sister Chelsea’s idea]

–Hi, this is the Marshall’s. There are seven members of our family, until September 22. Then there will be six. Thanks for calling!!! Bye.

–Hello….Hhhhellooo….Hellooooooooooo. Fine don’t talk you motherfucker. First Lou Gehrig’s Disease and now a crank phone call. It all just makes me want to kill myself…. [Shooting noise, followed by a long pause] We’re just fucking with you. Thanks for calling!!! Bye.

–Hi, this is the Marshall’s. If you would like to feel better about your life, or you think petty things like your kid getting a B in geography are a big deal, leave us a message and we’ll get back to you with a laundry list of reasons why our life is more stressful/shitty than yours. Thanks for calling!!! Bye.

–Hi, this is the Marshall’s. We can’t cum to the phone right now because our penises and cum shots aren’t long enough. Leave a message. Thanks for calling!!! Bye.

–Hi, this is the Marshall’s. We are a family torn to shreds by a series of tragic events. We resent all people that have normal lives. Leave a maaassage at the beep!!! Thanks for calling!!! Bye.

–Hi, this is the Marshall’s. Please leave your name and your number and a cure for cancer and Lou Gehrig’s Disease at the beep. Thanks for calling!!! Bye.

–Hi, this is the Marshall’s. We can’t come to the phone right now because we have a million other things to worry about that are way, way, way more important than your bullshit phone call. Thanks for calling!!! Bye.

–Hi, this is the Marshall’s. So we were watching that shitty Matthew McConaughey movie We Are Marshall together and I looked around the room and saw that we were all together, that we had all been through a lot, but we’re all still alive now because we had all put our differences aside and acted in a very altruistic way, and I was like, “Fuck you Matthew Mc-Kind-of-Gay. Weeeeee are Marshall.” Anyways. Thanks for calling!!! Bye.

My Dad’s aide Regina found my blog and was reading it to my Dad when she discovered that I had made light of her weight. 

She approached me and said, “Danny, why are you so mean?”

I said I wasn’t, that I’m as mean to myself as I am to anyone else.

She picked up a small piece of white medical tape, handed it to me, and said, ”Here, use this to cover up your small penis.”

I read my Dad a piece I was writing. Afterwards, I asked if he had any suggestions. 

He looked at me and responded, “I would take out a couple of the mother fuckers.”

Greg and I aren’t very good at killing things, as evident by the fact that both of our parents are still alive.

We’re especially bad with spiders.

Killing one is a long, drawn-out process that makes a gonzo film feel short. Earlier this year it took us three hours to kill two spiders.

Instead of walking up to the spiders, quickly doing the math to equate that we are over two-hundred-thousand times their size, and using our ever-expanding bodies to crush them into a brownish/blackish stain with legs, we fucked everything up.

Spider Number One was discovered on the basement stairs. I had noticed it on our way up after having a nice “Our family is so fucked up. What the fuck are we going to do?” conversation.

Me: We’re fucked.

Greg: Yeah, this is really bad and not getting better.

Me: There’s no end in sight.

Greg: Dad could live for years, Mom too.

Me: We’re so fucked.

Greg really loses his shit around bugs. Growing up, my sister Tiffany and I would tell him ants were crawling on his head and then laugh as he screamed and ran around swiping at his hair for the next ten minutes.

“Are they off? Did I get them?” he would ask.

“Nope, still there. I think one even bit you,” we would respond. “We might want to start thinking about getting you to a hospital.”

His fear of bugs, teamed with the life-sized cardboard cutout of the Scarecrow from The Wizard of OZ, made his gay announcement pretty unsurprising.

I have a different reaction to bugs, especially spiders. I’m not as scared of them as I am angry with them. I feel like they are out to get me, so I have more of a “Come and get me you mother fuckers” attitude. I often swear at them, call them “cunts” and “shit-eaters”, and, when I’m around Greg, “faggots”.

