Zebra's Can't Blend In

I adopted the zebra as my personal trademark during the years that The Jeffersons telelvision program ran (1975-1985.) For those too young to remember, this was a sitcom about an African American family who "moved on up to the East Side" of New York City, after "making it" with a small chain of dry cleaning establishments.

The Jeffersons' son fell in love with and married the daughter of a mixed couple in the building. George Jefferson, the buffoon of a father in the title role, referred to his daughter-in-law as a zebra, because her mother was black and her father was white.

There are zebras strategically located throughout my house and I named my now-defunct company accordingly.

A zebra cannot hide before a snowdrift

Nor fade into the blackness of the night.

Her stripes, which give her texture, interest and depth,

Don't lend to getting lost in any crowd.

A zebra learns to stand alone in crowds,

To listen always for the fearsome hooves of

Predators that pounce from all directions.

She moves about in groups to which she cannot truly belong.

A zebra carries passengers along her back;

Those not as strong or quick or fit enough to live

Within the jungle known to man as life.

She's neither black nor white, and covets the skill of the chameleon.

Swimming in Jell-O

Walk-All-Over-Ya Mortgage Company (Wachovia to them) is the only thing standing between me and freedom from the burden of owning this big house. Last night I accepted an extremely low offer to purchase my home of 17 years; so low that it will not satisfy the debt I carry against it. Wachovia will need to accept the purchase price as a Short Sale in order for me to be debt-free.

In March 2009, when I was notified that my job as Marketing Director for a Sales Training and Consulting firm was ending because of the economy, I began what turned out to be the most frustrating run of negotiations with the bank one could ever imagine. My strategy was to start talking to them early, before I ran out of money and time.

After 14 months, three applications for loan modifications, each followed by denials for inexplicable reasons, the submission of four separate packages of identical documents after each round of failed applications, and countless fruitless phone calls ending with me slamming down the phone; I have found a qualified buyer who is neither able nor willing to pay the amount of money I need to erase my obligations. It is the only offer I have received in 14 months on the market.

Instead of feeling the relief I expected to feel after finally signing a contract, I am in a state of suspended animation, numb and listless. I feel as if I am swimming in a pool filled with Jell-O.

After sitting quietly, searching my soul, I realized what's going on. I have been sub-consciously hoping for a miracle, something or someone to swoop in and toss several hundred thousand dollars into my lap so that I could pay off the mortgage and live happily ever after in a house I cannot afford and which is too big for me to maintain. As long as I was able to stretch out the road to the inevitable, maybe my son would land that breakthrough role in a movie or TV pilot. Maybe a secret benefactor would emerge from nowhere and anonymously save the day, like in the old television series The Millionaire.

Today I am under no such delusions. I am entering, however reluctantly, a new passage. Tomorrow I will begin to look forward. I will accept, even embrace, the start of a new lifestyle. It will be free of property taxes, roof replacements, busted HVAC units, termite inspections, rotted siding and the need to keep updating the bathrooms and kitchen. I won't have to hire people to clean the house once a month or a guy to keep the yard and garden manicured. I might be able to take a few trips, see more of the USA, if not the world.

Without the relentless worry about things I cannot control, I will spend even more time appreciating what I have, and forget about things that I never needed in the first place.

For today, I will stay immersed in the Jell-O and let my sense of nothingness run its course. Tomorrow, I hit the road to a new, elusive peace.

A Funeral for the Ages

This is the third of a 3-part series.  Part One and Part Two provide added background for this, the conclusion.


So much "stuff" comes up when somebody dies. I'm not talking about the sorrow, the grief, the pain, the finality of death. I'm talking about "stuff" aka shit. You'll see...
 
In 1987 my son was preparing to graduate from high school. Four years earlier, Bert and I made the decision to sacrifice some square footage and the swimming pool in order to move to Moraga, CA, a lovely town located just east and slightly south of the University of California at Berkeley. Moraga had one of the best school systems in northern California, and one of the lowest crime rates in the entire state.
 
I have not broached the subject of race in this series, but I will now, because it is relevant to the rest of the story. Brad, my first husband and my son's birth father, was African American, from a proud family of high-achievers who had a long history in Milwaukee. They were by no means wealthy, but Brad's father was a local hero because of his stardom in track and field at Marquette University.
 
Bert, my second husband and the adoptive father of my son, is the whitest white man one will ever find in America. With his Caribbean blue eyes and thick shock of white-blond hair (at that time, anyway), he had the kind of pale skin that would burn at the mere mention of the word sun.
 
There are hundreds of stories I could tell about the humorous and/or pathetic events that this bit of racial-mixing provided over the years, but I'll leave most of them to another time. For now, it is only necessary for the reader to know it.
 
