Mr. Drunken Househusband 2008 speaks!

Today is a Very Special Day in oh so many ways: I have volunteered to chaperone the pre-k sleepover, so I'll be up all night with a large crowd of insane five year-olds. Also, I am informed that one of the other chaperones, whom I don't know, is an insane control freak, so that should make the evening all the more delightful. So wish me luck, and in the meantime, today I'm handing the Drunken Housewife blog over to our dear Brown, the new titleholder in these parts:

As the newly crowned Mr. Drunken Househusband 2008, I have taken a solemn oath to use my powers for Good and not Evil. This post is in service to that pledge.

First, thank you to Hughman and DH for bestowing this honor upon me -- I can only conclude that there were few other entrants. In spite of the very real humiliation of kissing my own toilet seat and then posting a picture of it all on the intertubes for everyone to see, I find it hard to believe that that truly represents the extremes to which readers of this site would go. So you all must be chickens.

Second, I'm a'gonna testify: NO man! Can call him self a MAN! IF he canNOT bear the COMPany of a STRONG WOMAN!

In that vein, please allow me to introduce my sister.


You may have heard her obliquely referred to here and elsewhere as "Chubby." Both a moniker and a descriptor (as me), she is in the habit of daring me to do crazy stuff like run many miles with her. Last year, I begged and wheedled at the feet of Drunken Housewife readership for your support in what eventually became a one-runner race.

Although she had shamed me into preparing for the half-marathon, poor Chubby was unable to join me. Nevertheless, thanks to your generosity the effort was successful. I finished the run and raised over $1000 for the cause. I immortalized the day here, if you're interested in wasting your time surfing the tubes: The Final Adventure of Fat Man and Chubby.

Well, the Chubster is at it again. Actually, she's often at it (it being pretty much anything). In this case, however, it's a run and a cause that is close to both of our hearts.

The Norris Cotton Cancer Center at Dartmouth Hitchcock is where my one of my grandfathers received the last medical treatment of his life. Both of them died from cancer, as did Chubby's father-in-law. As did many of the people we once knew--you may have heard: cancer is quite common. While the CHaD race was my big fundraiser, Chubby attempts the Covered Bridges Half Marathon every year in memory of our grandfathers and as a way to help raise some money for such a fine institution.

IN JUST ONE DAY, she will try the run. You have JUST ONE DAY to pitch in and donate. Please help us out. This is one gritty, determined person. Read the race report in that link for a look inside her head. I know that part of what drives her on is knowing that, while she has the option of quiting, cancer doesn't give you that chance.

Chubby's more than halfway to her $1000 goal. Please help me help her get to that line--she will take care of the rest.

tomorrow is betrayal day

Attention: It appears that some delightful person is passing around the URL to this post, trying to stir up cat lovers into a frenzy of hatred against me. Evidently the person in question has much more heart than brain (or reading comprehension). As anyone with a reasonable grasp of the English language should understand, here I was venting about my sorrow over parting with my FOSTER KITTENS. The word "foster" means that these are not the offspring of any cats I own. My personal pets (all rescued animals) are neutered (with the exception of the parrot, but no one has sex with her). Indeed, I am a volunteer for a nonprofit rescue group which takes the youngest and sickest feral and abandoned kittens. At times I set my frigging alarm clock so I can get up and bottlefeed ill and underweight feral kittens. As part of a small and lean rescue, I spend far too much of my own money on supplies and far too much time cleaning up kitten diarrhea and vomit. Besides assisting cats, I've also washed oiled birds at oilspills and handfed an orphaned baby beaver, as well as driven all over the state of California ferrying rescued rats around. So indeed, dear animal lovers with a poor grasp of reading knowledge, please go protest a veal farm or something and stop harassing someone who actually does put in a great deal of time every single frigging day towards helping animals. You also owe me an apology, but I won't hold my breath.


Some of my foster kittens are ready to be put up for adoption, and that means that tomorrow I'm going to take them down to the shelter. There they will be inoculated and put into a very small cage, where they will live, surrounded by the cries of the other cats, until someone adopts them. That could be a very long time for two of them indeed, because you see, they are black cats.

