My Inappropriate Life

by Heather McDonald

  “I did. I brought all twenty-four.”

  “Did you check the ingredients for peanuts?” she asked.

  “Yes, I did—no peanuts,” I said proudly.

  “Where were the bagels made?” she questioned.

  I balked. “I don’t know. I bought them at Ralphs,” I said.

  Tammy just stared at me with her eyes widening, so I continued: “I got them in the bakery section, next to the hot dog buns.”

  “Well, we need to know if the bagels were made in the vicinity of a peanut factory,” Tammy said seriously. “We have two airbornes.” Airbornes, what did that mean?

  She continued, “Two of the children are so allergic to peanuts that they can’t even be near a product that was made in the proximity of peanuts. They could be affected because the peanut particles are airborne.”

  Oh my God. My heart started beating faster. “I don’t know if they were made near a peanut factory,” I said.

  “Well, where is the package that they came in?” said another mother, trying to be helpful.

  “I threw it away,” I said.

  “Which trash can? We’ll look,” she replied.

  “No, I threw it away at home this morning so I could bring them in a cute wicker basket so I’d look more like a homemade mother.”

  I instantly imagined one of the airbornes holding their little throats and being placed in a helicopter to be airlifted to a children’s hospital and everyone knowing it was me who brought the bagels. So I took my cute basket and with less than sixty seconds to spare picked up all twenty-four bagels off the bunny plates and dumped them in the large trash can in the kitchen. Then, of course, I started to cry. I said, “I’m sorry, you guys. I know how hard it is to be a room mom and I ruined the one thing I wanted to help with.” As they began to console me, the kids came barreling out of their class, grabbing plastic eggs with hidden candy in them. I wiped my tears and hugged Brandon as he showed me his starburst eggs. Then I thought, Who wants a bagel when you have candy? I now always sign up first so I can bring the paper goods—I found an amazing brand that is 100 percent nut-free.

  The following day was Friday. I was off to volunteer in Drake’s class to help with their painting projects, which the parents would bid on at an auction. Each student paints his or her name and a small picture on either a serving platter or a tile to all be put together on a bench or a patio table. It goes for hundreds or sometimes thousands of dollars, depending on how much the parents care about possessing the ultimate childhood memory.

  Every year I donate a basket full of Chelsea Handler–signed books, Chelsea Lately T-shirts, and Chuy bobbleheads. After I dropped off the kids at school, I parked the car and walked the basket in so everyone could see me with it. It was pretty heavy and included four VIP tickets to a taping, so I figured it would go for at least a couple hundred dollars. Just then I saw Sheila Baker. From across the parking lot, she yelled, “Wow, twice in one week, what’s going on? Is Peter out of town?”

  “No, I’m dropping off my very large donation for the auction. Books and tickets to the show I work on every day to provide milk, bread, and Nestlé Toll House Chocolate-Chip Cookies for my family of five,” I said, very matter-of-factly.

  “Oh, I’ll take it for you. I’m sure you have to get into hair and makeup, right?” she said as she grabbed both sides of the basket.

  Ouch. I had actually put on makeup that day and even brushed my hair, but I’d be damned if I let her drop it off and not get full credit. Just then I looked down into the basket and noticed something pink, almost fleshy-colored, peeking between the Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang book and a “Homo You Didn’t” shirt. (It’s a very pro-gay T-shirt, which happens to be our top seller.) What is that? I thought. Then it hit me. It was a rubber vagina that a sex company had sent to the Chelsea Lately offices. I must have left the basket alone in my office for a second.

  “Heather, let me take it. I’m in charge of writing the descriptions of all the silent auction items,” Sheila said nicely.

  Oh my God she could not take this. How would she describe what she found: “A Night of Laughter: four VIP tickets to a taping of E!’s number-one show, Chelsea Lately; five NY Times bestselling books, all signed by the author, valued at eighty dollars; and one anatomically correct vagina—priceless.” I pulled the basket close to my chest and said, “Sorry, I just remembered I have one more thing in my car I need to add to it.” I turned on my heel and headed back. I still don’t know for sure who put that vagina in my Catholic-school silent-auction basket, but I would bet it was Josh Wolf or Chris Franjola or Sarah Colonna or Jen Kirkman or Fortune Feimster, or even the grand master herself—Chelsea.

