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Mrs. El Estero Car Wash is driving me quite mad with her incessant micromanaging.
For one thing, she has a serious hard-on for wacky fonts.
"Can't you do the auction items with different letter styles?" she suggests. "You know! The champagne party on the yacht! Couldn't you do like a font with bubbles? And the seven-day stay at the Villa Ayres in France! Can't you research what font they used for the cover of A Year In Provence and use that one?"
It is hard to explain good taste to someone through gritted teeth. So I don't even try. I just ignore her, further solidifying my reputation as someone who does not Work and Play Well With Others.
I am seriously regretting the civic-minded impulse that led me to volunteer umpteen billion hours to the International School's Gala and Live Auction.
ISM, a charter school, spends $1800 a year more per child than what the state of California provides in its much-disputed educational budget. I suppose that money has to come from somewhere.
Personally, I'd prefer a tri-state crime spree. Dress those mothers up in velour jogging suits and ski masks. Hit every Seven Eleven and gas station on the California/Nevada border.
I just completed a 19-minute movie (animated Flash in PowerPoint) on the live auction items to loop during the cocktail party part of tomorrow's event. I felt a little like Richard Dreyfuss in The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (a brilliant and highly under-rated movie), the part when he makes his wedding video. I kept wanting to slip social commentary into the PowerPoint – a graph demonstrating the economic contributions of illegal Mexican aliens to El Estero Car Wash's bottom line; a summary slide reviewing the history of failed weapons systems coming out of the Naval Post-Graduate School, their staggering cost to the tax-paying electorate.
But that would be wrong.
One of the consequences of having been raised by wolves, I suppose.
I have this altogether delusional sense of what normal mothers do, which means I can't set limits. I take way too much on. My own mother was completely useless as a parent so my only role models are June Cleaver and the senior Mrs. Norman Bates (if only she'd neglected motel management, turned those homicidal energies to iron-fisting the PTA at Norman's middle school.)
Ah, well. It's over tomorrow night. And I've put in so many volunteer hours that I've satisfied the monthly quota through Robin's graduation from high school. I never have to lift another finger for ISM.
And trust me, I won't.
In other news, the store – quite surprisingly – had a brilliant last weekend. No idea why. The website is getting 1500 page views a day. Many of them are from German ISP's, linking to a jpeg of a hot sauce called Anal Angst. How do you monetize that?
Also I got a disturbing letter from Max. Max's letters always come in envelopes addressed "Mom" with my street address below. I'm always very touched by that. It's like he doesn't know I'm a person with a name. I'm his mother.
"I grow weary," his letter began. And rattled on and on about the sameness. Deep Springs has been snowed in for months now; I suppose they've all got cabin fever. Plus he had a very active sex life last year and presumably – unless his preferences have changed – has none now. Deep Springs is an all guy school.
He's coming back for a break in April. I'm a bit perplexed about what he's going to do. I mean, Monterey is dead, dead, dead and all his friends will still be away at school.
And finally – Robin has been taking a sex ed class at school. When I picked him up yesterday, he was rubbing his hands together gleefully.
"So, Mom," he said. "Today we learned about bestiality!"
"Uh. Well, that's nice, dear."
Bestiality?
"So, like, is it true that in India, they do it with elephants?"
"Miss Livingston told you that?"
"No, no, Maille told me. She said she found pictures. On the Internet."
I wonder if I should call Maille's mother up. Suggest she install Net Nanny or something.
I also wonder about the appropriateness of teaching sixth graders about the sexual peculiarities of .0000000002 % of the humans on this planet. I mean, I'm cool with discussions of vaginas and penises and whether you pee out the same place you ejaculate. But bestiality? Not appropriate. Not appropriate at all.
For one thing, she has a serious hard-on for wacky fonts.
"Can't you do the auction items with different letter styles?" she suggests. "You know! The champagne party on the yacht! Couldn't you do like a font with bubbles? And the seven-day stay at the Villa Ayres in France! Can't you research what font they used for the cover of A Year In Provence and use that one?"
It is hard to explain good taste to someone through gritted teeth. So I don't even try. I just ignore her, further solidifying my reputation as someone who does not Work and Play Well With Others.
I am seriously regretting the civic-minded impulse that led me to volunteer umpteen billion hours to the International School's Gala and Live Auction.
ISM, a charter school, spends $1800 a year more per child than what the state of California provides in its much-disputed educational budget. I suppose that money has to come from somewhere.
Personally, I'd prefer a tri-state crime spree. Dress those mothers up in velour jogging suits and ski masks. Hit every Seven Eleven and gas station on the California/Nevada border.
I just completed a 19-minute movie (animated Flash in PowerPoint) on the live auction items to loop during the cocktail party part of tomorrow's event. I felt a little like Richard Dreyfuss in The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (a brilliant and highly under-rated movie), the part when he makes his wedding video. I kept wanting to slip social commentary into the PowerPoint – a graph demonstrating the economic contributions of illegal Mexican aliens to El Estero Car Wash's bottom line; a summary slide reviewing the history of failed weapons systems coming out of the Naval Post-Graduate School, their staggering cost to the tax-paying electorate.
But that would be wrong.
One of the consequences of having been raised by wolves, I suppose.
I have this altogether delusional sense of what normal mothers do, which means I can't set limits. I take way too much on. My own mother was completely useless as a parent so my only role models are June Cleaver and the senior Mrs. Norman Bates (if only she'd neglected motel management, turned those homicidal energies to iron-fisting the PTA at Norman's middle school.)
Ah, well. It's over tomorrow night. And I've put in so many volunteer hours that I've satisfied the monthly quota through Robin's graduation from high school. I never have to lift another finger for ISM.
And trust me, I won't.
In other news, the store – quite surprisingly – had a brilliant last weekend. No idea why. The website is getting 1500 page views a day. Many of them are from German ISP's, linking to a jpeg of a hot sauce called Anal Angst. How do you monetize that?
Also I got a disturbing letter from Max. Max's letters always come in envelopes addressed "Mom" with my street address below. I'm always very touched by that. It's like he doesn't know I'm a person with a name. I'm his mother.
"I grow weary," his letter began. And rattled on and on about the sameness. Deep Springs has been snowed in for months now; I suppose they've all got cabin fever. Plus he had a very active sex life last year and presumably – unless his preferences have changed – has none now. Deep Springs is an all guy school.
He's coming back for a break in April. I'm a bit perplexed about what he's going to do. I mean, Monterey is dead, dead, dead and all his friends will still be away at school.
And finally – Robin has been taking a sex ed class at school. When I picked him up yesterday, he was rubbing his hands together gleefully.
"So, Mom," he said. "Today we learned about bestiality!"
"Uh. Well, that's nice, dear."
Bestiality?
"So, like, is it true that in India, they do it with elephants?"
"Miss Livingston told you that?"
"No, no, Maille told me. She said she found pictures. On the Internet."
I wonder if I should call Maille's mother up. Suggest she install Net Nanny or something.
I also wonder about the appropriateness of teaching sixth graders about the sexual peculiarities of .0000000002 % of the humans on this planet. I mean, I'm cool with discussions of vaginas and penises and whether you pee out the same place you ejaculate. But bestiality? Not appropriate. Not appropriate at all.
