Dying of Thirst

Three hundred miles away and what do I miss most about St. Louis? Iced tea.

I guess one could say I drink a lot of tea- pretty close to a gallon a day. But I'm an iced tea snob and it can only come from a few sources if it's to be really good iced tea. Hartford Coffee and the south county Hardee's both make a drinkable tea but the supreme iced tea maker, the exhalted beverage dispensing king of them all, is Quick Trip. Any Quick Trip, at that! Extra large cup, filled with crushed ice (you know, because at QT I have the option for crushed or cubes-another bonus)gurgling with unsweetened, freshly brewed tea made with filtered water and seven packets of Splenda. Dayum, I miss that.

In a moment of adventurous weakness, I purchased a diet raspberry flavored Snapple from Walgreens and promptly wretched upon opening the bottle. 'Twas too vile to touch my lips. It smelled like skraight-up vomit.

So, I'm back to my former fave, Diet Coke, until I can get the hell out of the state of Indiana and back to the things I love the most...like QT iced tea.

The Frustration of Tags

Who doesn't have a bone to pick with the DMV or Department of Revenue? In the ongoing efforts to have my new vehicle titled and plated, I've come up with a few gripes not covered by every stand-up comedian currently working the comedy club circuit.

1. There are no men working at either bureau. No hotties to make the waiting in line a little less monotonous.

2. The women who work there are all morbidly obese with badly bleached hair. And, their clothes look more like they're off to the coin laundry instead of to their goverment protected and well-paying jobs.

3. Their beverages (I seemed to notice a preference for 1 liter bottles of Pepsi) are enormous. They swill these sodas every 12 seconds, you know, because they're so thirsty from the strenuous job of ignoring the line of angry people.

4. There must be some madate requiring that a maximum of two (2) service windows be open at a time, regardless of how many people are sacrificing their lunch breaks to get vehicle plates or driver's licenses. The other DOR/DMV employees just sort of mill around looking smug and superior without actually doing anything.

5. Employees laugh at dejected customers who have waited for an hour or more if they are missing a piece of documentation or paperwork. I witnessed this several times. Nice, huh?

6. They should all wear those t-shirts that say, "I can only please one person a day and today ain't your day. Tomorrow isn't looking too good, either." This should be the motto of the DOR and the Omega Moos on Stools should actually say it when folks approach the infrequent open window. The line should be delivered using the standard smarmy, condescending voice they all use.

7. When they say, "I can help the next person in line." They really mean, "I hate you all and I hate your children. Hope you have two hours to hang around while I waste your time."

I'm already dreading next year's visit.

Jubilation, Appreciation and Promises

For those readers who may have lost track of the time the kids and I have been alternately couch surfing, homeless, housesitting and living above the cafe, it's been a little over three months. Three months of renovation, screw ups and transient, Bohemian living. This Saturday, it is ovah.

I tried to tease the news to my youngest daughter. "Did you hear about the big excitement?" I asked her. ""Oh my god," she gasped. "You're adopting another kid!" Funny how that thought entered her little stream of consciousness before the possesion of an occupancy permit did.

Thanks to those who let us use their laundry facilities, sleep in their guest rooms, fed us home cooked meals and otherwise let us impose on their lives while we were in transition. Special shout outs (shouts out?) go to my partner and all around road-dog, James and his wife, the lovely and gracious Dr. Stephanie Strand. They generously took in daughter two and provided not only shelter, but family to a kid who wasn't doing well with suitcase living. I will be forever grateful to them. Also, thanks to my mom and dad for their mutli-faceted support and encouragement. Y'all may think you have good parents but none could hold a candle to Mr. and Mrs. McGinn. My older daughter roughed it with me, slept on floors and kept her shower stuff in a contantly mobile tote. Her humor and resiliency are astounding and I don't know how she got to be so cool without me ever noticing. My main man, Carlos, spent more than a few late nights cutting tile and teaching me how to grout. He also kept a watchful eye on the sometimes disreputable individuals doing work on the place.

With this chapter of my life coming to a close, you'll see a return to regular posting here and at 52nd City. Be on the watch for these stories:

Tres Leches cake
Colossus restaurant
Why my love affair with McDonald's is over forever
Teenage girl drama
Shorts, jorts and women who wear them
St. Louis Powerhouse church and ministries
The United Nations of clothes washing

Thanks for hanging in there, folks. I'm back!

Last Wishes

I'm going to die. You're going to die. Hopefully, we all die with a little dignity and our selfish families abide by the directions we give them (while still alive) about how to handle our deaths.

Not only do I have a living will (I think it's also called an "advanced healthcare directive") but I also have written instruction on my funeral arrangements. Now, you can call me Quasimodo but I got a hunch that my kids aren't made of the stuff necessary to put a pillow over my face should I ever become incapacitated-physically and/or mentally. I've made a solemn pact with my best friend to do the dirty deed for me when the time comes.

Mourning is another matter altogether. All decisions are made by the murky lot known as "next of kin." Chances are, this will mean the girls. My verbal and written wishes are that my useable organs, yup- all of 'em, be donated to live recipients. Farm me out. Take my retinas, skin, kidneys, lungs and heart and give 'em to the next matching person on the transplant waiting list.

