"I'm smarter now than I've ever been in my life."*

   I’ve been really awful about blogging this summer.

   Part of me hopes that everyone is disappointed and sad and checks this page every day for updates and is let down and then their days are ruined because I haven’t posted.

   The bigger part of me knows that you all have been living your lives the way you always do, and haven’t been too bummed about it in the least. Fine. (Screw you.)

   Anywhose-its, I don’t want to bore you with a recreation of my intensely amazing summer (you really couldn’t handle it, anyway), I just want to talk to you about math.

   I know I’ve kvetched about math on at least one occasion, but I want to fully describe to you the utter horror that this math class has wreaked on my life.

1.  I am taking statistics online through Omaha’s Metro Community College. Therefore, I am essentially my own teacher. And my teacher is really bad at math.

2.  There are, if I were a responsible, adult-type person, approximately 2-3 hours of homework per day. But who the hell wants to have so much fun? So I wait until day 3 or 4 and do 5-6 hours at a stretch. I’m like an Olympic athlete at math. Except for not really, because I don't try.

3.  Since the course is of course online, I am at a distinct disadvantage because of my cave woman-level knowledge of the Interwebs.

4.  My sister Penelope, who is ten years younger than I am, is taking the same class. Which sort of puts me in the mood to say, “WHAT THE FUCK HAVE I BEEN DOING WITH MY LIFE?”

5.  I’m a girl. We’re not supposed to have to learn the maths (duh), because we’re supposed to get married after high school. But I’m not married, so I have to learn statistics. Thanks a lot, God.

6.  Math books are written by mathematicians, therefore they are extremely good at telling you things that make no sense and they are really terrible at WRITING ANYTHING OF VALUE. I.e. “blah-blah-blah, use this formula, blah-blah-blah, don’t worry about it, "snoochie-roochie," don't think so hard, "blah, blah, blah," answer.” There is no, for instance, description of how these mathematical terms work in the grander scheme of things, just pictures of Asian women with glasses leaning over a list of really long columns of numbers. Yeah, thanks. I already knew Japanese ladies could do math. Showing me a picture of it does not constitute an education or a text book, you dumb fucks.

7.  Really long columns of numbers: fuck you, statistics! Now that we know what we’re doing, do you think you could maybe just hand me the standard deviation for this problem so this quiz doesn’t take me 5 hours to complete?

Here's a collage of my summer artwork.

8.  I know I’m starting grad school in mere weeks, but what does it all mean for me? As soon as I take a math test I’m over it. I don’t hate math, I just don’t ever want to do it again. Because it's stupid and awful. (J/K...it's just time-consuming, requires concentration, and doesn't happen to get my motor running. I'm not trying to be an engineer, bitches!)

   So…the summer has been full of long columns of hideous numbers that mean nothing to me in any real context. In many ways, that is the short story of my life.

   I have, on a positive note, learned a lot about gambling odds. Hopefully this will prove useful the next time I'm on an Indian reservation. 

*This quote is from Season Two of Mad Men. It's odd I haven't quoted Mad Men before. The show makes no sense, has no point, and is yet one of the most addictive pieces of shenanigans I've ever seen. And consider this: not a single character does math. Fuck yeah, advertising!

"Not with that attitude, you won't."*

   Mother’s Day is a great holiday. Mothers have a really shitty job…okay that sounds mean, and I don’t want to start off on the wrong foot. They have a really hard job, we’ll say, and even if you’re adopted and your particular mom didn’t carry you around for 9 months and push you out the hard way, she’s busted her butt (if not her vaginal canal or abdominal wall or bladder or all three) trying to feed you and make sure you have semi-decent hygiene and some kind of ability to take care of yourself. Having been a childcare provider for a number of years I can assure you that you were a huge pain in the ass and your mother’s love was the only thing keeping you from dying in the streets and all you ever wanted to do was not eat your dinner and whine like a spoiled brat about every mundane thing you could possibly imagine. Maybe you were an easy child, but when people say their child is “easy” what they mean is “compared to other children, my kid is less suicide-inducing.” They love you, those moms. And they deserve a day (or 100 days) of attention and hugs and presents and trips to Europe.

   I didn’t get to see my mom today, but it should be said that she was and is a great mom.

   And so anyway. 

   My most vivid memory of Mother’s Day was when I was about 15 (one of my most asshole-ish periods). Like she always does, Mom spent the better part of the day preparing a feast for us and for our grandparents. She made all the food and cleaned the house and decorated the table and probably bought her own floral arrangements. We probably whined about sweeping or folding laundry and watched movies in the den while she roasted a lamb or some other ridiculously delicious and difficult meal.

