Let's Make a Deal

7 weeks had passed in a blur. My husband had been accepted to med school, my family – including our cat - was moving to an island in the Caribbean, I’d started selling our possessions and I did in fact suffer from “the elevens”.   That news from my dermatologist, coupled with the loss of my favorite grill, was killing my optimism. I’d spent the afternoon medicating with chardonnay and episodes of ‘The Tracy Ullman Show’ while lying on the couch. I was comfy in my pity-me pajama pants when I got a call from Taff.

“Somebody better be dead.  They just started the dance routine on this episode of ‘Tracy’,” I answered.

“Happy getting sauced in our fat pants, are we? Get up and get sober. I’m on my way over with an idea.”

Mental Checklist: moving the Cariboo means I will not be in the same neighborhood as Taff, thus no easy access. Win.

We disconnected and I forced myself off the couch. 30 minutes, a pony-tail and a cup of coffee later, Taffi was in my family room parked on the same couch I’d just peeled myself off of.

“I’m waiting for a response,” Taff was literally on the edge of her seat waiting for me to respond to her suggestion of a neighborhood garage sale.  “And, seriously, are you going to call Dr. Shelton and get that,” she said while pointing at the spot in between my eyes, “taken care of?  It’s almost too much for me to look at.”  She added while finishing off my last bottle of Robert Mondovi.

“Taff, you’re lucky I’m in a good mood.” 

“Good mood, my ass. I’m lucky you’ve still got your buzz on. Either you’re in or I’m going to go sell my idea to the hippies over on 172^nd. I’m sure the hood would love them to sell their stuff instead of displaying it on their front lawn with a sign that says FREE.”

That moment my son Grey and his older half-brother, Mitch, walked through the front door.  It was our weekend with Mitch and since he played hockey that really meant he spent “our weekend” on the ice with Grey.

“Hey, Taff,” Grey said while nodding at her and walking toward me.  “Mom, Mitch and I are going to a movie. He’s paying.”

“OK. Make sure you tell your dad you’re leaving. What movie?”

Mitch answered, “Bridesmaids. And before you ask - no it’s not porn.”

“Grey doesn’t need porn. He’s a pre-teen with a subscription to Netflix. He can watch all the reruns of Alias he wants,” Taffi spouted while getting up to go rummage in my wine bar for another bottle of chardonnay.

After a quick discussion about the movie Priest, the movie the boys were actually going to see, I completed my conversation with Taffi and agreed to the garage sale. I needed to unload my baggage – literally and figuratively – and a garage sale was a great way to move stuff without doing too much leg work.

Two weeks later Taff and I were parked in my garage with the sale in full swing. The neighborhood hadn’t agreed to the sale, but my entire block was participating. This meant that Taffi brought all of her wares to our house to sell. The early June weather was perfect for the sale and Taffi and I treated ourselves to rum and Diet Coke while watching the sales stroll in.

“Hey! No looky-loo’s!” Taffi hollered at a lady I swore could pass for Mrs. Roper while clinking the ice cubes in her glass.

Mrs. Roper left our garage and I turned to Taffi, mouth open and asked, “What the hell? You just cost me a potential sale.”

“Really? Are you going to haggle over the pot holder marked 25 cents? She wasn’t buying. I’ve watched her case every joint on this block.”

“Case every joint?”

“Max was travelling for work this week so I watched a lot of Magnum P.I.”

I raised an eyebrow and she added, “What? Like you’re the only one who has an 80’s obsession.  Besides, I don’t think Tom Selleck gets enough credit for that role. Do you know what the humidity in Hawaii does to naturally curly hair?”

“Oh, I didn’t know his hair was curly.”

 I mulled that over while watching a couple in their early 20’s look at our framed art.  I was starting to feel nostalgic and realized that I was about to kill a sale myself when I said to the couple, “Those are buy one, get one free.”  That upped their enthusiasm and forced me to smile. I’d make it through this day, Taffi had brought over 3 bottles of Parrot Bay just to be sure I didn’t break down and decide to keep everything in storage.

“What’s our total?” Taffi asked Mitch and Grey. 

Our garage sale was a huge success, but Taffi and I cleared 2 of the bottles of rum just to be safe.  At one point during the day I told a kid to drop our pepper grinder and put his hands where I could see them. That was when Jameson had to physically remove me from the sale and asked the boys to keep track of our earnings.  Now we were standing in the garage with empty shelves and only a few odds and ends left to go to Goodwill and the Women’s Shelter. 

“I think its $892.75, but you probably want to count it again when you can see straight,” Mitch said while the boys fist bumped and then laughed together.

