Okay, I’ve addressed hemorrhoids, so I feel like the content of this blog is wide open. Why not address the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever done? Sure.

Of course, some history is in order.

In college I lived in the dorm two years per the University of Illinois requirement.

But then, as all cool kids do, I moved off campus. I lived with some dorm pals in a house that had been subdivided (awkwardly) into two apartments. We thought it was the Taj Mahal. (It has since been torn down…)

The first floor had two apartments. One had five bedrooms — perfect for me and four pals. Well, maybe “perfect” is an overstatement. But, hell, we were out of the dorm so we hardly noticed the inconveniences. To wit:

We had one bathroom. For 5 girls.

AND

To access the basement laundry, the residents of the other first floor apartment had to tramp through our apartment.

No problem.

More background detail: In our one bathroom for five girls, we had a dresser with five drawers. Convenient. One for each of us to store our toiletries. Nonetheless, one drawer was still small considering my storage needs.

The other first-floor residents who needed to tramp through our apartment? Well they would be Mr. and Mrs. Dicker. While they were not old — my guess is grad students — they were married (which none of us could imagine). The Dickers were seemingly appalled by our freewheeling approach to life in general.

Really? We were good students — accounting, biology, social work, geology, engineering. We were devoted to our studies Sunday through Thursday nights. Yes, Friday and Saturday were the “let off steam” evenings. But they — particularly Mrs. Dicker (a/k/a Kim…can’t believe I still remember the name of someone I had less than 3 conversations with 40 years ago, but I digress.) Kim seemed particularly disturbed by our “goings on.” The music. The parties. The raucous laughter.

But we abided her.

We also made up a song about Mrs. Dicker. It went as follows:

“I’m a dicker. She’s a dicker. Wouldn’t you like to be a dicker too?”

Of course I am not proud of this ditty, but believe me, I wasn’t singing it alone…

One of our — frankly brilliant — ideas, was that we would each take a night and cook for the five of us, allowing the remaining four to come home seconds before dinner, snarf something down, and return to study on campus. The cuisine was “uneven” but that is the subject of another post. For now, let’s focus on my night to cook.

I came home, about 4:30ish. Early enough for me to prepare my signature ham slice or meatloaf. But before starting, I had to “freshen up.” So I proceeded to the shared bathroom, opened my assigned dresser drawer, removed my spectacles, rummaged around my very messy drawer, and donned my shower cap so I could wash my face without having my hair “in the way.” Ladies will understand.

And just at that inopportune moment, the doorbell rang.

I trudged to door, still in my shower cap, and asked, “Who is it?”

“Kim Dicker. I need to do my laundry.”

So I unlocked the door and admitted her.

She looked STUNNED.

“What the hell?” I thought. It’s just a goddamn shower cap. Surely she is familiar with shower caps?? I explained that I was just washing my face and donned a shower cap so as not to dampen my locks.

She looked dubious but hustled past me down to the basement, and I returned to the bathroom to finish up my “refresh.”

OMG.

When I returned to joint-toileting central, I caught a glimpse of myself.

Yes, I had the shower cap on but that wasn’t the half of it.

Somehow, appended to my shower cap, was a “light day” pad. The strip covering the adhesive back had gotten dislodged. Not sure how that happened, but one small drawer to house all my toiletries is the obvious answer. The crowded conditions made for an untidy drawer. Jumbled even. Things got knocked loose perhaps. Like adhesive backs.

And the pad was stuck to my shower cap at such a jaunty angle!! Almost gaily!

I don’t know how to even end this post.

Are the Dickers still married? Did Mrs. Dicker tell Mr. Dicker? Did they concoct some bizarre story of the girls next door? Did Kim Dicker suppress the sight? We will never know.

This I do know. The Dickers never mentioned the shower cap incident to any of us. They moved away at the end of their lease. They didn’t say good-bye but one day they were just gone. So we got to rent the whole first floor, and the Dicker apartment became one with ours, meaning we now had two bathrooms, two living rooms, another bedroom, and two front doors.

And there was learning. Henceforth I always stored things in their original packaging.

No words. Lots of staples.

