Still Playing Dress Up (this time as a Mom)

This one’s for my dear friend, Red.  We’ve raised so much together, pal – a little hell here and there, a few glasses, children and from time to time, each other.  I wish you luck and laughter in the throes of labor and delivery.  I know the possibility of having a little girl makes you nervous…and probably with good reason given some of our own history.

Like the Allende meteorite, my daughter’s birthday streaks through the holidays – a blazing fireball with all the potential of cratering just four days after Christmas.  Santa, generous grandparents, bighearted aunts and an uncle set a sky-scraping bar for the mom-come-party-planner in me.  Before I can clear away the scraps of ripped up red and green wrappings and strewn streamers of ribbon, December 29^th is knocking impatiently at the front door and threatening to ring my bell, too.  Kids are crashing from candy cane highs, and parents palpitate anxiously as they stare down the barrel of another week without school.  Add to this balance hang, Little Syd’s swiftly shifting opinions and expectations regarding how she should be celebrated, and I usually find myself in a modern day fairytale, trying to summon some she-roics and bibbidi-bobbidi-boo birthday magic.

This year, to mark her majesty’s milestone of four years, I called girlfriends of all ages from across the land for costuming, cupcakes and karaoke – a tulle and tunes twist to the tired-but-tried-and-true princess theme.  Given the complicated calendaring and overwhelming obligations of the season, I had to practically stalk would-be guests to gather enough support to officially declare this event more than a glorified playdate.  Finally after a few days of determined phoning, texting and emailing, I confirmed a party of five, and turned my attention to the feast, flair and fanfare for the fete, wishing all along for a wand and some pixie dust.

First, I planned a light lunch for the lasses:  warmed ham biscuits with a poppy seed and mustard butter (or just plain mayonnaise for the less adventurous), fresh fruit and sparkling lemonade.  Wanting an elegant flourish, I climbed on the counter to retrieve a stack of hand painted porcelain dessert plates which had collected a good bit of dust in their decade of neglect.  I grew nostalgic for my grandmother, remembering our tea parties and how she served chicken salad sandwiches and Charles Chips to me on her own gold leafed bone china.  I loved how she trusted and treated me like a lady – every day, not just on special occasions – even when I was little.  Per usual I hadn’t left enough time to go waltzing wistfully through the wilderness of my memories, so I jumped down with plates in hand, nearly breaking every last one of them when I landed (read: not very ladylike, neither dainty nor demure, really shouldn’t be trusted with heirlooms at any age, etc.).    

Snapping back to reality (or at least my version of it), I hurriedly bedazzled the dining room table with crystal, white candles, crisp linens and lilies (admitted layovers from holiday hostessing).  I stepped back to take in the tablescape and half-expected the teacups to turn a tango with the candelabra.  However, I bumped into Little Syd who, with hands on her hips, immediately tut-tutted and tsk-tsked and threw wrinkles into this regal plan unfolding – reminding me with the subtlety of a hammer that it was her birthday, not mine.  She pretty-please asked me for some princess-y paper plates and pink plastic forks instead.  A few flashbacks of spilled juice, broken glass and water rings in the wood later, I fully surrendered form(al) to function.  I also realized that I seem to expect messiness and chaos (and get it) whereas my grandmother expected decorum and grace (and got it).  Again, with this little birthday bash closing in on me, I couldn’t pursue my thoughts about self-fulfilling prophecies and today’s little princesses, but I filed this in the Be A Better Parent manila folder in my mind.

With menu and table set, I shifted gears to the party’s activity, secretly wishing for the simplicity of pin the tail on the donkey or the ease of Chuck E. Cheese’s.  Instead, I dragged down a basket brimming with glitz and shine – some gowns gifted, some handed down – all of scratchy, shimmery, sequined and synthetic fabrics complete with worn velcro and shot elastic.  I itched and hitched just looking at the gobs of glam.  Next I plugged in the karaoke machine and tested the microphone (maybe I even donned Syd’s pink boa and gave my Gloria Gaynor a go…and perhaps a little Dusty Springfield, while no one was looking or listening, of course).  After Windex-ing my daughter’s new full-length mirror, I crossed “Entertainment” off the mental party list running in my brain. 