Brad had volunteered to give up his parental rights when my son was 8, and they hadn't seen or talked to each other since. As is wont to happen with adopted children, our son became increasingly curious about his birth father, and his resentment was building over the idea that a man would willingly denounce his own flesh and blood. So when he came to Bert and me and asked if we would contact Brad to invite him out to California for the graduation, we enthusiastically agreed.
 
Brad arrived with his widowed mother and Wife #4 in tow. I can only imagine what we must have looked like filing into the football stadium where the graduation was to be held. Nobody matched anybody, and since our son and one other girl were the only African Americans in the school, all eyes were on us as we climbed the bleacher stairs. It was a great day.
 
The previous day had not been so great for Brad. Our son decided to meet him for lunch in San Francisco. When Brad stepped off the elevator of his chic boutique hotel, my son said later that it felt as if he was gazing into a mirror. They were clones. Both 6’3” or taller, as they stood face to face they were like mirror images in profile.
 
Brad was in tears by the time their lunch came to an end. Our son read him the Riot Act, asking how or why a man would willingly denounce his own flesh and blood. Of course, Brad blamed me, saying he thought it was what I wanted. It didn’t fly, though; my son knew better. Eventually, they made peace and spent the rest of the weekend talking about sports.
 
The next time they saw each other was in 1997 in a Milwaukee hospital. Brad was on his death bed, rapidly losing his hard-fought battle with throat cancer, and our son flew up there to say his goodbyes. The memorial service took place two weeks later.
 

The Church

 

My former brother-in-law and one of my son’s half-sisters picked us up at the airport the night before the memorial service was to take place. I hadn’t been back to Milwaukee since my former father-in-law’s funeral more than twenty years before. Back at the small, Cape Cod-style home where my former mother-in-law raised her boys, there was a lot of laughter and reminiscing about old times. We all seemed to sub-consciously agree to save the mourning and grief for the next day. I was the only daughter-in-law that Brad’s mom ever liked, and the always outspoken woman would tell anyone that. Therefore, I was the only ex-wife invited to spend the night at the house.

 

It was January in Wisconsin, so it was very cold. I knew it would be, which is why I left work early one day to go to the furrier to buy my mink coat. A mink coat in Atlanta is a joke for all but the showiest of residents, but I had to have it. Since I was Wife #1 and we were pretty poor during our marriage, I didn’t even have an engagement diamond. By the time Wives #2-5 rolled around, Brad was quite well off, so he bought a mink coat for each of them. I wasn’t about to be odd woman out, so I spent $5,000 of my hard-earned money on a coat I have worn exactly 6 times since. But I didn’t need his stinkin’ money to get a mink coat – that was the point.
 
The service was held in Brad’s current father-in-law’s church, where he was the pastor. Wife #5¸who was quite a bit younger than Brad, had married him knowing that he was terminally ill, so they had no children. The funeral director showed our group, the first to arrive, to the large ante-room across the hall from the sanctuary. Brad’s mom sat down and ordered me not to leave her side for the remainder of the services. She wanted me to sit with her in church, too.
 
One by one, the other wives arrived with their respective offspring – and all were wearing their souvenir mink coats. As they came into the ante-room, each practically genuflected in front of my mother-in-law (forget about the ’former’ part, ‘cuz she sure has) and kissed her on her cheek. Grandma was gracious to all, until the most-hated Wife #3 entered, at which point Grandma turned her entire body toward me and started chatting me up as if she had just seen me for the first time in 20 years. Wife #3 was not to be denied, so she stood directly in front of us, very close, until I couldn’t take it anymore. “Hi, Mama,” she cooed. “It’s been a long time.” To which “Mama” replied, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is it time, yet?” To this day, I don’t know what Carole did to piss this woman off, but I’ll bet it had something to do with money.
 
While this drama was playing out, I looked around the room and located every one of Brad’s seven children. Despite the fact that Wives # 2-5 were all 100% Caucasian, those children looked as if I had given birth to every one of them! This was one of the things the family members joked about the night before. They weren’t exactly thrilled about Brad’s choices in women, especially because they were not African American. I only passed muster in that regard because I look more Black than I do White or Native American, at least to most people. I was once mistaken for Chinese, but that’s another story. Brad, being the butthead that he was, once told me that he had gotten the closest thing to a white wife when he married me.
 
I assumed my role as Token Black Wife #1 with glee. As far as I was concerned, these women were even bigger idiots than I had been, because they had my idiocy to use as history, and the best way to predict the future is to look at history. I was really loving this.
 
The funeral director came to the doorway and asked that the family line up for the procession into the sanctuary.
 
All hell broke loose.
 
A sea of white legs under mink coats scrambled at once to the doorway. Mothers were signaling to their respective children, urging them to hurry so they could get to the front of the line. At one point there were five people struggling to fit into a doorway only large enough for three. Grandma and I were still seated, not realizing that we were gawking at the spectacle in the doorway.
 
