by Jen Logan | Jun 21, 2018 | Being Awesome, Life
My daughter was looking through some of my old yearbooks last weekend. As I flipped the pages and looked at pictures of my class, I was a little shocked at how few of my classmates I remembered. I was also shocked that when I saw the picture of one particular girl I was brought right back to being a twelve year old girl and wanting to rip someone’s head off. Not so shockingly, it wasn’t even the girl, it was her mother.
I went to a very small school. There were less than 15 students in my grade and most of us had been in school together since we were very young. One girl that I was good friends with wore glasses the depth of the bottom of a glass soda bottle. Of course when some of the other girls teased her the words “Coke bottle” were often used. These are the words that I heard come out of the mouth of a girl we will call “Judy” that initiated my feelings of ill will toward her mother.
Judy was the kind of girl who defined herself by her looks. Her entire self worth was wrapped up in the emblem on her popped collared shirts and pink headbands. She spent more time in front of a mirror than a book and her school supplies consisted of glosses and powders rather than leads and paper. Looking back, I can’t really blame her for this, it was how she had been conditioned by her mother who was a walking Ralph Lauren advertisement. I think Judy’s mom was pretty, but it was hard to tell what she really looked like under all the mascara and hairspray. Sometimes her insides showed through which is exactly what kept her in the pageant runner up category. She would never be beautiful with all of her insides making an appearance like they did. She was full of gossip and snarky comments. It was no wonder Judy only felt good about herself when she was making others feel badly about themselves.
Judy never picked on me the way she did my friend. I think she knew better than to enter a battle of wits unarmed. Twelve years of smart assery had left me a relative wit warrior. Having an overly healthy self-esteem, her words would have been like paper airplanes attacking me. I threw grenades. And after she called my friend “Coke bottle” that day, I threw a pretty hefty grenade. I don’t recall my exact words but the message was that even the strongest braces were not going to fix her enormous buck teeth. Although I was a skilled verbal swords woman I was also a prepubescent girl so my natural reaction was to go directly for the jugular. She had no comeback for me other than to scream “BITCH!” which was, unfortunately for her, overheard by a nun walking down the hall. We were both taken to the headmistress’s office and our parents were called. I don’t recall any punishment. I do remember that our mothers had a telephone conversation that night.
In that conversation Judy’s bumbleheaded mother informed my mom that Judy was forced to call me a bitch. My mom asked if I had held her down and made her recite the word. I don’t think Judy’s mom understood what “personal responsibility” meant when my mom used the words and she certainly didn’t understand what my mom was getting at when she was trying to find out how I had coerced poor little Judy into swearing at me. Judy’s mom finally let her insides show and said “maybe if you stayed at home with your daughter these things wouldn’t happen…” My mom is a better person than I am. Where I would have said “maybe if you didn’t spend so much time with your daughter she wouldn’t know what a bitch was”, my mom remained calm and continued the conversation until they finally agreed to disagree and hung up. My mom has told me many times that there is no fixing stupid.
I know those words cut my mom. I know she often felt guilty about being a working mom in a land of stay at home moms. I know this because I used that guilt as a weapon on many occasions. Again, I was a prepubescent girl so my natural reaction was to go directly for the jugular – mother or not. Plus, I was kind of a manipulative little asshole. Those words actually provoked me to be a little more like my mom. I was pretty certain that Judy’s mom truly was a bitch and it was probably because she was miserable with her life decisions. I had always thought that my rebelliousness came from my dad, but I realized then that my mom had been bucking the system my whole life.
by Jen Logan | May 11, 2018 | Being Awesome, Life
Practice makes perfect right? There is usually a positive correlation between the number of times you do something and your ability to do it. Driving seems to not follow this rule. Like dancing or listening, it seems to be something you are either good at or not. Practice may help, but if you are one of those bad drivers I see on the road every day, you are never going to be good at it, no matter how many hours you spend behind the wheel. You may become barely competent at best. Taxi drivers are a pretty good example of this theory. They spend more hours behind the wheel than they do on their feet in any given day and they still get as many middle fingers directed at them as Jane Fonda at a Veteran’s Day parade.
I remember taking a driver’s education class before getting my license as a teenager. I took a week long class about two weeks before obtaining my license and I literally drove the instructor’s vehicle for less than ten minutes in that week. I did, however, drive myself to the class daily since it was in the summer, my parents weren’t home and the car I was getting for my upcoming birthday was already parked in our garage. I was a rule breaker from birth, so this didn’t seem like a particularly bad thing to do. In my fifteen year old mind driving without a license was less of a crime than inconveniencing a family member or neighbor by asking them for a ride.
