A Commonplace Book

It’s time for Henrietta and Dick’s annual Halloween party, which we have excused ourselves/hid from for the past couple of years. This year, however, Mira wants to “stop in” because it’s “neighborly.” That little shit! Why did we have to go and raise her with manners? Let’s review the highlights of H and D’s past annual Halloween parties, and I’m using the word party only to refer to the fact that people are gathered and not as in “I want to party like it’s my birthday.”

I just received a Tupperware party invitation from, of all people, Henrietta! As if!

I’ve always sort of resented the Tupperware/Pampered Chef/Tastefully Simple/ Home Interiors/etc. invite everyone who crosses your path approach as a way to get lots of free stuff. There isn’t any way to turn down these invitations without lying. I’m a nervous liar, so usually, I claim I have a “meeting” or I fake a last-minute child illness (Gwennie and projectile vomit and/or high fever is the current plan).

Otherwise, these invitations are difficult to turn down because it means (essentially) telling the schoolmate’s mom, work friend, or in this case, psychotic neighbor, that I’m either not willing to spend the money to help her win her hostess incentive, or that I’m not into the products, or that I really just don’t want to spend time with her and whatever weird friends she has. I never know what to say. I usually just try to ignore the invitation, but inevitably, the hostess calls to see if I’m coming. I screen the call, naturally, but then there are two invitations out there.

This process is really difficult with preschool moms because I actually see them a few times a week. One mom even brought the catalog to school when I made my usual “meeting” excuse in case I wanted to order anything from “the book.” It was a Home Interiors party, and because I don’t usually choose to decorate my house with tacky, mass-produced, angel-themed crap, I can assure you there was nothing I wanted from “the book,” but then I had to take it home and pretend to look at it for a couple of days, which of course, only prolongs the inevitable insult to the mom’s taste.

Tupperware? Why would I buy Tupperware? We have enough Cool Whip/take out/deli containers to cover us, and we also have some really nice OP (other people’s) Rubbermaid. Pampered Chef products are quite nice, and the parties are often worth attending for the yummy food; however, sometimes these parties can have a strange vibe. First of all, without question, guests are expected to buy something. Then there is the pressure not to be cheap so that the hostess can reach her (free stuff) goal. Because we all know that the after party conversation goes something like… “Lucy only spent $7 on cinnamon and toaster tongs…”

Another source of Pampered Chef sociaphobia for me comes from being in a room with Supermom/Superwife times 20. So much worry about being creative at dinnertime, having a great food presentation, making something the whole family will like, makes me feel incredibly inadequate. My typical approach to dinner is something like “here’s what I made, and anyone who doesn’t want it can eat Cheerios.” At these parties, there is always great discussion of which products we “can’t live without,” and there is always one woman who has almost everything in the catalog and only attends the party to see if there’s “anything new.” I purchased all of my pots and pans in a box at Target, so I can’t really relate (but I do love the toaster tongs).

Finally, there is the inevitable “you can make a bazillion gajillioin dollars and vacation in Hawaii 17 times a year if you chooose to become Tupperware/Pampered Chef/Home Interiors consultant just like me” pitch. There is also a built-in incentive for the hostes that if a guest books a party at her party, the hostess gets even more free stuff. Waaaayyyy too much pressure.

Even though dodging invitations can be a tricky business, it really is better to avoid these parties altogther, which is the Tupperware, et al path I’ve chosen. That is, unless you are deeply committed to creative dinners and meal presentation, or you need your food storage containers to match your decor and stack easily, or you enjoy buying your angel-themed, rose colored, over-the-couch art and matching brass sconces all at the same time. Unless you’ve got a bucket of frozen booze on the refreshment table (props Crse), I’ll be home serving up the Cheerios.

Love thy neighbor?

I’m currently experiencing something like blind effing rage at my neighbors, who I’m convinced have personality disorders (in the way that all hateful ultra-conservatives have personality disorders). Much of the neighbor drama revolves around the property line, and whenever we do something like, throw a birthday party for our eight year old daughter Mira, they use the prop line or the neighbor children to retaliate.

This time, it was both.

Somehow, the party nvitation that Mira put in their mailbox for their nine-year-old twin mean girls–Veruca and Nelly–got misplaced. Now, Mira saw these girls a few times between the misplacing of the invitation and the actual party, and it was clear to every reasonable person that the whole damned street was invited. But, because Veruca and Nelly didn’t get an invitation written in blood, they not only didn’t attend the party, but they made a spectacle of not attending the party by luring another neighborhood girl away to join them in a confontational phone call. I know it seems incredibly stupid, but these little darlings don’t know about caller ID because their parents won’t pony up the eight bucks a month.

