Relax?…Just Do It.

I’d like to start with an apology to my one faithful reader, you know who you are! for my tardy post this week. I spent a lot of time this morning trying to come up with a good excuse, and was even going to make up something really good, but I didn’t know if you would believe that I took too much Ambien and slept for the last several days, or that I was suddenly struck with short-term-memory amnesia as the result of a migraine and kept writing the same sentence over and over again, or that I won the Mega Millions and jetted off to an African Safari and I don’t have wifi on my laptop so I didn’t get to tell you, or that a producer from the Bravo Network read my blogs and decided to make a reality show about me, or that I gouged out my own eyes with a grapefruit spoon so as not to have to see another clip in the saga called Charlie Sheen. But the god’s honest truth is that I’ve been relaxing. Which, it turns out, is an activity that I highly recommend.

It all started on Friday when we finally got news that Bianca was accepted into college. Much revelry and celebration ensued and continued throughout the weekend, while Mav and I refused to consider the painful reality of two college tuitions. At least for now. A feat which, you might imagine, takes significant amounts of alcohol. But we must have had enough because I was feeling so stress-free, that I started to realize how stressed-out I had been….waiting, waiting for the mailman, saying little prayers as I opened the mailbox, having a little heart attack each time I got a text from Bianca, trying desperately to hack into her email so I could circumvent possible bad news from her number one school. But by Monday morning, I was so unstressed I decided to really relax, and skip my 5am workout. And since Bianca has been pretty stressed out too, I decided she should also relax and skip school. Hell, if I hadn’t spent the last ten days stuck home nursing Charles and his swine flu germs, I might have let him skip school again too, but considering he started driving me crazy the minute his 104 fever dropped below 102, I thought it was time for him to re-enter the world outside. So off he went barely getting into the school building on time, the only thing lighting a fire under his butt the possibility that I would have to sign him in, me decked out in my dogs-wearing-reindeer-antlers flannel pajamas and my bedroom glasses. (I’m not exactly sure what “bedroom glasses” are, but in this case I am referring to a pair that are 20 years old, John Lennon style, and only correct my vision about 60%.)

Once back at home, Bianca and I decided that we would go out to breakfast, because we were too relaxed to clean up the mess from the celebration the night before, and too relaxed to cook anything. In fact we were also too relaxed to take showers and really get dressed, so I substituted my flannels for a pair of sweat pants, a kerchief and a dark pair of sunglasses even though it was raining, lest I be recognized, and we headed out.

It only took a minute to realize that I was almost completely out of gas, practically riding on fumes, so we took a detour to the Mobil station, which was good because I remembered that I hadn’t won the lottery last week and with the two college tuitions on my plate it would be a good idea to buy a couple of tickets. Thank goodness we live in a full-service-gas-station state, so the whole process was quick, but long enough for me to notice that there was a new hire at the Mobil. Let’s face it, the staff at a gas station is always pretty interesting. In my experience either extremely ethnic to the point of speaking limited English, or extremely stupid to the point of speaking limited English or finally, my favorite, the guy with the extremely large tongue that contributes to him speaking limited English. But the new hire I noticed on Monday was of a completely different variety. The Munchkin variety, to be exact. And I am not referring to the greasy, yet delicious doughy treats from Dunkin’ Donuts, if you know what I mean.

He looked remarkably like a real, live, leprechaun, believe it or not, so much so that I thought perhaps we were still celebrating St. Patrick’s Day. And I started to realize that every midget, er, “little person,” I have ever come across either has the leprechaun look or the mini-businessman-with-a-big-head look, and collectively all look alike. The women are a little harder to group into categories like that, thank goodness, or I would start to think I was an anti-midgite, which I absolutely am NOT. But honest to god, these guys all have a very similar look to the actors that played the Oompah Loompas in the remake of “Willie Wonka” who looked like decendants of the Oompah Loompas in the original “Willie Wonka” who looked like descendants of the Lollypop Kids in “The Wizard of Oz.” But I guess this is what happens when one starts to relax, you start pondering inane topics like midgets and their lineage. You’re probably saying to yourself, “D. Parker, you must be relaxing all the time because you are always pondering inane topics,” and there might be some truth to that, so I suppose we should all be grateful that I don’t spend as much time relaxing as I’d like.

Case in point: the minute Bianca and I placed our order at our favorite breakfast joint, I got an emergency text on my cell phone from the PTA President. Why such a person was granted the privilege to emergency text me is a whole other story I will save for a later discussion, nonetheless her text was clearly of significance and reeked with the ire of a woman scorned: “WHERE R THE CUPCAKES?” And I said, to quote the famous Ralphie of “The Christmas Story” fame, “Ohhhh, fuuuuudge!” Only I didn’t say fudge.

In my relaxed state I had forgotten about the cupcake sale I had volunteered to run that day. Not only had I forgotten to bake a batch myself, I had forgotten to remind the recruits to bake as well. I knew I was in deep shit and as this woman is scary as the Devil himself, I knew the only thing to do was to pretend all the bakers had dropped off twenty dozen cupcakes at my house and I would be delivering them to the school that afternoon, “in plenty of time for the sale! Not to worry!!” Bianca and I swiftly inhaled our breakfast, ran across to the Foodtown and bought ten boxes of cupcake mix and ten cartons of icing and went home to bake.

I am sure I’ll have another opportunity to relax in five years when Charles gets into college.