  Having not scored a perfect 10 at the boys’ school, I felt I could at least be the world’s best wife by taking Peter to the annual Playboy golf tournament. The first thing I had to do was buy a super-cute golf outfit, since I never play unless it’s miniature with the boys.

  When I got to Golf Smith, a tony boutique, my eyes were immediately drawn to a hot-pink gingham skirt. I first tried on a small and I couldn’t even get it over my thighs. Then I tried a medium and it was still too small. What was going on? Are golf clothes all made for Asian women, or what? Finally, the large fit me. When I was grabbing a pink visor, I mentioned to the salesgirl how much I loved my outfit but that it ran so small, and she said, “Well, it’s juniors.”

  “Like, for middle-schoolers?” I asked.

  Me in my golf outfit from the juniors department.

  “Yes,” she answered. I was a little humiliated but mostly relieved that I wasn’t actually a large. I was going to be competing with scantily clad Playmates. How else could I compete unless I was dressed like a twelve-year-old?

  Once we arrived at the tournament, I was pleased to be greeted by a Bloody Mary. Maybe real golf is more fun than I thought. The celebrities were few and far between, to be honest, which explains why I was invited. There were also some professional football players there. I didn’t recognize any because I don’t follow sports unless the players are ten years of age and under. One guy from the San Francisco Giants did stop me to say how much he and his girlfriend enjoyed reading my book while on the beach in Hawaii. That made my day a home run, or rather a hole in one. Do you get it? If not, reread!

  The girls working the event were about sixth-tier Playmates compared to the Playmates in the magazine—a little rough around the edges, with dark roots, some cellulite, maybe a missing tooth here or there, but still not a day over twenty-three, so the guys were happy. On the first hole we were greeted by four of the girls, dressed in their little Playboy golf outfits. Mine was definitely cuter and possibly skimpier. It was a good day out with Peter and I know I definitely scored a lot of relationship points. I must admit, our relationship is not perfect.

  I think the biggest problem plaguing my marriage right now is Peter’s snoring. He doesn’t just snore. He has sleep apnea. I know this for a fact because I don’t mean to brag but we have medical insurance and I sent him to the university to spend the night and he was professionally diagnosed. This means that he actually stops breathing in between snorts. They gave him this sleeping apparatus that he is supposed to wear over his nose and mouth that looks like something out of the movie Alien, but he didn’t like it, so he was like screw this thing, I’ll just smoke a cigar and have another bottle of wine and just continue to snore. Some nights are so bad and the pauses between snores are so long that I actually think he is dead and start planning his funeral. I’d choose a simple black wrap dress and I would go with wedge heels because it will be easier when walking on the grass at Forest Lawn Cemetery. I’m going with pre-made deli sandwiches. I don’t care what my mother says; I think it is weird to force people to make their own sandwiches, especially when they are in mourning. No one likes that yellow bread, and you have so much Russian dressing left over. At this point, he’ll usually snort so loud it will break me out of styling his funeral and back into reality and I’ll pop up out of bed and ask
, “Did you cross over to the other side? Did you see Papa Joe? Did you talk to Amy Winehouse? Is she still mad at me for impersonating her?”

  On our recent trip to San Francisco for a gig at a comedy club, his snoring became unbearable. Every time he’d get a little bit quiet I’d think, Heather, fall asleep, fall asleep, fall asleep, then: SNORE. It was so frustrating that I got up and went to the front desk of the hotel and got another room for the night. A very empathetic, extremely well-dressed gay man on duty listened to me rant about why I had to get my own room and how we were happily married but I just really needed my sleep. I was going to go straight to the room but then I thought Peter might wake up and think I was kidnapped. So I went back to the room to leave a note saying “Hey fat fuck, Your snoring was so out of control that I got another room. I did 6 shows this weekend so I can afford it.” When I opened the door to our room, it was silent. His snoring had completely stopped. Fuck, my dramatics were unnecessary and cost me $219. I still left the note and went to the room in the hopes that he’d feel a little guilty when he woke up. Unfortunately, I woke up and returned to the room before he even opened his eyes. He’d had the best sleep of his life and had no idea what I had been through.

