No Matter Where I Go, There I Am

Since my husband retired our lives have simply been weird.

For close to three months I’ve been sleeping on the couch.  It took a while to get used to it, but now I’m relatively comfy and it works.

But when I wake up in the morning he is sitting approximately three feet from my head, as is exhibited in the following photo:

Our home is relatively large, but every morning he’s right there working on a sudoku puzzle in the NY Post.

To be perfectly fair, this is the seat he always sat in before I began sleeping on the couch and he is a serious creature of habit.

Quite often he will bring me coffee.

Many of my friends have suggested that at some point he may decide to shoot me in the back of the head unexpectedly.  But in the mean time he’s really exceptionally nice.  I’m not sure why.

Perhaps the element of surprise.

* * * * *

For nearly three years I have wanted to move back home.  There are pros and cons to everything but it’s become my bizarre obsession to return to the land of corn and beans.

Yet I have lived in NJ now longer than I ever lived in my hometown, nearly 1,000 miles away.

Once you leave you never again really fit in completely anywhere.

I was not happy when I moved from Illinois to Oregon, nor was I content when I left Oregon and returned to Illinois.

The move to California from Illinois was a relatively disastrous adventure, although I did love San Francisco.  The move from San Francisco to North Carolina was simply idiotic.

I left North Carolina for New Jersey like an escaped convict.  I’d have done anything to get the hell out of Winston-Salem.

Currently I live an hour from NYC, 90 minutes from Philadephia &/or Atlantic City, 15 minutes from the Atlantic Ocean.  Our real estate tax alone is $10,000/year.  This is why we don’t often go to NYC, Philadelphia &/or Atlantic City.

* * * * *

We put our house on the market for $120,000 less than it’s worth a couple weeks ago and the first people who looked at it are making an offer.  I was standing in Christmas Tree Shoppe when I got the call and you could describe my reaction as

panic-stricken. 

That’s what happens when your “fantasy life” (as named by my most recently abandoned therapist) starts to look like it might become reality.

Once this move is complete I am definitely mailing that doubting bitch a postcard.

Twisted Dipshit

Either I do nothing or I do everything at once.

Every once in a while I will wake up and schedule myself and/or my daughter for 12 classes and 7 appointments that reach far into the future.  But most days I do nothing.

So last week I purchased 30 days worth of Isagenix to try and get my eating on track.  I had the option of ordering 11 days worth, but went all the way.  What could I have been thinking?

The lovely & extremely thin woman who is my “counselor” has provided me with all kinds of directions.  Oh my do I dislike being directed.  Tell me I have to eat a certain thing and not to eat other certain things and you will find me at 7-11.

Although I’m mostly harming myself this way, I slip into child mode and hide the fact that I’m cheating.  I find great joy in “getting over” on . . . who?  Me, myself and I.

Nothing really brings me more joy than lying to my husband.  He apologized last night for making chicken & mashed potatoes because he assumed I could not eat the meal.

Oh.my.God did that ever tickle me.  I’d just had a Slurpee, an ice cream bar and a package of donuts.  I thanked him for the chicken as I surreptitiously slipped mashed potatoes and gravy into the bowl.

Today I am following the fasting procedures, now that I’ve made it clear I have choices and options and “You’re not my mother!  You can’t tell me what to do!”

I just read a great book entitled: “You are Not so Smart.”

Clearly, this is true.

Twisted Pattycakes &/Or My Barbie Doll BFF

My insane BFF Pattycakes called again today.

Lately I’ve been letting the phone ring without answering.

Her last voicemail: “WHATAYA DOIN?  GIVEN YUR HUZBAN A BLOWJOB?” followed by raucous throaty laughter.

* * * * *

She had a visitor recently and although the woman seemed absolutely lovely there was just . . . something . . . that didn’t sit right.  So Patricia, with her usual down played intelligence and beyond the norm street smartz, tricked the woman into giving her a last name after the chick called a second and third time asking for help finding employment.

It’s not like Patty has a manufacturing business or owns fruit fields.  She’s unemployed herself, after collapsing a lung pushing a garbage cart through a home for the aged.  Yes, this 98-pounder man-handled an enormous plastic bin to the point where she punctured her own right lung.  The girl has a heart the size of the moon.

Anyway, since this unknown prior woman came to visit with her boyfriend’s pal, a dude who’d just recently been released from government custody, Patty searched her on the state website.  Lo and behold, she was in prison for the attempted murder of her husband, an ex-police officer.  How did she do it?  Poison.

She received a miniscule 5 years for putting anti-freeze in his drinks and cyanide in his food “on a number of occasions.”  She supposedly considered suicide but decided punishing her husband was a better idea.  You know someone is pissed when their preferred method of your demise is watching you writhe on the floor for 30 minutes before your eyes go dark.

My favorite part is the neighbor: “She was a little ditsy but didn’t seem like the type . . . always smiling.”

No shit!  The smile should have been the tip off.  I only trust someone who’s exhibiting annoyance with the world.

Patty got the woman back on the phone and said she’d come close to finding her a job when she called the mayor, but the mayor wanted to know “ARE YOU FUCKING NUTS?  SHE JUST GOT OUT OF PRISON FOR ATTEMPTED MANSLAUGHTER.”

I almost forgot the best part, when she told the woman: “Do me a favor, don’t be fixing me any drinks!”

* * * * *

I kept listening.

She mentioned a woman I met once before, Debbie.

‘That bitch is fucking everybody!  She’s almost 50 years old and still posting Facebook self portraits taken in the bathroom.  Jesus Christ, pay attention.

At least keep the toilet out of the shot!” 

“Can you believe it, she went to Atlantic City and picked up some guy down there, slept with him.  The next morning he gives her money for a cab ride home!”

I told her, “You got fucked twice!”

* * * * *

But what’s really got her going is a certified letter that insists she show up in court or a warrant for her arrest will be filed.  Why?  Because she called 9-1-1 five years ago when she heard a commotion across the street behind her house.  Someone was in the process of being robbed and having his throat slit.

She recalls testifying: “You gotta look at the judge when you curse.”

The attorney asked her what she heard: “Gimme your money you fucking spic.”  Uproarious laughter follows.  Testimony lasted two days.  Worst of all, she couldn’t smoke during the breaks.

“They took me in this little room.  The officer said, “You can’t smoke in here.”  I was like WHAT THE FUCK?!”

Now the accused, a scary looking man with an enormous rap sheet, dread locks and a neck tattoo, is asking for a new trial and she has to testify AGAIN.  She says, “No fucking way will I ever call again unless it’s a loved one.  I don’t give a shit what happens!”

Then she ends the call like she always does, ever since she lost her son:

“Call me!  Let’s do lunch.  I love ya!”

* * * * *

There are people in this world you will spend oodles of time with and yet they add nothing to your life.  But there may be one who catches your attention returning to school with kindergarteners from the circus when she says:

“This was a great trip for these lil’ motherfuckers, wasn’t it?”

Do not pass go.  Do not look straight ahead and pretend you didn’t hear her.

Immediately strike up a conversation and say: “Did I really hear you say you have five kids?”

You will never regret it.

Ofukme

Someone told me today he can’t just complain about being fat and skip the gym or that makes him a hypocrite.

Ofukme.

I wish it was just the gym.

I hate the sound of my own thoughts. 

R.E.P.E.T.I.T.I.V.E.

I’m actually shocked that other people can’t read them, that they can misread me.

Especially people who are constantly with me cause it seems like I’m screaming.

It’s so much worse now that my husband is retired.

Now he’s just here, staring off into . . . something.  I’m not sure what.

When we go places he sits in the back of the car like we picked him up at a retirement home and are taking him out for an early bird special.

I don’t know where he carries his disengagable testicles.