In this case, we were dealing with a hobo spider, which are even worse than others because they are larger, hairier and can actually hurt you, much like drunk Greek people. I’ve seen photos whereupon bite victims need to get their arms removed. Plus, hobos often fake their own deaths. I would whack one, think it was dead, and return a few minutes later to find it missing. What fuckers! I always assumed that this bout with near death had motivated the spider to train, that, while I filled my body with Mountain Dew and pretzels, it had hit the gym, and, under the apprenticeship of some kung fu spider master named Master Spindler, had learned how to gut a man using only a silk string. I expected it to return one day, nunchucks in each of its eight arms, and say, “Remember me mother fucker?” and then eat my face to the bone.

So when we spotted Spider Number One, we both froze. Greg grabbed my arm and whispered a panicked, “Oh my God Danny. What are we going to do?” as if we had just happened upon a hobo criminal about to eat a baby’s privates instead of a hobo spider.

This one was pretty big, but I wanted it dead, so I whispered back, “Grab me a shoe and I’ll kill this cunt-ass mother fucker.”

After spending twenty minutes deciding which shoe to grab, an old boot or a running shoe, I slowly approached the spider.

“Danny be careful,” Greg said as if he were a Princess wishing her Knight-in-Shining-Armor well as he was about to cut the dick off a dragon. “Cut his dick off,” I imagined him saying in a gay-Princess voice.

“Don’t worry. This cunty faggot has no mother fucking chance.”

I lifted the boot above my head like it was a mallet in one of those “Test Your Strength” carnival games. I pictured there being the long scale with lights. If I hit the spider with the right strength and accuracy, the lights would light up from bottom to top and a siren would go off, indicating that I had won the grand prize, that the spider was dead.

I swung the boot down hard. My weakness and shaky accuracy only lit up half the lights, rewarding me with the prize of having the spider run and wedge itself where the end of one step meets the beginning of another.

Greg shrieked. “Danny, oh my God.”

Spider Number One was so nicely tucked into the stairs that it had made itself un-killable via boot. We were fucked and frightened now. We spent twenty minutes deciding what to do.

We starting thinking about how we needed our Lou Gehrig’s Diseased Dad, who, at the time was still able to walk, but was kept alive at night by a breathing machine called a BiPap.

Greg: Should we go wake him up?

Me: Well, he might not be able to do anything because he can’t move his arms and can’t breathe. Something like this might be the end for him, and do we really want to explain to friends and relatives that we lost our father because we were too pussy to kill a mother fucking spider?

Greg: I’m ok with that.

Me: Let’s just get this asshole.

But Greg’s idea wasn’t bad. In his prime, my Dad wouldn’t have missed. He would have slammed the mallet down so hard that it would have destroyed all spiders forever.

So we went to Plan B and grabbed sticky traps and a pool cue, figuring we could use the pool cue to scare Spider Number One out of hiding and onto one of the sticky traps where it would stand frozen and slowly starve to death. Fuck, humans are mean to insects. If only we treated the Chinese that way there would be no more racism. Wait is a spider an insect? Fuck, my Dad would know that. Should we wake him up for that?

“Excuse me Dad. I know you’re laying there on the brink of death struggling to breathe, but are spiders insects?”

He would tell me that insects have six legs, that spiders have eight, that a spider is thus classified as an arachnid, that I am a dumb ass and should shower my brain with knowledge about the world I live in instead of with booze from the bar I’m drinking in.

After forty minutes of poking then calming Greg down then poking again, we finally got Spider Number One onto the sticky trap.

“Ha-ha mother fucker,” I yelled while biting my hand, a habit I developed as a child when I was either mad or excited that I still practice with frequency today. In fact, it was my initial reaction to my Dad’s announcement that he had been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s Disease and would subsequently be slowly dying over the next couple of years. That time I bit out of anger, not excitement.

