Tales of Domestic Bliss
When Husbands Attack
Many mornings I have woke to find myself the victim of a stabbing. There is a protrusion from my husband’s boxer briefs that is gently nudging me in the back. Then I hear the words whispered in an almost laughing voice, “Poke, poke, poke.”
Forget flowers, expensive dinners, seductive music, dim lighting. All it takes is “Poke, poke, poke.”
Print Shop Stories Missing food was a common occurrence at the print shop. People would place something in the fridge and come back at lunchtime to find either an empty container in the sink, unwashed of course, or more commonly, no trace of the object whatsoever. The culprit was unknown, though many suspected Owen. One reason for this belief was that most food disappeared during the day and on the weekends, when Owen worked most frequently. I guess since he was on third shift for so long Rick wasn’t aware of this little quirk in the food storage policy. Shortly after I went back on first shift Rick followed suit … and brought a pizza in one morning. Mitch was predicting a theft, based on his ten years with the company and occasional victimization. He had been monitoring the situation all morning, with frequent trips from his area to the break room. He shook his head no on every trip to let me know all pieces were there. Around 10 he walked by and said, “Ten o’clock and all is well.” I laughed each time and went back to work. At 11 Mitch walked by my room and sounded out, “Eleven o’clock and prepare for hell!” I shot him an odd look, but he was trucking for his booth. I ran down and asked, “What was that all about?” Mitch looked both excited and apprehensive and whispered, “He’s missing three pieces.” I understood the warning now, and the look that he had plastered all across his evil little face. Rick, a man of little patience but much hot air, was certain to blow his top over this event. We all bunkered down and awaited the hellfire and damnation that surely would follow. Nothing. We all ate lunch at twelve and waited. Nothing. Rick finally came in and to our surprise had a Subway sandwich. He sat down with Mitch and me and munched away. He engaged in his usual – gossip laced with rude remarks about women and racist comments. I followed with my usual – rebuttals on his ignorance and short, precise demands for him to keep his boorish opinions bottled up around me. I talked to Mitch afterwards and we discussed the odd lack of rage and pondered the odd presence of the Subway sandwich. Mitch also reported that the pizza was in the trash can, still only missing the three pieces. I knew that Mitch’s patience was wearing thin and soon his dislike for Rick would be overcome by his curiosity and need to stir up trouble. He would go and get to the bottom of this. It didn’t come to that, though, as Rick coasted by to the proofing room with a smug look on his face. “I brought a pizza in this morning and some unlucky bastard ate three pieces of it,” he told me very matter-of-fact-ly. I replied, feigning ignorance of the situation, “Really? What are you going to do to him, Rick?” “Nothing.” I looked at him is disbelief. “YOU,” I asked in astonishment, “YOU are going to do nothing? YOU, who have to take out every ounce of anger on someone are going to do nothing?!?” Rick just looked back vacantly and said that in a few hours we would know who took his pizza and that they would know it, too. “They are going to be some kind of sick pretty soon. I pissed all over that pizza this morning before I came to work. I bet they don’t steal ANYONE else’s food ever again.” And he was right. Mitch had to fill in for three days for Owen, who was out due to a stomach bug. No one ever found his or her food missing again.
Rick’s Pizza
Tales of Domestic Bliss
Battle of the Backgrounds
Yesterday morning I started up the computer to find my usual background replaced by one that said WHAT? with a Stone Cold Steve Austin skull as the dot on the question mark.
After a long eye roll, I changed the background to an Egon Schiele painting. I said nothing to my significant other.
This morning WHAT? was back.
Now Ricki Martin is the back splash.
I wonder how long this will go on.
True Confession
I am a junkie for Fiestaware. My favorite colors are turquoise, medium green, lilac, chartreuse and plum. I like all of the colors, though. I have pieces in cobalt, rose, sunflower, sapphire, the old green and red.
I need to stop browsing eBay.
True Confession
I didn’t invite my mother to my wedding. We have been fighting since November and I didn’t trust her not to try to sabotage things for me. She has been very vindictive in the past and I didn’t want my wedding day ruined. It may sound petty to some people not to have asked her to be there, but it was the best decision I could make at the time.
Swirly’s Time Line
Feb – March 1986
The visits with Carol and Paul continued. There was one where I was sick and Mom took me to Kmart to cheer me up. She let me pick out something to “make me better.” I chose a Care Bear, the one with the sunshine on its tummy. I kept it beside my bed and looked at it that night until I fell asleep. Mom told me that it was a good luck charm and that it would make me happy if I kept it. I still have it on my drafting table. I can’t say that this myth held any truer than the tooth fairy or Santa, but I do still have it. Just in case.
Carol and Paul decided that they wanted to move Lisa and me to Greensboro with them. My grandparents balked at this and said that they didn’t want to pull us out of our school. They suggested that Carol and Paul move near them if they wanted to take us.
In March, shortly after my mom’s birthday, a trailer was bought and moved in right behind my grandparent’s home, on the back of the same three-acre lot they lived on. We were asked if we wanted to live with Carol & Paul and of course we were thrilled.
I still remember looking at my new room the first day and thinking how great things were going to be. The walls were wallpapered in a thin stripe pattern of tan and white. The carpet was tan and the ceiling was that spray on sticky-looking-stuff. Lisa and I had to share a room and we got a bunk bed for this purpose. It was used but who cared, I was getting to live with my MOM! I did wonder about the room thing, the trailer had three bedrooms, why couldn’t we finally have our rooms?