I’m a limousine driver with a 14-year old sidekick and her father.

It’s just weird.

What kind of man gives up all control & sits in the back seat by choice?

Worse yet, what kind of woman is married to him?

This was never what I wanted.

My mom married men who were powerless against her anger, who jumped to make her happy.

I swore I would never be with one of their ilk yet here I find myself.

Life is so fucking cyclical.

We’re all stuck on a demonic merry-go-round and I want off.

So what can I change?

1. The lies are killing me.  I need to get real.  No matter what.

2. I need to move physically.  I’m a fucking potato.

3. I need to eat like a non-suicidal person with a functioning brain.

4. I need to make a schedule and follow it and stop being a loser.

5. I need to take responsibility, blame me and only me.

6. I need to stop being 16 and do things that aren’t fun.

7. I need to stop being an asshole.

8. I need to pack my shit up and move.

9. I need money and a job.

I have lots of ideas: memoirs, non-fiction books, internet marketing, websites, e-books.

I look at job sites.

I rotate it all in my head, never getting anywhere.

I get overwhelmed and do nothing.

I bake monkey bread and fall asleep.

Miserable Twisted Mofo

No doubt I probably should be placed on anti-depressants (plus anti-cholesterol meds and something to bring down my blood sugar) but fuck it.  I’m not willing to numb myself out to make other people comfortable, so they can live their lives with all the pawns in proper position.

Although I do occasionally use cake.  Oh, and I did take a recreational Vidodin yesterday.

I’m not enjoying my life. 

My daughter is in the basement, where she spends most of her time when we’re in the house.  The single time I mentioned the possibility of divorce she began to cry and that was all it took to shut me up.

My husband is staring at the TV screen.  He got flustered when I walked out of the room,”Where are you going?!” but barely noticed I was there otherwise.  He would have taken me anywhere I wanted to go, but there is nowhere.

I am an unhappy motherfucker. 

And because I am a co-dependent unhappy motherfucker I feel bad that you’re reading this.

The problem is in me and I know that, but nothing sounds enticing enough to make me take action to find happiness.  I can do anything I want.  I’ve been carrying around the book “Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway” for months now but haven’t finished it.

The things I want are things I should have done at 25 or even 35, and now at 50 they are becoming silly & embarrassing fantasy.  Ray keeps telling me how old I am and I wonder how he imagines that will make him popular.  But then that’s so typical of us.  He moved a couple tons of dirt today and we discussed how happy mindless tasks make him.  Mindless tasks are the bane of my existence.

I wanted children, I had them and lost myself, or maybe I never really existed. 

People freak out when I say my children don’t need me any more.  Maybe my vision is skewed because I really didn’t have a parent by the time I was 13, the age my daughter is today.  My dad had already been gone 3 years and my mother was never there.  Plus, I’m kind of a black & white sort of person.  I thrive on desperation and crisis, not love and harmony.

So, yes, my children need me in some obtuse kind of way.  But not really.  My son doesn’t call and I don’t like the idea of pressuring him to do so.  Even if he did, it wouldn’t change my life.  He is in a good place and I’m thrilled about that.  My daughter only wants food and money and to be allowed to sleep whenever she pleases.  That’s a pretty simple task. 

Would it fuck her up if I was gone? Of course it would.  But for 23 out of 24 hours a day I could sit a dummy in a chair and she might easily think Mommy was home.

Other people get excited about grandchildren or cleaning their homes or their jobs or some freaking homemaker project.  Nope, not me.  I wish I was back living in an apartment, as long as I could be near all the peeps I love.  At this point, they are spread across the country and it’s impossible.  I’d rather scratch at my wrists with a fork than plant flowers or tend a vegetable garden.  Fuck that boring ass shit.

I would love to make lots of money, I just can’t figure out how to do it.  It would absolutely make me happy if I could take my daughter into NYC every day or play craps in AC or Las Vegas.  I enjoy shopping and I love sharing cash with others.  I’d like to get my niece out of her predicament.  I’d love to take my son’s grandmother all over the world and pay off her many bills.

But I can’t do any of that.

The only things I enjoy otherwise are escapist: watching movies or tv or reading books.  But how long can I use escapism and not want something real?  Would anything at all make me content?  I really don’t know. 

Yet I’m happier than a lot of people.   I’m like a bi-polar bitch, laughing one minute and crying the next.  I do a lot of both.

I’ve even lost friends and let them go without making any effort to change things.  I’ve learned a huge lesson in the last couple of years about controlling other people.  I don’t want to control anyone and I don’t want them to try and do it to me.  Control is mistaken for love and we end up living our lives for other people.

I am a miserable motherfucker. 

Watching TV day before yesterday with big silent tears plopping down my face and onto my shirt.   No one noticed.  Usually a sign of PMS, although it’s been worse for a couple of years now.  Could definitely blame it on perimenopause, but then that’s just fucking disgusting.

Such a spoiled brat, daring to be miserable when I have every possible need taken care of without having to do anything at all for it.  We watched a show on HBO yesterday about children who were cast out on the street and called witches, some as young as 3 months, one little girl was all of 5.  I’d love to go to Africa and take care of those babies.  Well, actually, I’d need to bring them here.  The heat and flies and nasty smells would bother me.  God, sometimes I hate myself.  Once that 3 month old was 15 and asking for a car she would just completely piss me off. 

Too twisted to stay, too freaking scared to take action.  Never in my life have I felt so completely stuck.  I always prided myself on leaving, cutting my losses, never being willing to stay when I knew it was over. 

Where did that ballsy chick go?

I’ve tried to remind myself of the shit I’ve been through, the things I’ve survived:   the death of my father, a raving maniacal bitch of a mother, the death of my grandmother, loving a drug addict, having a baby with him & then his death from AIDS & all that entailed, losing him, moving across country alone five times, working in NYC, driving thousands of miles on my own, supporting myself, a blood transfusion during childbirth, my brother’s funeral, a 3-week marriage, being beaten in the head by that ugly bastard, a physical attack in the middle of the night, flat tires on freeways and finally calling my mother a c*nt  . . . it sounds like someone else’s life.

And then there are the catastrophic things other people are going through and I hear myself  whining like a fucking gnat that won’t go away. 

Oh, I am just so sick of myself.

 

Happily Twisted

Today was one of the best days I’ve had in a long time.

It doesn’t take much. I’m relatively low maintenance unless you’re comparing me to someone in a coma.

Occasionally I spend time with people who need everything to be “just so,” and I feel extremely lucky that in most situations I’m perfectly comfortable just going with the flow.

As long as everyone I love stays alive, the day is golden.

My son sent me pictures from a plane ride he took around San Diego with a pilot friend. They landed safely.

My daughter made me laugh like crazy and called me names and made me swear to STFU about the silly thing she said.

My best friend called and promised to always be there. Anything that quiets my hairy fucking abandonment issues . . . . YIPPEE!

My niece and I texted back and forth about how we can torture my sister’s boyfriend at some future date and it made us both giggle with devious glee.

I made it through another day fasting and don’t feel like an overstuffed turkey for the moment.

We bowled and I maintained my 144 average and promised to bring my young friend an entire package of Nutter-Butters next week, which made him ridiculously ecstatic.

I threw a package of Thin Mints at my husband’s head when he left them sitting out and claimed I “don’t like mint,” when he very well knows I ate an entire box of the fucking things on Monday and nearly killed myself. The cookies bounced off his hand and nearly hit an 80-year old man.

I took a clover plant with a tiny leprechaun man hiding within and gave it to my favorite bowler chick. She screamed with joy, even though it only cost a dollar. She also agreed that it’s ridiculous that a man I’ve been married to for 15 years does not know I love Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies and that it’s reason enough to run off to Wyoming.