   I remember it was a beautiful day and very sunny and my mom was making a point to fix Arnold Palmers, as she always did when Grandma Millie was coming over, because that was Grandma's favorite. And my mom was always very good to her mom. Moms!

   Grandma and Grandpa arrived for “dinner” around 2 in the afternoon along with my Aunt Mel, who most likely contributed to the eats as well. Everyone was gathered, Grandpa had a beer, and we were all about ready to sit down and eat.

   The tea was finished boiling on the stove and Mom had only to add it to the fresh batch of lemonade. She first dumped a pile of ice into the pitcher and then poured the tea on top. I mean, these Arnie Palmers weren't going to cool themselves. And, in a moment that I still can't quite see without everything going into slo-mo, the pitcher promptly exploded, dousing my mom in scalding tea and shooting shards of the glass pitcher into her leg and all over the room. 

Bloody Arnold Palmer horror.

   Despite the fact that she had a glass shard shoved into one of her perpetually bare feet (a hippie preference I’ve inherited from her) and was gushing jets of blood all over the floor, Mom remained remarkably calm. This was a bit of a miracle as the site or suggestion of blood makes her faint.

   I think she just sort of sat down on the floor in a state of bemused shock. (In retrospect, I think maybe she did faint. Hmmm...)

   Luckily Dad and Aunt Mel, both medical professionals, didn’t seem as completely frozen with ineptitude as the rest of us and managed to figure out that she would need stitches pretty soon and they wrapped her foot in a kitchen towel and drove her to the ER.

   I think they’d been gone for a full 5 minutes before my grandparents and my sisters and I moved at all. We’d all been put to the test and we’d all failed miserably. We were straight useless in a crisis, and apparently incapable of even reacting to the situation. So we stood in a line around the kitchen counter and stared at the pool of blood on the floor. Huh. Blood. 

Blood. Glass. Huh.

   Finally, slowly, while making small talk with our Grandma and Grandpa and keeping some sort of tabs on Penelope, Ouisa and I started cleaning the blood. I guess we decided it would be nice if, on Mother’s Day, my mom didn’t have to clean her own blood off the kitchen floor when she arrived home from the ER. Surprise! Happy Mother’s Day! Your gift is to spend a full day NOT cleaning your blood off the floor! You’re welcome! We even did the soap thing, the way Dad had taught us, so the floor wouldn't be sticky. It seemed doubly important since we'd all know that it was sticky because of blood. And that's just gross.

   They came back from the ER an hour or so later and we sat down to our meal. And I’m sure it was delicious. I think Grandma and I had even managed to make a second batch of Arnie Palmers without incident while they were out. But I learned a valuable lesson that day: don’t put boiling fluids into a glass container filled with ice.**

   Just kidding.

   I didn’t really learn anything.

   But doing something that was actually useful for my mom was a nice feeling. And I wish I could do it more often. But she hasn’t bled on the floor in a while. Kidding! (Not about the blood part...she really hasn't had a bloody accident. But about the doing nice things for her part. Ugh. Too much back-peddling here. Let's move on.)

   It’s important to do the things that help your Momma, is what I think you can take away from this, if you are greedy and feel that you need to take something away from this heart-warming post. My mom always wants me to fold laundry before her dinner parties and I never understood why: the guests don’t see the laundry! But over the years I’ve realized that the laundry is just one of the 47 other things she has to finish before she can go to sleep tonight, so doing it does help, even if no one can tell it’s been done. So I try to do that whenever I’m home. And empty the dishwasher. Take out the garbage. You know, stuff like that. Maybe it’s because now that I’m an adult and maybe ever so slightly less of a jackass, I appreciate the value of having clean clothes and a place to put my newly dirtied dishes. I’m grateful to my mom for having always done it for me.

   Along with a billion other things she's done for me. 

   Say thanks to your Mom and fold her laundry and clean up her blood. It's the least you can do. 

   And flowers are nice, too.

Happy Mother's Day, Maman!

*I'm not sure if my mom invented this quote, but it has long been her response to any statement of negativity. ("I won't get into that college." "Not with that attitude, you won't." "I will never find those shorts!" "Not with that attitude you won't.") I find myself using it all the time nowadays. My mom is the Queen of The Positive Attitude.

**To this day I'm afraid to add ice to anything hot. But I think it's more about a glass container + ice + boiling fluids. I think. But I always shield my face when making iced coffee from hot.

"Before you can read me you've got to learn how to see me. I said, Free your mind and the rest will follow. Be color blind. Don't be so shallow."*

   En Vogue’s epic R&B tune “Free Your Mind” found its way onto my iPhone the other morning and I was so excited. I hadn’t heard the song in years and it’s always brought back memories of my childhood. I was especially excited to hear the opening lyrics: “Prejudice. Wrote a song about it. Like to hear it? Hear it go.”

