BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

It was pretty much a typical Friday morning as Friday mornings go.

I rolled out of bed at 5:39 AM. A bit later than usual, yes, but only by around 9 minutes, which is the span of time allowed by a slap of the snooze button on our alarm clock. Not really a big deal. I just wouldn’t have quite as much “quiet time” alone in the office as I normally did prior to the hustle and bustle of getting E K off to work and the child off to school. I could easily live with that.

I hit the ground running… Or, these days, shuffling just a bit. I fixed breakfast for E K and the offspring, packed E Kay’s lunch while the coffee maker sputtered and steamed, downed a cup or two of the java once it was finished, answered some email, checked my Facebook and Myspace pages, and even took a quick look at the local news on the idiot box. (I prefer K M O V channel 4 here in Saint Louis, just in case you are wondering. They seem to have fun, and Matt Chambers is one of those honest weather guys who prefaces his forecasts with, “This is what we think is going to happen”.)

But, lest I digress…

In keeping with the regular Friday routine,  (as Friday has a few more steps than say, Wednesday, for instance), I had already run about the house  on a mission – gathering trash and replacing the bags in various refuse receptacles, then cleaning the cats’ litter boxes, (not one of my favorite tasks, but hey, it has to be done), and finally delivering the bountiful haul of garbage out to the street corner to await removal by the big, blue, noisy truck that arrives every Tuesday and Friday (except holidays, of course).

All was good… In fact, even with getting a bit of a late start, I was now actually ahead of schedule by just shy of 10 minutes. Not only had I made up the 9, I’d added 9 and some change to it. I was feeling a bit proud of myself.

I figured I could take advantage of that extra time on the back end of the morning, so rather than stop in front of the “toob” to admire Julie Chen and Maggie Rodriguez on The Early Show,  I just kept plugging away. As the clock continued ticking forward my routine progressed with little deviation from how it has gone for countless Friday mornings past.

My initial chores of the day were finished, (though there were many more on the docket for later), the offspring was in her room obsessing over exactly what to wear – as female offspring often tend to do, and E K was finally out of the shower. Since I was next up in the scrub-a-dub-dub queue, I slipped into the bathroom with my lovely wife and proceeded forward with step one of  “Murv’s Morning Routine Phase 2”.

Advancing mechanically through my usual order of tasks I had already run my toothbrush over my teeth, dragged a comb through my hair, and had even made it so far as to whip up a passable lather with my shaving brush,  (trying to be eco-friendly, I’ve used old school shaving soap and a brush – when not on the road – for several years now, as opposed to cans which just end up in landfills). At this juncture, my face was full of rapidly dissipating foam and I had just dragged a trio of  insanely sharp, cold metal blades resting on the end of a short, crooked stick, across my cheek when the demand hit my ears.

“Move over,” came my wife’s voice. “I need to wash my face.”

I gave the end of the screaming metal skin scraping stick a quick rinse and shuffled to my left. I was an inch away from dragging it along my jawline when I stopped, cocked my eyebrow, then turned to look at my bride. Her hair was wet and I knew she had just climbed out of the shower moments before. Still, not being one for taking things at face value, with a vague questioning tone I said, “I thought you just took a shower?”

“I did,” she replied. E K didn’t seemed surprised at all by my query. Of course, after 22 years together she has grown used to my random verbalizations of various thought processes and simply accepts them as old hat. I’m certain this will serve her well later in life when we are both sitting in rocking chairs, side-by-side, and I am talking to myself for no apparent reason.

I pondered her answer for a moment, then gave her excessively damp, red tresses a one-eyed stare as I added, “And, you washed your hair.”

“Yeah,” she answered. “I did.” She still didn’t seem at all fazed by the fact that I was currently channeling Obvious Man.

At this point, had I bothered to look in the mirror, I’m sure my eyebrows would have been see-sawing back and forth like a puppy trying to figure out whether to pee on the carpet in the living room, or on the tile in the hallway.

“So…” I started, then paused.

