batteries not included

Let me tell you about the length of seven months. Seven months are 210 days, but whose counting? Oh, yeah. Right. Me. I’m counting. I’m counting that seven months can fly right on by, but 210 days?

Two hundred and ten days are a back road Sunday drive, interrupted by a washed out road, blockaded, detoured and … you get it. S-L-O-W. That’s seven months in my body. Without another body.

I’m at my friend Heidi’s the other day, have I mentioned how much I love my friends?

Anyway, I’m Heidi’s and Josie is shadowing Georgie. Josie adores George – the older man at three. It’s George and Josie jumping off the chairs and laughing, over and over. George in his blond hair, Superman boxers, Buzz Light Year shades and nothing else. Josie peeling shoes and socks, getting to bare feet before I stop the shedding.

Josie putting pirates on the Play Mobile ship: “OK. Piwate you go up here. Play piwates, Geowgie. Wanna play with me.”

George waving his light saber: “No, Josie. I’m a super hero.”

Heidi and I at the table, steam rising from the teacups between us.

In another life, not so distant past, she was a Passion Parties rep. Sales, like Tupperware parties, but with sex toys instead of airtight leftover containers. And now that she’s gotten away from it, there’s this whole box of lonely, unwanted, untouched samples somewhere in her house. Somewhere. But, where?

I’ve been asking that question for months. Where, where, where is that box, girl? And, she’s stumped. In the back of a closet? Buried behind her husband’s guitars? WHERE? See? See those capital letters? Those big letters mean URGENT. Desperation.

It’s nearly time to get Amelia from school and I need to go, but I am not leaving empty handed.

Trail Heidi down the basement stairs after her laundry.

“Ok, you NEED to find the box,” now it’s just "the box" and we both know what I’m talking about. “I’m going to rip your house apart, girl. SEVEN MONTHS. It’s been seven months,” I say. “Seriously, I’m going to rip the walls out to find that box.”

“Oh my god, I forgot to tell you. I FOUND IT! I was going to call you yesterday, but I was on the way out and I knew if I called you’d want to come over.” A pause, stuffing wet cloths into the dryer. “Oh my god. Seven months. I’m so sorry. That’s so long.”

We’re up in her room, highest back corner of the closet is a pretty pink case, white polka-dots, stuffed with black silk bags that are stuffed with vibrators. Choose your style. The Monarch. The Rabbit. The Jelly Osaka. The bullet. The G. Choose your size. Choose your features. Long? Stubby? Straight? Curved?

Anything. Anything will do now.

George is in the doorway, curious, and I’m feeling around the bags but not pulling anything out with Superman hovering.

“Go play with Josie. She came over to play with you,” Heidi says, leading curious George back to the family room.

“But, what are you looking at?”

We’re talking features and functions, but I’m an easily influenced consumer, Sex In the City girl. So, it’s The Rabbit. No point in discussing the others.

My friends take good care of me. I leave with the black silk bag, lubricant, a two-cup coffee maker and a can of powdered kitten formula she wants me to pass on to this animal rescue woman I’m supposed to interview later in the week. All of it mingling in a plastic Freddy’s bag.

Can’t get this kind of variety at Freddy’s.

“There’s no batteries in it,” she says as I’m sliding Josie’s shoes back onto her feet. “You need to get C batteries. I think it needs three.”

The whole bag hits the back of the car and I don’t think about it, or the three C batteries, until it’s dark outside. Dinnertime, then baths and stories and bed. Too late for battery shopping now, the rabbit sleeps in its perfect silk sac.

But, this is a kids’ house. Kids’ houses have kids toys. Kids toys, the kind my parents send - the talking, bleeping, blaring plastic kind I hate - they have batteries. The kids are sleeping, the toys are silent and I’ve got the screw driver out, gutting the Winnie The Pooh talking phone, the Backyardagins radio, the Diego drawing board that Josie calls her “Ego (com)puter.”

AA. AA. AA. Doesn’t anything in this house take an effing size C?

Let me tell you about necessity. There’s a little bit of McIver in all of us, even me. And you know what, three AAs may be a bit longer and a lot thinner than Cs, but line them end to end and viola, power.

Now I have power, but these things don’t fit right, keep popping out. They’ll need something to hold them in place. Think, Holly, think. Tape, can’t find the tape.

BAND-AIDS! Of course. A bright green band-aid, crossed with a blue one, reinforced with another green and now the rabbit is running.

Let me tell you about just one more thing: it’s amazing what a Band-Aid can fix.