Let’s go!
When the instructor asked me how much experience I had driving I said “a little”. Having no point of reference, it seemed like an acceptable answer. I had been riding a motorcycle since I could hold it up by myself and logged as many hours riding as a long-haul trucker full of adderal. I had also been appointed the designated driver at the age of eight on a trip to Canada with the Indian Princesses. This sounds bad until you know that we pulled into a gas station and a nine year old was behind the wheel of another car. Okay, I guess it still sounds bad. Regardless, I thought everyone had the same amount of experience as I did. I was mistaken.
I spent three of the five days in class sitting in the backseat praying that I didn’t die because the fifteen year old in the front seat couldn’t simultaneously keep her hands at ten and two and her foot on the gas peddle. I quit turning to look out the back window after awhile, fully expecting to get flattened by a semi because little Suzy couldn’t get our car up to the speed limit in the football field length of space she had on the freeway entrance ramp. A sat, silently praying that the gas peddle and steering wheel would receive some kind of divine intervention. Somehow, by the end of the week, everyone was sent on their way to the Secretary of State with a certificate of completion.
Like mother, like daughter!
I was behind a student driver last week that made little Suzy look like a race care driver. She was holding onto the wheel so tightly I could see her knuckles bulging from the side mirror as she attempted to make a right turn. I tried not to laugh as her back tire took the curb on the way around the bend. My amusement turned to concern as I saw a line of vehicles behind her attempting to pass as she drove down the center of two lanes. I think I even saw an old lady with a walker flip her a middle finger as she walked past. This girl was a hazard on the road, barely moving. I felt like I was watching the slow speed police chase led by OJ Simpson.
Unfortunately, I have seen many middle aged people driving the exact same way – people who should have years of driving experience. I watched a fifty year old man drive a mile through my neighborhood with two wheels completely on the curb. I don’t know if it was his first time driving or if he was one of the people who would just never quite get the hang of driving. All I know is I had to slow down to avoid the spray of dust behind him and I watched people walking their dog pull back onto the grass to avoid the cloud coming at them. My seven year old giggled from the back seat asking “what in the world is that guy doing?” Even at her young age she knows when she sees a bad driver and she is not afraid to point them out. She has certainly heard enough backseat driving coming from the front seat!
If there is a good driving gene, I guess my daughter has a 50/50 shot of getting it. Although my husband and I have both spent countless hours behind the wheel, only one of us is really good at it. Just in case it is a skill that will develop with practice, we have put her behind the wheel already. She sits on my husband’s lap and drives around empty parking lots. I’m happy to say she is doing better than at least 60% of the drivers I see on the road. I know driver’s education classes are still a long time away but I am already contemplating where I will hide the car keys. After all, she is my kid.
by Jen Logan | Apr 16, 2018 | Being Awesome, Life
My Mom has a bell that sits on a table in her family room. Last month my daughter was playing with it and my husband started saying “bring me my chair!” My daughter, of course, looked at him like he was crazy and went about her business. After he said this three times, she finally asked what he was talking about. I shared the fifteen year old joke with her.
The year before my husband and I were married my dad was in a pretty bad motorcycle accident. He was halfway across the state on his way to Sturgis on the weekend of my parents’ thirty fourth wedding anniversary when it happened. A teenage girl made a left turn in front of him and hit him head on. He went over the hood of her car after his handlebars broke his pelvis in four places. He was taken to a hospital 150 miles from home. He called me to come pick him up. He said he was fine but his bike was damaged and told me to bring “the big ride”, which was his car, so he could lay down in the backseat on the way home. I would like to say that he was delirious from the pain meds, but he refused to take them, so the idea that he was leaving the hospital that day in his own car was purely his own stubbornness. I realized when we got there why he had called me to come with my mom and why he wanted his car – my poor mom almost fainted when she saw him. The doctor pulled up the x-rays on the screen and they literally had to bring in a gurney for her to lie down. My mom does not do well with trauma or blood. I vividly recall her hitting the floor when I had blood drawn at the age of seven. She was not going to do well taking care of my dad’s wounds as he healed. Which brings us to the bell…
My dad got out of the hospital as quickly as he could after his accident. He spent a week in a room with an elderly man that continually rang the nurse demanding “where’s my pain pill?!” My dad dislikes nothing more than whining, so his patience was tested the entire time he was in that hospital bed. I think ditching his roommate was his biggest motivation for being discharged next to being able to eat ice cream directly out of the carton at midnight. He was brought home in an ambulance and took up residency in a hospital bed in my parents’ family room for the next several months. He was home, but immobile with pins and a halo around the front of his body. My mom gave him the little gold bell to ring when he needed anything.