  So maybe my hiatus didn’t work out as planned. Maybe I’ll never be the perfect wife and mother. But at least I have a job that allows me to afford cute golf outfits from the juniors department and a separate hotel room from my husband.

  24

  RED-CARPET READY

  I’m not the best disciplinarian. I often say no to things that my kids ask for but then give in and say yes after the ninth “But Mom.” I joke with them, but I really hate being called “But Mom.” My name is Mom and I have a butt. However, I do not like being called “Butt Mom.” It’s a horrible name to call your mother. Sometimes I even sign my letters “Love, Butt Mom.” Because I feel that is the name I most often hear.

  There was one incident that took place a couple of weeks ago in our home. Drake was acting up and all I had to say was, “Do you remember the broken-cookie incident?” His eyes widened and he experienced the horrible flashback known as the “broken cookie” like a soldier who goes through post-traumatic stress.

  In our house we have what we call a cookie party. We buy those Nestlé’s Toll House cookie packages with the cookie dough already made into itsy-bitsy squares. We then put them on a cookie sheet and into the oven and ta-da! It’s a cookie party. One night, my husband started the cookie party at eight thirty on a school night. I thought this was a little late for a cookie party, but I didn’t try to stop it because, well, I’m a cool mom. When the cookies came out, Peter said to Drake, “Now, don’t use the spatula to scoop the cookie off the pan until they’ve cooled, otherwise the cookies will break apart.” I was not aware that this conversation had taken place, and about two minutes after I entered the kitchen, I saw the cookie pan, got a spatula, and began to scoop one cookie up as Drake witnessed it breaking apart. He immediately started to whine and say, “Mom, you broke the cookie! You broke the cookie! You didn’t let it cool first! You ruined it!” I tried to calm him down and said, “Drake, it’s fine. It still tastes good.” He continued and began flailing his arms around. “No, Mom, you ruined it. Dad said not to take them off the pan yet, and you did and now the cookie is broken.”

  Much like the critically acclaimed Oxygen show Snapped, a true-crime series about women who have committed murder, or attempted murder, where often the target is the individual’s spouse, the thing that ties all the stories together is that something caused a normal woman to finally just snap and go into a murderous rage. That is what happened to me that night, except fortunately the only thing I ended up murdering was the freshly baked Nestlé’s Toll House cookies. I snapped. Looking at my whining, ungrateful son, I turned to him as my voice lowered like Linda Blair possessed by the devil in the movie The Exorcist and I said, “You will not cry over a broken cookie when there are millions of children in Haiti who don’t even have clean water to drink. Sean Penn has to divide the water up! You ungrateful little shit! Now no one gets cookies!”

  Poor Brandon was just sitting there and not complaining at all and would have devoured a broken cookie even if it fell on the dirty garage floor. It was too late. I took the cookie sheet and dumped all the cookies in the trash can. I said, “Drake ruined it for both of you.” Drake continued to whine and cry and tried to explain that he was justified in being upset that I broke the cookie, so I ordered him to his room.

  I went back out to the kitchen and was trying to calm myself down when Peter said, “Well, you know you shouldn’t have tried to take the cookies off the pan until they were fully cooled.” I turned to him in horror and yelled, “What, you think Drake’s reaction is justified over a broken cookie? What kind of monsters are we raising?”

  After a few minutes Drake was still crying, which pissed me off even more that he was being so dramatic, so I opened his door and stomped into his room and picked up a giant LEGO helicopter Drake had just spent three hours putting together and I said, “You want to cry about a broken cookie? What about a broken LEGO helicopter? I’ll take every LEGO in here and give them to little boys who don’t know the difference between LEGOs and the LEGO knockoff, Eurobricks. Do you know how many times I’ve stepped on one of your LEGOs and suffered? I have the scar on my heel to prove it. It is a rectangle with two small circles in it!”