Tomorrow I have two job interviews. The first is at 9 a.m. What in the hell was I thinking?

Sweet dreams, peeps.

The Twisted Bitch Blogs

I must begin blogging again or my head will explode and psychedelic shit will cover the surface of the earth.

There is no other way to take the pressure off my brain unless a doctor drills a hole, something like you might see at www.popthatzit.com .  I recommend clicking that link only if you have dermatological instincts which make you desire to remove the enormous yellow blemish of a stranger on a city bus, which I happen to possess.

Since it’s been a while since updating this blog I shall provide a quick synopsis:

1.) Unable to say much about my mother or sister since I haven’t spoken with either, even though yesterday was my mother’s 70th birthday. The fact that my sister allowed her boyfriend back into the house after he made comments about my niece’s breasts sickens me.

Add to that my mother’s input, telling my niece that she’s had more cocks than most farmhouse hens, and I hope you understand why I’m rotten enough to block both of them from Facebook, which is really my only communication with the outside world.

2.) My glucose levels reached a new high of 500 today thanks to fucking Girl Scout cookies. I will not be buying any next year, thank you very much.  It’s a constant struggle and I am loopy over it.

3.) My son is still living in San Diego and has A GIRLFRIEND.  I haven’t actually met her, but I love her.  I hope they get married and live happily ever after.  She is a Gemini, her birthday only two days after mine, and she likes me.  I must admit that pretty much my only criteria for liking you is that you like me.  But she’s funny, too.  He has been wonderfully successful in every other way, so why did I worry about who he would bring home?  I should have known.

4.) My daughter is now two inches taller than me and twenty pounds heavier.  I am not happy about the second part of that sentence.  We joined a gym, took a yoga class, and with her butt in my face I heard a loud putt and we ran out of that damned class, convulsing with laughter.  It turns out I do not like yoga.  I don’t like anyone bossing me around.  I certainly don’t like anyone telling me to get on the floor, then stand up, then get on the floor again.  Fuck that shit.  It completely sucks.

5.) Still in New Jersey but planning to put the house on the market and move, quite a frightening proposition.  I’ve come to the conclusion I never should have gotten married, never should have had children.  But since the children are wonderful I’ll keep them.  The absolute certainty is I never should have stopped working, earning my own money, having a life of my own.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the economy sucks ass and getting a job is nearly impossible now, though I continue to look.  I watched a show about millionaires giving money away last night and when a soup kitchen was highlighted and many, many toothless people were on the screen, I began imagining an entirely independent Pam.  I am such a fucking pussy about things like shiny teeth and properly highlighted hair.

As always, I would love your thoughts and comments.  I’m going to start updating daily, I swear I am.  Comments will help make it happen.

Pamajama

The Great Book Escape &/or Skip This One, It’s Not Very Funny

“I entered the obedient limbo of the inauthentic life whose main reward is not to be attacked or rejected by the narcissistic parent . . . “

For most of this summer I have had no less than 50 books checked out from the library, usually a few more, along side the piles I call my own.  (Those bitches at the library who give me dirty looks can suck my dick.) 

I continue to read flippant & easy escapes, but cart home dozens of non-fiction and self-help books.  Robin Cook’s Contagion gave me 2 days of delirious happiness last week, while focused on the Plague.

Yesterday I opened “The Intimacy Factor” and read: “My essential reason for writing The Intimacy Factor is to acknowledge the role of spirituality in intimate relationships.”  Well, fuck me, if I’d read that in the library I’d never have checked out the book.  The original issue of intimacy is enough of a drag, throw in spirituality and I’d just as soon be alone.

I have yet to open “How I Made My First Million On The Internet.”  I’ve kept “Creating Websites” for so long it is now costing ten cents a day to sit on the floor of my den amidst crumbs and dusty hairballs.

There was a single book I read cover to cover this week: “Trapped In The Mirror: Adult Children of Narcissists in Their Struggle For Self.”  Believe me, I know, I have to be a complete asshole to have been drawn in to such a subject.  But I’ve always wanted to know WTF is wrong with my mother and this book nailed it.

BAM, that bitch is a narcissist. 

She may very well be other things too, but this one is a clear-cut diagnosis that gave such perfect examples it made me want to get in the car, drive to Kentucky, and kill her.  Like not clean kill, but nasty, dirty, drag it out, torture her for 18 years sort of thing.

“There is no rational explanation for what a completely self-centered person will do.  The adult child must wean from compulsive need to understand or drown.”

You’re supposed to have pity for certifiable people with “diseases,” but I evidently . . .

don’t. 

I took 20 pages of handwritten notes regarding things in the book that affect me directly, stories that made my pulse beat like a drum with the thought “That’s me.”  It can be summed up with this statement:

“When we ask ‘Am I worth it?‘

the answer from our internalized parent is

‘No, you’re not.’”

My husband, more and more, has proven himself to be the original devil’s advocate.  I can’t talk to him about shit like this, not even a little bit, or I hate his guts. 

“The mother shows no interest in her daughter.  Self-absorption is non-negotiable.  Showing interest would only be an act.”

He repetitively tells me I am my own worst enemy and there is “nothing wrong” with me.  This negates my existence, the anger I feel over becoming an essential orphan at age 10.  I have tried to explain that my tapes are warped, that they were instilled like a lop-sided racetrack owned by a crooked bitch, that I can fight against negative urges but will always be at war with myself.  I can’t completely replace the original framework of my life, built by my mother.

He ignores the evidence & prefers not to notice that I am disintegrating to some extent.  He doesn’t show any kind of reaction to my failure to accomplish anything, anything at all, some days. 

“Feeling unworthy we lack motivation to improve our lives.” 

I think he’s okay with that because it keeps me dependent.  I can’t decide if I would be better or worse on my own. (Although last week he pushed me in a particular direction when he said diabetes is “the kind of thing that improves with proper diet and exercise” as he held ice cream in one hand and a Cherry Pepsi in the other.  I was so enraged I could not speak.)

Angry?  Do I sound angry?

I’m not only angry but scared.  I am certain that if I continue in the current situation I will eventually push myself to the kind of diabetic complications that make people lose their feet, go blind & need dialysis to pee.

“It is easy to fall into a self destructive lifestyle after being treated as expendable & worthless.  Destroyed by parents, we now destroy ourselves.”

It’s completely fucking freaky to watch yourself reach a point where it seems a Sugar Daddy is worth the possibility of a heart attack because your addiction to sugar is so great it deems resistance as futile.  I have transferred huge globs of sadness into grief over my inability to fully enjoy a box of Sour Patch Kids (you can keep the green and yellow.) 

I can walk down the candy aisle and get tears in my eyes.  In a 24-hour day I can ruin my blood sugar levels in mere seconds of self-pity.

“The idea that achieving great heights can be dangerous may relate to the grandiosity it simulates.  Narcissism lurks within the psyche of every child of a narcissist since we had such a parent to identify with.” 

Oh great, this explains why I, too, am often such a fucking asshole!

It’s easy to put such thoughts out of my mind when I’m laughing with my daughter and being a goofy idiot.  I begin thinking I am ridiculously dramatic, complaining about stuff that’s so much less important than what other people experience daily.  Yet, I am killing myself all the same.  I don’t care for me, but I do for my daughter.  She would be left with this big goofy Pittsburghian whose grammar makes me want to gouge my eyes out with a dirty fork, who reminds me of my grandfather (a man I did not get along with well as a teenager).

” . . . a person with a negative introject [that fucked up voice]  reacts to loved ones as part of the self.  There is a merging of ego boundaries . . . this initiates aggression of the introject, who begins criticizing & reforming the loved one, who is now subject to one’s personal self-hatred.”

