Anne Nahm

Hi. I’m getting a D+ in Anne 301 this quarter. Halp!

I thought I’d put you guys in the driver’s seat and see if you can do any better. Just what you were looking for on a Tuesday! Acing the How to Be a Better Anne Pop Quiz! Pencils ready? Go:

1. You’ve just moved lots of heavy furniture to vacuum the whole downstairs. Halfway through, you start to smell the vacuum cleaner. It smells like burnt tuna. Exits are blocked by all the furniture you just moved. You:

a) Turn off the vacuum, flip it over, and figure out what is going on! Must save precious vacuum! Also, must chase away stray cats who come to investigate smell.

b) Realize these are probably vacuum death throws. And damn, you just moved all the furniture. Vacuum faster, because it may be a while before there’s another working vacuum in the house. Don’t let that smoke distract you!

c) Lean over and whisper to the vacuum that you will never again try and vacuum up scotch tape, but please keep working, mama needs a clean floor for playdate. Pat canister gently. Accidentally vacuum up button while doing so. Consider eye exam.

2. You drive to the gym you’ve been going to for the last 3+ years. Oh Hai. It’s closed. Forever. You peer in through the window, and everything is gone except the hanging foam insulation from the ceiling. It’s just a gym, but it’s where you go and get Anne time twice a week, and damnit, your schedule is all messed up now.

a) You still have ten dollars on your childcare card. Probably if the gym is closed, your ten get-out-of-momming-free bucks are gone. Do you send a letter requesting a refund anyway?

b) Your new choices are Curves and Megalopolis Gym of Spandex & Silicone. Where do you go?

3. After cleaning your house, you call about 7 other mothers for a playdate, 36 hours from the time of phone calls. This is the furthest in time you can expect the house to remain reasonably clean and also air out the vacuum cleaner smell. Also? Like a dumbass, you leave message invitations.

.
With seven hours until go time, three people have RSVP’d. One said ‘yes’, one said, ‘maybe’, and one said, ‘I’ll try to swing by after work’. Do you: Cancel? Or risk having a party where one mom comes? If you chose ‘risk’, please explain how many food items you prepare for party.

4. After watching half the second season of Big Love, you realize you are having a little difficulty separating fantasy from reality. Like you start worrying maybe Margene, Barb, and Nicki will do something interesting while you are not there. After your husband repeatedly explains how DVD’s work (with full example of pressing the freeze and stop buttons to your horror (Zomg! Time Has Stopped!) and fascination (I can go pee!)) you conclude maybe it is time to seek help. Make help recommendations in the space provided below.

5. Your husband reads your last post about the weekend with dinosaurs. He smiles wistfully and says, “I wish our lives looked like that.” He was there the whole time. He actually took some of those picture. Is he kidding? Serious? Justify your answer in 500 words or less. Extra credit for any diagrams explaining how the male mind actually works.

Thanks for your help! To show my appreciation, I’m serving Bananarama for dessert:

It is indeed a cruel summer.

Went to the beach yesterday.

Held the whole world briefly in my hand. It smelled of low tide.

Came home and had a picnic under the trees in the backyard.

We watched the neighbor’s dinosaurs graze.

He’s been feeding them surfers. Apparently, the boards are very tasty.

But difficult to pass.

I just got a letter in the mail, attempting to squeeze money out of my tightly clenched fist, in the name of my high school alma mater. Which was a boarding school, in case you are new here. Or not so new. It may have actually been years now since I mentioned this. Or maybe it was last week. Life is fuzzy here on the internet.

Anyway. Glossy brochure! People trying to separate me from my Benjamins can be so clever, with their sepia toned old yearbook photos right there on the cover, with a won’t you please give? So that others can share in the delight that is our school? Which I totally don’t get, because they make you pay to go there. It is like a questionably employed chick calling you up two weeks after the office Christmas party, reminding you that you two once balled at said office party, and then asking for another twenty. Our transaction is done! Stop calling me.

I once got sucked in by their clever scheme of: If every single person in your class makes any donation at all, some big BFD* benefactor will donate a billiondy dollars to our school.

This may have been true, but there was never any follow up on the matter that I ever read. What I did read in the next glossy brochure was my own name under the category of money I paid.

Also? The Bronze Circle category is for people who donated more than a thousand but less than five thousand. I mean, shit. There was no circle name for my five dollar donation. But everybody in my class got to see I was a cheapskate. Thanks, alma mater! I donate nothing now, rather than risk my monetary donation being eyeballed by the rest of the alums. Also? I already paid to go to your school back when I was taking classes. Our transaction is done!

