I Can Barely Take Care of Myself Jen Kirkman (best books for students to read txt) 📖

That sentiment felt secure and it was true. We were legally a family. But people who had kids usually just looked at us with pity—the kind of pity I reserve for people who are folding and unfolding strollers and clumsily walking into a restaurant.

I knew that people stared at us and thought, But you can’t have a two-person family. What if one of you falls off a boat when you’re on vacation? Then what? A family of one? What good is a family of one? If you’re the only one in your family, then who do you blame for all of your mistakes? No, it’s your fault that I dropped the carton of orange juice that I was drinking from while standing in front of the open refrigerator, because you walked into the kitchen on your tiptoes. You know that when you try to walk quietly it scares me more than if you just walked normally. Also, I had a bad day at work and I blame you because if it weren’t for you, I’d have more free time to meet the heir to an oil empire and if he married me—I’d never have to work again! I’m not feeling good about myself but I’m too afraid to look within, so I’m just going to fixate on the fact that your toothbrush is on the top of our toilet tank.

I imagine that if Matt had come home every night and said to me, “Oh, Jen, but you’d be such a good cook,” our marriage would have broken up a lot faster than it did.

It’s not that I can’t cook. I just don’t enjoy cooking. It takes too long and you have to stand there monitoring everything, which doesn’t work well for me and my ADHD. The times that I’ve cooked something elaborate in my kitchen, I’ve packed for the event like I’m going on a long plane ride. I make sure I have my laptop, BlackBerry, iPod, a book, and some magazines at arm’s length.

Throughout most of my life there seemed to be only two types of women represented on TV shows. There were housewives slaving away over a hot stove and then there was Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw, who once said she used her stove to store handbags. I’m neither of these types of woman. Before and after we were married, my husband’s dinner would continue to be something that he bought for himself at the Whole Foods sandwich counter. I’d be coming home from work at nine o’clock and eating my cottage-cheese-and-cucumber saltine sandwiches. I wasn’t a totally useless wife. I was always able to open a bottle of wine for dessert.

I have memories of my grandfather Kirkman making mashed potatoes that were so good because they tasted like a bowl of butter. I love my mom’s brownies. My favorite thing about both of those recipes is that someone else made them for me. Occasionally I feel an urge to whip up some mashed potatoes and brownies, but I don’t ever feel an urge to scrape the crust from the baking pan, or to squeeze out some progeny so he or she can remember that while Mommy was out of town often doing stand-up comedy, she baked a mean banana bread to try to make up for her flagrant neglect.

I am a generally honest, good person who likes eating your brownies/playing with your kid for ten minutes, but that doesn’t mean I should drop everything and enroll in culinary school or start begetting future generations so that one day I can traumatize them, for example by telling them their grandpa was a no-good adulterer.

I never met my mom’s dad, Grandpa Freddy, who died many years before I was born. I’d always known my (now deceased) Nana Jean as a widow. Nana lived about an hour away from our house and had never learned to drive. Once a year, on Thanksgiving, my dad dutifully picked up his mother-in-law and drove her back to Needham, Massachusetts, to stay with us. Nana and I used to walk to the corner doughnut shop the morning of her arrival and when we were out of earshot of my mom, she’d tell me stories about her dead husband. That’s how I thought of Grandpa Freddy—as my nana’s dead husband and not a real grandfatherly type. She didn’t paint the most familial picture of that man.

Apparently, Freddy was a bit of a womanizer and cheated on my nana. When I was about nine, on one of our doughnut-eating walks, I asked her, “Is Grandpa in hell?” I knew the Catholic Church wasn’t so hot on married men having girlfriends, and even though he was my grandfather, I was pretty sure that God didn’t bend the rules for my family. Nana matter-of-factly answered, “Freddy’s in purgatory.”

She explained that it was like a waiting-room area for people who are dead but aren’t quite ready to meet God. That didn’t sound so bad. I liked most waiting rooms as long as they had fish tanks and Highlights magazine. But Nana Jean said that purgatory was brutal. She said it felt like you just couldn’t wait anymore and then the nurse would come out and you would see a glimpse of God behind her and she’d look you over and decide not to take you in to see him just yet. All the while the devil is nipping at your heels, saying, “I’ll take you right now if you want.” My nana grinned. “I know Freddy’s in purgatory because his spirit knocks on the wall above my bed all night long while I’m sleeping. And I say, ‘Freddy, since when do you pay so much attention to me in the bedroom?’ Freddy wants me to pray for him. That’s how he’ll get out of purgatory. But I’m not praying for him. He can wait.”

I never had to go to Catholic school like my mom did. My parents weren’t as religious as their parents. My parents were like