“So, what?” E K asked, amusement now welling in her voice.

“So, if you took a shower and washed your hair, how did the water manage to miss your face?”

“It didn’t. My face got wet,” she chuckled.

“Okay…” I paused again. “But, you’re saying it didn’t get washed while it was wet?”

“Of course not,” my wife replied. Her tone had made a drastic and sudden change. It was now one of sympathy for someone who is obviously a bit slow in the brainpan, so by way of explanation she added, “I have different soap for my face.”

“Different soap,” I said.

“Yes,” she replied. “Different soap.”

She reached past me and rummaged around in the medicine chest,  so I watched on in silence, now taking notice of the countless weird shaped and various sized bottles, tubes, and jars lining the shelves. I’d never really paid any attention to them before. After all, they are on her side of the medicine chest, not mine. Of course, I have to admit that I had always wondered why her side of the three-paneled chest consisted of both the left and the middle as well as a portion of the right, whereas mine was just a small sliver of said right.

Now,  my curiosity was piqued, so I focused my attentions on her task.

Oddly enough, upon initial and even secondary inspection, I didn’t see any containers with “soap” written on them. I  did, however, see things like “anti-wrinkle cow placenta apricot avocado P H-balanced age defying micro-bead moisture-rich scrub“… With “scrub” coming in at the end of the title, I suppose that stuff would qualify as soap, but it seemed to me “face soap” would have saved some ink when the bottle was being labeled. But, that’s just me, I guess.

There were other products as well, each with equally descriptive and endlessly confusing names like, “glycolic facial peeling solution masque,” and  “collagen infusing pore cleansing makeup removing pre-wash.” I figured that last one probably had pig in it instead of cow, what with collagen being first in the title.

One of the bottles that did make perfect sense had adopted the simplicity in labeling scheme I suggested earlier. It was titled, “nail polish remover.” I pretty much got what they were saying with that, so it seemed like a pretty good marketing move to me. I mean, if E K were to say, “Honey, could you hand me the nail polish remover,” I was all good. But if she were to ask me to retrieve her “face soap”, I’d probably be back to deciding whether to pee on the carpet or the tile. By the time anyone found me I would most likely be doing the “potty dance”.

There were other bottles, jars and tubes – more than I could count really – but I can’t even begin to pronounce their dozen word, semi-foreign, hyphenated and fancy-script-fonted names, (nor would I want to, unless of course, I was considering a career in Dermatology).

“I see,” I finally muttered, even though I really didn’t.

After a couple more swipes across my face with the stubble scraper, I gathered enough courage to ask, “So, do you have different soap for other parts of your body too?”

By now, E K had dried her freshly washed face and was lining up various bottles of differently named products along the edge of the vanity – each of which thankfully ended in the easily definable word, lotion. This helped reduce my confusion, but only just a bit given that there were so many containers that ostensibly all contained the same thing.  Once the linear arrangement was complete, she began working her way down the line, applying different amounts of each to various different areas of her person. Had I not been somewhat preoccupied with my confusion at this point, it probably would have been fun to watch, in an adult amusement park sort of way, if you get my meaning.

“Don’t be silly,” she chuckled in response as she adopted a Marlene Dietrich-esque leg-hiked pose, using the toilet lid to rest her foot, then proceeded to slather, smooth, and rub various lotions into the shapely appendage.

I was actually taking some amount of solace in that answer until she snorted, “Of course I do.”

I didn’t pursue the conversation. A quick glance at the clock told me I had used up my almost 10 minute surplus of time and was instead operating at a deficit, now being a little over 3 minutes behind schedule. I figured I’d better pick up the pace, because since E K had been in the shower first, I knew I was going to be spending several more minutes just looking for the shampoo amidst all of those different bottles she had lined up along the ledge around the tub.

