The Manny Diaries, Chapter Eleven: Mexico is for Lovers

On Sunday (6/15/14), if all goes according to plan, the Manny will be winging his way toward his new home in sunny Mexico. The odds that he actually makes it onto the plane grow increasingly slimmer, in direct proportion to his nervous nattering and hand-wringing, and the reality that he's drinking again. Yeah. His fears include:

• Being detained at the airport and made to pay exorbitant taxes on the few beat-up possessions that he's taking with him.
• Finding out that his landlords will put him in enforced servitude upon arrival, and that the Craigslist listing was an elaborate ruse to get a slave.
• Discovering that whatever suitcase he brings is exactly 1 inch too large to qualify for the one free bag (because of the wheels!) and being forced to pay more money to transport it.
• He will get waylaid by banditos at the local Wal-Mart
• He will accidentally drink the local water and get Monty's Revenge
• Since he can't speak Spanish, the cheap translation app he bought will say "pussy" instead of "gracias." When we typed in "thank you." Which it does. For real.
• And much more!

In the interest of a smooth removal, I took him to the local Goodwill to find a cheap suitcase of exactly the right dimensions. We found one right away! Here it is:

Manny accosted a fellow who was sorting girls' clothing on the racks.

"Do you work here? Or are you just some creepy guy who likes touching little girls' clothing?" he asked the man, then guffawed. "Anyway, do you have a tape measure?"

Manny opened the bag and reached into an inner pocket, immediately yanking his hand out and flinging a pair of dirty women's undies violently away from him. They landed on the end of the clothes rack and dangled there. Virginia is for Lovers, indeed.

"OH MY GOD I HAVE CRABS NOW!" he said, scratching his arm violently. "Look, do I have a rash starting?"

"Crabs don't jump that fast," I suggested.

"They jump FAST!" he said. "Like lightning! They hop. They leap."

He bought the suitcase anyway, but the whole way home he scratched at his arm and inspected it for crabs and fresh bites. He got home and obsessively washed his hands and then started on the dinner prep. Except earlier that day, my husband had hidden the salt, after an overly salty meal that had rather bloated and sickened us. (The cooking was starting to lose its shine, after we realized that the scale was telling a tale of buttery, greasy, salty, sausagey overindulgence).

So he went seeking the salt, becoming almost crazed in his hunt.

"Where's the SALT? I can't find the SALT. Could someone have HIDDEN the salt?"

"Maybe," I said cryptically. "Maybe someone did hide the salt. I believe that may have happened, yes."

"Who hides salt?!! That's a creepy, crazy thing to do. WHO hides salt? I mean...I just can't even understand why ANYONE would ever hide salt. That's troubling."

He scratched at his head and worried about the crabs again, a little bit. Then he went searching for the salt again, muttering and cursing.

Next, he decided that he wanted to have a tag sale and get rid of all his worldly possessions, but for a few treasures that he would take with him to Mexico. So he made some truly extraordinary craptastic signs and tacked them up around the neighborhood, and he sat on our lawn, sweating in the heat, surrounded by a panoply of strange goods, including the Aunt Jemima bookends from Part Ten.

This print, by the artist Niagara, greeted shoppers as they arrived at the sale.

Here are some things he said to people who dropped by:

Woman: Is this something to rest your spoon in while you're cooking?
Manny: You can use it to cook up your heroin, actually.

Man: I'll offer you $20 for that.
Manny: Don't screw my pooch! I'm not an idiot. Didn't the ad say "no crackpots"?

Husband's Frenemy who lives down the block (returning item that he bought for $10): I got home and the wife said "no." So I'm bringing it back. Can I have my $10 back?
Manny: Who the fuck DOES that?

He sorta had me in agreement at that last one.

Anyway, he managed to unload a variety of things and made some decent cash.

As his possessions disappeared one by one, I began to wonder about the mental state of a man in his 60s who is suddenly unburdened. Lightened. Free to travel to Mexico, and perhaps to never return. One of the few things he hadn't chosen to sell was the urn containing his beloved bulldog's ashes. That would go into storage, along with the bulk of his art collection. The cast iron pots, the spoons, the coffee grinder, the French press—all of it sold, gone.

And I did think of all our relentless, endless belongings in the attic, those things that we call home. What we cling to and what remains. Ashes and memory. And how my friend texted me today and said "Is Sunday a special celebration combining Father's Day and 'Get the Fuck Out of My House Day?'"
Yes, all of that.

The Manny Diaries, Part Ten: Tequila Farming!