The funeral director raised his voice above the clamor. “I need the widow and the mother of the decedent at the front. Please step aside and let them through.” Grandma’s death-grip on my arm didn’t leave any doubt that she intended that I play the role of widow. The actual widow was so distraught; she was in the corner of the room being comforted by her mother. As wife #5- the widow- was helped to her feet and guided toward the doorway, I whispered to Grandma that I would be right behind her, no matter what.
 
With the Keystone Kops scene under control, the funeral director signaled to the organist to begin the service.
 
The church was packed with mourners. People from the Mayor’s office, people from the TV station where he once served as sportscaster, professional ball players, and friends from all corners of his life attended. I heard someone attempt to whisper, but fail miserably: “That’s his first wife and her son. Doesn’t he look like Brad just spit him out?” Similar tittering took place all the way down the aisle, until we were blessedly out of earshot in the first row of pews.
 
Since Brad’s wishes included being cremated, his beautiful urn was placed beside a photo of him that had clearly been taken before the ravages of cancer changed the contours of his handsome face. I was close to feeling very sad, when there was another commotion at the back of the sanctuary.
 

A youngish woman was arguing with the usher. She insisted that she was part of the family, but no one in the family knew who she was. Like any run-of-the-mill Looky Lou, I craned my neck around to see what was happening. The two terrified children, who I would learn later were 7 and 9, had a very familiar look to them. The boy looked exactly like my son did at that age. And the little girl was a ringer for my son’s favorite among his half-sisters. Uh-oh. I sat back in the pew and smirked. I guess it was a smirk, it felt like one, but no one actually saw it to confirm.
 
The service was lovely. Brad’s children were all crying softly, as were their mothers. It WAS sad that a man of only 50 years of age was already dead, but I didn’t tear up until my son’s shoulders started heaving. When he cries, I cry. Always. So the thought I had had two seconds before – “See, Brad. God doesn’t like ugly”—left my mind.
 
There was a reception after the service, held in another huge room outside the sanctuary. The sound of people greeting one another and seeing people they hadn’t seen in years replaced the hushed, reverent quiet of the sanctuary. I was standing in the middle of the floor, having lost sight of Grandma, chatting with Brad’s younger brother. This was after I had been approached by a woman I had never before met¸ who introduced herself as Bonnie. My eyes flew open wider in recognition of that name.
 
I had written a monthly check to her for several years when I was still Wife #1. Bonnie was the woman who Brad had dumped mid-pregnancy upon his decision to pursue me. “I know you don’t know who I am, but I would know you anywhere. I remember watching you and Bradley get out of your car one evening when you were going into the Pfister Hotel.” I just smiled – like a lunatic. “I think our children have just met each other,” she said. “They seem to be having some sort of argument.”
 
My eyes rolled heavenward. My son had thought he was the first-born for years and years. I don’t recall how he found out, but he was not pleased, to say the least. I was hoping he would dig down and pull out some of his home training for this eventuality, but no. I couldn’t tell which child resented the other most, but they were locked into a war of words.
 
I signaled to my son that I needed him, successfully halting the argument. Just as he approached my right arm, someone touched me on the left shoulder. “Hi, Lezlie. I don’t know if you’ll remember me…I’m Bridgit (Wife #2). And what did I reply? God help me, I laughed out loud!
 
 “Oh, I think I will always remember you, Bridgit.”
 
She was the dental hygienist who had the honor of being the other woman while I was swollen and fat, two weeks after my due date, waiting for the birth of my son. She is the one who got married, WITH a big rock on her finger; the day after our divorce was final.
 
“I know. I didn’t know what else to say. I’m really sorry about all that, Lezlie.”
 
I almost tinkled in my silk panties! I said nothing.

Wives #3 and 4 made their rounds and stopped to say hello. They were both blonde and they both had a similar look to their faces. I knew that #4 had just had a facelift when she came to California with Brad for the graduation. Apparently, a facelift was part of the swag bags that the later wives received along with their mink coats and diamonds, because #3 had the taut , pulled look of a cadaver as well.
 
Out of nowhere came a kind of a shriek. I looked around and saw Grandma in deep conversation with her youngest son. Whatever he told her set her head moving quickly from side to side. I had hoped that we could wait until we got back to the house to have this outburst – oh yeah, I knew it was coming. But, according to my younger brother-in-law, she kept asking about the woman with the two children who were ultimately seated in the last row of the family pews.
 
It seems the woman was a paramour of Brad’s and had been, according to her, for ten years. Since no one knew she or her children existed, no one knew to notify her of his death, but she read it in the newspaper. She became angry when she read the “…survived by” portion of the obituary and didn’t find her children’s names. So she crashed the service.
 
There was no doubt in my mind that these were siblings #8 and #9. They looked just like the other seven. Over in another corner I noticed my son’s favorite half-sister sobbing on a chair. My son walked over to console her, thinking she was having a post-service meltdown about their father.
 