The only problem was that we had also managed to land the pool cue onto the trap. It took us another thirty minutes to get the cue off. Not in a sexual way, you pervs. What, you think I was sitting there stroking a cue stick until it came? Well I have news for you: cue sticks can’t come. Trust me. I’ve stood there stroking one for hours and nothing.

Greg and I figured our work here was done. We were relieved. We could go to bed and rest up for another day of wiping Daddy’s ass, which is the title of Eddie Murphy’s next family flick. Greg was excited. He may have even mentioned that it was good that I was home, that I was a hero of sorts.

“Wait a second. Before you go masturbate to gay porn, check that mark out on the ceiling. I think it’s another mother fucking, ass-licking spider,” I said.

Though we could not confirm whether or not it had ever licked an ass, it was indeed a spider. Spider Number Two hung from the ceiling waiting to parachute onto us. I pictured it eating our faces to the bone.

“That mother fucker,” I said.

We figured we’d do the same thing. We’d scare the spider off of the ceiling using the pool cue. It would fall to the carpet and make a run for it, as we moved sticky traps around it, eventually catching it and producing another slow, painful death that generations of future basement spiders would never forget.

I tapped the ceiling near the spider.

Nothing.

I tapped again, this time much closer to the spider, instead of four feet away like tap number one.

“Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God,” yelled Greg.

“That shit-eating mother fucker,” yelled me.

The spider recognized the threat, jumped on its silk string and began its descend from the ceiling to the floor. The drop was about eight feet and took the spider about twenty seconds to do. Greg and I both screamed at the top of our lungs the whole time.

Once the spider hit the ground it sat there, probably with a “What now bitches?” expression on his face, all eight middle fingers raised, ready for us to make our next move. Our next move was to stand there for twenty minutes recounting how fucking freaky that was, how we had almost died and had our faces eaten to the bone, that Mom and Dad were lucky because they only had to go through cancer and Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

We then repositioned the traps around the spider. It was cornered. It was fucked. There was no way out. It was OJ driving 35 miles per hour in its Ford Bronco down the 405 (that was not meant to be a racist joke. I meant it not as spiders=black people, but as spiders=criminals, note that criminals don’t always=black people). It still took us fifty minutes to tap the right part of the carpet and scare it onto the trap. But we got it.

“Yes. Danny. Oh my God. That was the most amazing thing we’ve ever done,” Greg said.

We slapped a sweaty high-five.

An image of us driving our Mother to chemotherapy, rubbing her bald head as we left to go home to make sure our Father was still hooked to his BiPap machine so he could live another day flashed into my head.

“Yeah Greg, you know what. It was the most amazing thing we’ve ever done.”

Chelsea may have revolutionized the handshake. Her and a friend were thinking that, instead of shaking one’s hand, why not reach for their cock and shake that, the ultimate salutation if you will. 

When my Dad started deteriorating via ALS, it was obvious that the disease wouldn’t just affect his body and my sex life. It would affect everything my Dad was responsible for, everything he did for himself, everything he did for the family.

Our Dad over-parented us in many ways. Christmases were always extravagant events, even when we stopped believing in Santa Clause and Baby Jesus, even when I told Greg that he wasn’t a real Jazz fan, that he should just back the fuck off my turf and hop off the bandwagon just as we were walking down the stairs to start Christmas. The TVs worked and functional batteries weighed down the remotes. There was enough beer in the fridge. The yard looked like the cover of a magazine that specialized in beautiful yards and was never covered in dog shit. Light bulbs were replaced the instant they burnt out. Homework help was always available. There were multiple shampoo and conditioner choices in the showers. Rolls of toilet paper were at least an inch thick. The grill had a never-empty propane tank connected to it and chicken shish kabobs sizzling on top. The garage was swept and didn’t smell like a weird combination of dog urine and more dog urine, with a splash of drunk-Dan urine. We had a tool bench. There was chalk next to the pool table (No big deal). No leaves floated in the pool (No big deal). The tennis court (No big deal) was usable and had a new net. The cars were washed and had enough gas in them. The dogs were fed and walked to the point of tired. The spiders (No big deal) in our basement would never bite us. All the bills were paid on time. We had smiles our faces.