People often argue this point with me as though they are certain I must be mistaken about this. "Really? People don't like black cats? Where did you hear THAT from?" Funnily enough this argument sometimes comes from people who own orange cats, the number one most popular cat color. One of my current herd is a fluffy orange boy with a loud purr, and he's going to fly out of that pound. I'm not worried about him. But I am on the brink of tears already about my black kittens, and the word from my rescue is that the shelter already has a lot of black kittens rotting around in those little cages.

I hate taking my kittens down. During their time with me, they usually forget whatever horrible things happened to put them in the foster care predicament. They become bold and confident. They meet me at the door when I come home, and they create havoc on my bed when I'm trying to sleep. They frolic everywhere, and, poor deluded darlings, believe this is how their lives will be. Then the day comes, and their beloved lady sets them down on a cold, metal table and walks away, even when they cry after her.

The worst came one day two seasons ago, when I dropped off some kittens and watched as they were installed in their little cage. A few cages down some kittens languished that I'd dropped off a long time before. "Oh, no, you guys are still here!" I said. The poor things recognized me and were freaking out with joy, no doubt thinking, "I knew she'd come back for us! Now our nightmare is over!" I asked the shelter worker if he could take them out for me to hold, but he was harried and it would have involved breaking a rule (Shelter Rule # 5,432: No one -- not even a foster parent-- may handle a cat unless she has been pre-screened at the front desk and given a pass). Also, I needed to go pick up Iris at school. So I left without even holding them, and they cried so desperately as I walked out that door. I felt like the world's biggest jerk. Even now tears come to my eyes remembering that.

houses I have seen and hated

As someone who has bought two houses, I have been on a lot of tours of houses.

One of the most memorable houses I toured was the House of the Reluctant Tenants. Needless to say I wasn't interested in buying that one (I had actually evicted many tenants as a lawyer, and I didn't feel like going there as an owner). One angry young male tenant accosted everyone who came in and said, "You aren't going to evict us, are you?" in a hostile manner. Another unseen tenant was taking a shower (or running the shower; how long could the hot water last?) the whole time I was touring, so no one could see the only bathroom (like most people, I won't buy a house without seeing the bathroom). But that was somewhat understandable and didn't inspire horror or disgust, only pity for the poor listing agent. Other houses crossed the disgust or horror line with boldness and panache. Let me share a few of them with you:

The Sex House: I was really loving one house with a great roof deck across from Buena Vista Park until I went into the master bedroom. There was a variety of sex toys and lubricant and sex books out everywhere. I'm not a prude; I own some toys myself, but seeing some strangers' well used vibrators was just an "ewwwww" moment. Also, it seemed their sexuality was stuck in the seventies, which upped the "ewwww" factor for me. There was no way I could ever have sex myself in that particular master bedroom.

Ironically I had already bought a house with a sex-themed room, but it was more subtle and certainly very antiseptic. On our first visit to the beautifully appointed and perfectly clean little bungalow which became Our First Home, I noticed that one of the tiny rooms was set up with two comfortable recliners facing a television set. Each chair had its own personal box of Kleenex strategically located close by. "Hmm, this must be where they watch gay porn," I thought (perhaps because it was so clean and the actual porn had been tucked away, it didn't make me turn against the house). The Sober Husband chose to disagree with me. "Maybe they have allergies." It could also have been that the owners liked to watch a lot of tearjerkers, but then again, we were four blocks from the Castro. I was voting for gay porn.

In any event, after we put in the winning bid, I asked the sellers' real estate agent about that room. It turns out one of the owners was such an aficionado of gay porn that he'd written an encyclopedic book rating virtually all known gay porn flicks. I made sure to gloat to my husband about how I was RIGHTRIGHTRIGHT as always.

The Serial Killer House: We were excited when a large house went on the market one block from our first house. We loved our quiet, quaint neighborhood and didn't want to leave it; we just needed more space since we'd procreated. This could be our ideal solution!

The house was huge but immensely shabby and dilapidated. I could see some possibilities. On the bottom floor, there was a spellbinding trapdoor under the bed. "If we have Jews, there is where we will hide them," my husband remarked (ignoring for the moment that he himself was Jewish).

But then there was the tiny little enclosed patio off the wretched little kitchen. It was triangular, filthy, and contained only a chopping block, an old and well-used hatchet, and a lot of stains. Seeing this dear little space made me wonder more about the mysterious trap door. Perhaps it was used to smuggle out severed limbs. The house was thereafter The Serial Killer House to me.