When he returned, now he was shaking his head. “You are not going to believe this, Mom. You know the little girl that nobody knows? She has the same name as my sister! What was wrong with that man?! No wonder you kicked him to the curb!”
 
And then it happened. The drama that ended the whole reception.
 
Grandma jumped to her 85-year-old feet, put her hands on her hips after she straightened the same hat she wore to my wedding all those many years ago and screamed:
 

 “Every bastard in Milwaukee is not my grandchild. No!”

A Stone on the Roll

This is the second installment of a 3-parts series. Part One was posted on Tuesday,
April 13, 2010.

My marriage with Brad was officially dissolved somewhere around our baby son's first birthday. I was 26 and on my own, getting $150 per month in child support. I waived alimony out of pride, foolish pride according to my attorney. In my youthful rage my thought was "I don't need your stinkin' money! I can take care of myself, you narcissistic jerk; you help take care of our child."

Although I stayed in Milwaukee another 18 months, eventually I found a local newspaper publishing job in Chicago and moved back to Illinois.

The state of Wisconsin in 1970-71 required a one-year waiting period between the granting of a divorce and the remarriage of either party. Exactly one day after the end of the legal wait, Brad married the dental hygienist he had "befriended" while we were still married.

By then, he had become something of a local icon because he was a sportscaster on one of the network's local affiliates and his handsome face was plastered on the butt-end of busses. (I know. Highly appropriate for the butthead he was.) He was also attending law school.

Brad and the Hygienist had a son and a daughter before he managed to sabotage that marriage by continuing to pursue women on the side. He was well on his way to establishing a legendary pattern. Over the next 25 years, Brad would get married, have at a couple of kids, find a woman to replace his current wife, and proceed to get himself thrown out a total of 5 times. I was wife #1.

Including the daughter who was born out of wedlock to a woman he discarded in order to marry me, there were 7 children by the time Brad became ill with throat cancer early in the 1990s.

I was pretty sure I would never marry again. I worked my way through several PR jobs -- the paper, the University of Chicago, The Woodlawn Organization -- and finally landed the job that started a 25-year career with a major corporation. In the manner of most single mothers, I struggled emotionally, financially and professionally to make it all come together as perfectly as I could make it.

My son had been doing the usual bouncing back and forth between Chicago and Milwaukee for visitations, and during those times he would come home filled with wondrous information. He kept mentioning women's names, names that weren't his Dad's wife's name.

Sometimes, Brad and I would meet each other half-way to make the kid transfer, and I would be amused to see which female companion would be waiting with him this time. He was quite the catch in Milwaukee (never mind that he was ALWAYS married to somebody) because, in addition to his good looks and charm, he had become reasonably wealthy as a sports and entertainment attorney.

In the meantime, I dated quite a few guys who ranged from terrible to terrific, had a great time playing tennis and raising my son to be a rounded and grounded human being. Still convinced that I wasn't the marrying kind, I was not prepared for what happened after I took the corporate job.

A co-worker and I were assigned to the same industry in our sales office. We became great friends and eventually fell in love. We moved in together, slowly and carefully to accommodate my 7 year-0ld's sensitivities, but Bert really wanted to make it all official. After he flashed a gorgeous solitaire on Christmas Eve and proposed, I was elated to have a wedding ceremony the following February.

When Brad found out that I was remarrying, he took the opportunity to show me that he hadn't really evolved all that much, despite the fact that he was then on Wife #3. He sounded upset as we spoke on the phone.

"You were my first love. You will always be special to me. Sure, I'm sad."

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAT? you might ask. I know. He was just that kind of a butthead. (I think it is here where convention dictates that I say "May he rest in peace." I'm not very conventional.)

And then he delivered the bombshell:

"I've always told you that if you ever got married I would step aside so your husband can adopt our son."

Based on his behavior over the years, I knew, without question, that this was entirely about his getting out of paying the measly $150 a month in child support. We had never had any conversation whatsoever about him giving up parental rights.

Livid, I shouted words at him that I didn't even know I knew. His mother, who was a widow now that his dad had died three years earlier, was deeply hurt. She and I had always been extremely close and she couldn't believe what she was hearing when I told her of Brad's pronouncement.

However, that is exactly what happened and from that moment on, our son never saw or heard from him until he insisted on inviting his "birth father" to his high school graduation.



NEXT UP: Conclusion, A FUNERAL FOR THE AGES

PAPA WAS A ROLLING STONE: A Funeral Dirge?

This is the story of my first husband's 1998 memorial service in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Funerals are seldom occasions that supply material for comics. Even for the most twisted among us, there is little about a memorial service that is genuinely funny. But seldom does not mean never.

This is the first installment in a 3-part series. It is a true story.