I never thought I'd say this, but lately I have been finding Manny something resembling...invaluable. Every single day, he comes downstairs quite early, before we are even awake, and cuts up a plateful of fresh fruit for the boys. Then he waits, ready to spring into action and fry up bacon and make gourmet omelettes filled with things like fresh asparagus and feta cheese and some delicious sausage that he sourced out at the Italian deli.

By the way, he washes his hands religiously and insists on separate serving utensils for each dish. If a kid reaches out a hand toward a serving dish, he flinches and groans.

It's filled with Manny-ness!

Later, he has dinner ready on the table by 6:00 p.m. Skirt steak tacos, fresh salmon with dill and lemon, garlic mashed potatoes, roasted beets in some sort of astoundingly good salad with delicious unknown ingredients and pepperoncini poking out of the top.

One day, he made the boys a pork roast. It was absolutely fine and tasty, but one of the boys decided it wasn’t for him.

Middle son said, “I don’t really like this.”

Manny, distraught, said, “You don’t? You really don’t? Why? What’s wrong with it?”

“I dunno,” middle son shrugged. “It’s kinda flavorless and chewy.”

Manny wandered off in a tither, all the way into town. I got repeated text messages such as:

Should I try more spice??

Think they would like quiche???

Stir fry

Salad

Eggs??

I had the boys make a list of foods they wanted to try and the very next day, he set out to start cooking the items on that list, one by one. That night we had BLTs, except he used fancy prosciutto. They were awesome.

Let’s face it…aren’t you starting to wish that you had a Manny right about now? If you want one, you have to accept the whole package.

He hums while he cooks, and mutters to himself. He talks and doesn’t listen. He makes crass and unfunny jokes—and an occasionally exceedingly funny one. And he brought in these somewhat…unusual bookends to prop up his cookbooks.

We throw a cloth over these when people come to visit. Not that they are not, well, somewhat of conversation starters.

He mixes up his words all the time.

“I put the leftovers in the other refrigerator,” he says, gesturing at the oven.

“How about I make some guacacado?” he asks another time. “Oh! I mean, something with those eggstables. Eggpants! Eggplant hummos.”

“You mean baba ganoush, right?”

“Yeah, that!”

(The baba ganoush was excellent.)

But he is kind. He got in the habit of pushing the boys on the new tree swing that our neighbor built, and pushing them much higher than I ever could, such that they would call out for him to “give me another push” and he would comply, despite sore shoulders and aching back.

So when he said he was going to move to Oaxaca, Mexico, at the end of June and live on a tequila farm, I had some mixed feelings.

I can't wait to drink this!

One, hurrah! Two, the Manny Diaries may have to come to an end. Crap. And three, what kind of bonehead would choose to live on a tequila farm when he oughta know the one poison he should never, ever have is booze?

In fact, he got so excited about his new life as a tequila farmer that, on Sunday, when he was purportedly out buying some food for dinner, he must have wandered into a local drinking establishment. He came bumbling in at 6 pm with no food and with a bottle of tequila, made in his future hometown! He presented it to us as a gift. He stank of booze and slurred and denied having a drink, so we sent him to his room.

We can’t really kick him out now, with so little time between now and his departure. He has rented a place in Mexico and even paid for plane tickets. He says he’ll stay sober until he leaves, even during his four-hour layover on the way to his new home. If he makes that connection it will be a miracle.

I can imagine getting a tearful, drunken phone call from the Oaxaca jailhouse (do they even allow phone calls?) saying that we gotta bail him out because he insulted some Mexican dude and then got into a pistol duel over the man’s underage daughter. I can just kinda imagine that.  But I think that truth will be even stranger than my imagination can conjure at this moment. 

Don't you? WHAT do you think our Manny will do next?

The Manny Diaries, Part Nine: Conspiracy Theories

Perseverate: To repeat something insistently or redundantly; to repeat a response after the cessation of the original stimulus.

Conspiracy theory: An explanatory proposition that accuses two or more persons, a group, or an organization of having caused or covered up, through secret planning and deliberate action, an illegal or harmful event or situation.

Put two things together, and what do you get? The Manny, that's what. 

For three weeks now, he's been blessedly sober. At least he appears to be, and there's no hint of fumes on the breath or the eggy, bloodshot eye. He snacks on pounds of chocolate and pretzels in bed, by his own admission, and says that there's no way he's a drunk because "alcoholics drink, and I'm not drinking! See?"