Next, I want a quickie cremation and an Irish style wake. Play music, tell stories, drink and eat all in celebration of life. Not necessarily my life, just life. I don't care at all what they do with my ashes. As a teen, I wanted my ashes scattered surreptitiously in a big fountain in the mall. Now, I don't care. Just please don't lay me in a Webber grill and let meat juice drop on my eternal remains. I have these additional requests:

1. Don't cry for me. I'm not in a better place, I ain't with God and I'm not at peace. I'm just gone and everyone will carry on with their lives. This is the way of it.

2. If any of my ex-husbands show up to the wake, be gracious to them and offer them a drink and a chat. Feel free to call them "sons-of-bitches with a lot of nerve" after they've left.

3. Fight over my personal effects. If someone could actually take or give a punch over something that belonged to me-well, that'd be incredible. My life would have meant something.

4. Do not, I repeat, do not, load up into a limousine and ask other folks to follow behind you with their headlights on and drive to some sort of place for a memorial. This is irritating and a misuse of public roads. Limousines, particularly stretch limousines are absoulutely gauche. Nothing says "middle class" like a stretch and I deserve more respect than that. If you loved me at all in life, don't do it.

Yup. I think that's it. The do's and don'ts of death. My requests have been made known. Hold each other responsible, will ya?

Little Mike Gives Advice

I overheard this lecture being given to a thirty-five year old man by a ten year old boy:

You gotta find a good woman. Here's the things you gotta have. You can't have a fat woman because, when she cooks, she'll eat all the food and not leave any for you. And you can't have a woman who wears much jewelry 'cause she'll just want you to buy her more and more jewelry. She has to have a job, for sure. And here's the important one-she can't love you for your money. She has to love you for the person you are.

I asked the kid, "What if he doesn't have any money? Then do you know she just loves the man?"

All men have money. Except for poor men.

"Dude, did you make this up or someone schooled you?" I pressed him.

I just thought it myself, right now. Nobody told me.

He was serious like a heart attack.

Not sure why I found the whole exhange so remarkable and I wonder what happened in the lad's young life. His assertations smacked of a kid who's parents had a nasty split and, while neither mom nor dad would openly disparage the other, the hurts were communicated, if not directly to-then around the kid, in the form of random musings. Somewhere, someone done somebody wrong in Little Mike's life and he, being an observant and sensitive boy absorbed it, processed it and regurgutated it in the form of relationship advice for a grown man.

Either that or he's just a dope-ass kid with mad, crazy smarts.

I can't wait to hear more wisdom from the fourth grade. Will keep you posted.

Memory Building

After a few very tense days and another late, sleepless night, this blogger was hungry. Four AM dining options in the city are relatively few and my disdain for eating alone is well known.

I used to be a conscientious parent-putting my kids' wants and needs before my own. My every action was based upon what was in their best interests. Last night? Not so much.

With a few gentle pokes and insistent whispering I woke my younger daughter, totally disgregarding the fact that she was due at school in just under four hours with a social studies test looming shortly thereafter.

"Psssttt....hey! Are you hungry?" Her eyes barely open and most certainly not focused, she looked at me like I'd just asked if she would be willing to axe-murder a small child. "I know where there's a twenty-four hour McDonald's and we can get french fries!" The idea seemed to be catching on. She fumbled for her shoes as I shushed the canines, also roused from sleep by all the activity. We started to laugh, suddenly aware of the absolute absurdity of the scene.

She loved seeing St. Louis at night. Without much traffic, we could roll through the streets with ease and enjoy the lights of post and moon. Alas, the Mickey D's was only "open late" and not round-the-clock. On the way to our backup plan of the Courtesy Diner, we discussed throwing pebbles at the apartment above the Royale and treating SFS to a little sleep interruption of his own and lamented our lack of bathroom tissue, for decorating his purple neon sign seemed like a fun idea as well.

The kid couldn't quite punch in the numbers of the jukebox correctly and instead of listening to thirteen-year-old girl music, we jammed the the shredding guitar solos and raw vocals of some, unknown, eighties rock. The cook, a younger lad with a K-Fed demeanor and look, nodded appreciatively at her music selections.

We giggled and shoveled cheese and eggs into our mouths. We shivered in the meat-locker temps of the Courtesy Diner. We agreed that those wee hours were well-spent, U.S. geography be damned.

Nobody recalls what her birthday present was last year. And those astronomically expensive Nike shoes from a few months ago are kickin' it somewhere at the Goodwill. But, I have to believe, she'll remember for a long while the time her crazy mother took her to a grubby diner in the middle of the night.

Oxygen!

My idol and friend, Julia Smillie (her link is on the right) frequently offers up a topic in the reader forum called, "Fitness Police." People post their challenges and successes for the week in the areas of responsible eating and exercise. They cheer each other along and absolve the transgressions of big dinners and ice cream.

After too many days off I leashed up personal security canine extraordinaire, Miles Davis, and hit Tower Grove Park tonight. Before the break, I was able to run most of a half-park trek. Alas, I could do no such thing today.

Not only didn't I run it, I couldn't even walk the damned thing. In a gigantic admission of failure, I cut through the ball fields to shorten the journey back to the Shaw neighborhood. By the time I returned the still spry dog back to his home my shirt was soaking and plastered to my body and, in a flashback to the Presidential Physical Fitness testing of sixth grade, there was a disabling cramp in my side. To round out my humiliation, my face was beet-red from exertion.

I fell into the house and face down onto the floor. A model of poor health and total lack of stamina. Gross.