the happiness project

on Friday I broke free of the homespace to have lunch with a friend who was in Texas for the weekend. She was staying in Austin, so we agreed to meet halfway between my house and where she was—about an hour’s drive for both of us. All in all it was a four-hour excursion, but considering the amount of planning, discussion and milk preparation that went into the venture—I might as well have been planning a long weekend trip to Mexico. Minus the tequila and the bullet-proof vests, of course. Though I did think about the tequila, trust me, there were multiple times I thought about the tequila.

The lunch was fabulous, a much-needed reminder that I am a member of the human race who can be relied on for more than functionality as a small-scale dairy farm. We talked about our lives and relationships and so much normal shit that by the end of the time with her I even found myself dropping some f-bombs in conversation. Glimpses of the real me! Not all was left behind in the labor & delivery room! Strands of cynicism must have wormed their way into my cup of ice chips and made it to recovery!

When I was leaving lunch, Andrew called to see if I could stop off and pick up some charcoal on my way home. Part of living in the country is learning to plan ahead for the provisions you need, and should you realize you need something you don’t have on hand, either you have to A. decide whether the necessary item is worth a trip into town (a mentally precarious weighing game that has brought me to tears more times than I care to count—how can one ever know for sure whether a box of brownie mix is worth a half hour drive? On what kind of scale can this be weighed?) or B. hope against hope that your significant other is already in town and can bring you what you need.

Andrew was in luck that afternoon. I told him I could definitely get the charcoal. Secretly I was pleased to have a reason to stop by the Target across the street from the restaurant without feeling guilty for not rushing home. My plan was to go directly to the charcoal section, identify the lump charcoal (‘Make sure you get lump charcoal’, he said, ‘no briquettes, the bag will clearly say lump.’ ) and then spend ten minutes wandering aimlessly through the aisles, reminiscing for the days when I could stroll through the string bikini section without irony.

But the plan hit a hitch in the first five minutes, when there was no lump charcoal in the charcoal section. After tracking down a Target employee, I was informed that I should probably just check out Home Depot or something. Or maybe Lowe’s. Or what about Wal-Mart? ‘I don’t actually know where you should go,’ the red-shirted helper finally admitted, ‘I just know we don’t have what you need.’

And so instead of wasting the next small portion of my life looking at very glass, very breakable, very-pointless-if-you-have-a-newborn martini glasses, I found myself in the hardware and outdoor section of Wal-Mart looking for the lump (not briquette) charcoal and not finding it. What I did find was a worker who was (I shit you not) was mopping up a broken jar of pickles (in the hardware and outdoor section? How did it break there?). Once I had been standing uncomfortably close to him and his mop for three awkward minutes he finally realized I wasn’t going away and asked if I needed some help. In return, I asked if he knew where I could get some lump charcoal. ‘Never heard of it,’ he said. Then he looked back down at the pickles and continued mopping. ‘CRYSTAL,’ he yelled without looking up, ‘you ever heard of lump charcoal? And can you get me some clean water for this mop?’ Crystal said she’d never heard of lump charcoal and then left the scene, presumably for the water. But more likely to avoid having to help me with any further inquiries. And I was left, standing in front of twenty varieties of charcoal, none of which clearly said lump on the bag.

At this point you’re probably like well why didn’t you call Andrew and ask for clarification on the type of charcoal and where to find it? To that bit of sense and reason I will have you know that I had accidentally left my cell phone in the car, and do you know how much time it takes to walk out of the bowels of the hardware and outdoor section at Wal-Mart back into the parking lot to retrieve a cell phone? More time than I had on my hands, I can assure you of that much.

My maternal homing device had hit full throttle and as I was scanning the charcoal selection for the umpteenth time I was also mentally cataloging the ounces of milk I’d left in the refrigerator. And the miles that were between that Wal-Mart and my home. There was no time to get the phone and call Andrew for answers, oh no, and since no one in the entire supercenter wanted to help answer my lump charcoal question I did what any sane person would do in the situation—I loaded four random bags of varied brands of charcoal into my shopping cart and headed for the checkout.

Sanity. It’s a relatively relative state of mind.

After paying for more charcoal than any one person should need, not just for 4^th of July weekend, but for a lifetime—I wondered why, exactly, in my entire charcoal search at two separate stores no one had been very eager to help me. As I was loading the charcoal into the car, heaving the bags into the truck, I realized that this was the first time I’ve heaved anything into my trunk in, oh, nine and a half months. And then ding, ding, ding, I realized the answer to my question: I wasn’t getting help from the salespeople because I was a normal person again.

I was not an incredibly pregnant person waddling around the store, who they would prefer to help and get out of their store as soon as possible, before I left water much worse to clean up than some pickle juice.

And I did not have a very small and adorable infant in tow that the Crystals of the world love to coo at and make adorable faces in the general direction of.

I was alone, just me, myself and I. Totally normal, average, not looking like the kind of person it would be rewarding to help. Right when I’d kind of gotten used to having people lend an extra hand, or at least throw a sympathetic look in my direction. As much as I have complained in recent months about how weird it is to have virtual strangers share way too much information with me about their first cousin’s c-section, or the way their best friend from high school had an emergency delivery on the side of the highway, or all they reasons they have decided never to have children, all of a sudden I felt very weird (and truth be told, a little sad) to be back to normal. No more random conversations, no more strangers holding open doors or offering to carry groceries. And apparently, no more salespeople filling their quotas of genuinely helping one customer a day on the likes of me.

When I got home Andrew was, well, a little surprised at the amount of charcoal I had in my trunk. As it turns out, the bag that was advertised as 100% natural but also described itself as wood charcoal fit the bill perfectly. When I asked why the bag didn’t actually say ‘lump’ on it he was very vague about his answer, because I neither care nor ever want to understand the intricacies of the charcoal world, I let it go. I found the baby inside the house, much in the place where I had left him, but with a huge smile on his face while he listened to the World Cup game that Andrew had recorded earlier that day.

There is much—oh so much—that we do not yet know about this young man, but one thing that is definite is his love of the vuvuzela. He loves it so much that long after the World Cup is done, these recorded games will be played in my living room to keep him happy. At which point sanity will no longer be relative, it will probably just flat out cease to exist. And I’ll have every reason in the world to start shopping with really large pickle jars that I drop on the floor when I want to get attention. You can only be the pregnant lady for nine-ish months, but the pickle lady? Hell, you can do that forever. Salespeople will jump to help me with my questions and then get me out of their departments and on my way, trying to ensure my jars of pickles stay unbroken on their watch.

‘I hear she used to be normal,’ Crystal will whisper as she chomps on gum and rearranges Coke Zero in the mini fridge at checkout, ‘but then her kid fell in love with vuvuzelas and her man started barbecuing every night to get rid of all this extra charcoal they had. Some combination of the South African noisemaker and smoke from the pit just plum drove her crazy.’