He perseverates on various things. Someone hacked his files and stole all his contacts. Something in the universe is out to get him. The post office is up to no good and is out to destroy his career. Why does something named "Grumpy Cat" have a career and he doesn't and couldn't he do the same if people were not out to get him? Goody Longbottom down the way gave him the evil eye and soured the milk in the cartons and the cows' udders. No amount of logic and humor can address these fears, and they are brought up every single day, numerous times per day, unless I can avoid him through stealth and speed. 

"I don't know, Miss Jennifer. It just seems that an evil force is out to get me. I have been betrayed. I did so much for so many people. And they betrayed me. My feeling is that there's something suspicious going on, for them all to betray me at once."

"Maybe they noticed you were a blathering drunk and they were afraid to do business with you?"

"Ah, no, not possible! My customers are all idiot drunks themselves! Most of them, anyway. No one minds if you're a drunk with lots of money. People just mind if you're a drunk without money and out of luck."

He might have a point there, with that last one.

He natters and blathers and perseverates so much and so persistently that I fear I will go mad, and will tear at the curtains with my teeth and kick him in the throat and stand on my head going "yah, yah, yah!" until he runs and hides in the attic.

Oh, speaking of the attic. I had an acquaintance come visit yesterday and she wanted to check out our attic, because we always say it's cool and has lots of potential and space. I kind of warned her that there was a man living up there but I am not sure she was prepared. We wandered into his space and he was sitting there among some orange peels, surrounded by dirty laundry, on a carpet black with filth (crap-daddle, that is one of my old carpets and I hadn't had the nerve to walk in there for quite a while, but now that I saw it I can't un-see it. Aw jeez, can it even be saved? No, it cannot.) My acquaintance hemmed and hawed and made some polite throaty noises but I could see she was jarred. Why does Jennifer have a troglodyte living in her attic? She seemed like a normal woman, but now I am convinced otherwise. And, the creature sitting there in the dirt has a pornstache!

[Manny shaved recently. And he has a pornstache now. And short hair.]

I can cook a mean pork butt.

He has outlasted the two days of sobriety once predicted by my friend, and he has not nipped at the sauce. But I confess that we are waiting for that fine day when his conspiracy theories will coalesce into a singular notion: If only I had a cocky-tail, perhaps everything in the world would right itself?

Haven't you ever thought the same, those of you who have had a whiff or two of the bottle? And when that day happens, what will become of him? 

Meanwhile, he tends our new tomato plants and braises the chicken thighs and mashes the avocados into a guacamole of which I can't pretend I'm not jealous, even though I was once considered the Guac Queen in our household. And I watch our boys attack Manny with their small, ineffectual limbs, because clearly he's fun to try to climb aboard, as big and rangy as he is. They are like mosquitos to him; he plucks one up and puts him gently aside just as the next boy launches himself. He laughs. He seems happy. He is good with them. I swear it. 

Something rotten this way comes.

He says he is happy, but for, you know, that problem. The betrayal. The conspiracy. Everyone is against him. He's trying to get a handle on it, wrap his mind around it, move forward. And he's really worried about the Korean grocery in town, because the veggies there are wilted and why would anyone sell wilted veggies and are they about to go out of business and if he had recommended them to someone they would think he was full of shit, just plumb full of shit, and that would give him a bad reputation for recommending bad grocery stores, and some of the veggies in that store sink in right under your thumb because they are so filled with rot, and there's something wrong going on in this world and why won't anyone wake up and see it? 

If you ever read this blog, Manny, know that I acted alone. No conspiracy. 

The Manny Diaries, Part Seven: Crumbling Walls

Hundreds of people wait for the end to this story. "Why not thousands?" I asked my friend. "Because you don't have a kitten playing a piano," he suggested. "You have only a drunk who can cook. It's not so visually spectacular."

Once we discovered the receipt for the bourbon, we conferred. My husband and the Manny engaged in the following dialogue:

"Did you buy a bottle today?"

"Uh, no?"

"So you didn't buy a bottle of bourbon today?"

"Uh, well, I guess I kinda did."

"I can't have you drinking and being around the boys. And if you are going to drink, you can't live here."

"I'm 63 years old. No one should be able to tell me what I can or can't drink!"

"OK, then. You have to promise me that your drinking will not become a problem. You need to be an asset. I don't need any more liabilities."

"I promise. Absolutely. Not a problem!" And he enwrapped husband in a giant, sloppy bear hug.