Things were pretty great at the old Marshall Manor.

Then the ALS shit-storm hit.

Suddenly our house was transformed into a third world country. There were weeds on our dirty-covered tennis court (No big deal). Dog shit and dandelions covered our yard. We didn’t get HBO on every TV. The hot tub (No big deal) smelled like gay balls and teenager piss. Cobwebs haunted our windowsills and spiders ran our basement like it was a 1920s speakeasy. Rooms were unevenly lit or just darkened with dead bulbs. Letters on our computer keyboard were all scrambled, making typing a “fuck you” letter to Lou Gehrig’s Disease tough. The pantry contained old cans of soup and stall chips that were never good to begin with because they weren’t BBQ, my Dad’s favorite flavor. The grill functioned as a resting place for unfinished 3 AM beers instead as the place where meat was made delicious. Two of our three pinball machines (No big deal) no longer worked. The mini-fridge (No big deal) in the basement had more types of mold than beer, and wasn’t even plugged in. Door handles jiggled. Locks didn’t lock. Our cars filled with Subway wrappers, Red Bulls, sunflower seeds, banana peels, and unwashed glasses stained with week old orange juice residue. No new pictures went up on the wall. Cat piss stains yellowed our carpet. Cigarettes and weed were smoked in the backyard. Raccoons danced in our trees and shit on our trampoline (No big deal).

And those Katrina A-holes thought they had it bad.

We had lost the “Man of the House” and never realized how much he did for us.

So, Greg and I were left to man the ship, which has proven to be a daunting task, given that Greg likes hard-bodied men on ships and I can’t even run or stay in a functional relation-ship. I mean Christ Almighty, when I should be setting spider traps and shampooing cat piss out of carpet, I’m making ship-related play-on-words. 

We could both take several courses on how to run a family as well as my Dad did, but it would do nothing. Dog shit would still grace our lawn. The pine needles would remain un-raked. It would still take me three hours to spray off the tennis court (No big deal). The sprinklers still wouldn’t be turned on until mid-July. Two out of the three pinball machines still wouldn’t work.

Because Greg and I were so inept and my Dad was stuck in a hospital bed and no one has invented a way for an ALS patient stuck in a hospital bed to do house choirs using only their mind and eye-blinks, we often relied on other to help us.

No one helped more than our bald, across-the-street neighbor Ralph.

Growing up, Ralph was one of our mortal enemies. I was terrified of him. My neighbors and friends Mike and Bob were skateboarders and would often practice in the street just outside of Ralph’s home. Ralph disagreed with this hobby so he threw his dog’s shit in the road. Mike and his other skater friends retaliated by throwing Slurpee cups over his fence into his backyard. Ralph responded by saving up all of those aforementioned Slurpee cups and setting all fifty something on Mike’s door with a warm “fuck you”.

Things got really bad with Ralph after one of Mike’s friends mooned him as he drove passed in his self-made car (He was an engineers so he built things he wanted, like cars). He charged towards the ass-flasher and said, “I’m going to tear your fucking head off and shove it up your ass.”

He may have tacked on a “you mother fucker” or a “you mother fucking son of a bitch” on the end, but I don’t remember. He did ask a simple question to the group while rolling up his sleeves, “You ladies every get your asses kicked?”

We were maybe 15-years-old at the time, so Ralph had the wherewithal to back off, maybe picturing the headlines, “Bald 60-year-old Engineer Shoves 15-year-old’s Head up Ass Following Mooning” or “Bald 60-year-old Engineer Calls pack of 15-year-olds ‘Girls’ Then Kicks the Living Shit out of Them.”

