Spelling It Like It Is (6 page)

While on our chicken splurge, we also signed up for a pygmy goat. She would be ours as soon as she was weaned. I initially named her Donna Martin, but by the time she arrived, the joke had worn off and Dean named her Totes McGoats after the movie
I Love You, Man
.

One day we went to the pet store Kahoots to get food for the animals, and they had a bunch of newly hatched chicks. They were irresistible. We brought home five. These we couldn’t sex, but only one of them turned out to be a rooster. We kept him and named him Jackson.

For Stella’s second birthday that June we got two rabbits. They immediately had twelve babies, ten of whom we gave away. (I identified with the mother rabbit, but I would never give my own away.) And at some point around that time I went to Petco for supplies and brought home a bearded dragon named Princess and a snake. (The snake didn’t last long. It became anorexic and wouldn’t eat. Apparently this sometimes happens with snakes. The poor thing died of starvation. I was surprised that
Star
didn’t pick up on the story for a “pets look like their owners” piece.) Then there was another goat. And, around Father’s Day, two rescue guinea pigs.

Coco the chicken lived in the house with the dogs. She was trained. Ish. The rest of the chickens were in a chicken coop (not the chic mobile one that had launched the madness). Totes McGoats was smart. She learned to use the doggie door in one day. But it can be hard to house-train goats because they don’t really know when they’re pooping. But since they only eat oats and hay, goat poop is sweet smelling, and to dogs it’s like candy. So the dogs followed the goat around and cleaned up after her. Life on the farm.

Something was clearly going on with me. All this animal expansion happened toward the end of the fifth season of
Tori & Dean
, right when Dean and I were going through relationship strife. My beef was that Dean spent too much time biking or sitting at the computer looking at racing events and gear. Maybe I should have been grateful. At least his concept of porn was racing helmets and riding gloves. He wasn’t doing horrible shit, but he was disconnected and quick to anger. There is no doubt that, although we never said it out loud, the animals created chaos and distraction. Instead of focusing on our relationship, there was an ongoing stream of new creatures to take care of. It would take me a while to realize that part of the reason our farm kept expanding was so I could postpone dealing with the issues in our relationship.

THERE WAS ONE more animal occupying a small but rapidly growing space in our backyard farm: the pig. When I heard that there was something called a micro-mini pig, which only grew to be twenty pounds, I envisioned a whole farm of minis right there in the backyard. Dean was on board. New animals were something we usually agreed on. He was always game—at least in the moment; he only got angry later when he had to clean up after them. (I’m really good at cuddling and playing with and loving the animals, but poop scooping isn’t exactly my forte.)

Soon after I first read about micro-mini pigs, a friend sent me a link to a listing on Craigslist. It described a little pig named Hank, almost fully grown and still under twenty pounds. The pictures showed him wearing sunglasses and a dog sweater. He was already comfortable wearing clothes! I had to have him. He was going to fit right in. And at four hundred dollars he was much cheaper than the other listings I’d seen, which had micro-minis costing thousands of dollars.

I called the owner right away. At first she said that they had another buyer. I immediately got competitive. When she told me that Hank slept in bed with his owners, I told her that we had a European king and thousand-thread-count sheets. He would love it at our home. (Of course, it’s the cotton staple length that matters, not the thread count, but I couldn’t go into it with her.)

The owner seemed swayed by my passion. “Can’t you come do a home visit? We’ll pay more!” I added. I drive a hard bargain.

She agreed to bring him over.

In the photos on Craigslist, Hank was tiny and adorable. When he and his owner arrived at my house, his size surprised me.

“He looks twice as big as he did online,” I said to the owner.

“Yeah,” she said. “Those pictures are a little old. He’s nine months old, though. He shouldn’t grow much more.”

She had a very sweet scrapbook showing Hank’s first months on Earth. Here was an article from his local newspaper showing him at some event. Here he was wearing a party hat. Here he was dressed up for the holidays, posing on Santa’s lap. Hank’s owner seemed very attached to him—she agreed to sell him to us, but she teared up when it came time to say good-bye. Yet for all her love of her pig, she was moving to a place that didn’t take pigs. It seemed a little odd, but I’m not one to question.