Eleven years ago my youngest child graduated from high school (some say “graduated high school” and perhaps that is correct, but I am unsure whether a school graduates a student or a student graduates a school. I will stick with the former.) So, back to my reminiscence… Often a state occasion such as the graduation of one’s youngest, a “launching” so to speak, brings a crush of special events. So much so, that one’s memory can blur the details. True, but Berry Butt remains crystal clear.

The term was coined at my son’s graduation party — actually at the time the party was winding down. But before I go too far, allow me to set the scene.

All of our children’s graduation parties were modest affairs in our backyard, which is no wooded estate, rather a concrete slab patio and a small square yard with various hardy plants (because no others would survive), surrounded by a 5-foot wood fence. On the north side, the wood fence ran parallel to the “Barbie” fence, a term coined by my children after my neighbor erected an ugly white plastic fence. Between the wood fence and the Barbie fence grew a spindly tree that shed berries every spring. By “shed,” I mean a near constant dropping of red berries onto our patio furniture for a two-week period in June. The berries were inedible, the tree, an ugly runt of a thing, but for some reason, likely laziness, we neglected to remove it.

On the day of the graduation party, we swiped the berries from the patio chairs multiple times prior to the guests’ arrival, but then, when guests began arriving, in the crush of congratulations and greetings, we became lax. My son’s friends stood, preferring to stop in, mingle, and move on to the next party. But the old guard–the neighbors and friends–who attended out of obligation or pride (“I knew him when…”) sat, lingered, chatted, until it was time. Each stood and reached out to say all the nice things like “You’ve done a great job.” “Wow, three kids graduated and off to college.” “Bet you’re proud.” And we nodded, but then watched them walk toward the gate, the seat of their pants a testimony to the fact that they sat in one of the patio chairs close to the red-berry-shedding tree. Berry butt.

in our defense, what were we to do? Say, “Yes, we are excited for him and thanks so much for stopping by and your pants are stained and red berry stains are hell to contend with?” No. We did not. We said nothing regarding the seat of their pants. We just watched, silently at first, but then giggling, as each and every non-high-school guest left with a confirmed case of berry butt.

Starting a piece with a definition is an over-used literary device, but appropriate to today’s topic. To wit, Merriam-Webster defines “miracle” as “an extremely outstanding or unusual event, thing, or accomplishment.” Let’s not dwell on “outstanding,” rather focus on “unusual.” And before I disclose, some background is called for.

My late sister Rosie ran circles around the rest of her siblings in her ability to create thoughtful, cute things. She made me Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls with my name inscribed.

She made my nephew a clown Halloween costume that was passed down to the other nieces and nephews the way some families pass down a christening gown.

My inability to do these kinds of things rivaled the inabilities of my siblings, the difference being that they didn’t try. Alas, I was a member of the “hope springs eternal” crowd. Apparently Rosie shared my hope for myself, so when my kids were young and she was decluttering, she would, from time to time, ship me things. Before Christmas, she sent three two-foot high cardboard cutouts shaped liked gingerbread men that my kids could decorate. And before Easter one year, she sent me a lamb cake mold with instructions to use a box cake mix. That was it, the only instruction. Not sure why she thought that was adequate, but as I said, she had more hope in others than they in themselves.

For starters, the mold had 2 pieces. I mixed up the cake, presuming that one piece was the left side of the lamb, and the other, the right. So I filled each side with cake mix. When I took it out of the oven, each side had risen, thus when I removed the cake from each side and put them together, I had a two-headed lamb.

I’d already met the definition of “miracle,” yet there was more.

Unbelievably, I was not dissuaded from going further. I was expecting my 20-something niece and Jim’s brother’s family to join me, Jim, and my three teens for Easter brunch. After a moment’s reflection, I decided none were fussy and all would prefer dessert despite its appearance. So, I forged ahead because I had no alternative and time had grown short. So short, I felt I couldn’t wait to decorate my two-headed lamb cake.

I skillfully applied a white frosting and teased it up to resemble the soft curly fur of a lamb. Masterful. Then ,the piece-de-resistance. I added two red jelly bean eyes and a black jelly bean nose. Viewed from the proper angle, one would hardly notice the duplicate head. Into the freezer it went for a “quick cool.”

