The one where I'll never be naked again

*Sidebar:  Before I begin this highly inappropriate blog, I want to welcome my son, Kacey, and his fellow Marines, home from Afghanistan.  They arrived home safely yesterday afternoon.  I've spent the morning looking at the three photos that have been posted so far of him and his wife running to eachother, hugging, and kissing, and I've been bawling like the pathetic, silly mother that I am. 

I'm so relieved that you're home, my precious boy, and I love you so much.  You always have been and always will be one of the three brightest stars that light up my life.  And don't you ever go away to war again.  My heart can't take it.  Four deployments between two sons is four too many.  I have spoken.  //gavel

*sniffle*

(Seriously, this conversation just happened.  I'm watching my nieces at my in-laws and as I'm sitting here at the computer looking at the photos of Kacey and his wife and bawling, Jessie, the 9 year old, said, sounding irritated, "Aunt Dani, why are you crying AGAIN?"  Tori, the 14 year old, answered, with a tone of disgust, "She's ALWAYS crying today."  They both have special needs and are learning disabled and spent at least an hour last night singing songs at the top of their lungs about how much they love their pets in mock-opera vibrato but apparently I've managed to completely annoyed them with my ridiculous behavior.)


Anyway.


This morning, my self-esteem took a serious hit.  Serious.

Have you ever had one of those moments when you doubt every thing you've ever thought about yourself and are forced to look at your imperfections through the innocent eyes of a child who doesn't know how to lie?

If you haven't, avoid it as long as possible.  I don't recommend it.

Here's what happened:

So, as I said, I'm doing day care for my two nieces, ages 9 and 14.  They both have special needs and are quite learning disabled.  They are the sweetest girls on earth and watching them is almost easier than sitting on the couch doing nothing.  This is my second day doing it and the most difficult thing I had to do yesterday was dress myself.  True story.

Anyway, I took a shower this morning (yay me!) and afterward, took my towel-clad nekkid self back into my bedroom, plopped myself on the bed, aimed the fan towards me and started applying lotion.  As I was sitting there, awkwardly slathering my feet and ankles while the breeze from the fan tickled my hiney, the door burst open and Jessie (the 9 year old) barged into the room.

*freeze frame*


She stopped cold when she saw me and gave me a long, perplexed look.

Me: *deciding not to over-react... the least fuss made the better, yes?* "Jessie, you need to close the door.  Aunt Dani needs some privacy right now."


Right on cue, because she's extremely well-behaved, she promptly turned around and shut the door behind her, then turned back around and continued to face me.

Well, snap.


Me:  *rephrasing it*  "Jessie, Aunt Dani needs some privacy.  You  need to go wait for me downstairs."


Jessie:  "Okay."


Jessie:  *not moving*


Jessie:  *frowning*


Me:  *attempting to nonchalantly cover my nakedness with two hands and a bottle of lotion*


And then...


Jessie:  "Why are you wearing that?"

I glanced down at my birthday suit.

She continued to frown.


Me:  *lamely*  "Jessie, why don't you go have cookies for breakfast?  And you and Tori can put in a movie.  Aunt Dani will be down in a minute."


Yes, I will use blackmail to divert the critical gaze of a child from my seemingly unsightly epidermis.


Also?  I will never be naked again.  Ever.


When I went downstairs, dressed and ready for the day, Jessie took one look at me and said:


"AUNT DANI, DID YOU CHANGE YOUR CLOTHES?"

Breakdown of a Breakdown

I'm exaggerating, of course.  I didn't actually breakdown... I just threatened to.  A lot.  It became my mantra over the past week, as I packed and packed and packed and packed and packed and never seemed to freaking finish.  Most of my conversations went like this:


Any person who happened to talk to me last week:  "So how is the move going?"

Me:  "I SWEAR TO GOD I CAN'T TAKE IT ANY MORE!  IF I HAVE TO SPEND ONE.MORE.DAY. PACKING UP THAT APARTMENT I AM GOING TO HAVE A TOTAL AND COMPLETE NERVOUS BREAKDOWN!"  *LOUD, UNCONTROLLABLE SOBBING, FOLLOWED BY THE SOUND OF ME MIXING A STIFF COCKTAIL*


I'm pretty sure I fulfilled my lifelong ambition of becoming a temporary alcoholic last week. 

Except that's a lie.  I was mad at everyone.

I had some amazing ideas while I was packing.  UH.MAZ.ING.  Unfortunately, I couldn't get Dan to see the amazingness of my ideas, so none of them were put into place.  However, due to their utter amazingness, I am going to share them with you, in case you ever are in a position where you need to move all your random shit out of an upstairs apartment:



Me, to Dan:  "You know what we should totally do?  Just get rid of all our stuff and buy new.  We could totally just leave it all here and let the landlord deal with it.  He can keep our security deposit... it'll pay to move all this crap out and haul it to the dump, or thrift store, or wherever.  It would be a real money saver, don't you think?  Besides, I hate this furniture,"


Dan:  "No."