   When I was 10, my best friend and next-door neighbor, Rachel, choreographed a dance routine to this song. She taught it to me in her dad Mike's pristine garage (I know it was pristine because I often had to help clean it...and pick up twigs from his lawn and sing lullabies to his rose bushes). Once I had the moves down (which probably took a really long time, because I’m bad with moves), we taught it to our two younger sisters—Ouisa and Emily. I remember it involved a lot of cartwheels and the classic move of running our hands from our ankles to our thighs—like we were putting on invisible thigh-high stockings. (I just tried to spell that “stalkings.” Weird. And surely somehow Freudian?)

   A week of hard-core rehearsals later, I was very excited to perform the dance for our parents. Rachel had the boom box all plugged in to the side of the Kelleys’ house, and we lined up lawn chairs for our parents to sit on while we danced. The littler Kelley kids sat on the grass in front of us, and Hannah Kelley and Penelope were just babies, so most likely parents held them on their laps. To the outside world, it probably looked gloriously middle-class American and family-oriented.

Boom box with 90's style effects.

   And so we danced. And it was spectacular.

   But when I was in my car on the Hollywood Freeway listening to “Free Your Mind” at 9:15 a.m. on Thursday morning, the whole event suddenly took on a different shade. For one thing, the opening lyrics after the intro I wrote above are:

“I wear tight clothing/

High-heeled shoes/

That doesn’t mean that I’m a prostitute.

I like rap music/

Wear hip-hop clothes/

That doesn’t mean that I’m out selling dope.”

   Um…how the hell did our parents sit through this performance without laughing their asses off or dragging us off to our bedrooms?

   I still love the song, and the message is on point: just because I’m a sexy black woman who dates other races and wears scandalous duds, it doesn’t mean I’m a slut or a traitor to black people: “Be colorblind. Don’t be so shallow.”

   HOWEVER: what were a bunch of little, Catholic, white girls doing with this dance routine, which, in the clear light of 20 years of retrospect, seems ever-so-slightly…I don’t know…inappropriate?

   Our parents must have been frozen in shock and maybe mild-to-moderate nausea. I’m sure they wondered if we knew what the terms “prostitute” and “dope” meant, and I’m guessing they figured we did, since besides the repeated cart-wheeling, we kept acting like we were putting on our thigh-highs for a night of street walking. 

Really patient parents at an outdoor concert circa 1992.

   I’d like to think that they were trying really hard not to laugh at us. I’m sure Mike Kelley was probably smirking. Joan Kelley was probably rolling her eyes. But my parents were pretty straightedge at the time, and I’m sure that The Beatles-Beethoven-and Ravi Shankar-loving pair of them were wondering when and how this decidedly urban music had entered their 10-and-7-year-old daughters' worlds. 

   But they were kind and wise enough to applaud the performance and leave it alone. We were never admonished for play-acting at being hookers, and it seems to me that they played it just right in that moment. To draw attention to the lyrics would have only invited weeks or months of uncomfortable questions from us to which they would have to find clever answers (i.e. lies).

   Many years later, when I was in high school, my favorite pair of jeans went missing. They were wide-legged and made of thin denim and they’d split up the outer thighs (through no fault of my own). I’d proceeded to pin them at intervals with safety pins and I thought they were epically bad ass and I wore them everywhere with my black combat boots and long, cheetah-print coat. And one day during my junior year of high school they mysteriously disappeared. Mom never admitted to it, but I’m pretty sure they went into the garage garbage can sometime in the dead of night. Mom couldn’t take any chances that I’d turn into the dope-selling prostitute my childhood hinted at. Though, to reiterate, the song specifically stated, “That DOESN’T mean that I’m a Prostitute.”

*"Free Your Mind" by the incredible (though not very enduring) all-girl 90's group En Vogue. 

"I cook with wine. Sometimes I even add it to the food."*

   No man will ever want to marry me.

   There are, perhaps, many reasons for this, but the most important is my general ineptitude at all things house-keeping or craft related.

   Take for instance “The Curious Case of the Holes in All the T-Shirts.” I have a plethora of cotton t-shirts. Nearly every one has a mysterious hole in the same exact spot: lower, middle front.

   They all look something like this:

   What’s this about? How does it happen? Are my jeans attacking my shirts? Is it my seatbelt? Do I have a sharp bellybutton? I don’t understand, but it’s been going on for a good 4 years now, so I can’t blame it on any specific item of clothing. I’m truly stumped. And I’m really fucking annoyed.

