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The Origins of the Italian Tuxedo

This is my brother, Andy.

Perhaps you may remember him from my stories of the torture I experienced at his hands as a child, or from the fact that I keep him well-stocked with Charmin and lady deodorant.

I keep telling him, he is getting pretty famous among the two of you my many readers.

I just returned from a family vacation at my parent’s house in Virginia, where I spent the week with Bobby and the kids, my folks, and my brother Andy, his lovely wife of 15 years, Sarah, and their four kiddos.  It was, as expected, great fun.  Partly because when my family is together, we never cease to crack each other up.  And we actually enjoy being together!

But back to Andy.

On this trip, I saw something I had never seen before, a sight that was both humorous and slightly perplexing: my brother Andy wearing a “wife-beater” t-shirt.  Or, as he calls it, his “Italian Tuxedo”.  Now, we are not Italian in the least (we are actually mostly BRIAR), but the men in my family are pretty darn hairy (not on their heads, of course, but everywhere else, right, Uncle Paul?), so Andy looks like he could be Italian crossed with Greek crossed with BEAR.  Dude has got body hair.  As a matter of fact, two of his three-year-old “Cubbies” in his Awana class at church have commented on his outstanding fuzziness, one telling him he looked like a monkey, and the other rubbing his arm and saying very generously, “Mr. Brads, I like your fur!”

Out of the mouths of babes.

But I digress.

I had no idea my brother was a fan of the genre of the wife-beater, and one late night last week we got to discussing how and when he had come to love those paper-thin tees that so nicely showcase his voluminous body hair.  He thought about it for a second and said: “I know when I started wearing them.  It was when I got my “Concealed Carry” license and I needed something to cover my gun, so I started wearing the wife-beaters underneath my t-shirts so I could tuck my holster in my pants and then my t-shirt would cover my gun.”

Well. Makes sense, right?

After I finished laughing, crying, and gasping for breath, I came up for air and said, “Wait a minute.  Let me get this straight.  You started wearing wife-beaters so it would be more comfortable for you to carry around your GUN?”

“Well, yeah.”

I love my hairy, gun-toting, school-teaching, lady deodorant-wearing brother. And you really can’t argue with that logic in regards to his donning of the Italian Tuxedo.  I mean, really, you can’t have your holster chafing against your skin when you’re packing. Everyone knows that!

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Yet another occasion when I should have kept my mouth shut

Friday night Bobby and the kids and I were staying in a luxurious 2-star hotel that we pricelined for $50 in Charleston, WV, stopping over on our way to visit my folks in Virginia.   Joshua and I woke up before Bobby and Sophie, and as I was starving, we decided to sneak out and check out the free hot breakfast at said location of luxury.

It was pretty good! Waffle maker FTW! 

Anyhoo, I was looking lovely in my PAJAMAS and no makeup (at least I had washed my face the night before!) and unbrushed hair – kind of like this:

photo by aloha orangeneko on flickr

And for some reason at 8:15 am there were ALL these people in suits and dresses in the hotel breakfast area!  Um, awwwk-ward (for me.)

I was getting Joshua his bagel and muffin when a guy in a suit walked toward me and started getting some other breakfast product.  I did a double take.

It was an old high school boyfriend.

Wearing a suit.

Did I mention I was in my pajamas?  What was old high school boyfriend doing in Charleston, WV wearing a SUIT at 8:15 am?? Standing next to me in the breakfast line???

I wanted to ignore him and pretend I didn’t see him, but really, he was 3 inches away from me.  So, I bit the bullet and said, “Um, hi George (not his real name.)”

He looked me in the face and said, “Huh?”

“Um…aren’t you…George?” I stammered?

“Nope.” he said as he looked at the strange woman in the pajamas.

“Oh, um..sorry.” {Grabs six year old and runs to nearby table to consume scrambled eggs in shame}.

Most of me was very relieved it wasn’t George.

But ALL of me was wishing I’d just kept my mouth shut!

And he TOTALLY looked EXACTLY like him.

And all the people were wearing suits and dresses because they were there for  a Jehovah’s Witness convention.

And yet, NO ONE tried to save the soul of the woman in the pajamas.  At least I had that going for me!

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And THESE are definitely not the moments.

So all my sappiness last night came back to bite me in the ass tonight.

Pardon my French.

Let me preface this story by saying that Kate is now on day 18 of what the doctors are telling us is a stomach virus. Day 18 of a stomach virus.

So tonight when I got home from work, Andy went to have dinner with some friends (the poor guy deserves a night out – he’s been stuck at home with both kids cleaning up body fluids for 18 days… which really, I would be institutionalized by now. I don’t do stuck-at-home very well. As evidenced by the rest of this story). So, I heated up some leftovers, but after dinner I was already slightly stir crazy.

By the time Sammy had eaten Easy Mac straight out of the container AND ingested a newspaper cut-out picture of his favorite baseball player, I decided we had to hit the road. Our usual haunts were out of the question – couldn’t go to the park because it was 1000 degrees and we were already beating dehydration off with a stick… couldn’t go to Grandma’s because the BRAT diet does not include ice cream, Oreos OR Doritos… couldn’t go to Aunt Anna’s because we didn’t want to give Baby Lily the plague.

The library was about the only option I could think of, but of course it was closed (yay for budget cuts). So we went to the grocery instead and picked up the essentials for the current state of our lives – yogurt, saltines, tissues and toilet paper. Then, there was nothing left to do but go home.

The entire night, Kate was a mess. Eighteen days of being sick was catching up with her – she was tired and sad and incredibly sensitive. Her brother couldn’t look at her sideways without her bursting into tears. Or screaming at him at the top of her lungs, one or the other.

I did not handle it well.

I was tired (Kate has been throwing up at 1:30 a.m. like freaking clockwork) and grumpy and just not feeling it.

So I spent the entire night in a pissy mood. Andy texted me at one point to find out how things were going, and I must have sounded rather despondent, because he offered to come home right away.

For whatever reason, my response (“It’s ok, I promise not to drown them in the bathtub”) wasn’t all that comforting to him. He’s kinda paranoid like that.

Anyway, here’s the thing. I spent all day at work. I rolled in the driveway at 5:15. The kids were both in bed asleep by 9:15. But for whatever reason I couldn’t manage to keep my shit together for four hours.

I only did four hours of parenting today (unless you count the five minutes I was on the phone with Kate today when she called to tell me she wanted some toast. Because that’s a request I can fill 30 miles away.).

You would think I could have patience and a smile on my face for four hours. You would think I would cherish every minute of four lousy hours.

You would think. But I couldn’t, or rather, I didn’t. I would say I was patient/smily/cherishing for a sum total of 12.45 minutes of that time.

And you know what the bitch of it is?

When I put Kate to bed, she and I laid there snuggling, and she couldn’t stop telling me that she loved me “to infinity and beyond,” that I was the best mom in the world, and that we had the best family in the world. Her words weren’t manipulative or or tinged with ohmigod-mommy-is-finally-losing-it fear (I only threatened that bathtub thing once, geesh) – she was completely sincere.

Despite all my shortcomings, all my missteps and failings, that girl loves me. I don’t deserve it, but she does.

She loves me even when I suck. I’m not sure if that’s sweet or depressing.

But I love her too. To infinity and beyond.

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