The little golden bell has been a staple in my parents’ house for as long as I can remember. When I was sick as a child, my mom would get me all tucked in on the couch and put the bell on the table next to me. I was plagued by stomach issues as a child so I am guessing the bell was just as useful for my mom to be able to get ahead of a mess. Unfortunately, I normally rang the bell after I barfed all over the floor. Luckily my dad used the bell more timely than I did as a child.
Loud pipes save lives!
My dad was a really easy patient. He rarely asked for anything while he was recuperating. Mostly what he asked for was for people to stop asking him what he needed. The one thing he did need from us was to bring him his “chair” which was really a commode. When you are laid up in a hospital bed for weeks there is not a lot to do other than eat, read and watch television. Fortunately for my dad, my mom provides comfort on plates and she cooks when she is stressed. Because of this, my dad probably ate more in those few months than he did in the year prior. Unfortunately for me, the more you eat, the more you poop. I spent my afternoons bringing my dad’s chair over to his bed and leaving the room multiple times. After awhile my mom and I started a little battle with each other. She fed him chili the night before I came to sit with him and I brought him tacos for lunch. My poor dad’s digestive system was a pawn in our poop war. He even joined the battle one night when he finally succumbed to taking a pain pill but mistakenly took a stool softener. We all lost that battle – repeatedly.
I don’t know where the bell originated from, but it has always been a part of being sick or injured. Much like a warm blanket and soft pillow, the bell is a source of comfort. It sits on the table unnoticed until the patient’s fever hits 101 and then it is delivered on a little tray with a glass of orange juice. It’s a wonder the bell at my parents’ house still rings after my daughter got her hands on it. She could take some lessons in good patient etiquette from her grandfather.
As most traditions do, this one spread – to my house. The Easter Bunny brought me my own bell in my basket this year. It was quickly claimed by my daughter who has been using it to request breakfast on the couch most mornings. She is not really a traditionalist and has decided that if the bell is good enough for sick days, it is good enough for ALL days. She rings that little sucker when she wants her tray of food brought to her and again when she wants the tray cleared away or when she wants a fruit refill. The kid has a pretty charmed life. I’m the bumblehead who keeps coming back every time the bell rings. I’m like Pavlov’s dog without the drool. When she can tell I am getting a little irritated by her demands she waits until I am halfway out the door and yells “BRING ME MY CHAIR!!” It gets a laugh out of me every time.
In honor of Ian MacKaye’s birthday today, I wrote this piece while listening to Minor Threat
by Jen Logan | Apr 8, 2018 | Being Awesome, Life
One of us had a custom plate…
My friend texted me the other day that she got a new car. She didn’t notice her new license plate until she was approaching her car from the rear at Costco. The license plate began with “BJ” which made her want to drive right back to the dealership and return the car. I told her it wasn’t that bad. Well, unless it ended in “QUEEN” or started with “FREE”. She kept the car.
I have seen a lot of interesting vanity plates over the years. I have never had one, and I have a feeling that they wouldn’t print anything I would want my plate to say. I remember spending some time in Washington DC and being amazed at the amount of vanity plates. It made sense with all the politicians and their over-inflated egos. Of course people had to know who they were, even if it took a license plate to give them their proper recognition. Maybe it is trendy with the transplants. Some of the plates I had to look at for a full minute before I could decipher what they were trying to convey. None of the plates were comical or ironic like the ones I like to see. I didn’t even see a single “POLILOSER” or anything similar. Boring.
In the city I live in, I don’t see very many vanity plates, but when I do they are actually pretty helpful to me. I can pull up next to the plate that says “Shriya” and yell “Hey Shriya, congratulations on your first time driving a car. It only took you two and a half minutes to navigate that turn and you almost missed that mailbox!” I feel it’s nice to call people by name when you can. A thumbs up is also appreciated. Sometimes they even return a hand gesture, but that is usually from a driver with the “MYTOY” or “VETTEGUY” plate.