For the moment, his nannying duties were on hold, with the exception of cooking. Some mornings we'd come down to find he'd cooked chorizo and asparagus omelets for the boys and prepared a massive fresh fruit salad brimming with mangos, watermelon, and apples. He made homemade beef negimaki on the grill, whipped up fresh guacamole and spicy salsa, and ground gourmet espresso from the specialty coffee store. And little by little, sip by sip, we sensed that he was, occasionally, getting pickled on bourbon.

One night he ground up a whole lot of bourbon-flavored coffee and made himself a full french press worth. He retired to the attic and gurgled it down along with what must have been several shots of actual bourbon on the side, so that when we saw him next he looked like an old eggy-eyed groundhog given an electrical charge to the buttocks. He was literally vibrating with caffeine. We thought he meant to disguise the bourbon scent with the coffee scent, but we were not fooled.

I think I ought to back up for a moment to explain here, for a moment, why we—a nice, "normal" couple in a Westchester suburb—would ever choose a boozeaholic old fellow for our childcare in the first place. (Although the Manny, in his 60s, would resist the term "old fellow" most fiercely. "Good God, she's gotta be pushing 50! Too ancient for me!" he said of a woman who had asked for his number and persisted in calling him.)

There are a number of reasons. Among them, there is perhaps an idealistic, money-saving sensibility at play. After all, I found my fabulous Weber grill in someone else's curbside trash! Hand-me-downs and trash-picker finds include my lawnchairs, sleds, snow shovels, table umbrella, wheelbarrow, lawn tools, bicycles, snowboots, and couches. I get most of my clothes from boxes that my glamorous LA friend sends me when she cleans her closet. (Note to friend who is reading this: Send more!) The rest I get from the Salvation Army.

But we always think it's going to work out.

As an example, here is a section of our back stairs:

So trendy. Going for that "your wall is a map of unidentifiable Balkan states after-dinner quiz!" kind of look.

In a burst of energy, I'd torn off some ugly wallpaper and revealed a crumbling wall in need of professional assistance. I'd wanted to paint the wall myself, do it on the cheap. I'd gathered some paint samples. It would work out just great. Just like our new cost-effective nanny.

The wall never got fixed. It was too much for me to handle. Not without money, which is not in steady supply.

And, we really believed that the Manny was a good person. And indeed, he is. He once visited us at a time when Eldest Son had a serious problem with a bully and he was golden around the boys, really golden. He protected them. He had stood up for what was right.

Over a year later, our long-time supernanny had to move back to England. Manny wanted to move back east. We wanted to save some money. We thought: He loves the boys! He's a great cook. He can for sure pick them up and drop them off at school. What could go wrong?

But now our great cost-effective solution turned out to have problems, like the wall which, once revealed, was chunking off in powdery bursts of ancient plaster and revealing more weird Rorschach tests in its facade.

Manny started to slur and stumble. The Blanton's bourbon took hold.

I had a work trip that took me away for five days during which we had two big snowfalls and just as many days off from school. Manny was good as gold during those days, but I received texts from my husband:

"If you don't come home on time I will crack up!"

"Dishwasher broke."

"#worstweekever"

I got home and things were weird indeed. Manny, pajama-clad, was roving freely about the house. He was rambling about fish. He was a drunken mess. He wanted fresh fish and he needed to cook them, now! He started sobbing and laid his head against my arm and told me his real name, the one he'd been born with, and how his adoptive parents had disregarded him. He wandered up the front stairs and reappeared almost immediately down the back stairs, rambling and stumbling from room to room. I couldn't escape him.

"Miss Jennifer! My life is bad!" and he'd grip me by the arm and start to sob.

Over and over, he lurched and wept against my husband and told him how he loved him and how he needed a hug, repeatedly. And my husband, who had had just about enough, begged him, "Get away from me and stop touching me and go away! I have had more physical contact from you today than I have had with my own wife in five days! Just give me some space!"

At which point Manny said: "Stop yelling at me!"

Husband had not been yelling. But now he proceeded to do so: "I will not I will NOT please just get away from me RIGHT NOW."

I heard this from the next room but apparently right then the Manny swelled up like a big puff adder and his arms got fat like fire hoses and his chest got real big and pinwheels started to turn in his eyes.

Husband stood strong and glared at him, wondering what it might feel like when the Manny struck and his head hit the kitchen counter and his jaw had to be wired shut. (Manny is not a small man, by the way, nor is he a weak man.) They stood that way for several extremely tense moments. Both of them knew that if he threw a punch, the next call would be to the police. And, finally, Manny deflated.