Last night after writing a funny e-mail to a niece regarding the naming of her second child, my husband said, “You really missed your mark.”  I said, “What?” although I already knew what he’d said.  He repeated, “You missed your mark as a writer.”  I think he thought it was a compliment.

My favorite line in the whole book was confirmation I am not crazy:

“The hope that one can leave behind what one carries within one’s mind is usually quickly dispelled.”

At least Elan Golomb completely fucking understands me.  Typical that we’ve never even met.

Update On Potato-Head Brother-In-Law &/or Thanks, Mom!

Scott (my step-brother) called yesterday laughing like a hyena and talking like he’s been on  a 100-day meth bender.  This is the norm, although he doesn’t even drink alcohol.  He does, however, spend weeks alone in a truck.  So when he finally speaks it comes out with volcanic force. 

Occasionally he picks up some chick and spends a few hours feeding his need for human contact, but then he kicks her out and goes back to being the most kind-hearted, adorable, funny, anti-social freak I know.

He was calling to say that he told the pseudo brother-in-law Mike (my sister’s boyfriend who is married for the 5th time, yet engaged to sis) a big fat lie about buying his own truck, which in turn got Mike talking to him again.  Talking so much that Mike called 7 times in a matter of 2 hours.

Somewhere in the mix Mike asked Scott, “Kin ah ask yew a question ‘n will ya tell me the Gawd’s honest truth?”

“Sure!” was Scott’s answer, although anyone who would believe him is nuts, since Scott is never completely serious.

Evidently the fact that I’d written on Scott’s Facebook page the words

“Scott Eric“

had come to Mike’s attention.  Since I don’t always have shit to say I just put down anything to simply express the fact that I’m thinking of someone.  After I’d written that, my niece wrote back ”Pamela Jo.”  Amazingly, she gets it.

Cause it’s my name, fer goodness sakes.  Nothing more.

Then I made the mistake of saying something else on my own page about my 50th birthday approaching and how I might just stand naked in the road for the purpose of trying to get truckers to honk their horns.  Utterly stupid bullshit.  You know, the kind of thing Facebook would die without.

Mike’s question to Scott was,

“Are you fuckin’ Pam?”

Scott’s reply:

“Pam who?” 

Then he thought for a second and said,

“YOU MEAN MY SISTER?”

I’m kind of at a loss as to where I can even go with this from here.  I knew Mike was a pervert, I knew his mind worked this way, but the absolute confirmation of same is icky and troubling. 

There really are times I wish I was wrong about people.

I should acknowledge that from a different perspective this should be a compliment.  I am nearing 50 and most of Scott’s chiclets are 35 or less.  I have wings under my arms that resemble an owl, my skin bears the remnants of carrying two big ass babies, and Scott’s ex-wife is a Scandinavian bombshell.

So it might be a compliment if Mike didn’t have the IQ of a pork chop.

* * * * *

Then Scott mentioned that Mom has had pneumonia and went for an MRI recently.  Does this mean I’ll be feeling sympathetic and send her a Mother’s Day card with a nice gift?

Aw, fuck it.  I’ll spend the cash at the psychologist’s on Friday, trying to figure out why I am the most unforgiving person I’ve ever met. 

I mean if Mom wasn’t so fucked up then my sister would think she deserved better than this piece of garbage she’s aligned herself with.  She might be with someone normal, like a tax accountant.  Her children might never have gone to prison or had sex with chicks whose parents were jailed for murder.  This would play havoc with my superiority complex.

My brother, without my mother’s hideous interference, might have played for the NFL and be living the life of riley with a mansion in Miami.  Can you imagine how hot it is down there right now, if I had to make that trip for the holiday, if he wasn’t dead?  My husband could be forced to sit at the pool with hot, young cheerleaders. 

My sister’s tax accountant might have an affair with one of them and she’d be devastated.  My husband might be having a threesome with that motherfucking cheerleader and the wimpy tax accountant this very fucking second!

And since Mike was from Florida and I’d be really pissed off, standing on the side of the road trying to get truckers to honk their horns, that ugly bastard might have picked me up and we’d be together now, with me caressing his flaccid un-muscled skin and bad Harley tats.

So thanks, Mom! 

Happy Mother’s Day!

Perfectly Attuned to Twisted Humor

I love nothing more than saying inappropriate things to my pre-teen and getting her eyes to light up in abject fascination.  Will it make her a stable adult human being when it’s all said and done?  I have no freaking idea. 

It’s like being the teacher in the 2-year-old room at the nursery and using lesson plans that include surreptitiously scratching their little noses with their longest digit.  “Listen, kids, if Grandma won’t let you watch that 6th hour of TV when she babysits, here’s what you do.”

It seems to me that having fun with your mother has got to be a step up from having a tight-ass rule your life, dampen your spirit and bore you to tears.  Certainly there’s got to be a middle ground, but that’s not my strong suit.  Neither is singing all the correct words to any song and damned if my bitchy little chick doesn’t mock me unmercifully for that.  So I need to keep her on her toes.

On April Fool’s Day I was desperate to find a prank at 4 a.m., as too many years have passed without observing what is no doubt the best American holiday of all.  My husband was asleep in bed, my daughter and I downstairs in the hallway after brushing our teeth.  She wanted to know if we were going to a scheduled activity the following day.  (Not that we ever make it since we stay up till 4 a.m.)

I knew the plans had been canceled for other adult (boring ass) reasons and figured I’d been handed an April Fool’s Day gift.  Unfortunately, coming from the midwest I have a shit load of rich black dirt in my frontal lobe (after years of detasseling corn at ungodly hours of the morning, which I’m sure is why I still refuse to get up at a decent hour). 

The end result is I am a plodding thinker, related to the mule family.  But in this instance I had to think fast, which does not always end up with the best result.  (It is why I cannot be expected to order meals from snarky waiters in New York City.)

Now don’t get pissed at me, all up on your high horse, but I told her someone died.  She’s a fan of horror films and scary stories, believing herself a descendant from the makers of  “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “Saw.”  She loves to pretend that she has testicles the size of basketballs, even though it’s so completely untrue. 

But when her guinea pig died she acted sad for a minute and then asked “Can I poke it with a stick?”  I mean, come on, this is a kid you can f*ck with just a little bit.

The alleged dead person in question is not a close friend nor family member.  (I do have ethical standards.)  It’s another mom, someone who teaches in the co-op we attend.  I said she’d been . . .  killed in a car accident. 

Rachel replied “Really?” and looked at me with those beautifully naive eyes of hers.  I hesitated a moment and then said, “Well, I didn’t want to upset you.  Are you okay?”  Her heartless reply: “Yeah, I guess so.”  So that’s when I jumped in with, “Aww, it’s a lie . . .  April Fool’s!”

She began screaming and laughing and chasing me through the house as I cackled with joyous abandon. 

Her father woke up and began shouting, “What?  What?”  For the most part we just ignored him, as this has become kind of a common occurrence here in the middle of the night.  I think she told him the next day.  Yet he still fell for it when I told him I’d cut myself with a knife and would he please bring home bandage materials from the pharmacy after he purchased his White Castle dinner.

Emergency preparedness is his bag and he immediately began re-thinking his plans and insisted he could not go to White Castle as his wife bled to death at home on the kitchen floor.  Then I began hearing the “Clink, clink, clink” of his brain waves and, just as he was about to get it on his own, I said the obligatory line: “APRIL FOOL’S.” 

I think it’s actually the 3rd time I’ve used that kind of thing with him, once including a ketchup prop.  The favorite was when I made Rachel run outside and scream, “Mommy’s not moving!  She changed that light bulb in the bathroom that she asked you to change last week and she fell off the chair!”  He came in to find me appropriately splayed out on the bathroom floor waiting for a chalk outline.  If only I hadn’t started to laugh.  The guilt ploy was such a bonus.