PART ONE

We were married in December, 1966 right out of college--well, I was out, he still had another year to complete. I was 22, he was 20 and we were much too young, okay?!

We knew we were young, so we postponed starting a family for a couple of years to give ourselves a chance to grow up --well, that's what I thought I was doing, anyway. In the meantime, we learned a lot of things about each other that we probably should have learned prior to the big wedding.

For instance, that while we were walking down the aisle in my hometown of Maywood, Illinois, another young woman went into labor in Milwaukee and delivered his first child, a girl, before we even said "I will." Oh, I knew it was going to happen. I had learned about six weeks before our wedding that there was some "girl" walking around pregnant and bad-mouthing me because Brad had dumped her to marry me!

I must have had a problem with my vision back then, because I couldn't see the GIANT RED FLAG waving in front of my eyes well enough to cause me to call a halt to the nuptials. I was too far into the planning and too embarrassed to tell anyone that I was about to marry the biggest butthead in the nation. OMEN #1

We went through with the December wedding and all was well -- well, not exactly well, because I had a case of walking pneumonia on my wedding day, and I tossed my cookies after the rehearsal the night before. That would be OMEN #2.

After that stellar event, we went through a couple of years of child-like wedded bliss: partying almost every night; me paying all the bills while he went to his senior classes; him being extremely possessive and jealous, which I took to mean he loved me. OMEN #3, but I was still an idiot.

We eventually decided that the only thing that would make my husband grow up was to have a family. (Stop screaming at me! I already admitted I was an idiot.) So we went to work. Our first success ended before we even knew we had done it. After a very long and hot (no AC in those days, at least not in my car) road trip, I miscarried. I hadn't yet noticed I was pregnant.

The second time worked and we got our precious son. And it's a good thing, too, because I don't think having another girl was in Brad's plan. He showed up at the hospital, while I was still in labor, with a basketball for the baby.

And then the fun began. Not.

Brad didn't do well with the baby taking "all of my attention from him." He was such a child. Brad, I mean. Anyway, his way of coping was to start screwing around with our dental hygienist. I guess I had been too miserable during the extra two weeks of my pregnancy to really hear the phone call I received from a "friend" apprising me of that little situation. But it soon became painfully obvious that Daddy's heart wasn't in this parenthood thing, and Mommy didn't play the philandering thing. We were divorced just before our son's first birthday.

Oh, the moaning and crying that went on after the papers were served in the middle of the day in his office. He was sorry. He knew I couldn't live without him. (Yes, that's what I meant to write.) He sent his Dad over to tell me how sorry he was. I said, "Yes, I know. He is one sorry..."

I was done. And, with the court's permission, I moved my son and myself back to Illinois to start a new job and a new life.

COMING SOON: PART TWO--A STONE ON A ROLL

My Boobs Are Terrorists

The letter came last Saturday. It was from the doctor’s office, so I thought for a moment it was just a statement, an accounting of my visit charges.

I threw it on the table and got busy doing whatever it is I do. My grandmother called it “putzing around.” But I have learned the hard way that I should open all mail, no matter what I think it might be, so I opened it a couple of hours later.

The words leaped off the page straight into my brain.

Thank you for choosing the Piedmont Hospital Breast Health Center for your recent screening mammogram. Our radiologist has reviewed your mammogram and has recommended additional imaging. Please be aware that most findings are benign (not cancer.)

I carefully placed the letter back on the table, as if to avoid awakening it. Although I saw what it said, even comprehended it, I went into automatic denial. I didn’t think thoughts like “that can’t be right; this must be a mistake” “I’m not going to worry about this; it’s nothing, I’m sure.” No, I simply blocked it out. It was as if I’d never opened it. Since it was Saturday, I couldn’t call to make the follow up appointment anyway, so I just kept putzing.

As I have confessed before, I am nothing if not anal, hyper-organized and, lately, forgetful, so I scheduled a phone call for Monday morning. As I look back now, I am pretty pleased with my silly self for actually putting it out of my mind until then. Not another mammogram thought penetrated my consciousness until Outlook reminded me this past Monday morning.

The resulting appointment happened at 2:15 P.M. on Thursday (today). I woke up feeling awful, due to Atlanta’s 5734 pollen count, second highest in history. Either that or I am coming down with a cold from hell. So my mind was kind enough to cancel my day for me – no Silver Sneakers class, no housework, no…oh, shit! The mammogram!

The fear started poking me in the side of my head with its index finger. “Hello, it’s time for you to pay attention, here. Things are about to get dicey.” After I really woke up, it washed over me like the hot water in the shower I was in.

Again came the self-talk. “Stop it. Worrying will not change anything. You read the letter. It’s probably nothing.” And I was able to keep the fear at bay. Well, I kept it at bay until I was sitting in the crowded waiting room with my spiffy cropped smock on and the technician came in and called my name. I started untying the ties on my smock, thinking she would say the usual “okay, you can get dressed. The results will be sent to your doctor.” Not this time.