Manny shuffled off to bed. "Once he sobers up, we'll talk to him," we agreed.

The next morning he was excitedly babbling about fish again. So, I agreed to drive him to the fish store. It was 11 am, and by the time we got in the car I realized that he was already three sheets to the wind. We parked and he wandered in and saw this:

I am a succulent red snapper on ice!

He became enamored with that fish. I mean, he started gazing into its dead eye. And then he started saying things like:

"The last time I broke a man's hand it was over a fish like that! OOPS! Don't repeat that!"

"Hey fish guy, you ever do wetwork? Yeah, don't ask me about that. What do you think of Mister Obama? He's a criminal! You gonna overcharge me for this fish or what? Rest your hand on the scales or what, right? Kidding! Just kidding!"

"Miss Jennifer, these fish are beautiful! You want a shine in the dead eye of the fish, you do. You don't want it to look dead and all you want it to look sheeny. You don't want it to look like a guy who got whacked last week and was left sitting in the alley. Fish ought to be fresh."

He was rambling all over the store picking out this and that but he spent his own money ($87) so I did not complain. We got snapper, scallops, salmon, and more, and then we stopped at the greengrocers (where he insisted that another shopper, an elderly woman, was flirting with him), and we went home.

He started stuffing the beast. He had bought all sort of herbs and he got the stomach of this fish open and stuffed it to a faretheewell.  His hands were peppered with herbs and such and as he was washing them he said, "I think I shall go on a little walkie."

I knew what that meant! No drunk who lives in an attic ventures out at 4:50 on a gloomy day for no reason. He was headed to the liquor store for certain. The last thing he needed was more booze. We'd been waiting all day for a sober moment to speak to him seriously.

My husband came home from the grocery store and asked where Manny was. I told him he had gone on a "little walkie."

Husband texted Manny: "Do not buy a bottle. I have been waiting for you to get sober so that we can talk. You promised me that it would not be a problem, and it is."

Husband then immediately called him, and said: "I just sent you some texts. If you just bought a bottle, you need to return it."

Manny said, "Okay!" relatively genially, and they hung up.

He didn't come back to the house. But twenty minutes later, he called back. "I can't be treated like a bitch," he announced. "My friend is coming here to pick me up in an hour. The decision has been made."

He came back with a sack of something liquid and quietly packed his bags and waited. He didn't eat one bite of that fish. That beautiful, stuffed, sheeny-eyed fish. We asked him to partake. He said, "I want your boys to have it. I want them to be fed."

Before he left he got teary-eyed and huggy in the kitchen again. "This just isn't working out," he said, shaking his big head. "No one is to blame. I'm not mad at you."

"But," said my husband, "if you'd just stop drinking...."

But Manny cut him off, as if that wasn't at all the issue. "Ah, this is what's best for both of us!" he said.

A car came to get him and the silhouette of a man stood at the end of our driveway. They were waiting to take him to the pig farm an hour north from here, where he currently resides. Manny rolled his suitcase out the door and I saw his slippers sitting there, his stupid slippers. I tried to latch them onto the outside of his rolling bag. I didn't have any success and finally I just rested the slippers there and they slid off with a soft whump onto the floor, and he said patiently, "Don't worry, Miss Jennifer. I will come back eventually and get them."

Will he? Will there be a Chapter Eight?

The next evening, Eldest Son said, "Mom, where is Manny? He promised he would do a cooking show with me. I kinda...I kinda miss him. I really do."

Manny always said that Eldest son was his "go-to guy." Eldest Son has never been able to tell a lie. And he wasn't lying now.

"Manny went to live on a pig farm for a little while! Say, let's cook right now. I have this recipe for chocolate mousse. Chocolate squares and eggs and heavy cream and cointreau? Hmm, don't have that last one. How's Grand Marnier? And let's make this chicken dish. We don't have the exact ingredients but we can improvise. You up for it?"

"A Moose! That sounds great."

(I didn't know what I was doing, not really. Not like a master. But it didn't matter.)

He started pounding chicken flat with a mallet and poking bresaola, cheese, basil into the folded packets. We melted chocolate and stirred in egg yolks and beat the cream into frothy peaks. We chilled the results and waited, excitedly, for the next day's reveal.

Since that night my son and I have made several recipes together, thus far. Don't underestimate the gifts that you bring into this life. Drunk, slurred, broken. There is always something left.

The Manny Diaries, Part Six: Sober Up, We're Going Meat Shopping!