This left cupcakes (and very little time before I was to turn into the proverbial pumpkin).  Earlier, while I was checking out at Target with a handful of paper products and plasticware in every shade of rose, blush and bashful, I spied miniature Disney purchase-me-NOW princesses dangling at child’s eye level in the impulse buy section.  But it was I, not my daughter, who grabbed two Cinderellas, left my cart to hold my place, and bounced like some Girl, Interrupted from one line to the next looking for enough dolls for each guest.  With fists full of four Cinderellas, one Aurora, and one Ariel, I rushed home to begin the Cupcake Wars in my kitchen, a battle between me and my imagination. 

I raided the cupboard and cabinets for sugary embellishments and food coloring, and I stripped the helpless heroines of their teeny-tiny rubber dresses.  I jammed a Cinderella into an upside down cupcake that I hoped to transform into a gown fit for a ball, but alas, the doll was a touch too tall.  If this really were the Food Network’s take on a bakeoff, the camera would zoom in on me pressing palm to brow, bleep a flood of obscenities, pan to the ticking-tocking time bomb of a clock, and a voice might say, “We really hate to see this happen to someone who has worked so hard.  I am not sure even a fairy godmother could turn this around.” 

Sweating and seemingly circling back to the I Will Survive theme of previous famed sound-checking, I sheared down a mini-cake on the fly and fastened it to the regular cake with a flick and flounce of frosting.  Thankfully, the four Cinderellas played nice and settled into their spongy yellow tiers.  To match the color of their bustiers, I swirled a few drops of blue into the buttercream and then thickly swept the sweetness over the now double-deckers.  I recruited Sir Jonathan with his giant salmon-catching paws to cast candy pearls onto the skirts (and bit my perfectionist tongue as I watched wide-eyed his Big Bang spray of sprinkles).  The last two princesses called for petal pink frocks and more studded styling, and once iced and detailed, took their places next to the four Cindys. 

I surveyed the scene on the silver tray and laughed at the five pretty and prim royals, and that siren Ariel, who is Little Syd’s favorite.  With a shock of flaming hair and a seashell bikini, my daughter’s celebratory confection looked like a stripper bursting from a birthday cake.  Accidentally perfect…a showgirl for my showgirl.  When Little Syd saw the cupcake queens-to-be, she gasped.  She approved.  She lit up with wild delight.  And in that moment, that split-second, happily ever after seemed within reach.  For both of us.  Right up until the damsels-turned-divas birthday guests started frantically fighting over the lone Aurora.

Not-So-Smooth Operators

I: Order in the House

Nearly three weeks before our move across town, I responsibly rang up Verizon, navigated a series of key and voice prompts, waited some twenty-six minutes and finally found myself speaking with a human, I think.  She asked some of the same questions I had just answered and then in a nasal monotone with traces of low-grade irritation said that she could not make changes unless the accountholder authorized her to do so – the accountholder being my husband of twelve and half years who has not made one of these calls probably in at least as many years.  I calmly replied, “Mrs. Novack, I can have Jonathan dial you up or we can patch him into this call, and I will likely recommend, and he will surely authorize, closing this account and transferring our business to your competitor.  He really has no allegiance to our home provider.  However, if you would be so kind as to check the active email address and the signature on the checks, you will see that for eight plus years, I have made not most, but all decisions with regard to our account.  Please, Mrs. Novack, do you think you or perhaps your supervisor can help me with this transfer of bundled services today?” 

She sighed, snapped and then sucker-punched me with some sarcasm of her own, “Let’s get started, Mrs. Petty.  I can see you are a valued customer.”  She curtly clacked my new information into her database, and I could almost hear her lips curling into a deliciously wicked grin as she delivered the news that FiOS, Verizon’s fiber optic faster-than-cable-even-in-peak-hours solution which I had enjoyed for the last few years, was not available at my new address, and thus, I must return to DSL.  She assured me that my email address and phone number would neither change nor would service be interrupted; the DSL line would be dedicated, thus faster than, say, Comcast cable; and DirecTV was much improved in its consistent satellite delivery, even in stormy weather.  Something about how she painstakingly and precisely piled up these pumped up promises made me uncomfortable.  She must go by Charlotte or Char, short for Charlatan.  However, the continuance of my email address was important to me from a business perspective, so I begrudgingly tolerated the degradation and downgrades and marked January 21^st between the hours of eight and twelve: Day of Execution.  When I set the phone back in its cradle, I mourned the loss of sixty-two minutes.  I would never get them back. 

