Whine, Wine, Paint, and Tulips

I'm going to one of those wine and paint parties with my friend, Penny. Penny's the one I told you about who was on hold waiting to straighten out an overage on a bill and decided to make breakfast while she waited. Then she got sidetracked by her dog who, like a lot of us, she talks to as if it were a person. When she realized she'd just left the billing people a voice mail saying, in a sultry voice, "Does Mama smell like bacon? Y  E  S, MAma smells like BAcon," she hung up and paid the bigger bill.

Graphic by Teece Aronin

More recently, Penny fell asleep with her phone open to Amazon.com. Three days later, a corn hole game arrived, a large, expensive corn hole game. Penny's two boys were thrilled that their mother had bought them such a cool gift when it wasn't either of their birthdays, so Penny didn't have the heart to return it. 

The latest on Penny and her amazing shopping phone is that she fell asleep cruising Groupon and rolled over on her phone enough times to buy "multiple" (she won't specify the exact number) "multiple" Groupon packages for a "wine and paint night with friends." 

If you're unfamiliar with the concept, these are evenings spent making your own painting based on an existing work by a "real" artist. You do this with other people, usually in bars or sometimes, shockingly, at art studios. And you do it while drinking.  

Penny called me yesterday after we'd just seen each other at our neighbor, LouAnn's salad-in-a-jar event, and we tried to figure out which of the paint nights she bought worked for both our schedules. But here's the thing: It's not just finding a night that works, it's finding a night where you like the painting you'll be copying. None of the dates that almost, sort of, kind of worked for both of us would leave us with paintings either of us would want to hang once we got home. Then Penny said they did have a really cute painting of tulips.

"Oh, I love tulips," I sighed.

"Yeah, me too, but it's scheduled for a night after all my Groupons expire. I'll find out who to call, and maybe they'll let us switch."

So Penny and I are hoping they'll let us come in, drink, and paint but only if it's tulips. This has me wondering what kind of paintings people come up with when they've been drinking. Never have I seen a posting on Facebook from someone raving, "Check out the painting I did at last night's wine and paint night! And get this: A gallery wants to show more of my work! Heather Witherspeer, we are definitely doing this again!"

I'm thinking I'll order a white wine so that if I'm tipsy and accidentally rinse my paintbrush in it, I'll know right away. 

Memory Like an Elephant

Some of us are prone to losing things. In my case, the things tend to be my phone, my keys, my car, my credit card. I don't know if what they say about elephants having great memories is true, but if it is, I want a memory like an elephant. 

Elephant on Stripes, copyright, Teece Aronin

I once wrote an entire blog post about losing my keys. My favorite part of writing that essay was recounting what actually came out of my mouth one of those times I was searching for them. I was going out for the evening with my old boyfriend, Prickly Pete when I realized my keys were missing. Frantically I dispatched the kids, whose complete buy-in to the cause was gained by shutting off the TV. As I opened and shut drawers, cupboards, closets and jewelry boxes, Prickly stood there, perplexed.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “Why don’t you just keep them in your purse?”

“What, are you nuts?” I hissed, “Then I’d never be able to find them!”

You know you’re getting desperate for material when you start quoting your own blog posts, especially the ones that make you look like a ridiculous screw-up.  

But I make a good point (twice): Losing things, even things that should be perfectly easy to track, happens; it happens to all of us - especially when we’re distracted or under stress.

There aren’t many stressors worse than divorce, and years ago, while in the middle of one, I lost a cell phone inside my car. It would ring out from some dark, unreachable, invisible recess, and not even my kids, elfin enough to be jammed between the seats, could see it, much less recover it.

Then there are the things you’d think are too big to misplace, for instance, the car you lose your cell phone in.

One day, gal-pal, Tina and I went shopping. Carrying our bags to the car, we realized that we had no idea where we’d parked because we weren't paying attention. As we made our way up and down aisle after aisle, row after row, I noticed we were being followed by a car. Every time we turned up another row of cars, he followed us. If we slowed down, he slowed down. When I stopped to tie my shoe, he stopped too. 