One fine winter's morning, the Manny came down from the attic. I saw him padding through the kitchen in soft slippers, apologetically filling a glass of water and retreating, as silently as he had come, back to his aerie.

He made small appearances throughout the day, like a dazed rodent, each time quietly filling a glass of water. Eventually, he accepted a proffered piece of gingerbread.

He must have emerged during the night, for by morning there had been further nibblings on the gingerbread. By day two, the gingerbread had been savaged. Quietly and neatly, with a knife. But there was little left.

By the third day out of seclusion, he started to make conversation again. He was wearing the same costume he'd had on since his return: flannel pyjamas and a sweatshirt. Whatever torments he'd endured in the attic to flush the booze from his system had seemed to do him a world of good. His eyes were brighter and he wasn't muttering and mumbling to himself.

He looked rather longingly at the cookpots and stovetop and said, "Thinking of going shopping anytime soon? Because I'd sure like to cook a meal for those boys. I sure would."

"You'd have to get dressed," I noted, and he practically leapt up from his chair, almost shedding his garments as he did so.

"I'll get changed and get some pants on and we can go buy some MEAT," he said. "We could get pork, and chicken, and pork, and meat, and maybe some beef and some things like that. OH, and some fresh vegetables, maybe like asparagus? And maybe some HERBS? I'll be ready in five minutes."

But gingerbread is tasty!

He clearly hadn't eaten anything other than gingerbread in days. So there we went off to the A&P, the closest local grocery store, which is staffed by octogenarians and patronized by other octogenarians. All of them are waving coupons and squawking to "Hector" or "Agnes" to come over to the register to verify a 45-year-old's ID. Things move slowly around there. I once likened the experience to being pecked to death by an aged duck.

Manny moved rapidly through the aisles, a new spring to his step. He prodded at avocados and rejected grapefruit that I would have happily tossed in my cart. He never even glanced at the junk food aisles. While in the produce section, he seemed more contented than he had ever been. He picked up herbs and sniffed at them. He fondled the rutabagas. More fresh items went into the cart: flip, flip, flip.

He really got going in the meat section. Some meat wasn't worthy of his attention. He really examined it, with the true cook's appreciation for a fine cut. He also squinted at the prices.

Meat makes the former drunk very happy.

"This is a good deal," he announced, tossing a family pack of meat into the cart. He picked chicken, pork, beef. He got more excited as we rolled down the aisles. He started blathering about grains and eggs and all sorts of food. He also grabbed a giant-sized bottle of Aleve and a lump of cured meat and a jar of caviar.

We checked out and loaded it home and he went to work, slicing and dicing and flipping things in his precious wok, which hung on our wall when not in use. The results were phenomenal. The boys gave me a little squint-eye as if to say, "Hey, thanks for the NUGGETS while he was gone. That was really great, mom, those frozen NUGGETS."

"You know what I wanna do?" he said. "I think I ought to start a catering business. I could do well at that. I really could, Miss Jennifer! I could sell good food to a lot of people around here who just want to eat! And I could cater their parties and such. And then, oh, I want to start a cooking show with Eldest son! He wants to learn to cook. I can teach him. I'll set up a video camera right here and then, we'll cook, we'll cook! And we can show how it's done, right here!"

So the days went on and the wok sizzled and the boys ate and ate and the Manny beamed. And then one day he went for a walk. And when he came back he accidentally left on the kitchen table a liquor store receipt for an expensive bottle of bourbon.

This stuff.

He saw me glancing at the receipt and he snatched it up fast as blazes and stuffed it into the garbage can. (Which was a dumb move, really, when one has pockets available.) Then he realized his error and hung about like a rabbit on hot cinders waiting for me to leave the kitchen so he could get the receipt out and destroy it. He kept walking out and coming back and shuffling about the downstairs, huffing and sighing.

But I didn't leave the kitchen, not until he went upstairs. Then I snatched the receipt out and took a photo of it. Then I took the garbage bag out of the can and left it by the back door.

He appeared in the doorway moments later, and his gaze went straight to the garbage bag leaning there against the cabinets.

"I'll take that out for you!" he said. "I'll sure take that out for you right now get it out of your way get it out of the kitchen yeah yeah I'd be happy to."

"You do that," I said. And he shot toward it like a man possessed.

I thought I smelled the stink of bourbon. And I knew that our world was unsteadily tipping, veering toward its next conclusion.

The Manny Diaries, Part Two: A Drunk By Any Other Name

Two days before Thanksgiving 2013, Manny announced that he'd been invited to a friend's house in the city to join them for the family meal. He hemmed and hawed, wondering if he should go. The drunken debacle from earlier in the week was still bothering me keenly.