Mental Checklist: my life had been reduced to less than a grand and we only had 6 weeks left to complete my checklist from 2 months ago.  What was up with my time management skills? Fail. Oh, and buy more chardonnay.

The Final Countdown

April ended with the Canucks as Western Conference Champs in the Cup Playoffs – but no formal acceptance letter from AUC.   It was April 27.  What the hell?  We were leaving in three days for St. Maarten to secure housing and Ja had received zero information about the acceptance process.  He did receive an e-mail from his ill-advising advisor stating 2 previous copies of his transcripts had been found. Someone had filed them under “Z-E” instead of “Z-A”.  My Facebook and Google stalking of one Festus Morgan had resulted in some photos of him dressed in a brilliant white suit and the discovery that he was a member of the Coral Gables Toastmaster Committee.  Huh.  I wondered if Festus welcomed the crowds to Fantasy Island at the beginning of each public speaking gig.

 “Wife? You up there?” My husband called up the stairs to me.  He knew I was spring cleaning my work wardrobe in our closet.

 “Babe, you know I’m up here,” I called back.  “It’s very touch and go at this point. Come up at your own risk.”  The annual purging of my work attire was a delicate process for me.  As I moved from one client to the next, the dress code seemed to change. Business casual, business formal, jeans, shorts, scrubs. I even had a client in Texas that had “Rodeo Formal Fridays”.  I think Value Village sold a lot of Halloween costumes based solely on my donations from work attire at that client site.

Mental Checklist:  eBay the Lucchese boots in my closet.  My current Canadian clients already think I talk “funny”. If I showed up in these they’d think I was Annie Oakley and run for the hills.

“Kel, I got it,” and he handed me his acceptance letter.  I dropped the boots and a sweater that was meant for someone with assets I didn’t have and grabbed the letter out of Ja’s hands.

I quickly skimmed the letter and then gave my husband a huge hug, careful not to crush the paper. “It’s about bloody time!   What took them so long? Did they use a quill and ink well to write this and then had to wait for it to dry before mailing?”

“I think it was the message I sent to Mandy Sommerside.” Ja was preening. Who was Mandy Sommerside? I was going through my mental files of anyone I may know named Mandy when Ja stopped my wheels from spinning. “Mandy is who Festus reports to, I found her information on the AUC website.”

“Shut the front door! You looked up Mr. Roarke’s manager and tattled on him,” I asked.

“Mr. Roarke?”

“Oh, remind me to show you his Facebook. Oh. My. God. Now, continue please,” I prompted.

“Last week when I sent in my transcripts…”

I interrupted, “Sent them the fourth time, you mean?”

“Yes, the fourth copy. I started thinking and what I thought was that this is total BS. Not only had I done all the leg work and made all of the phone calls and initiated all of the e-mails, my ‘advisor’ hadn’t responded. So, I looked up the e-mail address for the Admissions Director and copied her on the mail I sent to Festus about his lack of attentiveness.”

“And?”

“And, I got a response.  It may have been the fact that I chronologically documented all correspondence and lack of response and compared Festus to a used car salesman trying to sell me on a medical school that I thought was snubbing me.  Or, it was the scanned and attached copies of my acceptance letters to Ross and St. George. Either way, Ms. Mandy Sommerside promptly replied to assure me all of my documentation had been received, I was under review and I should hear something within 48 hours.”

Mental Checklist: must remember the husband is cool as a cucumber. This skill will come in handy on Black Friday.

I hugged my husband again and gave him a kiss. “Babe, I’m so proud of you. How do you feel?”

He sighed, “I felt good until I started thinking about how much stuff we have to do and how little time we really have left.”

“Well, it’s a good thing you’ve got me,” I smiled at him and twirled around. “I bought a new notebook and felt tip pens at The Meyer.  They just ooze ‘Use me, Abuse me & Write Lists on me’.  We’ve got 3 months, we can do it!”

My husband left me to finish my closet cleaning and mental checklist making while he headed downstairs to catch up on The Hockey News.  And just like that, the final countdown began. 

New Math: 1 = 4

“I don’t know, Taff,” I said while holding the phone between my ear and shoulder so I could fold laundry.

Mental Checklist: take Grey with me to the Apple store to buy a new hands free device. My chiropractor spends way too much time on my C3P0.

“He’s been really quiet about it the past few weeks. I can tell Ja’s peeved about something, we just need to figure out what.”