My husband tried to argue a little sense into me about that house. "Imagine you live in this house, instead of that one YOU want to buy, and I give you thousands of dollars every month to do whatever you want to with! That's what the difference in mortgages will be." "I'd have to spend EVERY ONE OF THOSE DOLLARS to remodel the kitchen," I snapped back.

The Tampon House: My real estate agent was excited over an old house with spectacular architecture on a very great block in our city. The house had been horribly neglected and was filthy. The old bat of an owner criticized me for letting my toddler call me by my first name. But the final straw was when I saw a desiccated used tampon lying by one of the beds. I had to get out of the Tampon House and told my husband and long-suffering real estate agent, "NO WAY. I am NOT living in the Tampon House." My husband actually got into a squabble with me, claiming that it must have been a piece of art. I told him that I knew art and I knew used tampons, and this was a used tampon. As the only one of us who had actually used tampons, I claimed the expert role in the discussion. After all, the Sober Husband should have remembered from our squabble over the gay porn room that I am RIGHTRIGHTRIGHT when it comes to these things.

perhaps there should be no literary awards

During my mother-in-law's last visit, I took her to a bookstore. She was drawn by the latest Richard Russo novel, "Bridge of Sighs", and I stopped her. "Don't waste your money. In fact, you can have my copy if you want, but I wouldn't recommend it." I urged her to get "Fieldwork" by Mischa Berlinski instead, one of the best books I've ever read, an unbelievably engaging and well-crafted first novel. You see, Mischa Berlinski has not yet been spoiled by literary acclaim. Richard Russo, I fear, has been forever damned by winning the Pulitzer Prize for "Empire Falls."

Russo used to be one of my favorite authors of all time. I have lent out my copy of "Straight Man" so many times and reread it so often that it's barely holding together (plus there are still some spray sparkles on some of the pages because I took it to the Burning Man festival). It's a brilliant academic satire, right up there with Kingsley Amis's "Lucky Jim". Indeed, a professor of art I loaned it to ended up buying several copies to give to his colleagues, but when he gave them out, he made sure to tell them, "Don't worry, I don't see you as "Orshee" (a highly annoying young professor who insists upon constantly correcting his colleagues with a lofty "or she" whenever they say "he"). Russo's "Nobody's Fool" is an ubelievably rich and amazing work, with a heavy-drinking, aging manual laborer for a protagonist. It's remarkable how gradually and subtly Russo changes the reader's perceptions of Sully, the loserish protagonist, and his nemesis, a wealthy real estate developer, as the book progresses.

He used to write with such humor and flair, but now Richard Russo is determined to Write A Big Important Book, which evidently means being dreary and focusing on depressing subjects and really, really obsessing about how adolescent traumas can never be overcome. Oy vey.

Tragically the same thing has happened to my beloved, beloved Jonathan Coe. Coe, a British author, wrote one of the most moving and beautiful books ever penned, "The House of Sleep." It's also in places almost unbearably funny. Coe's first big success came with "The Winshaw Legacy", which combined humor with seriousness perfectly. Indeed one of my current literary loves, Scarlett Thomas of "The End of Mr. Y", credits that book with inspiring her to become both a vegetarian and a successful novelist who tries to write about big issues.

It was almost unbelievable that anyone could write so beautifully as Jonathan Coe in his prime. His characters were varied and real (I will never forget the medical student with a fetish for sticking his fingers in the eyes of his narcoleptic girlfriend), and his craft was unparalleled. "The House of Sleep" shifts between decades seamlessly, and an article written by one character ends up libeling the Pope and Maggie Thatcher's husband, among others, due to a footnote labeling error. There's no one like Jonathan Coe... including the Jonathan Coe who is currently turning out depressing downers like "The Closed Circle" and "The Rain Before It Falls."

Like Richard Russo, Jonathan Coe has won awards and is now writing Serious Fiction which evidently means losing all of his sparkling wit altogether. Sad, depressed characters enduring one blow after another, that's what we get with these two authors. Bleh. I wish someone would remind them that Shakespeare used to insert a bit of humor here and there, even in "MacBeth" and "Hamlet", and we don't think any the less of him for it.