That night Dean started to set up a dog bed for the newest member of our family, but I put my foot down. The owner had said he was used to sleeping in a bed. I had promised. “He sleeps in our bed,” I said. I picked up all forty pounds of him and carried him up our spiral staircase. As we ascended, he let out a huge squeal that echoed throughout the house. I should have taken it as a cry of warning, but soon enough Hank settled in between me and Dean, his head nestled in a down pillow, and went to sleep.

In the middle of the night a noise woke me out of a dead sleep. I had no idea what it was, but it sounded like the room was flooding. I sat up in bed. Hank was no longer tucked between me and Dean. He was gone.

I stood up and crept forward. “Hank? Hank?” In the dark I couldn’t see him but I headed toward the sound of gushing water. There he was, facing the corner, pissing. Only then did I remember that the owner had warned me that pigs like to pee in corners of rooms. I wanted to say, “Hank! Stop!” He needed to be trained not to do this. But I was afraid that if I interrupted him, he’d turn and spray pee everywhere. Instead, I stood, watching silently as my not-so-micro-mini pig peed on and on. He must have peed for five minutes. By the time he was done, there was a fully soaked circle, two feet in diameter, in the corner of our plush cream wall-to-wall carpeting. I had insisted on cream, even though Dean worried the kids would destroy it. The prospect of corner-peeing pigs had not entered the bedroom-carpet negotiation.

When Hank was done, it wasn’t a job for a few paper towels. It was a job for several long-staple Egyptian cotton bath sheets.

As anyone other than me would have realized from the start, Hank was not a micro-mini, if such a thing exists. He wasn’t a mini. He wasn’t even a potbelly. He was a full-on slaughterhouse pig who would grow to be well over two hundred pounds. Months later, I texted the seller. I wanted to tell her that Hank was going to appear on our show and that he was going to be on the poster promoting it. I thought she’d want to know that he was semifamous. When I sent her the photo, I added, “And by the way, as you’ll see, I don’t think he’s a micro mini.”

All she said was, “Oh, I’ve heard about these scams.” But clearly she knew the truth—why else would she have parted with him while he was still relatively little and cute? I knew she still loved him. Why else would she sign her texts “Hank’s mom”? (Why would anyone sign their texts anyway?)

We had two goats, five chickens, one rooster, four dogs, a bearded dragon, a guinea pig, and four rabbits, and we were doing fine. But Hank really needed to be on a farm. Perhaps house-hunting for a farm in Malibu was a bit rash, but all I can say is that I did it for Hank. The pig made me do it.

THE ANIMALS WERE a critical part of this new fantasy that quickly became my obsession. As we worked our way up the coast and started looking up in the canyon, we began to find farms. It was amazing! You could live on the west side, be near the beach, and have a farm with horses and chickens. The prices (I convinced myself) weren’t as crazy if you just drove a bit farther north and inland. We could really do this. We could sell our house, move into a smaller house for less money, and live out my months-long dream of being a farmer.

That September we went into escrow on a house. It was a little house. When I said we were downsizing, I wasn’t kidding. This house was fifteen hundred square feet, a quarter the size of our house in Encino. It was barely big enough to hold our family, but what did that matter—it was a tear-down anyway. What made it desirable was that it was built on one acre of great property. You stepped out of the kitchen to a glorious view of the whole coastline. The land surrounding the house was full of lavender and fruit bushes. I pictured myself in a chic brimmed hat, holding a wire basket, picking lavender. I would sew little sachets, filled with lavender from my backyard and tied with twine, and give them as Christmas gifts. I saw myself making jam from the kumquats and tangerines. Hank and the chickens would have the run of the horse ring. (There was a horse ring.) And this whole perfect setup was really underpriced because the old woman who lived there needed to sell it.

We didn’t talk about the fact that one day whatever money we had saved in the price would have to go toward tearing down the house and building a new one. And we also wanted a pool. The kids would die without a pool. But since we couldn’t afford to rebuild the house, much less install a pool, it would have to be a plunge pool out front. I learned that in Malibu it takes eighteen months to get building plans approved, but even that didn’t daunt me. My plan was to move our whole family, including the newborn, to the tiny, ramshackle, two-bedroom house while we waited for plans to be approved. Part of me was thinking that it would make a hell of an episode, or even an entire season, of
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition
, McDermott-style.