On January 18^th I rang Verizon to confirm the appointment and again was time-sucked into the labyrinth of the customer service loop.  Alas, the delightfully diligent Mr. DeWitt chimed in after seventeen minutes in the queue and quite chipperly checked off his pledge list: the technician would be in and out quickly for the DirecTV hookup, the phone line would go live seamlessly from a remote location, and the DSL self-install was virtually impossible to botch.  I had that same ill-at-ease Glengarry Glen Ross you-are-so-being-sold-sister feeling, as the words virtually impossible knotted my stomach and tightened my chest.

II: Disorderly Conduct

Around seven in the morning on the twenty-first, after settling the kids at the new kitchen counter with their eggs and English muffins, I checked my BlackBerry messages.  The first and only email that day came under the subject line: Action Required, and the text indicated that my Verizon email account had been disabled.  While this news chafed me given the guarantees of Mrs. Novack and Mr. DeWitt, I had expected and even prepared for a few hitches in the hookups; after all I haven’t heard many Moving is the Best! stories in my time, nor have I experienced any firsthand.  I took a deep breath and went to check the telephone for a dial tone, as the number was to be activated first thing in the morning.  Nothing but dead silence rang in my ears.  Strike one.

Jonathan, with earnest sympathy, wished me luck, and he and the kids headed out into their fully wired and functioning worlds, leaving me alone to slay the looming electronic dragon now threatening our sanctuary.  As we had moved our material lives from one address to another just the day before there was still plenty to unpack, shelve, hang and find a place for – plenty to dos to distract me from these un-doings.  The eight o’clock hour passed, as did nine, ten and eleven.  The tension took hold in my neck and shoulders first, and I found myself rolling my head, inhaling and exhaling deeply and slowly, pacing, meditating, and willing the nagging little sparks of rage away. 

At 11:45 AM, the doorbell rang.  Before the thought Ahhhh, Finally! could crystallize in my head, in slogged a technician with mud on his boots and mad on his tongue.  Visibly frustrated from his previous service call, Raj scowled at and scorned me for choosing DirecTV as a resident in the city – this from the man wearing a DirecTV identification badge.  He cynically questioned why I chose Verizon over Comcast – again, this from the man being paid through a Verizon partnership.   When I pointed out the equipment errors on his work order versus my service agreement (which thankfully I had at least saved on my computer), he slammed down his paperwork and furiously punched numbers into his handheld.  His head shook, no, his whole body quaked, and he was telling, no, yelling at me that he should just walk away, just walk away until the back office could get its act together.   I was almost ready to agree with him, given that he was smoking and spitting out flames, seemingly seconds from going full Vesuvius in the front hall.  He jammed his phone into my palm and demanded in heated, slightly broken-English, “You see if you work this out with my super.  Otherwise, I leave.  I leave now.  I leave right now.”  Strike two.

After a few intense rounds with the supervisor and a transfer to billing and then back to the supervisor, the orders were reconciled, another truck would deliver the correct equipment within the hour, and authorization was given to continue work.  The dish was mounted, unobtrusively and without event, and the now somewhat settled tech returned inside to identify where lines needed to be connected.  He then said he would go into the crawl space to make said connections and asked that I remain in the den to tap the floor where we needed to drill a hole to run the line through – and so began my lesson in coaxial wire fishing.  While I assisted without comment (which is hard for me) to keep the process moving forward, I did wonder why he had not brought someone along, especially since he reminded me no less than four times that this was at least a six-hour job for only one man.  Through the floor vents, I could hear him bristling and cursing beneath the house.  I asked if he could hear me.  A grumbling followed, then a rustling, then silence.  A few minutes later, he was back inside, covered in dust and flecks of insulation and his head hung low.  He said, “Mrs. Petty, you cannot have what you want.  You simply cannot.  There are two ducts that I can’t pass through.  I am, too, how do you say…burly?”  Here we go again.