Shortly after I had warned my mother-in-law off the latest Russo, I read an article in the Wall Street Journal about "importantitis." The author was addressing music, not literature, but it was just as I'd observed with poor Richard Russo. The writer used Leonard Bernstein as his prime example: after Bernstein won a particular award, he was never able to compose anything of any value again. His pre-award work was innovative and delightful, but what came after was stilted and trying too hard for greatness to achieve it.

Just the other day I read that Doris Lessing has been unable to write since winning the Nobel Prize for literature. Ms. Lessing warns authors to devote as much time as they can to writing while they still have the gift, since their abilities could vanish suddenly and unpredictably.

I really, really miss Richard Russo and Jonathan Coe. Lately the best books I've been reading have been first novels, like "Fieldwork" and also "The Lost City" by Henry Shukman. I can only hope that Mischa Berlinski and Henry Shukman don't win any major prizes any time soon.

the joys of working with the young

On Tuesday I started entering into my daily routine after enduring a four day migraine. I still felt a bit shaky, but I had to do my weekly shift at the parent cooperative preschool (read: I couldn't figure out a way to get out of it which wasn't shameful, and I needed to get out of the house anyhow). As I was driving, I thought over and over, "I hope Jim does something quiet and easy today." (Jim is our iconic pre-k teacher. Despite having worked over 25 years at this same preschool, he still has plenty of energy and an Elvis-esque quiff).

As soon as I arrived, little Stella bounded up full of enthusiasm. "WE'RE GOING ON A GIANT HIKE!!"

I barely averted blurting out "Oh, fuck."

Later Jim informed us working parents that we would indeed be going on a nature hike in the Presidio. I said pathetically that I was just coming off a four day migraine and didn't know if I were up to it. With the nerves of steel and the intolerance for whining which have made him a major success in the preschool world, Jim said calmly, "Are you wearing good shoes for walking?"

As the afternoon of breaking up squabbles wore on, I felt more fragile, and I broke the school rules (Rule #4,972: Workday Parents May Not Make Phone Calls When They Are Supposed To Be Supervising The Children) to leave a series of increasingly imploring emails on the Sober Husband's voicemail, begging him to bail me out by leaving work early. He finally returned my call (provoking another rule violation, as the office manager had to leave her post to find me to call me to the phone) and promised to cab over. He arrived in the nick of time, as the children were being assigned to grownups (the only thing that saved him from missing the start of the hike was that a lengthy debate had been waged over how to assign the two most troublesome and argumentative children, as the random method had stuck one parent with both those little cherubs, which was patently unfair to the poor parent).

Later I drove back to collect the Sober Husband and Lucy. Everyone else trudged back from the field trip, but there was no sign of the Sober Husband and his little band of children. Finally, after school dismissal time, they appeared, looking a bit harried and stressed. The husband was quick to explain: one of his charges (a very athletic and energetic boy) had lain down in the street at a major intersection and refused to get up. He was unable to make this child stand up and walk and in the end carried this large child back to the school.

Another mother and I contemplated this. This mother, a calm and smiling woman who has an almost Buddha-like persona, said, "I would have screamed at him until he got up and walked. I just won't take any nonsense from these kids."

I concurred. "The lash of my viperous tongue would have driven him onwards," I said. There is nothing like a warmhearted, loving and calm stay-at-home mother when it comes to viciously effective scolding.

hurry up and enter the Name Hokgardner's Baby contest!

I'm feeling efficient and like wrapping up all the loose ends (I advise our photo contest winners to write to me about their prizes while this mood prevails; poor Silliyak had to wait aeons for his prize last year). Therefore, let me call your attention to the Name Hokgardner's Baby Contest. I'm giving you a last chance to win before we call it closed. Enter now and have the glamor and glory of having named a real live baby without having to endure labor or pay the baby's college tuition!

a feel good song from Lucy

Five year-old Lucy happily sang to herself a song she made up about her older sister:

"Iris is a servant
Iris is a servant
Yeah yeah yeah!
She does all the boring stuff
She does all the boring stuff
Iris is a servant
She does all the boring stuff
Like cooking
And washing all the clothes."

Later, Lucy walked up to me and asked, "Wouldn't Iris make a good target?", her beautiful cherubic face beaming.

the winners of our Annual Readers Photo Contest!!