He’s creepin’
I was behind a car a few years ago that had a vanity plate that read “HOTTIE2”. I guess “HOTTIE1” was already taken. I thought I was behind a beauty queen runner up but when I pulled up beside the 1998 Cavalier, there was a 90 year old man peering over the steering wheel. Hottie 2 indeed. Maybe he meant Hottie World War 2. Either this old guy had a wicked sense of irony or he had borrowed his granddaughter’s car. Either way, I liked him. His granddaughter probably got that plate thinking it would prevent people from asking to borrow it. Well played old dude. He got a thumbs up which immediately caused him to swerve into the curb.
My family was driving a month ago headed north to go visit my Grandmother. We pulled up next to a van with a plate that read “CREEPEN”. It was a dark van with tinted windows in the back. All it needed was a sign on the side that said “FREE CANDY” to complete the look. It would have been funnier if it wasn’t in mid-Michigan where the movie Deliverance could be considered a documentary. The van was full of a group of college guys. Now I am really hoping the plate was meant to be ironic. If not, it is at least a great public service announcement.
It got me wondering if “CREEPER” or “CREEPIN” were already taken. If not, I may have found my vanity plate. They are going to love me when I pick up my 7 year old from school!
Not surprisingly, I wrote this piece while listening to some punk rock. Die, Die My Darling by the Misfits of course!
by Jen Logan | Feb 28, 2018 | Being Awesome, Life
This is my brutally honest face…
People who know me know that I tend to be pretty direct. I don’t beat around the bush. This is either a gift or a curse, depending on how you look at it. I like to think of it as a gift. This is probably because I don’t really care much about what people think of me. I have what you would call a healthy ego. If I was worried about pissing people off and them disliking me, it would certainly be a curse. It’s not that I want to hurt people’s feelings, I am just pretty comfortable with the truth, even when it sucks. I would rather hear the truth, even if it stings a little. I would also rather give the truth than blow smoke up someone’s ass. So if you are going to ask me a question, you better be prepared to hear the answer. And that answer will not be coated in sugar or decked out in glitter.
I come by it naturally. My Dad also speaks his mind. The difference is that my Dad is generally likeable. I, on the other hand, am an acquired taste. He also speaks the truth but does it in a kind way and usually with humor. He may not sugar coat it, but it is at least wrapped in a pretty package. Then there is my Mom, who never wants to hurt anyone’s feelings and is cautious with her words. You would think I would have learned a little something growing up in a house with these two but apparently I am pretty hard headed. Tact has never been my strong suit.
Does this mirror make my butt look fat?
The thing is, most people know the answer before they ask a question. I have never asked my husband if my pants make my ass look fat. I own a mirror and I know when my ass looks fat and when it doesn’t. The culprit is rarely the pants. It’s normally the bag of cookies and repeatedly skipping out on the gym. Regardless of the reason, the question did not need to be asked. I don’t ask these questions mostly because I am just going to end up mad at my husband for lying to me when I catch a glimpse of myself in a window later that day. These are the questions that also get me into trouble when I am asked. My answer to this question is almost always “it’s not the pants’ fault. Your ass is fat”. This is not a popular answer. The problem is this is a question that people ask, but they don’t really want a truthful answer. Sorry, I am comfortable with the truth even if you aren’t. Don’t ask me a question if you are trying to reassure yourself about something we both know is false. I am just not nice enough to lie to you. Seriously, I won’t do it.
The term for someone who doesn’t pull any punches is a Dutch uncle. The first time I heard this term I had to read it twice. Even after looking at it again I still saw “oven”. My brain really does belong to a fourteen year old boy. Uncle or oven of the Dutch variety both seem to be pretty unwelcome. Both may also leave you gasping. There is no equivalent female terminology. I guess the consensus is that women aren’t so ruthless. I guess they haven’t heard enough truth bombs from Dutch aunts.
I think everyone needs a friend like me – someone who will tell you like it is even when you don’t want to hear it. I’m probably not the person to talk to if you are fishing for a compliment or looking for affirmation that you can do something that we both know you can’t. Don’t ask me if you should sign up to bake cookies for your kid’s bake sale the week after you gave your mother-in-law food poisoning. I’m not the right person to come to if you want to know if cutting your bangs was a good idea after you already did it. We both know that’s never a good idea. But if you want to know if you should date the guy who lives in his mom’s basement, ask away. If you need to know if getting a tattoo of the “artwork” your kid drew is a good idea, I’m just the Dutch uncle to ask!
In honor of this last day of black history month this post was written with the help of Fishbone playing very loudly in my office.
by Jen Logan | Feb 11, 2018 | Being Awesome, Life, Punk Rock
The view and the aroma was good in my corner bedroom!