“Ha! Good luck with that,” Taffi taunts back. “Your husband is as tight-lipped as Angelina Jolie in that move ‘Salt’. The man spills nothing. The only way you ever find stuff out is when Grey happens to be in the room with him to overhear a conversation. You’re lucky your son is a stone-cold motor mouth or you’d never know any of the dirt.”

“Oh, I really liked that movie. But, she was like scary skinny, don’t you think?”

“Totally agree. How can she go from ‘Tombraider’ to that and still do all of her own stunts? I wonder who her trainer is…””

“Crap! Off topic. What am I going to do?” Just then I hear the front door slam and Grey talking to one of his buddies from hockey. “Taff, I’ve got to go. The motor mouth just came home. I’ll catch you up later.”

If I was lucky, Grey had overheard Ja say something during the Goalie one-on-one session that morning. If I couldn’t get the goods from the source, I’d do the next best thing. Bribe the kid. Parenthood win.

“Hi, Marcus,” I nod to Grey’s friend and walk over to hug my son. “Good God, child! Did you bathe before you left practice?

“Mom, I already told you. You don’t wash off the hockey smell at the rink. It’s bad luck. I blocked all but 8 today and Dad said I was looking better, “ Grey answers then hugs me and rubs his sweaty head in my face.

“OK, OK, I give,” I say while pushing the sweaty tween off of me.  “Where’s your dad?”

Marcus answers, “He went up to the station to talk to my dad about Uncle Fester.”

I look at Grey, “Ja went to work to talk to your Uncle Barry about ‘The Adams Family’?”

Barry was Jameson’s oldest friend. They’d known each other since age 5, had remained friends as adults and now worked at the same station. If my husband was calling on Barry, he must really be annoyed.

“Wait, I don’t understand. Why is your dad talking to Barry about a TV show?”

“Ohhhhh, is that why your dad kept saying Uncle Fester? It’s from TV?” Marcus asked Grey.

“Yeah, dude. It’s like some old show that our parents watched when they were kids.” My son was pillaging the refrigerator so he couldn’t see my face blanch when he made that statement.

Mental Checklist: call Reba and have her request the TV Land channel from her cable provider.  Marcus needs to watch something other than reruns of ‘Alias’ on Netflix. How many times can he and Grey talk about Jennifer Garner in the lingerie episode?

“What is going on?” I ask Grey once more.   My husband’s ears must have been burning because my cell phone began playing the theme song to ‘The A-Team’. My husband was B. A. Baracus for Halloween last year and I had yet to find a new ringtone.

“Babe.  What’s up?” I answer my cell and walk into the family room leaving the boys to themselves in the kitchen.

“What’s up? Festus Morgan is what’s up,” Jameson answers. I can hear the chatter of the station in the background. Yep, he was with Barry.

“Wait.  Is this ‘The Adams Family’ thing that Grey was talking about? I didn’t even know you liked that show.”

“No. Festus Morgan is the name of my Admissions Advisor for AUC. He’s my direct contact for all of the paperwork  I need to turn in to formally get accepted to the school,” Jameson explains.

“Hold it! What do you mean to formally get accepted? I just sold the grill on Craigslist this morning. I love that grill. It has that special hook thing on the side to put your spices in while you cook.”

“Wife! Oh my God! Stop talking about the grill.”

OK, my husband just raised his voice and called me “Wife”. This was serious. Maybe I should sit down with some chardonnay in order to calmly continue this conversation.  

“Kel, here’s the deal,” my husband began.  “I got my letter saying they received my application but they need some additional information in order to formally accept me.  They only had 1 of my letters of recommendation on file and even though I’ve had my undergrad transcripts sent three times, Festus Morgan can’t find them.”

“What the hell? How did you send them?  Pony Express?”  I wondered.  How hard could it be to find transcripts with the last name Zavrakis? Are there that many applicants with a last name that starts with Z?

“What’s the plan? Are you calling the university to get the other letters sent? And, what about the transcripts?” I asked.

“I just talked to Festus. Before you ask, yes he called me on a Sunday,” score one for my husbands’ intuition.  “I think I put the fear of God in him the last time he told me he couldn’t find my transcripts. Anyway, he found my other 2 letters of recommendation and now I just have to send in my transcripts one more time.”

“So, the school with the 5 buck lunch specials employs a guy who either can’t spell or can’t read and said guy who is your advisor is advising you to spend more money to have your transcripts sent to his attention. Again. A fourth time.  Did I get that right?”  How does this guy still have a job? And, how many other applicants went through the same crap and then just gave up on the university to attend another one?