At least now, after 22+ years, I knew they weren’t just decorations…

More to come…

Murv

Part 8 of 12

Continued from: Mahwage: The Wedding Suit…

… Actually, in retrospect, the title of this entry, while close, isn’t entirely on the mark. Truth is, it was more along the line of, Swish! Clink! Ping! Clatter! Roll Roll Roll… “Oh Crap!” Clatter! *Plink!* Clatter! *Tink!*  “No No No!” Clank! Rattle… (eerie silence)… All followed by a quietly muttered, “Dammit…”

But let’s not get into a deep analysis of my attack of onomatopoeia just yet. Don’t worry, I promise we’ll get back to it… I mean, given the title of this entry, I really kinda don’t have any choice in the matter…

But first, a picture… Here on the left we have a photo of the happy couple.  Aren’t we cute? E K is gorgeous, just like I said… And me, well, I’m young, no grey to be seen, and  a whole lot thinner than I am today… (I’ve really gotta work on that)…  And check out those Clark Kent goggles… At this stage of the game our official and legal union is right around 4 minutes 27 seconds old. We have not yet had a fight, or even a minor disagreement. No spat of any kind. This is not to say we never have since, or that we hadn’t prior… That would just be untrue.  All couples have “disagree-uments” to one degree or another.  I’ve learned over the past 22+ years, however, that E K always wins… But, every now and then if the planets are aligned just the right way, or wrong way as the case may be, this important little fact slips my mind. And, when it does, I  make the mistake of disagreeing with her. In the grand scheme of things, however, there isn’t anything to worry about. The Evil One immediately points out the error of my ways, puts me back in my place on the end of the leash, and life is once again good…

But, back to the picture above… At 4 minutes 27 seconds into this odyssey, all was bliss. Given that the “not having a suit thing” could have been an even  bigger debacle than it turned out to be, this was reassuring. However, what you cannot see here is that yet another issue had cropped up shortly before this photo was taken, and it was a bit of a speed bump in and of itself. I shall endeavor to explain…

Zero hour was approaching fast. In fact, we were literally at T-Minus 60, or thereabouts. Family and a few friends had arrived a bit earlier to help with the last minute preparations. My sister had pitched in and taken over the final cooking so that I could grab a shower and get dressed. Erin, (remember Erin?) was there setting up the chafing dishes… My dad was assuming his role as unofficial photographer while helping with chairs, tables, and setting up the luminaries E K had made for decorations. Things seemed to be right on track.

My sister, Missy, had finished up with the cooking and was now off in the bedroom helping E K with her hair, since one of Sis’s learned talents happened to be hairdressing. These days she handles video conferencing and support for families of deployed soldiers, and is damn good at it, but that’s one of those “nother blogs”…

I, myself, was being the somewhat typical nervous groom. Not that I had suddenly decided to bolt or anything. Quite to the contrary, I was still coming to terms with the fact that E K had finally said yes, and my jangly nerves were a product of the fact that I figured I would be waking up at any moment and hearing, “No, not right now,” rolling off  of my betrothed’s tongue.

In all honesty, to this day there are still times when I think that is going to happen, but there we go with my personal insecurities again…

So, does anyone remember Service Merchandise? Yeah, I know, that was a rough transition there, but I still haven’t had my coffee quota just yet today, so please bear with me… If you are unfamiliar with them, they are a semi-defunct chain of catalog showrooms. I say semi-defunct because they disappeared around 2002, but from what I just looked up it appears they returned as an online store sometime in 2008. In any event, there used to be a Service Merchandise out at Northwest Plaza (or, N W P). One of their charms was the fact that they sold okay quality jewelry on the cheap. Well, if you haven’t picked up on it throughout this blog series so far, I will remind you here… E K and I were pretty much too broke to pay attention, just like most young couples when they are first starting out. We knew we could have a “ringless” ceremony, but we didn’t want to do that. We were foregoing much of the pomp, circumstance, and religious frou-frou already, what with us both being secular humanists, me with a rich and diverse background in earth/eco-centric religions and Paganism, of course. In fact, we had even written our own secular vows, which her father embellished of his own accord, but I don’t hold that against him. He’s a Baptist minister and he wasn’t about to preform the ceremony without sticking God in there somewhere… I get that. Didn’t care for it, but I get it. So, all was good.