As I lie in bed last night reading my book I could smell bleach as if there was a bowl of it sitting next to me. I thought maybe it was coming from the bathroom where I had cleaned earlier in the night so I walked in to take a sniff, however, there was no bleach smell at all. Apparently I didn’t clean that well if the smell had already dissipated. I went back to bed and picked up my book again only to find the bleach smell invade my nostrils once more. I quickly took a whiff of my hand and found that the smell was indeed emanating from me. This is typical. I probably got more bleach on myself than I did on the surfaces I was cleaning. I’m sure I will also find splotches on my pajama pants in the morning.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the smell of bleach. I am one of those weirdos who likes the smell of bleach, gasoline and paint. In fact, the smell of bleach reminds me of moving into the loft that I lived in before moving in with my husband. This isn’t because the place was so clean it smelled of bleach, truth be told, the place was probably not technically fit to house human beings. It was above a bakery, so most days it smelled of freshly baked bread and cinnamon rolls. It was also a party house, so it smelled of stale beer and cigarette smoke too. But, for one night, it smelled so much like bleach that I got lightheaded from the fumes.
It was the night that I moved in, on my 30th birthday. My parents were coming over the following day and after a bottle of wine and cupcakes with a few friends I had determined that the place was not presentable. I was already nervous about my parents seeing the place where I had chosen to live. I was not known for making good choices about my living arrangements. After living in a co-op with a worse reputation than the Faber College Delta House my sophomore year in college, I had tried not to let my parents visit often. As a matter of fact, I don’t think my mom ever came to that house after my dad warned her about the fact that $150 of the $250 per semester rent went to cover the cost of the kegs that were regularly replenished in the walk-in refrigerator.
Maybe the bleach peeled the paint…
So needless to say, the fact that I was moving into another space that would host parties on the regular was not information I wanted to share with my parents. Unfortunately it was hard to hide with a mountain of empty beer bottles piled on a corner counter in the kitchen and a freezer full of Jagermeister. Also, I couldn’t guarantee that a gaggle of musicians wouldn’t show up in the middle of my parents’ visit. The front door didn’t even have a lock – which was why my dad was coming over to install a deadbolt on my bedroom door. Literally, there was no lock on the front door, but that’s not to say we didn’t have a security system. Our alarm was a floor that was caving in right inside the front door where our old ping pong table stood at an angle. Any would-be robber would take one look and assume nobody actually lived in the loft.
Looking around the loft I wasn’t quite sure where to start but the floors seemed to be something I could handle. The kitchen floor hadn’t been scrubbed in possibly forever, so I started there. It was of the 1950s linoleum variety, so it was pretty easy to scrub. Within a few minutes the floor went from brown to yellow and I almost regretted cleaning when I saw the actual color of the floor. It completely clashed with the once cream colored carpet. Plus, the stains on the carpet really stood out next to the sparkly linoleum. I evaluated the carpet and determined that the camouflage pattern was not intended, it was beer stains and dirt. I vacuumed until my hands were vibrating and the stains were still as black as ever. I finally decided that the best option would be to treat it with bleach, so that is exactly what I did. I spent the remainder of the night scrubbing at the stains on the carpet with diluted bleach. By 3 am I had scrubbed out the majority of the stains and I was delirious from the bleach fumes. I dumped my dirty bleach water and headed to bed.
Ted Nugent could have passed out on our floor and never been discovered!
I awoke the next morning and walked out to find all of the stains back in their camouflage pattern throughout the living room and down the hallway. Apparently the dirt from the base of the carpet crawled right back to the surface once the bleach dried. I debated pouring more bleach on the stains but I opted to let them do their thing. I would rather have my parents see the filthy carpet than have them wonder if I was trying to cover a murder scene with the overwhelming smell of bleach wafting through the loft. Interestingly enough, my parents never mentioned the stained carpet or bleachy smell.
I never tried to clean that carpet again. As a matter of fact I think I only vacuumed a few times after that day. I once handed a guy a bucket full of bleach water and a sponge when he made a mess all over the floor one night. He laughed until he saw the look on my face and he quickly got to work. Those stains were still there on the day I moved out.
I only lived there for about six months, but the smell of bleach still makes me think of that long first night. Other things come to mind when I think of my time living at the loft like watching drunken idiots jump down into the bakery with no way to get back upstairs, 6′ tall guys sleeping in my giant clawfoot tub, people cleaning cake off the walls while being carried on another person’s shoulders with a mop, and sledding down the stairs on bread racks. But those are all different stories for different days.
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