Against my better judgment, which by the way is probably crumpled in a corner along with the original paperwork for this order, I asked if I could give it a go, if I could fit through the ducts.  His eyes bulged and he began shaking his head so violently I thought it might disengage.  “Mrs. Petty, that is absurd. I cannot authorize you to handle the cable, to go under the house.  I cannot.  I will not.  I most certainly will not.”  I almost laughed at his kind of Seuss-ical response, especially since he also sounded strikingly like Apu, the Indian character on The Simpsons.  But some strange No Retreat, No Surrender/MacGyver impulse kicked in, and I defiantly stormed out of the room, grabbed his flashlight and my cell phone from the counter, and headed outside.  I crawled through the first underground room on my hands and knees and yelled back to Raj to go tap the floor in the den so that I could follow the sound.  When I made the turn into the second underground room, I had to drop to my elbows and G.I. Jane belly-crawl toward the tapping.  Giant camel crickets – the ones that look like jumping spiders – eyed me cautiously from their upside-down perches, and little rushing noises reminded me that snakes and rats and other vermin liked dark and damp places, last I checked.  I thought I was either going to be sick, eaten alive or become the subject of one of those mysterious disappearance shows.  I fully appreciated why Raj had been cursing earlier, as I found myself doing the same.  Eventually, I located the cable, managed to wriggle through the ducts and could hear the wrapping just inches away from me, but I couldn’t get to him because I had run into a cement wall, the end of the crawl space, a real bitch of barrier in the wire-fishing world.  I wiggled down through the ducts and slid and slithered back to daylight.  When I returned covered in dirt and with two dead stink bugs tangled in my hair (seriously), Raj smiled for the first time in four hours, and the only time that day, as far as I could tell.

He called in two senior technicians to develop and execute a new plan of action.  Perhaps he could have done this sooner.  By four o’clock, there was still no television, still no dial tone and still no internet connection.  In a thirty-two minute check-in with Verizon, Miss Thomas guaranteed me that the phone would be up by five o’clock.  In the midst of all of the misfiring and the litany of let-me-downs, my children returned home and shortly thereafter, my friend and her twins stopped by to check our progress.  After drinking a beer with me, swapping some whose-move-was-worse war stories, and witnessing a host of workarounds, one of which included staple-gunning about fifteen feet of black cable around baseboards and a doorway, my friend dryly advised, “Syd, maybe you should let your husband handle the electronics.”  We laughed (and I nearly cried).

Finally, at around seven, Raj wrapped it up and pushed some papers in my face for signatures of satisfaction.  Really?  Before I could scrawl anything in triplicate, I politely asked him to give me a channel and remote control tour, inquired about pay-per-views and digital video recordings, and posed a few other normal conversion questions.  But Raj was done with me.  Totally done with me.  He’d already washed his hands of the day’s debacle; he wanted a cold one somewhere far away from here.  He told me to read the manual.  He told me he didn’t do phones or internet.  He wrote down the number for customer service – even his DirecTV pen was sneering at me.

While High-Def was in da house and those snooping teenagers and their pesky dog were back on the flat screen, fingering old man Withers at the abandoned carnival for attempting to steal Uncle Jack’s fortune, five o’clock had come and gone with no dial tone.  I called Verizon one more time and was greeted by the message, “We’re presently experiencing a high call volume.  You may experience a longer than usual wait.  Thank you for choosing Verizon.”  And thank you, too, Verizon for making me feel all warm and fuzzy about said choice.  When Mrs. Jackson came on the line, she said, “I am sorry, Mrs. Petty.  There is really nothing we can do at this time.  We’ll need to send a technician out, but Monday morning is the soonest someone will be available.  You’ll be down for the weekend.  Someone can be there between eight and noon?”  Strike three.  You’re out, Mrs. Petty.

III: Out of Order (Luck, Patience, etc.)

On Monday morning I wished Jonathan a happy birthday and he again wished me luck with Verizon.  The hours ticked away.  At noon, having heard from no one, I placed yet another call.  When Mrs. Reed told me that it appeared the order had been cleared and closed, I just sank, sank right down to the cold kitchen tiles, tears of near defeat flooding down my cheeks (I think the weight of the actual move must have been bearing down on me…the losses, the lack of continuity, the unknowns…the unsettling as one resettles).  I wanted to scream, Are you fucking kidding me?!, but I didn’t have the strength.   Instead, with voice cracking and through sniffs, I asked how it could be closed if I still had no telephone or internet service.  She was sympathetic or at least pretended to be as she offered to transfer me to another department, but I begged her not to throw me into the abyss of no resolution, as I had been hanging out there for some four days.  I begged her to see this through.  I asked if she thought speaking to a supervisor or notifying the SCC might make a difference, and I learned that namedropping was a necessary evil, for the mere mention of the Commission resurrected Mrs. Reed’s enthusiasm for stellar customer service. 