Anyway, back to this ring situation. We were going secular and eschewing much of the “ceremony” associated with a wedding already, but we wanted to retain at least some bit of symbolism, that being the rings. So, since we were  “poor,” so to speak, we had gone to Service Merchandise out at N W P, and purchased a matching set of plain, 10K white gold bands. Not very fancy, but it didn’t matter to us. They were symbolic enough…

(On a side note… Even though I have since presented my bride with a much fuller set of precious gold, replete with a sparkly, ancient rock collection mounted upon it, she still wears that simple band on a regular basis. I still have mine too, but it lives on my key chain. You see, it doesn’t fit over my arthritic knuckles anymore, and while I have a newer, fancier ring that I wear when I get “duded up”, that simple band goes with me everywhere… Yeah, okay, I’ll turn off the sappy faucet before there’s a flood…)

Now, let’s get back around to that hairdo… Why hairdo? Well, you see, while E K was in the bedroom getting even prettier than she already was, (and still is, of course), I was also doing something about my own appearance. In particular, my hair… Y’all who have seen me these days know that I pretty much have a wash and wear, stick it in a ponytail and go, kind of “do”… But, back then, as you can see in the picture, I had 80’s hair. Not “hair band” hair, but just regular old 80’s hair. For you youngsters who don’t remember the 80’s, what that means is, feathered bangs, a love affair with a blow dryer, and a lot of hair product, namely mousse.

So, there I was, standing in the bathroom in front of the mirror. I was already dressed, sans jacket just yet, and was putting the finishing touches on my “do”. Like I said earlier, we were at about T-minus 60 and counting, so things were starting to roll and I wanted to be prepared so that I didn’t screw up any more than I already had… (remember the hangover, not having a suit, etc… Need I say more?) Well, Scott, the 6 foot 6 inch tall cop, best man, yadda yadda, and his wife had not yet arrived, therefore I had not been able to hand over Kat’s ring to him for safekeeping. So, in my desire to not forget to do something as important as that, I was keeping her ring on my own finger… Now, obviously she has petite little hands, so I had it jammed onto my right pinky finger. It was on there pretty good too. In fact, my biggest worry was actually how much skin I was going to lose when I peeled it off to give to Scott prior to the ceremony proper.

Now… Have you ever had anything happen to you in slow motion? You know, some event befalls you and it is as if time has dilated for you, and only for you… You feel disembodied, like you are watching everything from above as no more than an observer. It drags on before your eyes, flowing languidly along, unfolding like a horror that you can do nothing about, until it reaches its final, sometimes near devastating conclusion, and then suddenly life speeds up once again? Yeah, just like Hollywood special effects, but it’s for real…

Well, that’s exactly what happened to me.

I pulled the brush through my hair, then flipped it back forward to make sure the volume of my “do” was just so, and suddenly I was out of body… Watching as…

Swish! Clink! Ping! Clatter! Roll Roll Roll…

In a muffled, slow motion drone I heard myself say, “Oh Crap!”

Clatter! *Plink!* Clatter! *Tink!*  “No No No!” Clank! Rattle Rattle… (eerie silence)…

Time sped back into its normal flow and I returned to my body with an unceremonious plop, only to find that I was now kneeling on the bathroom floor and staring in abject horror at the air conditioning vent. This is right about the time the “Dammit” rolled off my tongue.

The tiny little band that had been wedged so tightly upon my digit had for some unknown reason elected to go on a trip. As I was concentrating on my coif, oblivious to its escape plans, the damn thing had seized the opportunity to eject itself from my finger. Once free it had flown through the air, bounced from the mirror, fallen into the sink, jumped out of the sink, clattered across the top of the vanity, rolled off the edge, plonked off the toilet seat, rolled across the floor, bounced against the wall, jumped up, done a double back flip, followed by a triple Salchow, then executed some other kind of fancy spin, and then did a straight in dive between the slats in the grate that covered the AC vent in the corner, before finally sliding down the duct work and falling silent… All while I groped, grabbed, and stumbled after it. I’m pretty sure I heard the silly round thing laughing at me the entire time too…

On that note, the judges gave the ring a 9.5… I think I got a 2.