But the incident still scared the shit out of our asses, potentially leaving room for our heads. We were so scared, in fact, that we would hide in my backyard and launch water balloons at his house. We even got to the point where we filled the launcher with some of the shit he had tossed on the street and tried shooting it back his way. That ended with us saying, “That didn’t work. We shouldn’t have tried that…well maybe once more.”

Plus, he, has he put it, felt “sorry as shit” for my Dad. Ralph didn’t like many people, but he liked my Dad, as he noted when he said, “I don’t like many people, but I like your Dad.” I noted that it’s virtually impossible to hate my Dad, and he responded by giving me a “How could you make such a huge generalization, you fucking dumb ass” stare. 

I was still scare of him, but I was more scared of trying to fix broken doors or rake leaves. 

So, he would come over and do the “Man of the House” sorts of things and blow Greg and my mind (Note: I could add a gay joke here, something like, “Ralph blew my mind, but I bet Greg wished he would blow something else,” but I’m not going to). We would stand around watching him work, making all the noises one makes at a fireworks show. 

Ralph: So you just turn this screwdriver and it tightens the screw and holds the door handle in place.

Greg: Oooooh!

Me: Aaaaah!

Or

Ralph: So you can apply this adhesive to the bottom of this doorbell and your Dad can ring it when he needs help.

Greg: Ok. Ralph. Let me just tell you that that was amazing. You are a genius.

Or

Ralph: It’s called Raid. You just spray it and it kills ants.

Me: Jesus. When did they invent that?

Or

Ralph: If you want to change the name on a car title you just have to go to the DMV and fill out a form.

Me: Ok, when you say DMV, you mean…

Ralph: The Department of Motor Vehicles.

Me: Right. Ok. Didn’t know there was a department for that, but that’s great to know.

But as time wore on, Ralph began to get frustrated with our inabilities. He started to make us feel like shit when we asked him for help. He would say things in a way that emphasized our lack of skills and reminded us that our Father’s life was in our hands. 

–“Don’t you have a generator? No, well, don’t you think it’s time to invest in one? I mean what if the power goes out and you don’t have a way to run your Father’s respirator? He would die. Let’s think here.”

–“You honestly don’t know how to load washer fluid into a car? What if you need to drive your Father to the hospital and your windshield is so dirty you can’t see anything? He would die. Jesus Christ.”

–“Do you have flashlights? No, well, don’t you think it’s time to invest in some? I mean what if the power goes out and you don’t have a way to see your father’s respirator? He would die. Come on people.”

–“You have a snow blower sitting in your garage. You just need to fill it with gas then it can be used to remove snow from your walkway. I know it’s hard and you might have to do some work for once in your life, but your Father is dying so it’s time to step it up.”

–“This isn’t a Philips screwdriver. Do you even know what one looks like? Jesus.”

–“Where do you keep your surge protectors? You don’t know? Fuck it; I’ll just bring one over. Because we need to get some of these cords out of the way, or we will trip on one and your Father will die.” 

–“Some of your trees are dying. You need to call someone to remove them. You Father’s life depends on it.”

–“Danny, you’re short and have a fat face that women don’t find attractive. And get a haircut, or your Father will die.”

One time Ralph was talking to my Dad about how we needed to remove the queen size bed from the room so visitors had a place to sit and we had more room to maneuver around the bed so we could provide my Dad with the care he needs to keep him alive.

During this discussion, Ralph said, “Bob, you need to put your foot down on this one. You’re still the man of the house.”

Greg and I sat in the room watching basketball and drinking smoothies. Even though my Father sat motionless in his bed, unable to speak, Ralph still considered him a better candidate for man of the house duties than Greg and me. This was slightly insulting.

I noted that my Dad could not put his foot down because he could not move his body. Ralph said that it was a figure of speech and asked if I knew what that was. 

I took a sip from my smoothie, producing a smoothie mustache, and retorted, “Yes, I know what that is. We have our shit together. Greg and I are sort of the men of the house now so we make these decisions.”