As I write this I am trying to figure out how I can get downstairs to the plastic wrap, bring it up and cover the toilet seat, so that when he gets up he splatters pee all over himself.  It’s a gag I’ve been wanting to pull for the longest time. 

Well, that and cover the entire door frame with the stuff.  In my mind’s eye he would bounce off it like a trampoline.  I’m guessing it has to be a little more complicated than my visualization.  Complications bore me tremendously, so IXNAY on that idea.  It would be easier just to bring an ice cube upstairs and place it in the midst of his underarm hair.  No lie, I would probably break his nose if he did something like that to me, yet he would not even get angry if I did it to him.

* * * * *

So I went to find the plastic wrap and we only have pink and purple.  The pink is now tightly wrapped across the top of the toilet.  I really, really, really hope Rachel does not get up and have to pee in the next two hours.

My Twisted Pseudo Brother-In-Law ~ One Sick F*ck

My sister’s boyfriend is so unattractive it’s hard to describe accurately.  It’s not that I hold that against him, it’s the fact that he thinks he’s hot that bothers me.  He combs his hair into this crazy David Cassidy style, wears gold chains on both neck and wrist, has massive Harley tats on his saggy, sallow, unmuscled skin, trims his fu manchu facial hair but doesn’t bathe.  He’s about 5’7″ and wears thick, dirty glasses.

You’d think he would be a little more understated & self-flagellating, considering that he’s still married to his fourth wife and on federal probation for the back child support he owes in 3 different states.  I had no idea this was even possible.  The amazing thing is that he found 3 women to sleep with him, let alone carry his seed.  The amount he must pay per month is about equal to what he makes in salary, sometimes more.  Yes, he’s a catch.  He and my sister are “engaged,” which I also think is a little tacky when it happens before the divorce.  She has no intention of marrying him, but did get his name tattooed on her ankle.  She seemed happy when she told me, “You can hardly read it.”

My husband is a lone wolf.  He does not have male friends who call and he does not sit in bars with pals.  (He might be much better off if he did.)  The only place Ray is really comfortable is in a bowling alley, where the reason for social contact is all about the ball, the reason to touch one another is all about the hand slapping.  Mike is a needy, social butterfly, who reminds me of a guy who works in a bowling alley setting pins & cleaning up beer bottles.  (These two are a match made in heaven.)

So Ray was kind of tickled when Mike started sending him daily texts that said, “Are you stel comin her [sic] ?”  [Translation: "Are you still coming here?"]  Some said things that essentially meant “Save me.”  After all, his boss is my mother.  He called and asked Ray for advice on handling my niece, asked him how he handled step-parenting my son.  (The one way in which my sister & I are completely alike is in the fact that you should protect your balls before making a single negative remark regarding our children, even if what you’re saying is true.)  We once mistakenly got involved in sending those ridiculous e-mail forwards of very bad jokes & nude body parts, but it got so out of hand with this creepy fucker that it was kinda scary.

My brother has told me great stories about fucking with Mike’s (soft like a bad potato) head.  There is no one I know who enjoys the psychological games you can play with a dimwit more than Scott.  I have always shared those stories with my husband, gasping with laughter.  The one time I didn’t think it was funny was when Scott called and told me that Mike had asked my sister if it was okay if he shouted ”Pam” during orgasm.  I still remember exactly where I was standing as I had to think it all through and eventually realize in this instance I was the dimwit.  Motherfucker got me for a minute!

Scott very nearly convinced Mike that our step-father drilled a hole in a wall and was watching my sister shower.  This was as payback for Mike’s continued repetitive statement: “Well, guess I’ll go home now and fuck yer sister.”  I’ve begged Scott to say, “I did her first & better,” but he won’t.  I also asked him to punch Mike in the face, but he wouldn’t do that either.  When we found out that Mom stayed in the house to watch the kids one evening & Mike came home & found her in his bed, the goofs were never ending.  Ray even joined in on the mother-in-law stuff.

The misspellings in the texts Mike wrote endeared him to both of us. We hooted in incredulity.  I was starting to really enjoy the guy!  As we drove there I actually said, “The only one I’m looking forward to seeing is Mike.”  That lasted all of 30 seconds.

It’s hard to describe my interactions with this guy because he’s like something from planet Venus.  I think he believes I owe him some huge amount of respect because he’s my sister’s man, or because he was part of the decision for her to take custody of her grandchildren.  Clearly, he expects me to be impressed by the rings he’s bought her, purchased in a pawn shop.  I know this because he often says, “Look at yer sister’s finger!  See what I gawt her?!”  I was unaware previously that you can only “trade up” at a pawn shop, but now I know.  This is not to knock used jewelry, just sayin’.

When you grow up with sick fucks you get a special gift for reading them.  I can walk into a room and immediately know who’s the freak of the bunch.  Well, it’s Mike.  This guy is a little Napoleon.  I think he stares at his dick in a mirror and is just so impressed & amazed that he has one that he thinks you should be impressed by it, too.  His vibe tells me there is a part of him who thinks I must be attracted to him, aren’t all women?  So he is constantly annoyed with me, confused by my actions, since I seem to (1) give him no respect and (2) laugh at him and (3) am so clearly just waiting for the dude to go away.  Yet he keeps waiting for me to stick out my tongue and beg to blow him.  That’s the kind of shit that goes on in this guy’s brain, I just know it.  Don’t ask me how, I just do.

My biggest issue is with his behavior around and toward the children.  When the big dog started nipping at my 4-year old niece’s dress flying in the breeze as she played on the new swingset Easter morning, Mike ran down the deck and began beating it with his fists.  He hasn’t bothered actually training the dog to behave properly.  The 2-year old stood looking at him from the deck, with a quizzical look on her face, like “Who the fuck punches a dog, you dumbass?”  He came back up on the deck and said something ridiculous about how he should have taken his rings off first.  It would sound stupid even without the southern accent that makes the words sound like I’ve been hitting the prescription drugs a little too hard.

Dogs are one thing, kids are another.  He knows that I’ve made mention previously about the fact that he should not be laying a hand on them.  So he intentionally will say things in my presence like “If you get out of that bed one more time I will beat your ass.”  Then he looks at me, just daring me to say something like “You fucking maggot, if I ever see you touch him I’ll crush your worthless, disgusting ball sack until it looks like you spilled a strawberry margarita down your pants.” 

Instead I am silent.  I follow the child into the bedroom, rock them to sleep & annoy the fuck out of the heartless bitches that are my family members, people who think you can spoil a child who’s already spent part of their life in foster care, a child whose father is in prison.

One day Mike will disappear.  The only thing I can do is laugh at him while he’s here.

If I was perfect myself, it would be a different story.  So many days I’ve been kinder to strangers on the street than I’ve been to my own son or daughter behind closed doors.  It’s easy to forget that fact, way more comfortable.

Mike was adopted.  When his brother moved out of the house, his mother told him his brother had died.  Somehow he later discovered it wasn’t true.  What kind of sick shit must he have grown up with, if this is just one example?

Life is so weird, no one gets out alive.

Twisted Update On My Mother &/or Eek!

I grew up in Illinois.  During my senior year of college Mom introduced me to the derelict & useless motherfucker who would become her third husband.  She followed him to his home state of Kentucky, a place she often spoke of with abject disgust during my childhood.  Her imaginary competition, my step-father’s ex-wife, lived there & she believed it her job to eviscerate every detail of my step-sibling’s mother, including the geography upon which she maintained a home.  People in Kentucky were the stupidest people alive.

Mom has lived there ever since.  She doesn’t even get the joke.  (It’s just one of the many schizophrenic ways in which she took the basic tenets of our screaming mimi childhood and said, “Oops, changed my mind.”)