"I'll betcher they just want to take advantage of my cooking skills," he said. "People take advantage in this world, don't you know? It's a terrible world. Someone oughta do something about this terrible world."

"No doubt, you talented sot!" said I. "You are a culinary genius. Go, go, and spread your gifts."

"I dunno. It's kinda cold. And I'm an OLD man. I get pains in my hip, and here. And here." He gestured to various places. I feared he might be about to expose stuff.

I nearly packed his bags for him.

"Go, go, my friend! You'll have a simply wonderful time!" I said, helping him out the door with a well-placed boot.

He was never heard from again.

(This isn't quite accurate, but for a while it was. And it sure sounded dramatic.)

After he trundled off with his roll-aboard into the city, I had a rare and startling meltdown during which I leaned against a kitchen cabinet and screamed at the top of my lungs: "Get him out get him out get him out of my house now I want him out now! I want that barking mad ass-clown madman out of my house!"

Manny received a text. It said something along the lines of, "Sorry old chap, we've had a bit of a blow-out, and you'll need to seek alternate housing arrangements." He didn't respond, so another text went out: "Of course, we understand that you'll need time to find another place to live. Let's discuss when you return."

He didn't reply to that either. We tried calling him. It said his phone wasn't in service. None of his numbers were in service, even his work phone. We knew his friends in the city by weird nickname only: Tom the Cattle King, Johnny the Tax Auditor, Chicken-Fried Sadie, and so on, so it was impossible to contact any of them. Manny had completely vanished. Three weeks passed, and we wondered if we should file a missing person's report or check the morgue.

I finally tracked him down via a scrap of paper I found in his attic room, which contained the website of a friend. I emailed her, describing our situation and our friend "John Doe" and asking if he was okay.

He was, she replied. His phone had been stolen and he'd had trouble getting a new one, as both times he'd shown up at the AT&T store the police had quickly been summoned by frightened employees complaining, no doubt, about a boisterous drunk with a potato-shaped head that reminded them eerily of Bill Murray.

However, there was one small problem. Who the hell was "John Doe"? The man who was staying at her apartment had been known to her for the past 20 years as "Richard Roe," not "John Doe."

And, apparently, I'd blown his cover and his entire fake personality with one thoughtless email.

Franken-Meatballs and Disembodied Iguana Tails

This is a story of the perils of working at home, as the mother of three young sons. This was my afternoon, and I have lived to tell the tale.

At around 4:30 Middle Son (age 8) came bouncing into my home office like a miniature Tigger, chanting in his inexorable way: "Hey mom mom I wanna icicle there's this big icicle outside a my window and I want it mom I want it I want that icicle will you get it for me mom huh huh? Will you get me that icicle mom huh huh?"

"I'm working right now. Can you please wait?"

"I want this one big icicle can I have it now huh huh mom? Can I have it now? Itsa really big icicle and I need to have it I want it I need to have it it's an awesome icicle and I want it now mom so can you get it for me now huh huh?"

My mind nearly snapping like a dry twig, I agreed to acquire the icicle so that the kid would bounce away somewhere else. I opened the window and leaned way out. The icicle was a lot further than it looked. The screen, open above me, suddenly slipped from its frame and banged me on the head and sproinged out onto the rooftop. I yanked it back inside and threw it into the room. I reached way out, hoping I wouldn't slip out onto the rooftop. Success! I got the icicle and snapped it off and handed it proudly to my son. He looked at it and hurled it away into the yard.

"What did you go and do THAT for?"

"That way I can grab it easy from the yard when I go outside! It'll be all nice and cold out there and stuff and won't melt nor anything!"

I was just getting back to work, where one of those painfully cryptic and pithy emails awaited me (you know, the ones that say something like "plz call me!!!!" or "what's ur #????"). I began to hear a soft wailing from Eldest Son, my fifth grader, downstairs, a low moan that devolved into racking sobs. When I came down he was slumped over his math homework and begged me for a calculator.

"I'd give you one, really I would," I said. "But it won't do you any good. You have to show your work. Common Core, you know, and all."

He collapsed in a fresh wave of tears. "These problems are stupid!" he cried. "I know how to do them. They are just a waste of my time. My time! When can I PLAY? Mom, when can I PLAY?" And he looked at me with a hunted look of a trapped animal. He had, by the way, already attended an hour-long "Math Olympiad" enrichment program after school, for students who are advanced in math. It wasn't that he couldn't do the problems. It's that, for him, they were dull. He wanted them over with and gone.