   I was feeling crafty the other night and decided to re-hem one of my favorite t-shirts in order to cover up the telltale holes on the front. It’s a sweet t-shirt that my Aunt Kris brought back from Korea after she and her family spent two years on the Army base in Seoul. It’s not exactly replaceable, if you get my drift. And it’s super cool because it has dolphins and Korean letters on it that probably spell out something really neat. (I actually think it was a t-shirt from the school my cousins attended there and it was supposed to be for Penelope, but I stole it before I moved to LA. Sorry, P. But once you’ve seen how I “fixed” it, you won’t want it back.)

   Here are a couple of photos of the finished product.

   Good lord, it looks like the dolphins themselves hemmed this shirt. And they were blind dolphins. On strong doses of PCP.

   I have plans to get this problem resolved. This shirt is too special to look this bad. But I’m ashamed. Ashamed that I mention sewing so much and act like I know how to do it. I don’t. And I should never be allowed to touch a real garment again for the rest of my life. I’ll just keep trying out stitches on pieces of cardstock like I did before. Sigh out loud.

   Segue to today when I attempted to make gluten-free peanut butter cookies. The recipe is very simple: take some peanut butter and add sugar, an egg, some vanilla and baking soda and bake it.

   But I am much too clever to follow a recipe. I decided to make mine with chocolate almond butter and since it was already really sweet, I decided to leave out the sugar. Here is what I ended up with:

I thought it might be good anyway, once I let it cool. 

But here's what happened when I tried to cut it. Cookie scale soup, anyone?

   Never make up baking recipes as you go. Or “eyeball” your measurements. Okay, maybe it’s fine if you’re good at culinary stuff and know what you’re doing, but don’t start getting a big ego just because you once made a yellow cake out of box. This doesn’t mean you’re a baker. It just means you can read. I went back and did it right the second time and they turned out pretty good. (I think. I mean they look like cookies. And what's that famous saying, "Get it right the second time"?) Lesson learned. (Dang, I’m just learning lessons all over the place this year!)

Totally passable. Fingers crossed.

   I am comforted by the fact that men still sometimes marry women who can’t do anything useful in the home. Thank goodness it’s 2013 and not 1953. But what can I possibly bring to the table besides my incredible body and delightful personality? It seems unfair to enter into a marriage with only the abilities to sleep for twelve hours at a time and recite lines from movies. On the other hand, no one is actively trying to marry me right now, so I guess I shouldn’t worry about it. And I suppose I can always keep hoping for a rich dude with lots of servants that know how to cook and sew. And I’m not entirely sure I want to get married anytime soon anyway, so I can probably relax about the whole thing. Phew. Yet another crisis diverted. Like my buddy Rebecca always says, "Life is a game of Whack-a-Mole." True, so true.

   I will, however, say a few prayers for my friends. They’re the ones that are going to have to try to eat these cookies tomorrow.

*A quote from W.C. Fields. I swear to god, I made those cookies sober. Maybe I shouldn't brag about it, though.

"When it's 100 degrees in New York, it's 72 in Los Angeles. When it's 30 degrees in New York, in Los Angeles it's still 72. However, there are 6 million interesting people in New York, and only 72 in Los Angeles."*

   It rained** over the weekend and so today it was so clear that I realized that the San Gabriel Mountains were much larger than I thought they were. I’d never really seen them before and it turns out I’d just been looking at the foothills all these years. Ha! Weird, though, because if you can never see them, does it even matter that they’re there? (Whoa, that’s totally existential of me.) But we get so few clear days in Los Angeles that it was a real treat to find out about the mountains. Today it looked like this:

I love those hot air balloons. Love them.

   Minus the hot air balloon. And the regular balloon. And I didn’t draw in the mountains. I guess this is just what today felt like in my head.

  I was feeling pretty awesome this morning even without the mountains (though those made it even nicer) because I’ve FINALLY lost the weight I put on over Christmas and the New Year. That’s right, folks. I gained 6 pounds in two weeks at my parents’ house eating the following: Christmas cookies, my dad's brownies from-scratch (Grandma Begge's recipe), Kraft mac-n-cheese, and copious servings of buttered toast. (Disclaimer: these items were either gifts from schadenfroh*** neighbors or purchased by my mom for my sister Penelope, who can apparently eat whatever the fuck she wants and drink six regular cokes a day and not gain weight. The last time I could get away with that kind of diet, I was 8.) Turns out flour and sugar are bad for you and I had the gut to prove it. But now I’m back to my pre-holiday weight so I can start again with my regular 15-lb weight loss goal. Hooray for baby steps!

   So I went to my appointment for laser hair removal. (Yeah, I do that. You never know when Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue will need a last minute replacement for Marisa Miller.) So anyway, I had consciously made the appointment with Aren, seeing as how she is the technician I always visit. But it turns out my technician’s name has been Linda this whole time. Wow, I feel like an asshole leaving all those tips for Aren. And...wait for it...Aren is Linda’s SON. And he was the only technician working today. The receptionist, Annabelle, informed me that he’s really good and he’s an R.N. so I shouldn’t worry about showing him my vagina.