I’ve previously mentioned my first meeting with the man who would become my step-daddy, a devilish character straight from the 70′s tv program Hee-Haw.  We had lunch in a pizza place and he drank a pitcher of beer as he grew louder and louder, telling a story about how black men can fuck white women all night long.  Theoretically, white men cannot.  It’s all because black men have a lower body temperature.  I shit you not.  Mom sat at the table like a cheshire cat, the pussy who’d won the contest for finding the biggest dick.  No doubt, she was correct.

There have been times when I’ve considered the possibility that I should think of him in a kinder light since he does, after all, live with the biggest bitch in all the world.  He is mean to her because that’s what she likes, it’s the only way to control her nastiness.  But when I hear the stories of his cruelty it’s impossible to forgive him, even with that IQ of 38.

Quick bio: One of 14 children, grew up on dirt floors, no running water.  Stabbed by his sister in the back with a 10-inch kitchen knife, just missed his black heart.  Previously married to 300-pound Marlena, has 2 morbidly obese sons.  He is a bean pole with alcoholic dreams even when he’s not drinking.  Alcohol only intensifies his moronic flights of fantasy. 

Speaks in a manner that would have you believe his tongue is too big for his mouth, with a southern accent that is hillbilly extraordinaire.  Makes you go “HUH?”  Baptist minister for a short time, found all the parts of the Bible that support racism, homicide & treating your wife like shit.  Claimed to various family members (not me) he killed the black man who slept with Marlena before their divorce, plus that man’s wife (she was inconveniently present).  [Interesting side note: Marlena's mother and my mother's father developed a romantic relationship and lived together for 10 years before being killed in a car accident in 2004.]

Mom and the jackass divorced a few years ago but still live together. Long story.  He’s the only one evil enough that the stress of being with her hasn’t killed him yet.  For 20 years I never visited, not once. 

Every time they came to see me something awful would happen and I would remember why there are allowable exceptions to the overblown dogma that you love your parents no matter what.  So I don’t say it, I never write it, I don’t feel it.  It’s the one thing I never fake, the only way I’ve been completely true to myself.  

Then my sister moved to Kentucky with the promise of a job in Mom’s company (an entity which should be named Puppetmaster, Inc.)  She began as a truck driver, but then a year ago her 3 grandchildren arrived, straight from foster care.  Now sis works in the office with Mom, they’re together what seems like 18 hours a day.  Next, my niece got out of prison & headed in that direction to be with her babies.  My step-brother Scott is only an hour away.  

The house we grew up in now belongs to my deceased brother’s girlfriend, so home base in Illinois is gone.  I’m the one who pushed for her to have it.  Fuck me.

* * * * *

This Easter was my fourth trip down, my daughter’s second, my husband’s first.  Rachel hates it, Ray thinks he might want to move there.  He loves bowling alleys, is entertained by goofy people.  She would push the button on a nuke if it meant she never had to go again.  (She did have more fun with the kids this time & would assist me in kidnapping the baby.   She does lust after my sister’s unbelievable array of snack foods.)

I purposely avoid speaking much with Mom before making these trips cause just hearing her voice could talk me out of visiting.  But I decided to be nice this trip and took her not only an Easter bag of candy (since food is her heroin & she is more immature than the 2-year old), but also showed up with a box of the most delightful cupcakes you’ve ever seen. 

She even found a way to complain ABOUT CUPCAKES.  She kept mentioning how “grainy” they tasted, as she ate four over two days.  These things were as heavy as leather shoes, my niece kept saying she didn’t think she could eat a whole one (even though I thought that was utter bullshit).  Mom is a determined eater.  No matter the taste or calorie content or that the balloon procedure she had to reduce the size of her stomach sometimes makes her throw up.  My brother and I learned from the best.  I don’t know how in the hell my sister escaped . . . the cigarettes I suppose.

* * * * *

Mom only kept our house clean as children because her second husband, Scott’s father, was a clean freak.  He had such OCD he would wash himself to the point of being pink.  He died when I was 18 and in college.  I soon thereafter went across the country for 6 months.  Upon return it blew my mind to see that Mom’s cleanliness was only a chameleon-like reaction to him.  Perhaps it would have been better if husband #3 had the same affliction.  He does not.

She doesn’t even bathe regularly, doesn’t wash her hair too often.  Her house is such a disaster I cannot imagine anyone ever living in it again.  This is not because it’s not a nice house, it’s because of the damage her five-plus dogs have done. 

When I absconded with photo albums last time, the bottom one was her wedding pics and it was damp from dog urine.  Niiiiice, Mom.  If one of her kids had pissed on her shit she’d have killed us.  Supposedly the dogs are more loving, however, which makes them forgiveable.  Whatever.  You get what you give.  She says the dogs don’t judge her, they don’t ever say she’s fat.  I think they’re smarter than that.

* * * * *

Since my husband is famous for downplaying any & every event (which is good in the instance of Viet Nam and serious car crashes, both of which he’s handled quite well), I use him as my tester.  I’m known to be a bit dramatic, so I send him into situations and ask for his take.  It lets me know if I’m based in reality at all or if, as my astrologer tells me, I’m living in fantasyland 24/7.

When Mom came over to my sister’s Easter morning she brought her biggest, oldest male Boxer, named after the Stephen King character Cujo.  This dog is the father of my sister’s big dog, Socks, who is only barely 2 years old and just feeling his oats (or licking his balls).  As my sister knew would happen, Socks didn’t handle it well at all when another male entered his territory.  She had evidently warned Mom previously not to do such stupid shit, but Mom’s hobby is stupid shit, it’s part of her bone marrow.

So in the middle of Easter morn, pastel colors, small children, coffee on the deck & love in the air, Socks sunk his teeth into Cujo’s neck and splashed dog blood across the canvas.  My sister handles it all so well, as my niece and I and the kids are running for the front yard so as to avoid the cacophony of screaming canines.  Sis kind of gets off on being right.  She considers herself a little bit of a dog whisperer.  She doesn’t control them at all, but she sort of talks to them.  She loves to say “I told you so.”  For her it was a win.

Mom just kind of acts like it’s no big deal that we’re moving into Michael Vick territory on a peaceful holiday Sunday.  I convince her she should put the dog in the car and take it home, sending my husband along for the ride so he can see her dog house.  Sometimes it amazes me that he will do anything I suggest, doesn’t even question it.  So off they go.

After they left it struck me, the story I’d heard about Mom’s Chrysler 300.  I felt kind of bad that I’d set him up for something I wouldn’t have wanted to do myself, namely get in that fucking car.  I mean, it’s beside the point that Mom’s vehicles are always filthy and covered in dirt and dog hair.  She travels with a companion at all times and people don’t much like her.  She has decided she doesn’t like people either, I think as a response.  (If she told me one more time, “I don’t have time for that god damn Facebook,” I might have said, “Mom, you have no friends, why would you like something that highlights that fact?”)

So when Ray returned I apologized.  I asked him about the trip, namely “Was I exaggerating?”  His reply made me cringe, cause part of me wanted him to say “Yes, Pam, your mother is normal and I can’t believe you tell such lies about that sweet old woman!”  Instead he said, “Oh, it was exactly as you described it.”  Fuck.

I asked, “Did she put her seat belt on, so it wouldn’t ding continuously with you in the car?”  He said, “No, she didn’t.  It dinged the entire way.  That didn’t really bother me as much though as that enormous dog’s head so near my face.”  I’d forgotten that he’d be traveling with Cujo, who I’m sure was annoyed that Ray had taken his spot in the front seat.