“No you’re not. Bob is. Dan, you’re the closest thing to it, but it certainly isn’t Greg. Bob is irreplaceable.”

We were doing all that we could. But Ralph was right. My Dad is irreplaceable. And even though Ralph helped as much as he could, it wasn’t the same. It’s like asking a man to fuck your wife: she’ll still get fucked, but it will feel different. In this analogy, our house is the wife and the person fucking her was my Dad but now is Ralph. Sort of a weird analogy, I know, but I’ve been waiting to use it for a while and my Dad has Lou Gehrig’s Disease, so fuck off.

I grew tired of Ralph’s criticism and felt guilty that he was spending so much time at our house helping. So I started to try to take over some of the “Man of the House” duties.

But I wasn’t as good. It took me 45 minutes to change a light bulb I thought had broken in the socket. I had read somewhere that you could get a broken light bulb out with a potato, that it could grip it and spin it out. I started there, with a potato. It didn’t work. Before I knew it I had a cantaloupe up there, then an apple, then a banana, then a Fruit Roll-Up, then back to the potato. It turns out there was no broken bulb in the socket, that all I had to do from the get-go was screw in a fresh bulb. In the end, the whole fixture was destroyed, smelled like the produce section of a grocery store, and needed to be replaced.

It still hasn’t.

We also have a raccoon problem. When I found out about it, I thought about asking for Ralph’s help because fuck raccoons, but didn’t. I figured I could handle this one, that they were only raccoons, and that if they were anything like the raccoons in The Great Outdoors, they would be hilarious. Ralph would have suggested that we call animal control. But I thought standing outside trying to peg them with softballs was a better idea. To this day the raccoons still come and eat dog food from a bowl on our back porch. Ralph probably would have suggested that we remove the food from the back porch. But I sort of like throwing softballs at raccoons; it takes my mind off things for a bit. Plus I need to get better at softball if I’m ever going to make woman’s Olympic team.

It became clear that I couldn’t do it. And Ralph had already established that Greg couldn’t, being gay and all.

My Dad also realized I’m a slap-dick. I would talk to him about how to do certain things, figuring that he could just tell me what to do and I could do it, without Ralph’s help.

Me: Listen, I noticed that one of the dogs walked on the pool cover and fucked it all up. I want to fix it. What should I do?

Bob: Call Ralph.

Me: [Slightly offended] Doesn’t it suck that you can’t take care of your own family?

Bob: [Looking sad]

Me: Sorry. That was mean. I’ll call Ralph.

So, I would call Ralph, our surrogate “Man of the House” and he would fix it while I watched in amazement.

And I’m okay with that now. I have come to terms with the fact that I can’t do certain things. I will never be called a “Man’s Man” or a “Handy Man” or a “Lady’s Man” or a “Man”. But at least I won’t be called “bald” like Ralph. 

My Mom found out that I have a blog. She asked what it was about and I said, “It basically just talks shit on you.”

She responded by saying, “Well I’m going to start my own fucking blog about you.”

Look for it. 

The car was silent as I drove Chelsea to her high school to pick up her new class schedule. Most of our car conversations are about how she is 17-years-old and needs to grow the fuck up and drive her own, fart-filled ass around town, that we all have so much on our plates already and are sick of doing it just because she’s scared of the road.

But, I already had this discussion with her twice in the driveway, so I was left to think of something else to say. I couldn’t think of anything, so I decided to strike an uncomfortable sex conversation.

Me: So, you’re going to be a junior this year.

Chelsea: Yeah.

Me: You know, that’s when most girls start having sex. Are you going to start having sex with your horny little classmates?

Chelsea: Ewww gross! No way!

Me: Why not?

Chelsea: Because that’s gross.

Me: Why’s it gross?

Chelsea: I don’t want someone’s thing in my thing.

Me: [Laughing] Why not?

Chelsea: Because its mine.