Lucky for us, it turned out that until we sold our house in Encino, we had no money for the down payment. We had to back out of escrow. That would have been a great moment to let go of this fantasy, return to the Valley, and continue life on our suburban animal farm. But I was unstoppable.

A week later we found my dream house. Or what I convinced myself was my dream house. It was a single-story bungalow in Point Dume, on the beach side of the highway, with a beach access key. Take that, Kelly Wearstler! It was five minutes by golf cart from the private beach—no paparazzi!—and it was on two acres. We could certainly have a farm on two acres! What else could we possibly need?

The house, at 2,200 square feet, was about four thousand square feet smaller than our current house. There were only three bedrooms—one for us, one for Hattie and Patsy (her baby nurse), and one for Liam and Stella. Where would my stepson, Jack, sleep? Dean thought he’d like the trailer that came with the house, parked in the yard. I wasn’t so sure. But we did want to downsize.

There were a few other small issues. I didn’t like the bamboo floors—but we could replace them with reclaimed wood. There was no air-conditioning—but at the beach nobody had air-conditioning. We’d have the breeze from the ocean. There was no pool—but someday when we had fifty grand to spare, we could build a pool. The house was small—but one day we could add a second level. It was on two acres of land, much of which was wild—but one day we could clear it and have the farm of our dreams.

The house had just fallen out of escrow, and the owner’s real estate agent told us we had to act fast. It would be sold again by the end of the day. There was no need to do inspections—they’d all been done by the buyers who were pulling out. And why were the buyers pulling out? Oh, it was just a money thing for them.

I spoke to my best friend, Jenny, who is always a voice of reason. When she heard that the house was in Point Dume, prime Malibu real estate in a great school district, she said, “My dream is to live in Point Dume! It has the best school. I’d move my whole family just to send the kids there, to be near the beach, and to still be near the west side. I’m so jealous.” Jenny thought it was a good idea. That sealed the deal.

I asked my mother to lend us the money for the down payment until our house in Encino sold. I told her it was my dream house, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. She agreed. We were moving to Malibu.

It’s a
Boy
Girl

O
f all the psychic, spiritual, voodoo gurus in my world, Cindy was the most consistently accurate. A year before I got pregnant with Hattie, she had said, “You’re going to get pregnant next year with your third child.”

I said, “Really!” This came completely out of the blue. It had been two years since Stella was born.

Completely matter-of fact, she said, “You’ll get pregnant in January or February, and it’s going to be a boy.”

I had been shocked to find myself four weeks pregnant with Hattie on Valentine’s Day, and then I remembered.
Cindy predicted this.

Since Dean and I had a boy and a girl at home, we told Dr. J from the start not to reveal our third baby’s gender. Besides, we already knew it was a boy. If Cindy was accurate enough to call the month of conception, then surely she was right about the gender. I was having a boy.

The entire world agreed with Cindy. When I walked down the street, strangers came up to me, patted my belly, commented on my shape or the way I was carrying, and said, “Oh, you’re so cute. Boy, right?” Every person, from close friends to car valets, was utterly confident it was a boy. The only person who thought I was having a girl was my mother, but I wasn’t about to listen to her.

As we prepared to move to Malibu, I started decorating the room that would be the baby’s nursery. I had the walls painted gray; I ordered a gray crib and a gray and white patterned chair. I was going to have yellow bedding and giraffes in the nursery. People told me I was crazy to order anything before the baby was born, but I kept saying that if it was a boy, I’d add pops of turquoise, and if it was a girl, I’d add pops of fuchsia. It would all work out. Because we were having a boy. We were going to call him Finn, a name Dean and I both loved and had planned on if we ever had another boy.

I had a Cesarean scheduled for a week before my due date. Once you’ve had two C-sections, they make you have a third, and so on. Two weeks before my due date I woke in the middle of the night. I’d had a sharp pain. Was it a contraction? I sat up to see if anything else would happen, and that’s when I felt a tiny bit of pee. Oops. I started to get out of bed to go to the bathroom.