   I said, “Have you ever been to him?”

   She said, “Well, he’s my brother, so…”

   “So, no.”

   She said, “No. But people love him! He’s really good! People request him specifically.”

   I think that the “people” specifically requesting him were me. Last week. And notice she said "people" not "women."

   But then Annabelle told me that she has a male gynecologist. Helpful.

   Anyway, long story short (TOO LATE), I sucked it up and had my appointment with Aren. 

   Aren came out and Annabelle said, "Aren, take really good care of Lacey. It's her first time with a male technician and she's really excited!"

   I said, "Well now, that sounds wrong somehow."

   But you know what? Aside from not having much to say while he was working, Aren was truly excellent. I would see him again (just as friends). I think he’s better than his mom, even. And I feel like he probably deals with a fair amount of sexism (not to mention skepticism) in his line of work, what with being a man and all. On the other hand, maybe that’s a weird profession for a man. But on a third hand, I’m sure dudes that are getting hair lasered off their butt cheeks are happy that he’s doing what he's doing. Okay. I’m totally sold on Aren. (Which is apparently pronounced like “Aaron” and not, as I previously thought, an exotic, Armenian name pronounced like “are-en.” Or R.N., which he is!) And at least my tips were staying in the family.

   That’s enough/more than enough for now. Happy Monday!

*Neil Simon. Not to shit on LA, but have you ever noticed that when people who live here talk about it we always say, "Well, you can't beat the weather." That's because if we didn't have the weather, we'd kill ourselves.
**Due to the rain, my power went out for an unknown period of time over the weekend, which explains why the milk I poured all over my oatmeal led to a near-brush with vomiting.

***Schadenfroh, according to my sources (the Interwebs), is the adjective form of schadenfreude. It’s not really used in English, but it was the only word I wanted to describe people who bring plates of cookies to your house during the holiday season and call it "a gift."

"You're having a lousy streak. I happen to be having a terrific streak. Soon the world will be back to normal. Tomorrow you will meet a crown head of Europe and marry. I will have a fat attack, eat 300 peanut butter cups, and die."*

   I thought that by the time I turned 30 I would have myself all figured out. I’m pretty sure I’ve brought this up before: I was convinced that 30 was the year when everything got settled.

   So…yeah…that didn’t happen. And that’s okay.

   Here’s something weird, though: a few days back, when I was still in Omaha, my youngest sister, Penelope, said the following: “Lacey’s the smart one; Lizzy’s the most fashionable; and I’m the nicest…?” I actually don’t know how the statement ended because I was immediately offended by not being considered the most fashionable (though I’m definitely not) and incredibly proud of being considered the smartest (also a stretch). Penelope probably said something to the effect of “the most ignored whilst handing out superlatives.” Sorry, P. (And for the record, Penelope: you are the weirdest, quirkiest, kindest and most original...among other traits.)

   Before I left Omaha, Ouisa gave me a pair of GORGEOUS brown leather, high-heeled boots that she said she could never wear because, at five-foot-ten, she feels too tall for three-inch heels. She described it as feeling like a “giraffe on roller skates.”

   And then my Aunt Mel had me over for coffee and we spent a good twenty minutes playing with a feature on a plastic surgeon’s website that allows you to see how you’d look with a few less chins, a bigger rack and Angelina Jolie’s lips. And Aunt Mel, despite being one of the most beautiful, smart and confident women I know, copped to feeling like she spends most of her day thinking about her meals and how much she’s exercised and if she should do 40 squats before bed to make up for the cream in her coffee.

   So, okay, most of this is self-evident: women hate themselves. Yes, yes, everyone knows that. But I really don’t want to spend my life feeling like a fat, ugly cow when, in all actuality, I’ll probably be 87 some day (if I make it that long) and I’ll look back at pictures of myself now, at 30, and think: damn, I was pretty hot!

   So I’ve decided to make a conscious effort to quit hating how I look, despite the fact that I’m not 5’10, I’m not the stylish one, and I consistently appear to be 4-months-pregnant, despite the 9 million crunches I do every week. Life’s too short. And seeing how beautiful the women around me are, who also think they’re heinous trolls, I have an idea that I’m not as hideous as I think I am.

*From Rhoda, my soul sister on The Mary Tyler Moore Show,who always thought she was ugly but was truly beautiful all along...

"I'll be seeing you, in every lovely summer's day; in everything that's bright and gay; I'll always think of you that way; I'll find you in the morning sun and when the night is new; I'll be looking at the moon, but I'll be seeing you."*

   Grandma was angry at the state of Colorado.

   Aunt Dudie had gone to reheat Grandma’s soup so we were alone for a minute at our little booth inside Panera.