A short time later, the time for dessert arrived. I dispatched my son to fetch the cake and bring it to the table. It took him longer than expected because he paused, finding it difficult to walk and laugh simultaneously. You see the “quick cool” wasn’t quick enough and the warm frosting gave rise to some melting of the jelly beans. As all stared in amazement, someone snapped a picture.

Over the years, the picture has been shared to family and friends of family. It is forgotten for several months, then like an Easter miracle, rises.

I am thinking there is no better time than a global pandemic, when people are starved for a bit of amusement, to share my creation publicly. Hence. I present, my two-headed lamb cake.

Rosie, we will miss you tonight when I launch my inaugural attempt at a family Jeopardy game on Zoom, but rest assured, hope springs eternal for my creative ambition.

As I mentioned in a previous post, our washing machine (actually the laundry tub) overflowed three times last week. And, being March, it’s muddy and Otis ran around the laundry room with muddy paws before he had a bath(s) in the laundry tub. We also store our luggage in the laundry room and having just returned from vacation, the luggage needed storage. Before I put the luggage in the cubby under the stairs, however, I decided to pull out ALL the luggage and backpacks and free totes, hoping that one might contain my lost sunglasses, rendering them found. What I am warming up to is that our laundry room resembled a war zone.

All week I plotted my attack, knowing it best to wait until Jim could supervise Otis. No telling what Otis could get into while I was distracted with the laundry room.

Today was D-Day. And let me assure you, I have less to fear from the coronavirus than from what was lurking in the laundry room…

I won’t detail the mold. It is distasteful and is now vanquished. But I WILL discuss some of the other cleaning challenges.

First, the evidence of my good intentions:

• Three full and one half-full bottle of Murphy’s Oil Soap
• Three cans of Pledge, one of which had corroded, reminding me of Chernobyl
• Three bottles of hydrogen peroxide

Those were exact duplicates. If I were to categorize by function, the duplications abound. A couple of spray bottles of degreaser (not sure that I have EVER used a degreaser. What does one degrease?) Several — and I mean several — different variants of products to clean and shine the wood in your life (and this is in addition to the Murphy’s Oil Soap and the Pledge). Lots of rug cleaning items. Bathroom cleaning items.

Next I spot the specialized tools.. The mismatched rubber gloves. The squeegee for the shower door (since the kids have moved out, we rarely use the shower with the shower door and have never even been tempted to squeegee it) and the blind cleaner. I can assure you I have never used this to clean blinds. Never.

I move on.

Our lightbulb collection has overgrown its storage receptacle. All different varieties, which is good, because who the hell know what bulb goes where anymore? Lightbulbs confound me. It used to be so easy. You need a 60 watt, 75 watt, or a 3-way. You go to the store, see the white package with the accordion insert, check the wattage, and you’re good to go. But now, where to start? I turn off lights when I leave a room, not to save the planet, but to save me a trip to the light bulb aisle.

Overwhelmed by the duplicative cleaning supplies and confounding light bulbs, I pivot back to the luggage and decide a sensible approach is to store all duffel bags in the mother of all duffel bags — the biggest and bestest one (and adorned with Jim’s initials no less). Alas, it smells. I report this to Jim, reluctantly, because I am thinking that I can do a little treatment, but it may well be that the initialed bag is headed for the garbage. Jim shakes his head knowingly. “Yeah I think one of the kids borrowed it and threw up in it.”

What???? So, so many questions!!

• First of all, why would someone throw up in a borrowed duffle bag? And then return it
• Secondly, if the duffel smelled like vomit, why would Jim store it for later use?

I ask Jim why he believes someone puked in his initialed bag. His proof is scanty. I wipe it down with white vinegar, wishing what it really needed was a couple of bottles of Murphys Oil Soap, scrubbed in with a blind cleaner, with a chaser of degreaser. The jury is out on whether the initialed bag will remain in our fleet of travel bags.

After hours of diligent effort, I grow weary. I scramble and organize shit and duplications of shit I will never use, just so I can get to the final act — scrubbing the floor.

Done.

nancy is getting ready to get back to this blog. this is a test/

Tomorrow is my birthday; I will turn 58. My Dad was 58 when I was born.

I can’t say I hope to have a baby this year.