This was going to be a problem.

Now remember, I was already nervous, and quite honestly I was still hung over too. So, I have to say I am fairly proud of myself for what I accomplished next. You see, even in my muddled mind angles were now being plotted on imaginary graphs that only I could see, trajectories were being simultaneously calculated, and flight dynamics of gold bands reverse engineered at lightning speed. My brain was ker-chunking like Univac on a mission to save the world. Advanced calculus equations I had labored over when in school suddenly became old hat as I plotted the path of the ring, right down to the millimeter, and within seconds, determined the exact location where it had to have come to rest in the duct work.

With no time to lose I bolted from the bathroom and out to my car… You see, back then I worked as a computer technician, so I was kind of like Paladin. Have tool bag, will travel…

I was keeping this horrible incident to myself, so as yet I had said nothing about what had happened. Fortunately, no one seemed to have heard me cursing  earlier, so everything was good… Or, so I thought. Screwdriver in hand, I raced back into the house, my sights locked on the basement door. However, as with any covert mission, just when you think everything will go without a hitch, the proverbial wrench gets thrown into the works by an insane howler monkey… Well, maybe not an insane howler monkey, but I just really wanted to say that, because I think monkeys are funny. Especially howler monkeys… And rhesus monkeys… And spider monkeys… And… Well, you get the idea…

At any rate, I was three steps from the basement door when I came face to face with my soon-to-be-mother-in-law. My mad dash, combined with my inability to keep the wild-eyed “what the f*ck have I done?!” look off my face had apparently attracted her attention.

“Murv, what’s wrong?” she asked.

I hemmed and hawed for a second. It seems that the clarity I had found during the period of doing advanced mathematical calculations moments before had now fled, leaving me conversationally brain dead. I simply could not think of anything to say other than the horrible truth.

“I dropped Kathy’s ring down the air-conditioning vent,” I mumbled.

At this point, almost-mom-in-law looked at me like I was a complete idiot, and then she said with an unmistakeably admonishing screech in her voice, “Oh, Murv!”

And, yes… For the record, that was when I discovered exactly where E K learned, “the look.” You know, the one that makes you feel about 3 inches tall…

I also believe, with all my heart, that this was probably a defining moment which set the tone for my relationship with my mother-in-law all these years. I say that because I’ve heard “Oh, Murv!” several times since that day… But I digress… (Oh, and another for the record note… I really do love my mother-in-law. She’s a wonderful lady. How could she not be? She’s E Kay’s mom.)

Back to the crisis…

Kat, still in the process of getting hairdoed, make-upped, perfumed, and dressed to the nines, hears her mother with the keen acoustic acuity only an offspring, grown or otherwise, can possibly have, and instantly pokes her head out of the bedroom door and asks with alarm, “What’s wrong?”

At this point, whichever vacuum tube in my head hadn’t yet warmed up, suddenly came on line. Flashes of the “one eyed E K stare at the front door,” the “Okay, come with me,” huff, and each and every of my bride’s reactions to all of the other stupid acts I had committed in the past year now flashed through my brain. I knew I couldn’t stop my mother-in-law from selling me out, but I could make it a moot point if I lied through my teeth and turned a screwdriver really, really fast…  So I did the only thing I could do…

I looked at her and said, “Nothing honey. Don’t worry…” Then made a bee-line for the basement like my life depended on it…

Knowing E K, it probably did…

And, just so you know, I had another worry rattling around inside my skull. You see, I didn’t exactly ace my math courses when I was in school…

More to come…

Murv

… NEXT: Mahwage: Fool For Your Stockings…