  Drake kept crying and said, “But Mom, you’re bullying me.” I don’t know what angered me more, being called “Butt Mom” for the hundredth time or being accused of being a bully.

  I said to him, “Bullying? A parent can’t bully their child. You will not use the buzzword of 2012 on me, mister! I’m so sick of bullying. I’m being bullied by people talking about bullying. I’m trying to teach you to be grateful for what you have.” At that point, I looked up and saw my reflection in Drake’s mirrored closet doors and what I saw was terrifying. I was becoming Betty Broderick, whom Meredith Baxter won an Emmy for portraying in my all-time favorite made-for-TV movie.

  Before the cookie party was supposed to start, I was in the middle of trying on nine potential dresses for a red-carpet event the following night. It was for the Gracie Awards, which honors women in television. The other female writers on the Chelsea Lately staff and I were going to accept an award on Chelsea’s behalf. I had been sent cocktail dresses on loan to choose from, but each one I tried on was not working. They were all too tight, too short, and too booby. I had come out to have Peter zip one dress that I thought would work and as I took a deep breath and sucked it all in, he took one look at me and said, “No, I’m not going to even bother. You look like a New Jersey housewife.” I ripped off the Garden State dress and tried on another brightly hued satin minidress. I was getting so frustrated, because I wanted to look like a classy lady writer, not a cougar in heat. To help get the dresses zipped up I had put on my industrial-strength Spanx, which is like an entire one-piece bodysuit that goes up over my bra and all the way down into shorts to mid-thigh. It is so tight, I have to jump up and down to get it on to the point where I work up a pretty decent sweat. Drake then said again, “Butt Mom, you’re bullying me!” Then I screamed again, “A mother can’t bully her son. What is that private school I’m paying for teaching you?” Just then I looked up into Drake’s mirror and saw an evil woman in a binding, nude-colored contraption wearing nothing else but a pair of red pumps and her hair in a severe bun screaming back at me. I realized at that moment that I was more frightening than Joan Crawford with Noxzema smeared on her face screaming at her adopted daughter, Christina, about wire hangers. I’m not proud of this moment, but I’m honest about it. I put the LEGO helicopter down next to the LEGO airplane and the LEGO airport and walked into my bedroom and peeled off the Spanx straightjacket and put on my flannel pajamas. I returned to Drake’s room and gave him a glass of water and a big hug and kiss and told him I loved him. Then I went to Brandon’s room. He was already asleep and I kissed his sweet cheek.


  I chose to tell this story in my book because this way Drake is less likely to write about it in his book thirty years from now or write a movie about his barely famous mother from which this will be the scene that gay men reenact at fabulous dinner parties for years to come.

  Wearing my own dress in the bathroom of the Beverly Hills Hotel before accepting the Gracie Award with other pretty, funny women Jen Kirkman and Sarah Colonna.

  The following night was the Gracie Awards, and I had decided on a long dress I had bought myself a year and a half earlier. I will never forget how much fun we had that night, and Drake never will forget the story of the broken cookie. We still have cookie parties regularly, mostly without Butt Mom. I have yet to make chocolate-chip cookie dough from scratch, but now I always make sure they cool and Drake never complains about what they look like. Even if they are burnt, he is well aware that there are children who have had nothing in their lives but burnt cookies, with no water, and are thrilled to eat them.

  EPILOGUE

  • EXTRAS AND DELETED SCENES •

  Here are a few stories that didn’t make the final cut, but I still think they are funny.

  For me the kids playing organized sports is still no picnic. But recently I found a silver lining when we were at the first soccer game of the season and the team mom asked loudly, “Who was on team snack today? Hello, the kids are starving. Oh, let me check, Dobias, Dobias?” What is great is that my husband and my kids have the last name of Dobias, but I’m Heather McDonald, so I confidently replied, “I’m McDonald, I don’t know who Dobias is. See you next Saturday.”