To be honest, no one in this house wanted the little monsters at the party, but we always try to take the proverbial high road, and we include everyone–even those who have earned exclusion. So, after the call, I calmly went over and asked the girls if something was wrong. They, Nelly and Veruca, started crying and said they were upset because they weren’t invited to the party. It was at this point that I realized that the invitation had gone missing. (Although, I have to confess that at the time of invitation delivery, I suspected that Mira may have placed it with their outgoing mail, but then the whole thing fell out of my mind until later.) I immediately apologized to the parents, Henrietta and Dick, whose fat asses were in ear shot of the whole phone call charade, gave the girls goody bags, and invited them to play with the kids. Reg (my far less compassionate husband) was furious with me because he has seriously had it with these people. But I will not stand for children getting their feelings hurt on my watch. I thought I handled it well, but oh no, apparently I did not bleed enough.

Now, let me digress for a minute and explain that I’ve been chronically ill for seven months with a thyroid disease that has made me alternately dopey and hyper and that my family has dealt with a couple of hospitalizations over the summer, (the most recent being my sister’s husband and my longtime friend Vic who got out of the hospital two days ago) but clearly, I’m supposed to prioritize hand delivering an ivitation for two little girls who won’t even say hello to my daughter at school.

The revenge began. The first, a loud smore-cooking bon fire event to which we weren’t invited. Mira and I laughed over this one, closed the windows, and watched Design Star (we’re rooting for Kim–it’s a sisterhood thing).

When that didn’t have the desired effect, they entered their typical phase two of revenge–landscaping the property line (sometimes it’s phase one). Midnight tree plantings is their usual approach. (Seriously. Four times we’ve gone to bed with no tree and woken up to discover a tree: pine (it died), holly, apple, that yellow thing that blooms early in the spring. This doesn’t include midnight planting of ornamental grasses and other plants–although we’ve had plenty of those. And then there’s the lattice…And the arbor).

One time, Dick even quoted Robert Frost to me out of context in reference to a piece of lattice they were putting on their perceived prop line; he actually said “good fences make good neighbors,” and the dumbass knows I have a Masters in literature. (But he’s just arrogant enough to believe that he can go toe-to-toe with me on the poetry quoting.) The prop line is punctuated with these plantings, most of which are actually about two feet onto our property, despite the neighbors’ best efforts to measure with sticks and string. Seriously–Dick and Henrietta spend hours with sticks and strings trying to determine the best placement of say…a marigold… But today, they seemed to be planning something much bigger…

It was clear they thought we were gone for the day–it’s labor day, so we’re sure they assumed we were partying somewhere else, but alas we were only book and shoe shopping. (We recently joined our local YMCA, and couldn’t take the kids into play because our four-year-old daughter Gwen didn’t have any “athletic” shoes. So Gwenny and I went to Payless while Reg took Mira to buy Lemony Snicket books). We returned home to discover the beginnings of a major stick and string project that ran all the way down the prop line–about 300 feet. (Who has that much string on hand?)

But then, when we were spotted, sticks and strings were hurriedly removed, and Nelly and Veruca were sent outside play/spy. This is how it works. Those kids never play outside, unless they are sent out to watch us. They use all kinds of ruses–like washing the dog on the edge of the yard. BTW they have a double lot, and their yard is something like 150 feet wide, but they always have to wash the dog five feet from our yard. They also always have to eat popsicles five feet from our yard. They also have to talk on the phone five feet from our yard.

And trust me, we’re not that interesting. Gwen was running around the yard with a stuffed owl and a wand/stick “stupifying” everything while Mira and I were on the porch swing playing Harry Potter on the DS. Then we ate burgers on the patio. But, we’re Unitarians and Democrats, so in the world of our controlling and nasty neighbors, that makes us people who need to be watched closely.

A while ago, Veruca and Nelly told another neighbor girl that Mira was going to hell because we didn’t go to church (we do, every week). This from the children of a woman who wouldn’t donate a used bike that she was already trying to give away to a local drive for poor children. Why? Because the parents of the poor children might be on drugs. Yes, but the children probably aren’t, so give them an effing bike.

For the record, we (Reg, the girls and I) believe in Jesus, and Allah, and Buddah, as well as the second tier Ghandi, Ralph Waldo Emerson, MLK, and Bono. We believe that all people deserve respect. We try to love our neighbors, but that gets really effing hard when our neighbors are so damned hateful.

So, in order not to be annoyed by the junior spy squad, I went in and did some yoga and took some magnesium. I mediatated. I prayed. It helped a little, but not as much as I needed it to. Hence, because I realize that what I really need is to speak my truth, the blog is born. I seek a community that will help me regain my faith in humanity because it’s more difficult than I can truly express to be so close to so much anger and judgement day after day. I truly feel as though the energy is infecting me, despite my efforts to block it. So, I choose to mock and laugh, and I’m hopeful that like-minded folks will find me.