   “People are uncouth here,” she said. She was mad. “When I was trying to fill my drink, those people acted like I was invisible.”

   “Well, if it makes you feel any better, they didn’t let me in there, either,” I offered. “Even those big, burly men pretended I wasn’t there so they could refill their Mountain Dews. Not very chivalrous!”

   “That’s the word! They aren’t chivalrous! I think it’s just the way people are in Denver,” Grandma decided.

   Now, Grandma and I both spent a fair number of years living in Omaha, Nebraska, a smallish city, where people will regularly turn themselves into human doormats before they offend or inconvenience someone, so I don’t know that our perspectives are very accurate as a basis of comparison to the fine people of Denver.

   “You seem pissed off,” I suggested.

   “I am pissed off!”

   My Grandma is so funny.

   “Don’t get too mad, Grandma! People are much more polite here than they are in Los Angeles.”

   “Well, I’m sure that’s true,” she harrumphed.

   “Maybe it’s a big city thing? The bigger the city, the less patience and manners people have?”

   “Oh, poor Julie,” Grandma sighed, referring to Aunt Dudie, my Grandma’s fourth of five daughters, my Godmother, and my hostess for the weekend. “She must get so tired of taking care of me.”

   “She does not! She likes it. And Julie’s boys are chivalrous, so it can’t be Colorado that’s doing it. It’s not where you are, it’s who you are, and some people are just nicer and better bred than others.”

   “Well, none of my grandchildren are uncouth, that’s for sure.” She was very proud of this fact and, as a way of proving it, took a huge bite out of her roll.

I wrote this nearly a year ago. Apparently Grandma and I had all our conversations in exclamation points!!!!

   I’d just spent a weekend in Parker, CO, with my family: Aunt Julie and Uncle Rick, my cousins, Connor and Trevor, and my Grandma. Grandma had just moved out there from Omaha and I was lonesome for her, as I was used to seeing her every day growing up and, later, every time I was home to visit. And this year she wasn’t in town for Thanksgiving or Christmas.

   But by January she was fully ensconced in the Leahy’s ENORMOUS basement, and it was as though her entire house had been replicated into an apartment in the suburbs of Denver. All her pictures and tchotchkes were there, along with her voluptuous cat Lucy/Alice, and the best of her beautiful furniture. She was super excited about all the deer she could see in her backyard (and spying on deer seemed to be almost as interesting as her old hobby, which was spying on the neighbors). We spent two days talking and watching movies and running errands all over town.

   My grandmother was born Mildred Rose Wilson in 1925 in Washington, Indiana (pronounced “Warshington,” which, as my cousin Connor pointed out, is the only thing Hoosiers pronounce funny. I’m not entirely sure that’s true). And when she was growing up in Washington, she was so beautiful it makes my face ache to look at pictures of her. It makes me proud that her DNA is floating around in me. She had brown, wavy hair and high cheekbones, big eyes, big boobs, narrow hips, and long, long legs. What’s even more interesting about Millie Wilson is that she was an amazing dancer, something that seems to have eluded most of her progeny. She used to go out jitterbugging with her friends every day after school, taking breaks only for a soda (pop) or a hamburger. And then they’d all run home for dinner and homework. Ah, the “good old days”. It all sounds like a scene from Back To The Future to me (funny...'cuz that movie was made in the 80's).

   Sadly, her kids are helpless fools when it comes to dancing: her daughters do lots of weird disco-era thumbing and pathetic gyrations along with the occasional Prince in “Dirty Mind” imitations (picture middle-aged women doing the splits and bouncing off a mock-velveteen couch. Yeah, that’s what I grew up watching. It's one of my earliest memories of Aunt Krissy who, for some reason, I always thought was "the cool one." Kids are stupid. And it’s a miracle I didn’t run away from home. Or stab my own eyes out).

   Her grandkids, of which I am the oldest (sigh), are a mixed bag. My youngest sister, Penelope, is a very gifted dancer, as are my cousins Ellie and Kate. Hell, Ellie and Kate are acrobats—they can do flips and Russians and all that crazy stuff. Connor and Trevor are natural athletes, but I doubt they’re dancers. Elizabeth, my other sister, could easily twirl her way through ballet lessons, but when is that appropriate at a club or school dance? I’m not sure how she handled it, but given her era in high school, there was no way it made her popular.

   I’m a total lost cause. My generation grew up in the Nirvana/Pearl Jam/Offspring era with flannel shirts and greasy hair and “dance” started to take on a sort of quality that made it look as though one were a drunk puppet randomly swinging his or her arms and pelvis around to no particular beat. I took classical ballet for a couple of years as a young child and it left me feeling as though I couldn’t get my rear end in the right position. It turns out, I just have a really sizable backseat and there was no way it was ever going to stop sticking out, no matter how many times my teacher told me to reign it in.            