Within the hour my landline telephone (yes, the landline, hallelujah!) rang, and Jamie said that he was around the corner at the remote box and would be at the house within ten minutes to secure the line.  Five minutes later the doorbell rang.  In walked Jamie, and while he didn’t have a cape, sword or movie star locks, backlit and flowing in the wind, he kicked off enough hero vibe to this downtrodden damsel to give me hope.  What I gathered in about five minutes was that mergers and acquisitions in telecommunications were a bit like arranged marriages, and the brides, not yet broken by their bridegrooms, were still kicking, screaming and clinging to their independence.  There was no love and certainly no communication among the parties – nothing was synchronized.  I was caught in a dot-net/dot-com crossfire of grand-scale irreconcilable differences.  Further, not meaning to salt my wounds but doing so nonetheless, Jamie told me that not only did I have FiOS capacity, but he had run the line last year through the neighborhood before the Verizon layoffs.  Net-net, all of this suffering was for naught, there had been no need to downgrade.  He gave me the business office direct line and his number, and said it would be hard to get out of the contracts, but not impossible, and that really, Verizon should make this right.

I couldn’t quite wrap my head around what I was going to have to do and undo to get what I wanted done and undone.  What I needed was internet service, preferably my old email address, but specifically the ability to electronically connect to the outside world – professionally and personally – from home, incidentally not only the place I live but where I work.  Jamie told me that he had not been trained on the internet side of the business, but I asked him to stay and witness the self-installation process (remember…virtually impossible to botch per Mr. DeWitt).  I connected the Y-cable, turned on the computer and modem in the order described in the Quick Start Guide, clicked the perky Let’s Get Started! icon, and followed the prompts.  A file began downloading and reached about fifty-eight percent, then crashed.  The following message box jeered, “The install files are corrupted.  Please contact customer service.”  I sighed.  I placed my hands beside the computer, so that I wouldn’t throw it.  My fingers were shaking.

Probably sensing a Steel Magnolia-esque meltdown, Jamie dialed someone in the field and handed me his phone.  I had no idea who was on the line with me as Jamie had only referred to the voice as a computer genius.  The genius said, “Please don’t ask questions, just do as I say.  Let’s bypass the bullshit and get you reconnected.”  He then told me to type in an address comprised of numbers, dots and slashes, gave me all sorts of codes and passwords, and within two minutes, the world opened back up, like a National Geographic slow-motion-flower-blossom reel.  The genius said he couldn’t do anything about my email address because that was a database re-pointing issue between FiOS and DSL, and I would have to go through the traditional channel of Tech Support.  I thanked the nameless mastermind and his apprentice, Jamie, instinctively bowing my head in reverence and profound gratitude.

At this point, I had not gone to the butcher, the market, or even left the house. Jonathan’s birthday dinner was slipping into the realm of best laid plans and good intentions.  I called my husband and relayed the status report – Television: check.  Phone line: check.  Internet connection: check.  Email address: negative.  Birthday dinner: negative.  Syd from school: negative.  I think JP was still on a high from a Saturday night dinner with friends (birthday celebration number one) and a small bacon-and-all-things-Petty-inspired surprise party on Sunday (birthday celebration number two) because he pushed his disappointment about birthday celebration number three aside, fetched our second-born, and then shopped for and mostly made his own dinner.  I did make him a dessert, though – shook five cookies out of a bag, arranged them on a plate and lit a candle in the center.  I told him, “Some years you get Italy.  Some years you get Frank Stitt’s Seven-Layer Coconut Cake confection, and this year, my dear, Pepperidge Farm and a votive.  Happy Birthday.”  I couldn’t get through the song without seizing up with laughter, and I cracked up again when I saw my sister-in-law’s mobile upload to Facebook.  I am still laughing now, knowing I will “pay” for this birthday for years.  The point is I am still laughing, several address changes later.

I will spare you the tedious account of the next seven days, including the eight hours I spent on the phone with techies from America to Asia and back, only to find out that keeping my email address – the trigger for all of this madness – was never a real possibility.  But let me shoot straight – take notes Verizon – on what I (re)learned: moving is hard.  You are going lose stuff, stuff like the plastic pitcher for your husband’s iced tea, the vacuum cleaner bags, a Black Crowes poster and maybe even your virtual address.  But it’s stuff and if you don’t just move on, well, you stand to lose even more – your sanity, your perspective, and heaven forbid, your shield of humor.  So keep moving, friends, always forward, with a smile, no matter the bumps, the bugs and the barriers that come before you.  And to think, all this light tipped from a two dollar Target clearance bag of Mint Milanos…