Instead, she ushered me back into the mammogram room for a sixth image in that torture contraption. After the mammary smashing stopped, the technician said “I’ll give this to the radiologist and we’ll let you know if he wants an ultra-sound, too.”

I went back to that same crowded waiting room. This is first time I actually looked into the faces of the other women who were undoubtedly suffering the same levels of concern. Their faces signaled varying levels of stress. One youngish woman was texting, furiously. Her expression was passive, but her left foot was twitching like a metronome. Two of the women pretended to read pages that had fallen out of the mangled magazines that had obviously borne the brunt of hundreds of freaked-out hands.

One woman was not even trying to hide her fear. She had been pulled out of the waiting room for imaging, re-imaging, and ultra-sound. Each time she returned to the waiting room she sat down, hard, in the chair and buried her face in one hand. She looked at her watch; glanced furtively over her shoulder, which was positioned right next to the doorway through which the technicians retrieved us.

This surveying of the other victims – yes, that’s the way I was starting to think of us – only distracted me for a short time. I grabbed my Blackberry, hoping there would be some hugely important email that would wrench my attention away from the sickening turbulence in my stomach. Damn! We were so far into the entrails of the building that I had no signal for data communications.

I grabbed one of the tattered pages of the most recent magazine, Ladies Home Journal. There is a recipe for some chicken dish. It called for so many ingredients that I didn’t have in the house I would have needed a loan from the bank just to make it. Looked good, though.

I hear my name called. “Oh, shit. I’m scared. I’m really scared. What if I have cancer? Who’s going to take care of me after they fill my body with poison and I have what my friend, who has ovarian cancer, calls “chemo flu? Will I have a lumpectomy or will the need to remove my entire breast? Both breasts? Some people have both breasts removed. At least I don’t have to worry about how it will look, since I don’t have a man in my life. Finally, I’ll be able to wear double-breasted jackets because I’ll be flat-chested, which works best for those. I am so scared. Breathe, breathe. Why can’t I breathe?

“Ms. Lezlie, would you come with me into room 6 please?”

She has papers in her hand. I don’t see anyone who looked like a “he”, in fact there is no desk in the room, no computer screens, not even chairs. “Ms. Lezlie, it was just overlapping tissue. Please sign here and here and here, and then you can get dressed. We are all done.

Once, when we were little, my sister accidentally hit me in the stomach with a baseball bat she was swinging from side to side. It knocked the breath out of me and I was sure I was dying. That’s what I was feeling now. I wanted to jump up and down, scream, hug the technician, and do my happy dance. But the technician seemed totally unaware of how her words were affecting me.

“Overlapping what?” I breathed. “Breast tissue is clumpy, like a bunch of grapes. Sometimes one of those clumps will sit on top of another one and make it appear to be a tumor. That’s why we have to flatten the breast as much as possible when we do the mammogram. You’re fine. Just continue to do your routine screening every year. Have a nice day.”

I floated down the hallway and out the double doors. I stopped in the rest room and gazed into the mirror for a full minute. I took two or three deep breaths and walked back to my car in the massive parking deck. It was raining pretty hard and people were trying to stay under the building’s overhang to avoid getting wet. My electronic key chirped, I pulled the handle and sat heavily in the driver’s seat.

And then, I cried.

I'm So Tired of Being Nice

There is little I hate more than the sound of an alarm clock. Try as they might, designers of these tyrants have not come up with a way to intrude upon my slumber without pissing me off.


One of the biggest perks of retirement for me has been the ability to decide when I want to get out of bed, at least most of the time. There is no question that I am an off-the-charts control freak. I tend to resent any turn of events that produces requirements for me that are not of my own making.


When my neighbors, with whom I share a driveway, announced that they were going to replace the siding on their entire house, my first thought was to wonder how much that was going to cost? The neighbors have not escaped Georgia's 10.8% unemployment predicament any more than I have, and the last time I looked into Hardiplank siding for my own house, I was looking at around $20,000.


I was having this discussion when I suddenly remembered what it was like, around 8 years ago, when the previous owner of the house next door decided to have every nail in the siding re-set. She was hoping to prevent further damage to the much-maligned composite siding that was used to clad the four houses that were built in 1989 to replace the gigantic old mansion that had burned to the ground. The incessant percussion of that power nail shooter nearly drove me mad for three solid days.


A flood of thoughts hit me. These neighbors of mine, a couple of men in their early and late fifties, respectively, are the most noise-averse people I have ever met. To them, a leaf blower is the neighborhood equivalent of water-boarding. They pick up their recycle bin rather than use the wheels to drag it to the curb on Garbage Day, because they can't stand the sound it makes. Dogs barking? Children playing? Trucks idling? All guaranteed to evoke a grunt or a snarl of contempt.