   While I was in Denver, Grandma told me that Grandpa Charlie (who I’ve mentioned here and also here) once took Arthur Murray dance lessons, so he could take Grandma out stepping. This was around 1960, and my grandparents already had three of their eventual five children (Mom, Aunt Mel, and Aunt Mary). He went to the studio, without my grandma’s knowledge, and tried to learn to dance so he could keep up with her and take her to, as my grandma and her generation called it, “trip the light fantastic.” But, according to Grandma, he had no rhythm. I guess the majority of us must have inherited his dance moves.

   But when I was a tiny child, she used to pull up her skirts when no one else was looking and dance a little jig for me, and she still had a pair of the most beautiful Ginger Rogers-style legs. And the fact that Grandpa tried to fight his natural inability to dance so he could take my grandma dancing makes my heart heavy and happy all at once.

   Millie Wilson was a carefree dancing queen, but Millie Lett was a mother and a wife and a homemaker. Her husband, my Grandpa Charlie, tried to let her be all four. And that’s kind of what love is all about, right?

   My Grammy died yesterday at home, in Denver, with all her daughters around her. I think she would’ve liked that they were all there and I hope she knew they were. When I think of her, I think of good smells and stylish clothes and The BeeGees. And I think of gardens and picture frames and mac and cheese and small animals. But most of all, I think of dancing.

           

Mildred (right) with her friend Betty, 1946.

            

Mildred Rose Wilson Lett

February 20th, 1925 - December 10th, 2012

*I initially had a quote here from "Moon River," but Grandma really loved "I'll Be Seeing You" by Irving Kahal and Sammy Fain, because it was a song that reminded her of the 40's, when all her friends (and her brother) were off in WWII and all the kids would hear this song and think about the people they were missing. Seems more appropriate, somehow.

           

           

"You know a woman is sentimental and so easy to upset. So make her feel like she's for real and she'll give you happiness. Strange as it seems, you know you can't treat a woman mean."*

   When I was 18, I had some really bad shit going on in my “nether regions” (that’s the poetic term for anything that happens in an embarrassing part of your anatomy below the waist). I didn’t know what it was and I spent a lot of time vacillating between diarrhea, nausea and constipation and occasionally passing out ever so briefly with mind-numbingly painful cramps.

   So the summer after my freshman year of college, armed to the teeth with my then Grade-A health coverage, I went on a journey of medical self-discovery.

   It began with an internist who suggested that I might have IBS (irritable bowel syndrome), the bowel equivalent of “dermatitis.” This is how doctors say, “There’s something wrong with your parts, but I don’t know what the fuck it is.”

   The thing with IBS is that it’s a disease of ruling out other things. The doctor ordered a bunch of tests to decide what was wrong with my guts and innards.

   I took a lactose intolerance test first off. I could have told them I wasn’t intolerant to lactose. Milk is pretty much my favorite non-booze drink, and if I had to pick one food to subsist on for the rest of my life, it would be cheese. Dairy can do no wrong in my eyes. But I showed up for the test because I love to feel sick and be the center of attention.

   So this test is the thing of where they feed you some god-awful concoction of candy-flavored lactose drink and then they draw blood from you every half hour for four hours. Being as I have shitty, slippery veins, the process left me looking like the world’s most committed heroin user just in time for my shift at the classy Mexican restaurant I worked at that summer that I’m pretty sure was, coincidentally, a front for drug dealers.

Look: here's someone pulling up in front of El Aguila to make a deal.

   Even before the results of my lactose test came back, I was at appointment number two: an ultrasound. It was weird and cold and let me tell you, if you’re ticklish an ultrasound is kind of a nightmare/really amazing and fun! I was relaxed with the technician—she was a nice, young woman and she made me feel better about my constant squirming and laughing by making pleasant conversation about nothing. I have to say that innocuous chatter was much easier at that point in my life because I had it all going on: a concrete goal (graduate from college), a job (albeit at a shitty restaurant), and the skin of an 18-year-old.

   The conversation was stilted whenever another technician or nurse would walk into the room, which was kind of a lot, but I didn’t mind too much. Until my technician said, “Uh oh.”

   I wasn’t immediately nervous. I had the comfort of knowing that I wasn’t pregnant and also I was 18 and never going to die.

   “There’s something showing up here, but I can’t see it too well. Would you mind if I did a vaginal ultrasound?”

   I gave her the uncertain go ahead and she changed wands as I took off my underpants. Shudder. And as she probed around down there, the technicians kept coming in and going out of the room, which was awkward, to say the least. But my gal found what she was looking for: a corpus ludeum. It was a benign cyst on my right ovary, and it was taking over the whole damn thing.

