Believe it or not there are days when nothing irritates me.  I go whistling happily through my life, and the sun shines, and the birds sing, and all is right with the world.  These are the magical days when absolutely nothing goes wrong.  The days you wish you had bought a lottery ticket.  I believe I’ve had two days like that in my life.  This was not one. 

I went to bed at six a.m.  It wasn’t my choice.  I was being my husband’s help mate.  You see he had a deadline this morning which he couldn’t make without my help.  So we worked through the night, and we didn’t make it.  I went to bed and had a nap, and at two this afternoon he told me that I needed to reschedule my sister’s birthday (which was supposed to be at our home tonight) for tomorrow night.  Well, that meant making about a half dozen uncomfortable phone calls…one of which was to my mother telling her I couldn’t help her with the unpacking today.  Mom doesn’t handle being put off well.  I have promised her that I would have her apartment finished this week.  It’s Monday.  In my mind I haven’t failed in my mission yet.  In Mom’s mind I have failed dismally.  The conversation, which was terse from the beginning, ended with her stating that her email wasn’t working.  Upon further examination I learned that technically it was just one website that wasn’t working.  I told her that I would look at it tomorrow.  I could actually hear my mother deflate.

After that stimulating conversation, and by stimulating I mean “Get me a rope I wanna hang myself”, I went to the bakery to pick up the cake I had ordered for my sister’s birthday.  A slight aside…normally I wouldn’t have ordered a bakery cake come hell or high water.  I would have baked a cake because everyone in my family would ten times rather have homemade, but to further the failure theme we have going today  I had ordered a cake.  I walked into the bakery and it was crawling with curtain climbers.  I don’t know if school was out early or what but the one thing I didn’t need was a bunch of carpet crawlers hyped up on sugar.  You will not meet a child in a bakery who is not dizzy from the sugar high.  I think it is in the air.  I went to pick up the cake.  Trodding over to the counter, I told the little Chickie what I had come for and plopped down my debit card to pay.  “Duchess?  That’s a weird name.”  I am sure that had I been looking in the mirror my expression would have said “are you effing serious?”  Instead, I said “yes, it would be if that were my name.  It is, however, a title.  You know, like Mr., or Dr., or Rev.”  I should have known better than try to continue to enlighten this Mensa reject.  However; if I had I wouldn’t have heard her very sharp witted response to the knowledge that Duchess was a title not my first name.  Are you ready?  Here goes…she said “Seriously?”  Wow.  It’s on the card, it’s not on my driver’s license.  I told her what it was and the best response she had in her was, seriously?  Now granted I was, if not at my bitchy best, at least in the top ten all time bitch modes.  I looked at her, and at least I had the presence of mind to pick up the cake first, said “No, I thought it would be really funny to tell people that I was a titled Duchess when my name was really Duchess, then not have that put on my driver’s license…which cost’s a little more…just so I could have this conversation when I picked up my sister’s birthday cake.”  She looked at me like she still wasn’t quite sure which story to believe.  I waited for my receipt.  “So are you or aren’t you?”  “What do you think?”  “I don’t think so, you don’t have a British accent.”  “You caught me.  Can I have my receipt?”  I think I get by with this crap because I do it with a smile on my face so people think I must be teasing.  Inside, I’m seething.  Millions of people are out of work…two of them are children of mine…and the idiots are taking all the jobs.

Walking out of the bakery I run across three unattended children looking at a display of cowboy and cowgirl hat cakes emblazoned with razorback crap.  For those of you who might not be native to my neck of the woods, the razorback is the mascot of the University of Arkansas. There are cakes galore showing multiple fraternities and sororities and practically begging alumni to order cakes with this huge red wild boar for there next tail gate party, birthday, or wedding.  These little ones are whirling in sugar coated abandon and chanting “yippee, yii, yo!  yippee, yi, yo!”  My first urge is to tell them the Bruce Willis version of the chant with a strong directive to get out of my way, but I am much more eager to just get out of this grubby fingered bottle neck, and into the safety and Simon and Garfunkel induced tranquility, that is my car.  As I walk toward the door, the oldest child twirls right into me, and in a move that would have made any prima ballerina gasp in awe, I turn…switch the cake from my left hand into my right, thrust the left hand out to push the child away from me,  kick my left leg out to still the swaying display case, and stop his younger brother from crashing to the floor, all without dropping my keys…which have remained in my right hand (along with the cake).  Their mother comes out of nowhere and says “say excuse me”.  Seriously?  Her trio nearly collapsed a shelf of competition level cakes.  Took out the cake I was carrying.  Received a life threatening brain injury, and had a bitch drop kick their collective little asses and she thinks excuse me is gonna suffice?  I give her a look that I used to give my children when they were acting up.  They call it the “Mom” glare.  It effectively says…”correct your way of thinking and behaving or I shall remove you from existence.”  Then I left the bakery.  She quick stepped out behind me and rushed her little darlings into her mom mobile, making sure not to leave until I had cleared the parking lot.  I pulled out onto the four lane and right into the scene of a four car accident.  Shit!

I did finally make it home, and no one was harmed in the making of this day.  As with all crappy days this one too shall pass.  I am helping my husband again tonight.  He is sitting in his chair right now, cheerfully whistling, and typing.  I heard him just tell his father that he thought we would have this project all ready to send to him by six a.m tomorrow.  I am seriously worried that my sister’s party may be cancelled tomorrow too. I am not an oak.  I am a willow.  I can bend with the wind.  I just sit hear typing.  He asked me earlier today how much I loved him.  I responded with a relatively low number, (ten I think) and he seemed a little surprised.  I told him he really had some homework to do.  Between this damn project and the golf, I’m feeling a little ignored.  It really hasn’t been about me much lately.  It really should be all about me.  He should know this.  He’s not new around here.  Maybe I have made things too easy for him.  So I don’t laugh when I deliver this message, and just for good measure…I gave him the Mom glare.

3 Comments »

1. 

   Ah,the Mom glare. Passed lovingly from one generation to another. If it could only be delivered by the military, the world would have true peace.

   Comment by pms — May 5, 2009 @ 11:41 am

2. 

   That particular Zen is not for men, and an all female military would end a war way too early to please the economical powers that turn that the wheel. Think about it, if men learned the glare, they might have to deal with the children…OMG!!

   Comment by admin — May 5, 2009 @ 12:39 pm

3. 

   Duchess,

   Might I point out that Boppy was scheduled to be born in 1956 but he put it off until 1971. Late 1971.

   Luv,

   Born on schedule in 1954.

   Comment by mls — May 5, 2009 @ 10:05 pm

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