It's official: I'm an old lady. And not just cause I have to go down my steps sideways like a crab. I just got home for lunch and I saw my roses bloomed and you'd think Morris Chestnut was in my backyard holding bacon scallion cream cheese while stacking four everything bagels on his member, so excited was I.
Is it sad that the cream cheese sounds just as exciting as naked Morris Chestnut?
Anyway, m'roses. Yay!
I also noted that those berries are here, the ones Tallulah used to roll in and turn blue because of, and that made me sad. Roses, yay. No Talu in the berries, nay.
This weekend was ridiculous. I FINISHED my statistics textbook, which means my house is a wreck and I'm exhausted, and I also managed to get to not one but two birthday parties, because apparently every bitch I know was born in May.
At one such party, the hostess made a signature cocktail, and thank god she lives in my neighborhood, because who literally made that cocktail her signature? Like, if I sign something in blood right now, it'd mostly consist of that cocktail. The drink was called La Cougar, the drink of my people, and I am sorry to tell you I found myself screeching, at the end of the night, "I TASTE DELICIOUS!"
God help us. Everyone.
But listen. Pear vodka. Vanilla vodka. Lemonade. LA COUGAR IN THE HAWSE!
The good news is, when I got home all loaded with cougars, I ordered a pizza, then forgot I ordered a pizza, and when that doorbell rang 40 minutes later I turned into The Scream. I was all, WHO IS RINGING MY DOORBELL AT TWELVE-THIRTY?
What a lovely surprise, then, to drunkenly open the door and to find my mystery date was a pizza! I'd done a great job: Thin crust, light cheese, spinach, tomato, onion. The only disappointment was the tomato was canned. And I was soused.
But none of this is why I gathered you here today. On my drive home for lunch, my mother called to ask if I was gonna tell you all about our math fight, which is the saddest concept, ever. It'd be like Lily and Edsel having a battle of wits.
As you know, yesterday was Mother's Day, and last week sometime I was similarly on the phone with my mother and I said to her, "Crap. I just drove to that little boutique I like and they're already closed." Dear local businesses: Don't close at 6:00. Stop it. "Your card's gonna have to come from Target now, and I hope you're happy."
I don't know why I made it her fault, but I did. Had she married Maurice Templesman or something, I wouldn't need a job and then I could go to little boutiques and send her cards any time of day, all willy-nilly. I like how I just pulled Maurice Templesman out of my ass, which is something Jackie Kennedy said on the regular.
I asked mom if she wanted to talk to me on the phone while I selected cards, and she could pick it right there over the phone, but she demurred, probably because she was sick to death of my Maurice Templesman anal jokes. So to circumvent the basic-ness of my card choices, I went with the above option, thinking I was hye-larious, right up there with the caliber of "I taste delicious."
On Saturday, my mother phoned. "Hullllloooo," she said. She didn't really. But she did say, "Honey, I got your card. It's cute. But this isn't the 51st Mother's Day I've had. It's the 50th."
......!
Okay. My mother KNOWS she can't do math. But she also thinks I am touched in the head. So when I said to her, no, I'm 50, but it's your 51st Mother's Day, she did the thing she does, and Aunt Kathy, back a sister up. She got Smug Voice. Mom did. Which is what she does.
"No, honey. My first Mother's Day was in 1966. This is 2016. That was 50 years ago," mom smugged.
"Okay, but, see, you have to count 1966 as one. It was the first year," I tried to tell her.
"Don't try to do math," mom smugged further, and where does she think I got my skillz, exactly? My father was in school to be a nuclear physicist.
"Pam, I need you to take a pen." I was trying not to yell at her. It was Mother's Day eve, after all. "I need you to write a scratch line starting with 1966, and make one for each year till this year."
Aunt Kathy, I KNOW YOU CAN HEAR HER TONE when I tell you she said, "I'm not doing that. I know I'm right."
SHE WASN'T RIGHT. SHE WASN'T RIGHT, and this is why I'm in therapy today. We argued like this for maybe 20 minutes. "You have some kind of DISORDER," I told her, laughing and yelling at the same time. "You are unable to admit when you're wrong!"
"I can admit I'm wrong," said my mother. "It just so rarely happens."
Finally I insisted she get my beleaguered stepfather on the phone.
"Hello, June," said my stepfather, sounding exhausted. I told him he wasn't allowed to sound that way at the beginning of our conversation. I told him the argument, although I suspect my mother had already given him the deets, and he said, "You know your mother is always right about things."
OH
MY
GOD.
Finally, I got HIM to admit that my counting was correct, and that it WAS her 51st Mother's Damn Day, and he TOLD her that, and she got back on the phone.
"Oh. Well, I get it, now. ...You explained it wrong, honey."
And that is when I told her to mail the card back. "I NO LONGER WISH YOU A HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY," I said. "I'm going to get a refund at Target."
So that was my holiday. Also, that pit bull rescue place called, and remember how the pitty puppy went to that adoption event more than three hours away each way, and I was all, Let someone there adopt her?
No one did.
Oh, my heart.
In Tallulah's will, she left Iris the gift of hooo care.
Numerically,
June