I asked what he thought of the house.  He was kind of tickled by the way all five dogs followed Mom as she gave the tour, but he was pretty grossed out by the intensity of the smell in her bedroom.  The dogs all sleep with her.  He noted that the laminate flooring she’s putting down upstairs won’t do so well with the damp wood left to rot underneath. 

He got the giggles, like a guy remembering an acid trip, when describing the mangy cocker spaniel peeing on a throw rug as Mom & he watched.  His amazement wasn’t so much that this old dog was evacuating her kidneys in plain sight, more that he expected Mom to do something about it & instead she stepped over it & kept right on with the tour.  When they reached the living room he saw multiple puddles, both wet & dry.  At that point it all came together and made a psychedelic kind of sense.

(When I visited the following day the same dog peed on the indoor/outdoor carpeting in the sun room.  She didn’t clean that up either.)

He mentioned that the room Mom had built onto the house as an office didn’t seem to be very sturdy, he wondered who would build such a thing without putting the proper supports on underneath.  These are the kinds of details that escape me as I look at things like senior pictures and the heirloom pieces Mom is constantly pointing out, stuff that doesn’t mean shit to my sister or I.  I’m just fascinated that it all means so much to her, how physical things are more important than people in her fucked up head.

For instance, she brought a refrigerator from Illinois to Kentucky, a relic that is so dirty and old I wouldn’t want to touch it, let alone keep food in it.  She keeps it in the garage.  That’s how it got so filthy.  My grandparents never would have had anything in such disgusting condition.

Ray mentioned the garage.  He stated that there was so much dog food and bird seed in there that it’s no wonder about the

mice.

See, Mom mentioned that she’s had problems with rodents this past winter.  She had a few mice in her house.  I have no freaking idea how they escaped the dogs.  Then one day she got into her car and noticed a really bad smell.  When mom notices something with those horribly abused olfactory senses of hers, you know it’s fucking atrocious. 

So she went out to the shop and asked the guys there to find what she assumed was a dead mouse in the car.  Amazingly, people are willing to do these kinds of chores for her.  They found the dead mouse.

But they also found a nest of live mice.  They were living inside the $30,000 Chrysler 300.  Let me reiterate, in case your mind could not wrap itself around that last sentence: my mother had mice living in her car.

When she told the story, Mom really didn’t make it out to be a big deal.  Shit happens.  When you own 5 dogs & are an insatiable overeater it happens a lot.

* * * * *

When we stopped by to say good-bye I noted a dead mole, shredded & hairy, lying on the cement apron at her home’s entryway.  A gift from her best friends.  Mom said she’d already put it in the garbage can 3 times and they continued to retrieve it.  (Some of these dogs are as tall as men.)

Now, I know I can be dramatic and take things too far in my distorted brain.  I think about Legionnaire’s disease.  I think about snorting a mist of rodent turds when the air conditioner is turned on the first hot day of summer.  I find myself wondering what lives in Mom’s bed after the dogs run through fields and lick their balls and then her neck.

Not only do I never want to ride in that car again, I think it was incredibly insensitive that the doctor didn’t do a c-section & instead forced me to travel through her nasty ass vagina.

* * * * *

The woman is intelligent in odd ways. 

She told me how stubborn I was as a child & said I’m crazy to think she could have changed a single one of my decisions.  She’s big on the idea that my perceptions of her were created to escape my own responsibility. 

Her theory seems plausible until it gets fucked up remembering that if she tried to change my mind it would have been through violence, the way she accomplished everything: making dinner, carrying in groceries, cleaning the house.  Either she thinks the whole loving mother routine is for pussies or she’s just incapable.  Probably both. 

Still it jarred my reality.  I would so prefer to remember myself as a tough little bitch and not her victim.  She’s not the only one who’s said things that make me wonder about the huge blanks in my memory.  Pieces of me got lost along the way.  She’s probably right, I’m too sensitive & need to toughen up.  

Except for the part about the furry creatures.  No fucking way.

The Twisted Easter Bunny Travels

It’s not like I don’t know visits to my family will suck.  It’s never a question.  There will always be highlights and lowlights and I will never fit in.  My actions & opinions will be in direct opposition with the prevailing familial thoughts on most anything at all.

It’s especially noticeable with regard to children.  I miss my niece’s three, 2 girls & a boy, now aged 2, 3 & 4.  My hope is to convince them they’re perfectly wonderful, it’s the adults that are the problem.  It’s what my grandmother did for me.  I have no idea if it’s even remotely possible.

 

I miss my brother, Scott, the only person there who feels like real family.  (It makes sense that he and I are step-siblings and share no DNA.)  He’s nuts, too, but more of a richly flavored macadamia than a simple rancid peanut. 

He drives his damned bass boat so fast that I found myself counting it out & discovering I am now the same age Grandma was when she used to hold on for dear life as we all screamed “Go faster, Grandpa!”  I was holding my breath, just waiting to die.

* * * * *

The 14 hour drive seemed easy, since previously I’ve done it on my own.  My husband and daughter went this time.  He is always agreeable and she is almost always not.  However, she is the one who laughs at my snarky comments & understands them immediately.  I identify most closely with 12-year old girls (and the potty humor of 6-year old boys).  There was a tremendous amount of training involved to get her to this point & if she turns on me now I will be completely devastated.

Pointing out fashion faux pas as I travel in my son’s green over-sized camos is both fun and paradoxical.  I think I even peed a little on my purse at that stop, yet it did not stop me from mocking others.  Dedication to the art is a necessary component.

I swear there was a female Keebler elf in an Ohio Cracker Barrel bathroom.  We could hardly contain our glee without pointing or jumping up & down.  Another chick looked incredibly happy with herself while wearing a patriotic track suit from 1990.  A good looking man walked in with a cowboy hat and boots.  You just don’t see that in New Jersey.  When I mentioned him to Rachel she called me a cougar.  Ick.

All this giggling & whispering may get my ass shot in a state that permits concealed weapons.

Please do not comment that I am mean or self-deluding.  I already know that.

* * * * *

30 miles from our final destination my sister & her boyfriend were waiting for us in a Sam’s parking lot.  He was wearing a bright yellow t-shirt which caused us to confuse him with the cart boy.  The red Harley between his legs was the clue.  It’s my sister’s bike, he just gets to drive it.  Most noticeable to me was the fact that they don’t wear helmets.

 

They carry that most important safety gear inside a box, for driving in states with helmet laws.  The sticker on the back was my favorite part:

“My nipples get harder than most men’s dicks.”  A true classic.

Watching my sister fly down the road at 60 mph, drinking a Big Gulp, under the total control of a man I wouldn’t want picking up my garbage, left me wondering in fascination.  How is it possible we came from the same parents, grew up in the same house & became such different people?  I know it happens, but damn.

I am terrified of most everything, practically cautious in extreme.  She loves to say things like, “Everybody dies some time.”  Part of me thinks her way sounds so much better.

She does not carry a purse, wears men’s jeans & sleeveless t-shirts, lets her short hair fly in the wind.  I often carry more than one bag (OCD impulses), tend to wear women’s clothing & am forever obsessing about the state of my hair even without the complications of Harley head. 

She is a chain smoker & I am allergic to cigarettes.  I used to complain but it caused so much damage to our relationship that I now block it out and say nothing at all, really it’s hardly noticeable when there aren’t two other people in the same small house doing it too (the boyfriend & the niece).  The kids live with it year round, so who am I to bitch?  (Well, I think we all know the real answer to that question.)

My sister has two enormous & poorly disciplined Boxers, I have to wash my hands every time I touch them.  I’m allergic to their saliva, which flies through the air without restraint.  I’m pretty sure that means I’m a big fucking pain in the ass.  Last time the male began biting me, so this time I brought tennis balls along.  He got so tired in the heat that he hid under the trampoline in the shade.  I discovered that I like playing with small canine horses when they’re not trying to eat me.