They complained endlessly about everything that happened on my side of the driveway when I had the roof replaced, the exterior painted and the kitchen re-modeled -- all at the same time. The contractor I hired (I must have been temporarily insane, but that's for another post) would stop at the nearest Home Depot to pick up one or two "helpers" every day. Most of those men were hard-working, eager-to-please guys who were happy to get a day of work.


But there was one who had no volume control button, no governor on his tongue. He would shout from the back of the house to his boss in the front. His laugh, which he used frequently, reverberated over the treetops, sending birds and squirrels scrambling. The eye-rolling and door slamming that went on next door was not subtle; I was acutely aware of their discomfort and did everything humanly possible to "keep it down to a dull roar." By the time the job was completed, I was a nervous mess from trying to keep the peace.


The tables have finally turned, and I have the opportunity to choose the behavior I will use to weather this current sound storm. As usual, my Midwestern, Catholic, pseudo-sophisticated upbringing prevailed and I took the familiar high road.


"I can endure anything for a few days; don't even worry about it," I assured my neighbors. "I am a mother. I learned how to tune out noise 40 years ago. Don't fret. You are the ones I worry about, what with your hatred of noise." I couldn't resist at least one zinger. Sorry.


Monday evening, around 8:30, the neighbor called.


"What time do you get up in the morning?"


"It depends on what's going on. What's up?"


I have often gotten up at 5:30 a.m. to drive one of them to the airport, a courtesy we extend to each other to avoid the cost and unreliability of Atlanta taxis. But unless I have a morning appointment like that, I tend to sleep in or lie in bed watching the news, read blog posts, or do a load of laundry. They know this. We've had this conversation.


"Well, um, the workers say they are going to be here around 7:30 tomorrow."


"Ok."


"...and they have to put up scaffolding that is going to jut out into the driveway..."


"At 7:30 in the morning?"


I didn't mean to say that with so much emphasis, but give me a break.


"...so you might want to put your car out front if you are going to need it during the day. It will just be for this one day. We're sorry you'll have to be so inconvenienced."


At times like these I lapse into an internal dialogue: "Be reasonable, Lezlie. They have no control over these things." " Oh really? They could have asked the men to delay their arrival to a more reasonable time." "The workers like to get an early start so they can get home earlier." "Not my problem." "Oh, be nice. Don't be such a bitch!"


So out of my mouth come these words to my neighbor on the phone:


"No problem. I'll just set the clock for 7 a.m. and move the car to the front. No need to apologize, it can't be helped."


It took those three men 2 complete hours just to erect the scaffolding. When it was finally up and ready for work, they immediately took a 15-minute break. By now it is around 10 a.m., and the rhythmic percussion of siding removal tools began. Creak, creak, thud. Creak, creak, thud. After lunch, the sound became Pop, pop, pop. Pop, pop, pop.


I zoned out pretty well and spent the day going to the gym, grocery shopping and writing notes for future blogs. I was so focused, in fact, that I didn't notice when the noise stopped. I went to the window to see the scaffolding gone and only about 25% of the new siding on the wall. Well, so much for "just one day."


This morning when the alarm went off, I was not even close to being happy. I hit every button on the clock radio before I finally silenced that sucker. I staggered to the bathroom, squinted into the mirror to see if it was really me, and ripped open the drawer to feel for my toothpaste. Just as I turned on the shower, the phone rang. It was 7:02 a.m.


I didn't answer, just kept on with my morning ritual. "Let him wait. They said 7:30. They said one day. They can all wait until I get damned good and ready to move that f*&^ng car."


Shame on me.

She's a Grown-Ass Woman, You Moron!

Allow me to introduce myself. I am Coquette, but my human, known to you as L in the Southeast or Lezlie, just calls me "Coqui." I'm a dog, so they tell me; a Bichon Frise, which means curly puppy in French. Cute, huh? Leave it to the French to make something as simple as a dog with massive amounts of thick, curly hair sound like the fourth course in a 7-course meal.

Anyway, I digress. I'm not very good on the keyboard, so forgive any mis-types. My paws, while very dainty, always hit more than one key at a time, and I can't figure out how to fix my mistakes. And my English isn't great, seeing as how I'm supposed to be French. But Lezlie just left to go to her chi-chi water aerobics class -- whatever that is --so I thought I'd take this opportunity to hijack the computer machine and tell you what happened earlier this week.

Y'all know (oh, yeah, we live in Georgia, remember?) that Lezlie's been trying to sell our house for a year now. She says the value of the house continues to plunge, so she decided to use one of those ForSaleByOwner programs and save several thousand dollars in commissions to an agent.