“Don’t look now,” I muttered from the side of my mouth, “but I think that car is following us.”

“You’re kidding!” Tina gasped.

“No, I’m not kidding. Just play it cool and don’t get close to it.”

The car pulled up even closer, and the passenger side window went down. Tina and I froze. A middle-aged man leaned toward us, and we held our breath.

“Excuse me, ladies. I was hoping to get your parking space, but you have no idea where your car is, do you?”

“No, sorry,” we confessed, and he drove away. The smart thing for him to do would have been to drive us around the parking lot until we found my car, and then take the space. Men just don't think sometimes. 

The other day, I lost a credit card – in the middle of the Lansing Convention Center. I was there for a conference with my boss and some coworkers. At the end of the day, hundreds of attendees were reconvened in the main ballroom. One of the event organizers stood at the podium, his image simulcast onto two huge screens on either side of the room.

“We have a lost credit card,” he announced. “Is there a Patricia Aronin in the room?”

“Oh, my word!” I yelped, jumping to my feet. “That’s me!” 

I started toward the front of the auditorium and several people shouted, “No! Behind you!” I turned around to see a woman walking toward me, reaching out to hand me back my card.

I sat down in the nearest empty seat, and heard a soft ping inside my purse. It was a text from my boss:

“Really?!?”

“I'm glad that tattoo artist was honest,” I texted back.

“Must notoriety follow you all of your days?” he asked.

Oh, I hope so.

Mercurochrome and the Mothers of Spring

All hail the Mothers of Spring! They were that fast, fierce, elite team of first responders always on the scene whenever their baby boomer kids bashed themselves up. The Mothers of Spring weren't real in the sense that they were a formally organized group - I made that up - but they were very real in every other way, especially to any child who ever cried out for hers or his while sorely in need of something akin to an Army medic.

Graphic by Teece Aronin

The Mothers of Spring are so named for the super-human ability to spring into action at a moment's notice, and also because, where I'm from, they were at their best during the spring season. You see, in my neck of the woods, the United States Midwest, Mothers of Spring shone brightest on those glorious days of April when it was warm in the sun and chilly in the shade. These are the days when children get so carried away by the beauty of it all, and too dazzled by the light, to look where they're going, and collide with something hard, like a section of buckled sidewalk. The Mothers of Spring deftly bandaged up their wounded warriors, first applying enough antiseptic to sterilize Lenny Bruce's toothbrush. And yes, Bruce did kiss his mother with that mouth.

Down through the annals of time the Mothers of Spring dabbed every boo-boo deemed in their mighty judgment as appropriate for it, with Mercurochrome.

Mercurochrome was a reddish-orange colored tincture that, once dried, became the reddish-orange skin stains kids of my generation wore as badges of honor. The cooler or more scrappy the kid, the more Mercurochrome stains he or she sported, or, conversely, the klutzier the kid was perceived as being. Baby boomers know what I'm talking about. 

In 1998, the Federal Drug Administration challenged the authority of the "Mothers of Spring, Mercurochrome Division" when it found that Mercurochrome was "not generally recognized as safe and effective. Mercurochrome wasn't flat-out banned, but it did get a lot harder to find. The comely flower-wreathed heads of the Mothers of Spring, especially those who were traditionalists or baby boomers, snapped up as one at this news, and many of the mommies yelled, "What the h€##?"

It turns out that Mercurochrome didn't get that first syllable, "merc," from nowhere. It got it because Mercurochrome contains mercury, an ingredient no self-respecting fish would be  caught dead with. While Mercurochrome didn't seem particularly hazardous when used as directed, it probably wasn't doing kids a whole lot of good. 

In an episode of I Hate Chris, the sitcom based on the childhood recollections of comedian Chris Rock, someone yells, "Chris got hit by a car!" and Chris' mother shouts, "I'll get the Robitussin!"

Robitussin is another must-have in the medicine cabinet of every good Mother of Spring.