Fighting With the FoodDay

You know it’s not going to be a good day when you’re overwhelmed by the FoodDay sitting on the driveway.  If you live in the Portland Metro area and you don’t subscribe to the Oregonian, you get a free FoodDay.  It’s a bunch of ads and the Food section rolled up to greet you every Tuesday morning. 

I go outside and destroy that FoodDay before I’m fully awake.  It’s my way of conquering the cul-de-sac.  Because of this diligence, I believe I can’t be judged as total white trash even though there are mattresses leaned against my garage.  Go ahead, try to find the FoodDay on my premises.  My lawn may be the worst in the tax district, but my FoodDay’s already recycled. 

<>I’ve lived in four different places off this same crossroad.  This arterial street is in the nasty part of town, near the Oregon Industrial Park (meaning crappy cheap businesses without good storefronts).  Everyone has their FoodDay laying around for several days around here.  A neighbor across the street from one place I rented seemed to be proud of her FoodDay collection.  “Do you like the way they’re arranged?” she’d say.  “How many do I have to leave out before they stop adding to my collection?” 

I hadn’t realized I’d become so fanatic about picking up my FoodDay until the day I didn’t.  I looked at it outside, grabbed the front door handle to do what I had to do every Tuesday, and stopped myself.  F*ck the damn FoodDay. 

Every day, even Tuesday (after I take care of my FoodDay business), I wake up by walking around the house tidying up.  No one else is awake.  I put away the garbage and junk and dishes left out from the night before.  I start a load of laundry.  I get breakfast and lattes ready.  I feel useful.

I looked at the garbage and the dishes this day and thought, why should I pick it up?  So I didn’t.  I even left Charlie’s shoes by the couch where he takes them off every night.  They’d be in my way all day but it seemed right to leave them there.  It seemed like fun to be blind to picking up and feeling useful.  Maybe this is what useless feels like.

One of my friends told me, “You only have a certain quantity of things you can do, of stress you can take.  If you add one more thing, things fall apart.  You don’t have room; something’s got to give.”

The FoodDay was my one more thing.  I left it there all day.  Wednesday I woke up, looked out at the FoodDay on the driveway and left it there again.  Not yet ready, I thought to myself.  I left Charlie’s shoes and the garbage.  I did pick up the dishes, though.

Thursday, I looked out and noticed the FoodDay had been moved from the driveway to the grass-like area nearby.  Now the FoodDay looks like a giant arrow pointing to the mattresses leaning against the garage.  It wouldn’t be so bad if it were just mattresses leaning there.  Mattresses sounds contained.

This is the area where we keep the garbage cans.  Since the garbage is already there, we keep anything garbage-like there, too.  There’s a pile of wood which needs to go to the recyclers, broken windows which need to go to different recyclers, plastic pots from all the landscaping, the half-broken vanity from the now unusable downstairs bathroom, and lots of other heavy crap nobody knows what to do with. 

On a normal day, I can look in that direction and feel overwhelmed.  I don’t need a FoodDay arrow pushing me along.

Today I woke up, looked at the FoodDay lying on the grass and went outside and picked it up.  Before I could congratulate myself about how un-overwhelmed I must be, I dropped the plastic and newspaper both in their proper recycling boxes.  Honestly, I would have been proud had I just moved it inside.  Then I picked up the recycling boxes themselves and put them away.  I put the garbage bins where they belonged and I moved the hose back to where it belonged. 

I went inside, put Charlie’s shoes away and made breakfast.  I picked up garbage and put away dishes.  I didn’t do a load of laundry, though.   I’m not that back to normal.

After all this, I did the minimum I could until I had to pick up the General at school.  She convinced me to let her cut her last class and lunch to take the written portion of her driver’s license test.  “I studied the DMV manual all second period,” she said.  “I’m so nervous.”  I don’t ask what class she has second period. 

“Let’s go sit at Starbucks so I can study a little more,” she asks.  “Everyone at school knows I’m taking it.  I’ll be so embarrassed if I fail.”