Once again your aging sot of a blogger commanded you to enter your photos for her amusement, and you rose to the occasion, you darlings (or at least some of you did. The rest of you are just skating by and will need to make it up to me next year). You may wonder, "Why the hell has it taken so long for this contest to wrap up?" At first, we (meaning Celebrity Guest Hughman and I) extended the deadlines to let some late entries sneak in, and then we extended it again, and then I was preoccupied, and then finally I did declare the winners and write it all up. However, only one of the pictures would show up: the one I uploaded to Blogger from my main email account. The others, sent to my gmail account, wouldn't load, even though they seemed to upload normally as I was composing the post. Evidently there is some bug, which makes no sense as Google owns both gmail and blogger, so one would expect them to go together like Armagnac and prunes (and if the image of Armagnac and prunes causes you to recoil, you need some more classic French desserts in your life. And while we're meandering, I have an anecdote: I used to have a pet rat, Leo, who lived cagefree. He occupied my apartment like another resident, which was delightful most of the time, but once I left out a Tupperware container full of prunes marinating in very good and expensive Armagnac for a planned dessert, and he ate all of it. Poor Leo must have felt like hell after eating his bodyweight not only in Armagnac but again in prunes). Anyhow, so finally a week later Hughman has nagged me into trying again, and here we are. Let me just say that I am hating gmail today.

Last year's winner and current holder of the Mr. Drunken Househusband title, Silliyak, weighed in with an unusual choice, a sad anorexic woman viewed from behind. This disturbed me, but the more blase celebrity guest judge Hughman said, "Frankly I can see this on the streets of LA every day."


Our beloved Carol Ann shared her travel duck with us. She explains: "This green rubber duck always go with me on trips and gets his picture taken. He's been to Vegas, Disneyword and Disneyland, and New York City, among other destinations. So, I decided that he should visit your blog." Awww! Hughman sez, "I love the duck. Is this where you get Green Eggs for Green Eggs and Ham? I wish the duck was swimming in a cocktail."

A new reader, April, gave me a scare. She sent in two pictures of herself, and this one, in thumbnail size in my email inbox, made my heart pound for a moment (and not for the same reason some of you readers' hearts are pounding as you gaze upon it). This picture, when tiny, looks uncannily like I did in the early nineties. I had very short bleached blonde hair, bright red lipstick, and a dominatrixish wardrobe for the weekends. For a moment, I thought our sprightly April was a stalker from my past (and I have been stalked; I have been stalked on two continents). When I opened the picture up to full size, I felt like an idiot, since her tattoos are quite different from mine and our facial features are different. Obviously April is my soulmate and not a stalker. If only we had teamed up back in the nineties; we would have been unstoppable. However, as Hughman noted, April is not going to take top honors because she hasn't added the Drunken Housewife URL to her picture, but she has a special place in our hearts (and I note that as I was uploading the picture AGAIN today, pulling up the thumbnail gave me a start once again. My god, it's uncanny).


Captain Steve had a very thoughtful entry, which really captured that Drunken Housewife zeitgeist. A book, a bathrobe, a cat: c'est moi. Hughman says, "It's all about the shoes. Kudos for including cats, cocktails, leopard print and Bust all in one pic."



Hughman and I felt that nothing could beat Captain Steve's entry, but a last-minute effort from defending champion Missy, holder of the Drunken Housewife title, blew us away. We loved the cat, the snarl, the cocktail, the beautiful colors... This had to be the winner, and it's ensconced at the top of this entry. However, I am declaring Capt. Steve to be Iris Uber Alles 2008, a new title!





Although the fight for Ms. Drunken Housewife 2008 was a hardfought and close one indeed, the Mr. Drunken Househusband 2008 was all too easy to call. Our dear Maine commenter, Jim aka "Brown" submitted a bold and carefully thought out entry which had Hughman musing, "Who can resist a man in lipstick? Sure he's supposed to be drunk but still he's not afraid to show his housewifey side." The only thing wrong with this picture is that it brought back unfortunate memories of my hideous bout with salmonella earlier this year, shudder; but of course that makes it all the more a propos. Jim, you are Mr. Drunken Househusband 2008! Enjoy your reign and don't abuse your powers!