   So I was instructed to get a pap smear.

   A girl’s introduction into the world of gynecology is a truly momentous and shitty occasion in her life. Because once you go into the stirrups, you just have to keep going into them. Not because you want to, of course, but because they find ways of making you. You want birth control? Gotta come in every year. You want to not die of Chlamydia? Better get in here. You want this baby born with one head? I’m going to have to watch it through my magic machine. And I think it’s probably a good idea, health-wise, anyway, just to make sure there aren’t any unwanted developments down there or just so you can get the cobwebs knocked out once a year.

Now imagine the theme from Jaws in your head.

   I didn’t have a gynecologist, so my mom suggested hers: a quite brilliant and capable physician who had been her OB/GYN through her pregnancies with my sisters and even delivered Penelope. Hooray!

   Her name was Mary, and that’s all I’m going to say about that.

   I showed up at the appointment not knowing ANYTHING about what to expect. They made me pee in a cup and then they took me into one of the examining rooms. The nurse told me I wasn’t pregnant (Thanks!) and asked me a series of questions.

Her: When was your last period?

Me: I don’t know. A couple of weeks ago?

Her: What kind of birth control do you use?

Me: None.

Her: None? Not even condoms?

Me: I’m not sexually active.

Her: But you don’t even use condoms?

Me: Not really. (I was confused.) I’m not sexually active.

   At this point she sighed and shook her head, judging the shit out of me for not using condoms while I was studying for exams, rehearsing for plays or sleeping.

Her: Smoke?

Me: Yes.

Her: Drink?

Me: Yes.

   Maybe I shouldn’t have been so honest, but I’m the daughter of a physician, and he always told me to tell the doctors everything so they could do their job as well as possible. He also told me not to smoke but I can't always pay attention to every little thing now, can I?

Her: Alright. Here’s a robe. Take off everything and put this on with the opening in the back. The doctor will be in in a minute.

   I took off all my clothes and put on the robe. I didn’t know where or how to sit without my butt crack showing. I opted to sit on a chair on top of my clothes with the gown wrapped around behind me.

   Dr. Mary came in and introduced herself. She was middle-aged and succinct, cold even. She went to my chart.

Her: It says here you don’t use condoms.

Me: I’m not having sex.

Her: At least you’re not pregnant. Yet. You should really be protecting yourself.

   I felt like I was losing my mind. Could no one hear me say I wasn’t sexually active, or did they think I was a big, fat liar? Maybe I was having sex and I didn't know about it?

Her: You smoke and you drink?

Me: Yes.

Her: You’re eighteen.

Me: Yes.

Her: Nice friends you must have.

   I sat, burning and freezing at the same time. I was furious, but shy and too young to defend myself appropriately. This was years before I started picking fights with everyone from the landlord to the person driving behind me to all medical professionals I encountered.

   She got me up on the examining table and into the stirrups. She told me to scoot down farther (the words you hear at your first 15 pap smears before you finally just show up, take it all off, grab an US Weekly and get your crotch right off the end of the table before the doctor even comes in). She was relatively gentle with the speculum, but I only know that in retrospect. At the time it felt like she was driving a butcher knife into my vagina and then using hedge clippers to break off parts of my insides. But at least she didn’t hang out all day doing it and making conversation about her kid’s violin lessons or excellent chicken recipes while I sat wondering if I could just yank the thing out myself (that’s happened to me). Picture getting an internal exam from Edward Scissorhands.

"This speculum looks like the right size."

   She verified that I had a cyst and she decided that the best solution would be birth control pills. She said the hormones would regulate my ovaries better.

   Then she said, “And at least now you’ll be avoiding pregnancy, if not diseases.”

   I said, “I swear to you, I’m really not having sex.”

   But she was already walking out the door.

   She stopped before the door closed behind her and leaned in, “You should really stop smoking and drinking, too.”

   I would like to talk more shit about her and that appointment, but she died a couple of years ago, and it seems wrong. My mom said Dr. Mary was the kind of woman who hated it when people were careless about their health, because she had so many congenital health problems herself. But that doesn’t make up for it entirely, in my mind.

   I went to 7 other gynecologists before I found one I liked, and then she jumped ship and went to Kaiser Permanente, so I can’t see her anymore. It was like going through a break-up to lose Dr. Chang. But now I see her partner, and she’s going to have to do.

   In the meantime, I stockpile condoms and sit (alone) with them on the couch watching reruns of Magnum, P.I. (how fitting) or The X-Files. I'm avoiding pregnancy on a whole other level. It's important to be safe.

*From "Treat Her Like a Lady" by Cornelius Brothers and Sister Rose. I have a love/hate relationship with this song, but my goodness it's catchy!