“The uterus is not a homing device,” Rosanne Barr screeched. I was channel surfing and happened upon her eponymous sitcom just as she uttered that line. I had never heard the saying before. It turns out that it is an old feminist slogan that is considered overused.
I laughed out loud. I did. I sat back and enjoyed the rest of the show.
I’m not much of a television watcher, but that one line hooked me. Barr was blazingly funny and insightful until she wasn’t. I was a faithful viewer until she, and the show, went off the rails.
Neither my now-ex-husband nor my son can find their own asses with two hands and a flashlight. I was the designated Finder of Lost Things. By the time I heard Rosanne say, “The uterus is not a homing device,” I was weary of always and forever spending my free time trying to find their lost stuff.
Something snapped, and one time, I quietly responded, “I don’t know where your jockstrap is. I put it away the last time I used it.” And that was my standard response unless the missing item was something important to me.
I’ve taken my typewriter to the hospital with me for kidney infections. I have taken it on camping trips, and the sand has gotten in the keys. It is just like the most fierce habit you can imagine. It is there, and it stares at you like a conscience.
Erma Bombeck
And I take my computer but unlike a typewriter, it needs a power source. So, not camping. But then I haven’t been camping. I haven’t been anywhere the computer can’t go. In fact, I have a computer dedicated solely to travel. If if gets lost, stolen, or damaged, it.’s no big deal. It’s old and it’s cantankerous but this is, as Bombeck says, a fierce habit. You do what you have to do.
I write daily. Sometimes several times daily.
On the rare days when I must miss my 7 am writing group, I am at loose ends and discombobulated. I am not myself and there’s nothing for it, but to write.
I am not writing important treatises or compelling prose. No heart rending poetry. I am just babbling in my own little way. Bombeck turned her unique writing into a multimillion dollar enterprise.
I have no illusions. I am no Erma Bombeck, but she is my heroine and I use the feminine because she started her career when women were housewives.. She wrote about her little Dayton Ohio life and family and made a career of it0. I can, at the very least, make a habit of it. And I have.
I average 800 word a day. Stephen King does 2000. I am no Stephen King. Plus I have a full time job that is not writing.
It is the most fierce habit. I am in a really bad place when I can’t or don’t write.
I write essays, I write slice-of-life, anecdotes, snippets of short stories, character descriptions, rants, prayers. Promises.
I write a little bit of everything and while I am not successful, I am happy.
I will continue to carry my travel computer around.
Nothing in my world is certain but “this too shall pass” which is my stock answer to everyone and anyone who asks for advice. Good or not, whatever is going on will be interrupted by change.
Sometimes I let my guard down, thinking I’ve reached a state of stasis where the pattern of my life is on a path that has been steady (sometimes unrelentingly so) and I think, This is it. This is what my last twenty years are going to look like” and then the Universe laughs at me and drops a boulder on what I thought would be a steady path.
John Lennon said, “Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.”
Well, this time the Universe dropped a boulder ON me and I’ve been trying to carry the damn thing down the path. Finally, I realized:
Put the damn boulder down. There there. See how nice that feels. Walk around the damn things or crawl over them, but they’re not to be carried. And while you’re at it, clean out that backpack. You don’t need all that shit. And get some sturdy hiking boots while you’re at it. You are not a forest nymph – bare feet for these, the last 20 good years, are going to require support and thick soles.
I think they call realizations of this magnitude epiphanies.
I know this too shall pass, but what I thought was an impasse is simply a wake-up call. All my life, I’ve had to switch paths. I have no idea why I clung to this one. It wasn’t headed anywhere particularly interesting.
So, I’m heading into the forest where there are lions and tigers and bears, oh my. I hope to find the Emerald City. I could use a spa day.
The other ones would make fun if they could see me. My top rim is crimped and stained with lipstick. The bottom is dented and misshapen from trips through the Keurig which is just a tad too small.
I was intended to be a single use with retirement then imminent. This chick has poured at least ten cups of coffee into me. I feel so used. And dirty.
But yet.
I should be in a landfill somewhere making conversation with pods, coffee filters, and wadded-up paper towels – all of my single-use kindred – but here I am with some sort of demented environmentalist who assuages her guilt at using me, by using and using and using me. She’s a demon.
She says she likes the way I fit into her hand. Hell’s bells. I’m just a 20 oz foam coffee cup. Made for take-out and advertising – Waffle House in cheerful black letters on yellow squares. The slogan is “America’s Place to Work” – when did I become a help wanted ad? I’m not suited for such. Who digs through the trash looking for tips on places to work? Is that the sort of person they want?
I hope not. I liked Theresa and Tony. I watched them from my place in the tower of cups next to the Bunn coffee machine. They were fun. Easy banter back and forth. Theresa giggled a lot. Tony looked at her at every opportunity. I wondered if they were having a thing. I knew my time was getting closer as my vantage point got closer and closer to being at the top of the tower of cups.
And then I was next. I could feel the breeze from the air vent on my nether region.
I heard her say, “Oh, and a large coffee to go, please.” With that I was pried off of my neighbor and filled with the steaming hot substance that keeps them going. A lid smartly slapped on. She carried me to the car and then she carried me into her home.
I was sipped until emptied and expected to find myself in a waste can, but no. Next thing I know, I’m being mashed into a too short Keurig and am filled with more coffee. It hurts my rim when she does that. Not to mention my bottom. She may be saving me from the landfill, but must she torture me in the process?
From my point of view, the landfill is not so bad once you get there. The journey through waste receptacles, garbage trucks and that frightening dump from high in the sky is traumatic, but no more traumatic than your average human death.
Time in the landfill, the recycled ones say, is sort of like retirement. You just sit around shooting the shit and playing silly games. Not so bad.
Not so bad here, either. I’ve got a new group of friends here on her desk. The stapler, I’ve never met one you know. As long as he keeps his sharp points to himself, we’ll be friends. The tape. The pen. I understand that at some coffee shops the waitress writes names on the cups. I think I would like to have a name and not just be part of a lot number. The pen and I are brainstorming on how to make that so.
She often names some of her belongings. I daydream that I’m special enough for a name, but refills go by and nothing. I am trying to be content with my lot in life wondering how many more times she will use me. She’s an addict. I wonder who she will replace me with. Will they have a name. Mortimer, maybe? I could be a Mortimer.
W. Va. Fur and Root 