We were where we usually are on any given day -- she's sitting on the couch with the TV on and the computer machine sitting on her lap, and I'm laying at her feet. This makes her think I adore her and she gives me great treats because of it. Anyway, I can tell she's reading posts on this thing she calls her bog or blug or whatever you call it, because every once in a while she snorts her approval of something somebody wrote. She evens laughs out loud sometimes, which scares the fleas off my hind end.

Man, it is hard to stay on track on this computer machine! I'll try harder to stay on point. No, not en pointe, like the ballerina that I am, but on the story that I really came here to tell you.

So the phone rings. Lezlie picks up and answers in her sing-song voice, I guess because she doesn't know who it is yet. I raised my head and looked up at her just in time to see her pull her mouth tight the way she does when I throw up on the living room carpet. Uh-oh, I think. What did I do now? Then her face started changing colors, her nostrils were flaring and I could have sworn I saw steam or smoke or something coming out of her ears. That was enough for me! I got up and got the hell out of there.

Later, after she calmed down, things went back to normal. I didn't know until I took a look at her email while she was at her Silver Sneakers class yesterday (don't ask ME; I'm a dog)  that things were far from normal. I found a string of emails between Lezlie and the guy who made her breathe fire on the phone:

Lezlie wrote: Mitch, I think you were rather brusque with me on the phone yesterday. Your diatribe about there not being enough interior pictures on the listing and how I was wasting your time by not telling you what I had in my house really caught me off guard; you might want to tone it down a notch. Here's the brochure about the house. All the features are listed, as they were in the listing, although you said they weren't. A video tour will be added on Monday, after the holiday weekend. If you're interested, I just reduced the price.

Mitch wrote:
Lez
You might want to listen to a Full Time Realtor that has a buyer. I just deleted all my thoughts because you would never understand it... Good luck on your photo of your home..



"OMG, Mitch," I think. "You might as well have sent a scud missile over here, man. Brace yourself." I was surprised -- very surprised-- when Lezlie didn't respond at all. But then:

Mitch wrote: Lez, Put yourself in my situation, I am here to show my clients homes and I come across yours which have NO interior photos ETC.... NOTHING.. I am not here to make you happy but I am to make my buyers happy. Yes, I am going to be upset with you because you make my life crazy which means no interior pics and no info on anything.. I usually look over itI know you are not a Realtor, I see that.... Get mad at me if you wish, I am here to get a home for my clients and your ""listings"" does nothing for anyone..
Good Luck Lez
I hit your nerve when I said there is no photos interior.. No reason to hate me..

Now I'm getting excited because I know Lezlie and she's going to blow her stack now.  Let's see what "Lez" said:

Lezlie wrote: First of all, my name is Lezlie. If you don't like my listing, move on. Get over yourself.

What??!!!? That's it? Such restraint! Such class! I'm so proud.

Mitch wrote: DONE Here I am trying to sell your home and you have said NO, Good luck on your sale..

Lezlie wrote: Nothing. She wrote nothing. You go girl!

But then...

Mitch wrote: Your video does not play..

Is this guy for real? Didn't she just tell him....Oops, she's back. Gotta go.

Lezlie: Hi, Coqui. Did you miss me? I came back as I always do. Were you a good girl? Let's see what should I do first? Oh yeah, I've got an email to send.

Lezlie writes:

Mr. W:

My friend who is an agent for The Golley Team tells me that you might be the managing broker for Coldwell Banker Intown. If you are not, I would appreciate it if you would forward this message to the person who is in charge.

My home is listed through C21ClickIt.com, Century 21’s Sale by Owner program. I chose the package I could afford, which includes two photos. On Wednesday evening of this week I received a call from Mitch G. , who immediately launched into a rude diatribe about how a listing without interior photos is a waste of his time and if I want to sell my house I needed to tell him what I have. I have never been talked to by any real estate agent that way and was taken aback. I told him I would send him the brochure.


Attached there is an email string that, when read from the bottom up, will show you what happened next. I think you will agree that this man is beyond rude and needs to learn how to talk to people, if nothing else. Here is the link to my listing, Buyer Full Report, which Mr. G has deemed incomplete. As you can see, despite his message that my video won’t play, the video has yet to be posted, which I explained in my message.

I don’t want this guy anywhere near me or my house.



Response from broker:
Hi Lezlie,
My name is Lisa J. and I am now the Managing Broker of the Coldwell Banker Intown Office. I read the email and I sincerely want to apologize. I will be speaking with Mitch next week as he is out of town. Please let me know if you would like me to follow up with you once I have spoken with him. Again, I am sorry.

Coqui wrote: Hey y'all, I'm back. She went to Publix to buy more treats for me. I hid the ones we had so I could get back to my writing.

Well, she didn't let me down. That'll teach that moron Mitch to treat people like children. Hey, Mitch! I guess you know now. My human is a grown-ass woman and she will git chu if you don't treat her with respect. Uh-oh, here she comes...