I’ll always have time to teach my offspring the value of wasting time in a coffee shop.  She ordered something fluffy and expensive, drank it quickly, and said, “Okay, let’s go.  I’m shaking too hard to study any more.  Can I drive?”

“Only if you let me sit here a minute,” I say.  “I have to mentally prepare.”

She drove well, although I noticed she was still very shaky.  I’ve never seen her like this.

“I keep telling myself it doesn’t matter if I fail,” she says.  “I can take it again  Monday and study all weekend.  I don’t want to study all weekend, though.”

As soon as she walks into the DMV, some tall guy with very seventies hair says, “Hi, Chey.”

“Have you ever been in here when you didn’t know someone?” I ask.

“Remember when we were in here last time?” she says.  “I knew about eight people.  Look, my hands are still shaking.”

I pick up newspapers and read anything in front of me while she waits for her number to be called.

“Is that a boy or a girl?” she asks.  Now she sounds like me.  This is what I do when I’m nervous: take extraordinary interest in strangers around me.  When I can’t handle myself, it’s easier to think about other people.  Not in a good way, though.

“Hope I’m not driving when he’s on the road,” she says, pointing to an extremely old guy.

The DMV person asks him, “Can you see that?”

The old guy looks into the vision machine and talks about what the shapes look like.  He’s talking and talking but not saying anything close to an answer.  He’s armed with several hearing aids and none of them must be on.

“Just tell me what you see,” the DMV person says.

The old man starts telling her all sorts of things.  He keeps talking.

“Okay, that’s enough,” the DMV person says.  He’s still looking in the vision machine and talking.  He hasn’t heard a word.

Cheyenneh’s number gets called.  “I’m going to throw up,” the General says. 

“Are you really?” I say.  “No, you’re not.”

“Mom, you’re yelling.”

“I’m old,” I say, still too loud for a teenager’s Mom to be talking.

I look over to see if the old guy heard.  Of course he didn’t – he really is old.  “Good for eight years,” the DMV person says and hands him his driver’s license.

“Hope I’m not on the road,” I say, probably too loud again.  Even if I was yelling he wouldn’t have heard me.

The General walks by me on her way over to take the test.  “I’m going to fail,” she says.

“Good attitude,” I say.

“Too loud,” she whispers.

I’ve read all the newspaper except the classifieds.  I should go through them and look at car ads.  Charlie convinced me, again, to sell the Jeep. “It’s got 79,000 miles and it’s bumpy,” he reminded me.  “It leaks in the rain.  It’ll be raining for the next eight months.”

“But we haven’t even owned it a year.”

“Cheyenneh can’t drive it.  Let’s sell it, get you and her both a car.”

“Okay,” I said.  We can’t sell the house, so it’d be fun to sell something.

I hear a familiar voice behind me, one of Cheyenneh’s friends.  This particular friend is beautiful, graceful and calm except for one time when she fell out of my Jeep in front of a crowded movie theater.   She stood up confused then straightened herself out and returned to her normal elegant self.  “I’m okay,” she said.  “I’m okay.”  If it were the General, we would still be laughing at her.

“Are you here to take the written test, too?”

“Yeah,” she says.  “I flunked it yesterday but I’m going to pass it today.  I’m much more relaxed.”

I hear laughter from the test taking area.  “I flunked,” she stood up and said.  Now she’s the one too loud.

She walked over and whispered, “Andrew was taking his test right next to me.  It didn’t help.  He was going, ‘Crap, I don’t know any of this.  Oh, good guess.  Cool, another good guess.’  I thought there were only ten questions so I started guessing at question nine.  I didn’t even finish.  I’m too nervous to take it seriously.”

“It’s a good idea to wait a few days,” I said.  “You’ll get back to normal, you’ll see.  Waiting worked for me and my FoodDay issues.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” she said.

“Nothing,” I said.  I don’t want to scare her by telling her how similar we are.

A little help? [] 7:49:27 PM