This question was answered with a bit of bittersweet news – Mom was pregnant. She was expecting in late May. It was going to be a boy. He was going to have the other room and we would have to share. I was a bit jealous about this whole baby thing. I thought my mom wanted to be with my sister and me and get to know us finally. She was going to be spending all of her time with the new baby, though. Where did that leave us? True, I’d never really been around a new baby and that was kind of exciting, but still…
Print Shop Stories
Rick
Rick was a scanner operator that was hired two weeks after I started. He seemed very knowledgeable, quiet and no-nonsense. A tall man of average build with thinning hair and small wire framed glasses, Rick had been hired because of his extensive knowledge and work experience. His father, now deceased, was a titan of the printing industry. Rick, in his mid-forties, was certain to be just as good.
He worked third shift so I didn’t work with him until I spent a month on 3rd shift. I’d heard the buzz in the building though, he was a master at color correction and was untouchable in the arena of scanning information. I said hello to him in the break room once or twice but never talked to him until he showed up in my domain, the proofing room.
Rick popped his head into the room and said, “Hey, want to come learn how to do some scanning work?” I was bored out of my mind and had nothing to do at the time. I’d actually been fighting sleep. I said sure and followed him to the scanning room.
We sat there in the darkened room as he showed me how to line things up on the scanner and explained how to decide what dpi to scan in at, etc. He showed me how to touch up images, cut a silhouette around something. He started to make color corrections to a job as I watched. Things got quiet. At that moment I REALLY met Rick.
“Have you ever seen Deep Throat?”
“What?!?” I snapped back.
“Deep Throat. The porno with Linda Lovelace where she’s going down on all of those guys?”
I was frozen in place. It wasn’t like working in the print shop I’d never heard anyone say anything like that. I was a 20-year-old girl surrounded by people in their late 30s to mid fifties. Most of them were men. The majority of the men were dirty old men. I was used to their attempts to shock me, to “knock the newbie for a loop”. I just wasn’t it expecting that from Rick. And not on the first day.
“No, Rick. I haven’t seen that movie. I must have missed it at Blockbuster. Sorry.”
He lost interest in the subject after that. Who wants to talk about his or her favorite movie to someone who has never seen it? The real outcome of this incident was the foundation for my Mac and scanning experience and learning what to expect from Rick.
Swirly’s Time Line
Meet Your Mom
I remember being introduced to my mother, shortly after my ninth birthday.
My mother didn’t appear like the image in my head. I won a mirror in Sunday school once for a memory verse contest. I put my wits to good use back then, to surpass the other kids to contend for prizes – in the name of the Lord, of course. The mirror had an illustration on the back of an angel guiding two kids across a crumbling bridge. The older kid was a girl and the younger was a boy. There was a storm brewing in the background, shown by ominous clouds with a flicker of lightning. A small little cottage was there, too, what must be their home in the distance.
I cast the parts in my mind. I was the older girl, of course, watching over my sister. And Lisa could be the boy, I had no problem with cross-casting so long as I wasn’t the boy. (Hey, after all it was MY mirror and my memory verses.)
The angel was my mother, I imagined it so and so it was. I knew very little about her, only that her name was Carol and that she had blonde hair. Grandma, her mother, was very stingy with details about her or my father. Looking back it seems she was ever the harbinger of bad news. ‘Mrs. McLain is your teacher, I like your sister better, your father was trash and your mother would have thrown you in an orphanage if it was up to her.’ Good-news-Grandma, always eager to pop my balloon and turn the hose on my parade.
So, again, my mother didn’t quite look like the image in my head or on my mirror back. She had the long blonde hair, but her was a thin and straight, pulled back not flowing. Her face wasn’t as soft and her nose was a little pointer than I’d envisioned, more like Grandma’s than I liked. Despite all of this, I was ecstatic. My mother! After all this time! Finally I would get to know my mom and be freed of the evil granny’s hold for a while.
Things Progress
I remember the house they were in – it was a duplex. The walls were white and there were owls everywhere, not real but in every other conceivable form. They were made from seashells, rocks, ceramic, painted, carved, pottery, realistic and cartoon looking. All of the stared at me, inspecting the new arrivals and not hinting at either their approval or disdain. Much like Paul’s expression, they remained reserved and almost standoffish.
We were returned in one piece to our grandparent’s house Sunday afternoon. We pranced about with our new horses, but we had to leave the crayons behind, perhaps a bribe to get me back later, I guess. I had stuffed the silver in my pocket to admire while I was gone. Not because I thought it had any monetary value, but as a reminder of the weekend. In case I never saw my mom again.
And just like shown on my mirror back, there was a storm gathering force in the background.
To be continued … soon.
Songs Stuck In My Head
“Crying” Roy Orbison
“Hot In Here” Nelly
“Woman Woman” Gary Puckett & The Union Gap
“The Good Stuff” Kenny Chesney
True Confession
I’ve been suffering through a sinus infection for the last two days. Today I tried wipe my nose and the tissue slipped on my snotty nose, dragging my finger and the tissue into my right eye. Of course my eye started tearing up, but it hurt to open it. Snot eye, how gross.