Annnnnyyway, Annie McStingypants, what is your point?

So this year, inside the glossy brochure, was a list of things pertaining to the era in which I was at school. And the title of this caligraphied out list was, “do you remember when…?” And below there was all this junk that was (probably) specific to the ten year time frame during which I went to the school. You know, like:

Do You Remember When……?

*You had to use an old fashioned pay phone in a dorm closet?
*You wore a Freshman Class shirt with the motto: (Redacted)? (And yes, ‘redacted’ is my new favorite word. Although, If I could figure out a way to say ‘redickted’ a lot, especially to my husband in the context of suggesting he put his wiener back in his pants? Then ‘redacted’ would have to drop to number two on my list.)
*We all ate “Fro-Yo” in the dining hall on Saturday nights?

And on it goes down memory lane. Except then, there is a Do You Remember When…. That makes reference to a code word that meant: Sneaking out of your room in the middle of the night, presumably to go do something illicit, perhaps along the lines of smoking pot and balling someone who will later hit you up for twenty dollars.

Which, hello? Sneaking out of your room was so completely against the rules that you could be expelled for a single infraction. If memory serves, a kid in my year got suspended just for being in his own damn room, fully dressed, and with the presumable intention of leaving his room. Can you imagine? Suspension on the grounds of being 1) awake and 2) wearing jeans when the proctor checks your room at midnight?

Not that I ever snuck out of my room after curfew.

Ok. I did.

But that is neither here nor there. What is here and there is the complete creepiness of seeing, “hey do you remember when everybody snuck out of their dorm room, using this special code word so the teachers wouldn’t catch on?” on official school letterhead in which my school is asking me for money. Money for a school I no longer attend. Is it blackmail? Or are they just saying it was really OK that we broke the rules now that we have wallets of our own? God, I’m so confused. Should I donate?

*Big Effing Deal

Something about people mentioning Twitter makes me want to pull my stretch pants up under my boobs* and scream out the window, “Get your damn twittering off my lawn!” Then I’ll go hit the early bird special. Those crazy kids.

In other news, I got very lonely to talk to real live people about anything not related to parenting. My lame dinner parties weren’t giving me any satisfaction. Possibly because I kept slapping guests with my white leather glove and saying, “I demand satisfaction!”** What did happen was most people looked at me funny and left. Except that girl who slapped me back and then got naked. Failure all around.

Anyway, I decided to join a writing group, even though I have had writer’s block for about… 7 years now. Seven years is enough time to get over the self-disgust of not ever actually writing anything. It is also enough time to realize I just want to hang out with other writers and possibly smoke cloves and wear black turtlenecks a lot and talk about writey ideas and pretend I am a writer. Yep. That’s the life for me.

I guess I should have seen it coming when I finally tracked down the group of cool kids and they were meeting at the Senior Center. I’d like to say now I belong to a group of writers where I am the only one under sixty-five. But that is not actually true. Because these people won’t let me become an official member unless I write something.

Actually, they were pretty iffy about letting me join since I hadn’t already been published.*** Can I tell you how desperately that made me want to join? That I can secure official membership only after sending something out to be scrutinized by members of the publishing world when they are done critiquing it? Slap me. I demand satisfaction.

The kind of awesome thing is that I’m having a pretty good time. At least, when I’m not having heart palpitations of nervousness. Having a bunch of old folks decide if I get to stay another week is kind of like being a contestant on my own imaginary game show. I’ve made it three sessions so far. Barely. Also, I’m actually writing. Is very humbling what fear of old farts can do. I think I love them now.

* I have figured out why old people are so pissy when they do this. Horrendous camel toe wedgie. You try not to be cranky when you can taste your underwear in the back of your throat.

** OK, now I have that B52′s cover of Love Shack from The Simpson’s stuck in my head. Glove slap! I don’t take crap! I cannot believe all the porn on the internet and not a decent photo or youtube to reference this point. Damn.

*** I completely denied this site, btw. And anyway, this is not really getting published. No it’s not.

And damnit, the internet entertains me:

I wanna be a pop star! Video that makes Nickleback funny. Impossible you say? So would I have thought, but it is actually kinda true:

If I had 415 bucks, I would have bought this. And maybe sent it to you. Because I love you is why.

I gained two pounds just looking at the pictures of this cheesecake. It was worth it.

Who wants to split a bottle of red wine tonight? Call me.

PS – not preggers for those of you who asked.