She Opens Her Mouth but You Can't Hear a Sound

I'm fucking falling apart.

It's because I had to get a job. I HAD a job. I HAD two jobs, cleaning up after Nick and Mike and writing. Make that three jobs. I also volunteered, for the school and for Mike's Boy Scout troop.

But we needed money. We needed money so that my son could argue about going to karate and find endless ways of getting out of going even after he insisted that he wanted to go so I paid yet another mortgage payment toward endless nagging. We needed money so that my son could join the gym and only go to it twice in a year and a half because I relied on Mike to do the nagging. I'd like to inform you that Mike failed Nagging 101. We needed money so that my son could sign up for the college credit in his German class and proceed to get a grade that was less than one half of a percentage point below, below, what was required to receive the credit.

Can you tell I'm having a bad day? Can you?

If you lived here, you'd be able to tell what kind of a day I was having by the condition of the strainer in the kitchen sink.

I usually pop that shit off the tiny screen four or five times a day into the garbage can. It's easier than being anal about what goes into the drain.

Today, it looks like someone vomited into my sink.

I repeatedly ask Mike and Nick-a.k.a, nag- to rinse their dishes so stuff isn't gorilla-glued to the plates and bowls or growing pretty pink and blue mold by the time I do my load of dirty dishes in the dishwasher at bedtime. Sometimes, they actually do it. More often than not, they stack the dishes together so that uneaten tortellini are smashed between plates and vegetables are hidden in the bottom bowl so I don't nag about eating what you serve yourself and not ruining the fucking environment by throwing out food grown in Chile, packaged in plastic, transported to Washington state, and brought home to our refrigerator.

One day, when Nick was feeling particularly entitled, he asked me why my generation "had ruined the world for his generation."

Before I knew the answer, my eyes bloated.

Did you ever feel that? Someone says something particularly obnoxious, making you personally responsible for the ruination of the entire planet, and before words reach your lips, before you even digested the nuances of his meaning, before anything, you can feel blood rush to your eyeballs and they do that little pop thing where you see a shaft of light for a second and you know some valve is going to blow if you don't open your fucking mouth.

And then you open your mouth and pabulum spills out.

"Well, I, well, I, ... well I recycle."

Then, after that someone goes back into his room with his pile of food that you just prepared for him, you begin to think of all the things you did to try to save this fucking planet.

Isn't it you who runs around the house in the morning turning off lights after you've yelled, "Turn off the lights when you leave the room," at least four times.

Isn't it you who tries to stretch every bit of food into meals and lunches so that you don't have to throw out that chicken from-when the hell did you cook that chicken? Last Wednesday?-whenever, and you end up wondering all day if Nick spent Chemistry class puking stomach acids all over his experiment because that shit had already turned?

Wasn't it you who leaped to your feet, incredulous, in a lecture hall at Bell Labs in 1988 when you'd just started contracting there and told the senior management making the presentation that planned obsolescence was a ridiculous idea, that no, customers did not feel the need to buy a new fucking phone every two years to match the decor when they redid the colors in their bedrooms and you didn't care of everyone else was doing it, it was still a fucking bad idea?

No, you didn't use the word 'fucking' but yeah, you were grateful to even have a contracting job after that lecture ended.

Wasn't it you who, and your husband, who bought a Prius before they'd proved they could go the speed limit on the highway and endured all the questions about your slow and dorky car before everybody else bought one?

Wasn't it you who has kept that Prius even though it's scraped on three sides, even though your husband redesigned the bumper last New Year's Eve, even though the dog chewed up half of the floor mat on the rear passenger side, and even though fur is still embedded in the upholstery right after you vacuum it? Isn't it you that still has that Prius even though your husband has had four or five other cars-you've lost count-and your son gets a newer car than you because he refuses to drive such a dorky car that 'only old women drive' and even though it's growing moss and maple seedlings in the cracks and crevices?

Wasn't it you who dragged his ten-year-old butt to pick vegetables at the local CSA farm for two or three years before you realized you were the only one in the house that even attempted to eat all those vegetables and you threw too much of it away every week?

Wasn't it you who insisted that paper towels were 'special' and for all but the dirtiest jobs, the family could use hand towels instead? Didn't you nag until everyone did it?

Wasn't it you who nagged everyone to keep at least a few grocery bags in their cars so that no one had to come home with new plastic even though you were the only one who ever shopped anyway?

Wasn't it fucking you?

But the boy was in his room with the TV on and didn't hear a word you just yelled. If a mom nags in her kitchen and no one is

Thank you for listening, jules