“Yep, “ my husband answers lifelessly. “I’m going to hang here with Barry and the guys for a bit. I’ll be home for dinner. Love ya.”

I told my husband that I loved him and then ended my call.

Mental Checklist: Google and Facebook stalk this Festus Morgan character. I'm going to miss that grill.

A 3-Hour Tour

2 weeks later the hockey season had ended, Grey had played a whopper of an April Fool’s joke on me (stinky goalie gear in my car overnight) and Jameson hadn’t mentioned medical school in the Caribbean.  My internal countdown had started:  4 months. What was Ja thinking? Why hasn’t he mentioned anything? He knows me well enough  to realize that my systematic and panic genes have a close working relationship.

Mental Checklist: remind husband that not everyone operates under the “fly by the seat of your pants” rule. Oh, and figure out who came up with that saying anyway – when I think of pants I don’t think of procrastination or spontaneity.

Grey was just taking the last of the dishes to the sink from the dinner table when I began my Caribbean fact-finding mission.

“Ja, how was dinner? Too much garlic on the chicken or no?” Too obvious? I think not.

“Ohhhhhhh, Dad, you’re in trouble. Mom’s doing that thing with her face.” Grey’s advance warning to Ja made him realize that I didn’t really care about the chicken. Ja could have choked on the chicken and I wouldn’t have noticed. I needed answers.

Jameson directed our son to head upstairs and finish his homework for Monday. Grey put up a fight because sitting in the kitchen and listening in on what could only be good gossip sounded better.  My husband won in the end. The promise of extra ice time is all the leverage he needed.

“Wife,” he started, “I know you’re stressed out. I can tell by the way you’re acting. You cleaned the bathroom 3 times today. Was there really so much toothpaste on the sink that you needed to scrub it 3 times? My sense of smell is completely gone for the next 24 hours thanks to your use of bleach.”

Why can’t men appreciate a clean bathroom?

“Husband,” look at me using his talking technique. “I’m just curious what is going on. You brought this up at the last practice and then nada. I’ve heard nothing. So… I made a list of some questions.”

“Of course you did,” my husband smiles at me, leans back in the chair and puts his hands behind his head. This is his typical listen-to-my-wife’s worries pose. I took that as an invitation.

I take the list of 10-bulleted items out of my pocket and begin with, “I’d like to submit into evidence the story of our AUC Campus Tour.”

“Submit into evidence? What? Are you an attorney now?” Jameson is mocking me.

“I watched reruns of ‘The People’s Court’ today while I was doing Minutes from my meeting. Don’t judge. May I continue?”

My husband nods and I begin again, “Remember when we vaca’d in St. Maarten this past January and we went on that campus tour. Wait – rewind. I’m out of order on my list. Before we even got there for the tour you contacted the school to schedule it. Remember?”

Jameson nods.

“Well, do you also remember that after submitting your tour request online using the school’s website that you followed up with the coordinator 3 times over e-mail because they had us scheduled for the wrong date? Do you really want to go to a school where the office staff mix-up the months of January and February?”

My husband argues, “Kel that could have happened to anyone.”

“You’re telling me that ANY person that we encounter could easily mix up the first 2 months of the year three times in a row. Can we test that and call Grey down here? He’s 12; let’s see if he makes the same mistake.” 

I was only on my second bulleted item on the list and I could tell Ja was getting uncomfortable. He crossed his arms, a classic keep-talking-but-I’m-only-half-listening pose.

“You finally get the tour dates figured out, we arrive and are greeted by the girlfriend of a 5^th semester and she feels ‘weird’ because she thought it was only one person on the tour not two. Then, she spends the next 15 minutes walking around the rotunda and talking about her boyfriend. Would they get engaged? Where will she live during his residency?  Oh! I also remember her telling us that the weather was really bad for her nails. It dries them out. I actually think that’s probably true. I bet the weather there is really hard on your hair, too.” 

I digress and Ja gives me a weird look. Did I really just talk about hair? 

“As I was saying, in the middle of all of this really important information about AUC life, we look in the window of one lecture hall and she shows us the cafeteria. Is this the school you’re talking about attending?  The school with the All-U-Can-Eat for 5 bucks lunches?” I’m asking sincerely and Ja bursts out laughing.

“Wife, I love you and all of the lists that you make. We don’t need to go through all of your questions. I can answer now – yes. This is the school I want to go to.” He stands, walks around the table, hugs me and then leaves the room. I can hear him call up to Grey, something about socks on the stairs.

Mental Checklist: we’re leaving the rain soaked city of Seattle to head to the land of sunshine and heat. I need to find a good hair conditioner.