Missy, Capt. Steve, Jim, Silliyak, Carol Ann, and April: please contact me to discuss your prizes (your choices include a book from my collection selected especially for you, darling; a t-shirt modified by me (I'm in love with my "108 Ways To Use A T-shirt" book); ordering up the post of your choice; or commandeering the space for your own rantings).

best not to ask

It is so tedious to tell one's dreams, and Miss Manners decrees that dreams should be shared only with those who share your bed. Nonetheless, I shall share that I dreamed last night that I went on a date with Hellboy. This could in theory have been quite a spicy dream, but in actuality the date consisted of our getting into an argument in a bar.

The husband's dreams, however, were of a higher calibre. He woke me up in the middle of the night with wandering hands, which led to a marked decrease in sleep all around but smiles over the coffee. "That must have been some dream you had last night," I said. He gave a silent nod, clearly choosing not to share any details.

"Mmm hmm," I thought to myself, concluding that I hadn't taken a starring role in that particular dream. "Too bad all Hellboy did was squabble." The Sober Husband has all the luck.

high expectations

Yesterday when we were putting her clean laundry away, five year-old Lucy's mind turned to romance. "When I get married, my husband will be very beautiful."

"More beautiful than Daddy?" I asked.

"Oh, yes! More beautiful than Daddy! As beautiful as Mommy!" Lucy turned a shirt over and over in her hands as she pondered her beautiful future spouse. "As beautiful as a butterfly! As beautiful as a flower! As beautiful as a princess!"

former lab rats make the best pets, karmically speaking

A public service announcement:

Here's the good news:

Cal State Northridge psych lab is permanently shutting down

Here's the bad news:

They want all the animals out by Wednesday, May 7, or they will all be killed. They have 50 mice; 20 hamsters (dwarf, syrian golden & black), 20 rat (black/white & brown/white), 5 guinea pigs (1 pair, 1 trio).

Dwarf hamsters, mice, rats + guinea pigs can live in same sex or spayed/neutered groups. Syrian (regular) hamsters generally need to live alone.

All animals are healthy and have only been used for animal behavior observation.

These animals were all whisked away in the nick of time by the delightful Debra Jenkins, a local rat and rabbit rescuer of great renown (I have not met Debra in person, but I got to know her a bit during the Great Petaluma Rat Hoarding Disaster of 2006. She has amazing networking skills for saving animals). Please contact Debra to adopt or sponsor a rescued lab rat.

I myself had several rescued lab rats, who came from a UCSD lab, who were charming pets who brought a lot of joy during their lives. I can't take in any myself right now, as my cat population is at ten (five kittens, including a pathetically undersized runt; one undersocialized young cat; plus four "regular" cats).

an extremely special contest

You may be wondering, "So, what happened to the Second, Possibly Annual, Readers' Photo Contest"? The answer is that we got a couple of requests for extensions, and seeing as how we're rather slothful here, we granted them. Also, it's been a tough decision this time around. We will announce the winners over the weekend.

But! Why wait a second longer to start the long-awaited NAME HOKGARDNER'S BABY CONTEST!!!! Why, indeed (we'd hate for poor Hokgardner to have her nameless baby before we get around to starting the contest).

Our dear commenter Hokgardner is expecting a child, but seeing as how this is child #4, she and her husband have run out of names. They have decided not to determine the gender ahead of time, doubling their work in choosing prospective names. So we will here enlist the readers to solve Hokgardner's problem.

Grand prize: actually naming a baby. (Please note that just like on "Project Runway" where they say, "The winning design may be part of Macy's fall collection", the winning names may or may not be used). Imagine the bragging rights from this: you can swivel neatly on your stool, turning to the next barfly, and say truthfully, "I named a baby in Texas once."

Runner-up prizes: right to use this space for a rant or reflection of your choice, unedited (but I reserve the right to mock) or the right to commandeer me to write about the topic of your choice.

Guidelines: The other children are named Lily, Ella, and Campbell. There is a general sentiment that perhaps the letter L has been used enough and should not dominate the next (and probably final) child's name. The parents, as you may have surmised, favor traditional names and do not particularly care for creative spelling. That said, the expectant mother loves the name "Tallulah", but Mr. Hokgardner has refused to give his consent.

Also, think about the initials. The last name begins with G, so let us wasteth not our time proposing names such as Penelope Ingrid and Franklin Allen.

How to enter: post your suggested names in comments to this post. Enter as many times as you like. Eventually I will call a halt, and after Hokgardner and Mr. Hokgardner have conferred, we'll declare some winners.