Me, to Dan:  "I have an idea... let's throw away all of our dishes and just use paper plates from now on.  Kill two birds with one stone:  I won't have to pack 47 boxes of glass and dinnerware and I'd never have to do dishes again!"


Dan, because he has no vision:  "No."


Me, to Dan:  "Let's get a kegger for moving day."


Dan:  "No."


Me:  "How about a margarita machine?"


Dan:  "No."


Me:  "Let's recruit the Amish to move our stuff for us.  They have strong backs and are used to doing hard work that sucks in 56483957 degree heat with 5638394756% humidity.  We can drink cocktails and tell them where to put everything."


Dan:  "Jesus, I hope you aren't serious."


Me:  "It would be fun!  I'd be all,  'Over there, Jedediah!  Don't drop that magic box that plays moving picture shows!  Pick up the speed, Hannah... I want that martini shaken, not stirred!'  Plus it would be totally PC because they aren't like slaves, they'd just be doing shit I don't want to do.  We'd pay them and stuff."


(*Sidebar:  I totally saw an Amish woman smoking while hanging out by her buggy selling fruit and vegetables.  I don't know if that's against the Amish code or anything, but I found it amusing.  I may or may not have flipped a u-turn to drive back by and see if I actually saw what I thought I saw.  I did.  Homegirl was getting her smoke on, in bonnet and sensible Amish shoes.   So I'm pretty sure they'd be okay with being my cocktail bitches while Jedediah and Mose moved my shit, yes?)


Dan:


Me:  "OR... and this is just a thought... We could have like an estate sale, only in our apartment, and we wouldn't be dead.  We could just put up signs and people could come in and buy our stuff and then we'd just take the money and buy better stuff.  Then we wouldn't have to carry it all down the stairs."


Dan:


Me:


Dan can be such an asshole.  He refused to take any of my suggestions into consideration.  Apparently (and this is what I read into it) he values our stuff more than he values my sanity. 


In the long run, I actually didn't wind up carrying anything downstairs (I'm morally opposed to carrying anything heavier than my purse) but still, it was the thought that counted.  I knew someone would be dragging all that shit around corners and through stairwells and over and river and through the woods, and I was just thinking about them.  Dan, his brother, his dad, and his niece and nephews did 100% of the grunt work while I stressed and cleaned and discovered, at the very end of the day, that I had completely forgotten about the hall closet, where I'd shoved all my Christmas stuff the day after Christmas without bothering to box it back up.  Hundreds of ornaments, two fiber optic trees, free-flowing garland, wadded knots of lights, ribbons, bows, and strands of tinsel had worked themselves into one elaborate unholy ball of holiday cheer that needed to be untied, sorted, bubble-wrapped, and repacked.


I threatened another breakdown.


Suddenly, my idea of putting everything into trash bags and dealing with it later didn't seem so bad.


Long story short, all my Christmas crap is in trash bags.


Boo yah, bitches.  I knew it was a fab idea.


Anyway, I survived.  Barely.  My stuff survived.  Barely.  My husband survived.  Barely. 

The Book of Revelations, Part One...

Am I really too sexy for my body?

So I've been packing.  And packing.  And packing.

This is what I've learned about myself:

There is no reason for me to have 45374856 coffee mugs.  No reason.  I know, with absolute certainty, that I will never be in a situation where I need to serve coffee to 45374856 people.  Never.

I have an unfortunate habit of using salad dressing one time, forgetting I have it, and buying a new bottle every time I go to the store.  Because everyone needs 13 bottles of the same kind of salad dressing in their fridge at all times.

I have never, in my lifetime apparently, finished an entire jar of pickles.  I seem to get bored with the bottle when there is one pickle left and then buy more without bothering to toss the lone pickle in the jar at the back of the fridge.  This is why there are no less than 7 jars of pickles in my fridge where one sad little dill resides.

I have 7892746 socks but only 12 of them match.  Not twelve pairs... twelve socks.

It turns out I left a box of Christmas ornaments on top of the fridge, conveniently hidden behind a large Betty Boop cookie jar.   Who knew?

I seem to have bought a bag of potatoes (which I never do... we don't eat that many potatoes) at some point in the past year and am now growing my own in a dark hidden corner of the pantry.

My dogs will never, ever, run out of Pupperoni.  It's another thing I seem to buy every time I go to the store and then forget I bought it, so I buy more.  I'm pretty sure this means that Javi and Maisy have to live forever, yes?

I'm a book hoarder.  I can't get rid of books.  I'm like one of those awful people on Hoarding:  Buried Alive who sob and cling to a slice of bologna that expired in 1987 and can't bring themselves to throw it away.  Only with books, which is less disgusting but takes up a whole lot more room.  I've been packing books for two days and I'm still not finished.  (It might go more quickly if I'd stop reading them as I pack them but that's neither here nor there.)

After packing all 657 pairs of Dan's underwear, I can safely assume he will never need to buy any again, ever.  I have no idea why I keep buying underwear for him.  I'm sure there's hidden symbolism in there, somewhere, but I shudder to think what it might be.

I just killed 23 minutes writing this blog.  Which indicates that I may or may not be a huge procrastinator.