I maybe did one of his 867 math problems for him. Yeah, one. It actually invigorated me as I haven't done paper-and-pencil math in years, so there's that. I destroyed the evidence so you can't prove it on me, you can't PROVE that I did it so, yeah...he did his own work, all of it, sir.

Then he announced that he had a science project due, and it was due tomorrow. We had to get teaspoonfuls of flour on dump them on sheets of black construction paper, and then drip water on the piles of flour from varying heights with an eyedropper. Except I couldn't find an eyedropper. Not only that, it was gluten-free flour and I don't think it reacted the way most flour does. Most flour is light and fluffy; gluten-free flour is stodgy and Lumpen. It just kinda sat there when most flour would have reacted in a more scientific and buoyant manner.

We tried drizzling the water from our fingers, pouring it off a spoon, etc., but it was impossible to aim it right for the little piles of flour. Finally I thought the most effective method might be if I spit the water at the mound of flour. I missed as well. The floor was sodden in water and spattered with flour (gluten-free, of course). Goopy piles of black construction paper lay about. I suggested to my son that he might piddle on the flour. At least then he would have something surefire to aim with.

"I don't care if I fail! This is the stupidest thing I have ever seen!" cried Eldest Son. "And, I'm even supposed to take a PHOTO of this."

It looks like a bird exploded on its way to the potty.

Littlest One, in the meantime (age 5), was swinging around his lovey, Iggy. Iggy is a Beanie Baby iguana. He looks like this but more threadbare:

My tail will be torn off by a vengeful elder brother.

Iggy has grown from being a bedtime snuggle-chum to a completely sentient being with mystical, magical powers who needs to be kissed goodnight and goes everywhere with the Littlest One.

(His other favorite "loveys" are turtles and snakes. Should I be concerned about the reptilian theme?)

So it was quite horrifying when Littlest Son and Eldest Son got in a tussle over Iggy and—the horror!—his tail came quite unattached from his body and lots of little "beads" poured out. The screams were astounding.

"He BROKE Iggy! He BROKE Iggy!" It was like the next 18 years of therapy in one terrifying session.

"Iggy is real hurt," sobbed Littlest One, as I stitched him up with my poor 4-H sewing skills so that his tail looked like a Frankenstein monster. He then quickly proceeded to accidentally drop Iggy into the toilet post-pee, such that Iggy needed to be bathed and laid upon a towel for recuperation. The screams, then, were also terrible.

Meanwhile, our houseguest, who will merit a few blog entries of his own, was serving meatballs and pasta for the boys' dinner. He is an exceptional cook and very gifted in the kitchen, which was welcome help at this time. Unfortunately, he is not as gifted with cleaning as he is with cooking. It looked like a meatball explosion. And these meatballs were GINORMOUS. There were meatballs dangling from every surface and a thick crust of detritus under the kitchen table. A meatball rolled from the counter into the leftover "gluten-free" flour from the science experiment. Fettucine noodles were adhered to the table. Little bits of cheese floated in the air like motes in God's eye. A smoke alarm was wanly beeping, and needed new batteries.

I heard an ominous "ding" from my work computer and shuddered. There was no doubt another cryptic email, this time saying something like "u have been gone for 45 minutes, where r u???!!!"

Eldest Son saw weakness, and he made his move like an adder.

"Can we watch one of those shows Mom, can we can we? Can we watch just one of those shows? Y'know just one? Just one?" and he smoothed his new, long, girl-magnet hair and added, "So you can get your work done, you know."

"Yes," I said, giving him a bit of the grateful stink-eye. "By all means, yes!"

Cooking Class

Velveeta Loaf. One of the finest names in cheeses, and a snap to prepare.
Directions: Unwrap cheese, Insert fork. Display. Feeds: 6 refugees from a war-torn country of your choice.



Meat Plate. Your party will be a smash with this as its centerpiece!
Directions: Arrange raw meat on plate. Admire the beauty of many disparate cattle and piggies, come together in death as they never were in life. Dream of their melodic lowing and oinking as they meet one another within this circular ceramic heaven. Feeds: The Party Pony's meat-loving family.



Grape and Homemade Play-DOH Surprise. This delectable mix will have your guests clamoring for more.
Directions: Ask a parent to split the grapes in half with a knife, as they will present a horrible choking hazard for the unwary.
Smash in Play-DOH and stir vigorously. Feeds: one younger sibling.