I scream like a banshee if my screen door is left open for 5 seconds because I do not want bugs in my house.  My sister leaves her patio door wide open for the kids & dogs, doesn’t bother making any effort to keep insects out.  They fly in, they nosh a bit on food left uncovered on counter-tops, they fly out.  It seems to work.

Her house is much cleaner than my mother’s. 

But this year Mom’s car was the mind boggling issue, the beautiful Chrysler 300, a vehicle she drives with no seat belt and a constant dinging warning sound.

Tomorrow’s entry . . .

Twisted, Schizo & Not Even A Little Bit Classy

Without a moment’s notice I can go from happy as a motherfucker to angry as a bitch in a bar fight.  In this specific minute I’m so pissed off I wanna set things on fire.  An hour ago I had tears in my eyes from wild & depraved laughter, as I tortured the person who’s nicer to me than anyone else has ever been in this lifetime.

A random brainwave  is all it takes to switch my head from placid to manic.  I don’t even need to be consciously aware of what sets me off.  It feels chaotic, like trying to keep up with three freaking rings at the circus.  (Which I might add is total bullshit cause you just can’t do it.)

If only I could stick with a specific position on any given subject.  After I burn shit up the next word in my frontal lobe is something like ”Oops.”  You can’t change what you’ve done or just take it back.  This is especially true of relationships. 

My emotions are psychedelic and my husband is attempting to talk me off the roof.  I’m wearing a sheet for wings, raving about phantasmagoria.  He is monk-like and 90% non-verbal but committed to the cause.  His blank facial expression antagonizes me. 

Relationships are teeter-totters and he’s left me too long in the elevated position.  Sometimes (the third Thursday of October and 12th of March) I wanna be the grounded & sensible one, but who can compete? 

Here is a snapshot of today’s interaction:

First Call

Me: . . . you don’t have a temper.  Your mother must have been doing drugs that day.

Him:  Oh, I have a temper, I just keep it in check.

Me:  No, you do not.  Otherwise I would have seen it once in 17 years.  You’re disabled.

Him: No, I’m not.

Me: Yes, you are.  If you were missing a finger wouldn’t you say you were handicapped?

Him: Well, yes.

Me: OMG, I need someone to fight with me.  You are such a pussy, you can’t handle a simple argument.  You have no weapons.

Him: Oh, I have a weapon.

Me: There should be some spectrum between total complacence and shooting me.

* * * * *

Second Call

Him: I’m on my way home.

Me: Why so early?

Him: Because I miss you so much.

Me: OMG, that’s just disgusting.  (This was not a joke.)

Him: Can I bring you anything?  (Neither was this.)

Me: Ice cream!  (This screams volumes about my current mental health.)

* * * * *

Arriving Home to the Happy Housewife

Him: Kiss me.

Me: (Dodging Away) How gross do I have to be for you to want to be rid of me? (Laughing)

Him: You can leave.

Me: You can’t make me!

Him: I could push your buttons.  You get so mad, you’d hit me.

Me: What would you say?

Him: Oh, it would be easy.

Me: But it would be bad for our daughter to see me taken away in handcuffs!

Him: I would just buy her some more cookie dough ice cream.

Me: Like how many days do I need to go without a shower?  (Cackling begins) What if I started FARTING?

Him: Go ahead.

Me: (Hysteria ensues) In public!

Him: Well, I wouldn’t be there.

Me: But I wouldn’t do it without you.  Since you’ll never be with another woman again [he says this all the time, since I've ruined his opinion of females] how bad do I have to be? 

Him: I wouldn’t put up with just anything.

Me: (Laughing to the point of tears I try to speak.  When I realize the capability is available I belch instead, which makes me laugh so hard I really do fart.  This is perhaps the 3rd time in 17 years I’ve done this in his presence.  Aided by sugar-free products (for diabetic reasons completely ignored in relation to the aforementioned ice cream) I blast from my ass in rhythm to the explosive laughter emanating from my gaping blow hole. )

Him:  Oh my God.  You can’t stop yourself.

* * * * *

I send my sister a text message of the conversation.  I tell her he’s standing outside the bathroom door continuing to ask if there’s anything he can do for me (he was).  I knew she would understand because she divorced her second husband for two reasons: (1) He cheated on her with her best friend and (2) He was too nice.  She mentions the second reason far more often.

In my defense, I have told him to ignore me.  I have given him numerous tips on handling my particular brand of mental illness.  (I did spend 17 years in training with my mother.)  He has refused my advice time and again.  It’s like refusing to listen to an expert bomb diffuser and playing eenie-meenie-miney-mo instead.

* * * * *

Final Act

Husband prepares to leave house to walk a 5-mile trail, run some errands & buy me stuff.  Kisses me good-bye and says “I love you.”

Clearly I must stoop to even lower levels of depravity to obtain a reaction.  Any concerns regarding self-respect must be faced down and eradicated.

* * * * *

You only get 5 or 6 monster laughs a year.  If it takes something disgusting for a kick-start, so be it.  I never claimed to be classy.

Within the hour I was again so pissed I wished I had a bat to beat the shit out of something.  Fortunately, it had nothing to do with the guy who should have thrown my ass out on the street earlier today.

There was a point in time when I thought perhaps I was getting my shit together.  I was pretending.  However, as I tell him regularly, he picked me and I picked him.  So who’s the nut?

Realistically considering my level of effort, I should be living in a hovel, driving a Hyundai or riding the bus.  I should be wearing retro stained clothing from the discount rack at Fashion Bug and have a gray stripe 3-inches wide across my cranium.

It could still happen.

Twisted Siblings &/or Pre-Teens Prefer Solemn, Serious, Silent Parents

It’s true, my laugh can be obnoxious as hell, a hooting kind of cackle that’s embarrassing as shit if I hear a recording of my own voice.  However, my daughter seems to think it emanates only from a desire to personally attack her, as if I’m wielding a comedic weapon, trying to ruin her life with my joy. 

In the car tonight she lay back, turned on her side and covered her ears as if they were bleeding.  It’s just ridiculous. 

Plus, it wasn’t my fault.

I was on the cell talking to my brother Scott.  He was driving an 18-wheeler and regaling me with familial tales from the Kentucky front.  One story after another, the amusement and disbelief continued to build. 

It wasn’t enough that my mother’s third husband drove his pick-up truck into the ditch of their dry driveway once last week and blamed it on his dog.  Three days later he drove it into the ditch on the opposite side of the same driveway, a straight 200-yard path he’s maneuvered daily for 20 years.  A tow truck had to be called to pull him out.  Twice.  (No further explanation available.)

Would anyone really take a riding lawnmower for repair, pay a large amount of cash for the job, then allow it to fall onto the highway while transporting it home, more messed up than before you started?  Yes.

* * * * *

I was already laughing too loudly for Rachel’s taste when Scott informed me he’d been thinking and had the perfect answer for perking up my marriage . . .

taking a gourmet cooking class with my husband. 

It was then that I erupted into the kind of hee-haw that sends cats running for cover & makes my daughter long for a place of her own.

For some background, both Scott and this guy I’m married to are into cooking (they don’t have much choice cause nobody’s doing it for them).  Scott has a classier, more refined taste.  He was making a Cornish Hen just for himself the last time we discussed one of his menus.  Let me repeat, there were no guests invited.  He’d been off the road for 3 weeks and was moving in the general direction of metrosexuality, even while living in such serious backwoods that he does not get cell phone reception or an internet connection from home. 

I have never eaten a tiny bird with a special name, never considered buying it or even investigating such a purchase.  Scott grew up eating the same 7 meals I did, so I have no idea what happened. 

Here in New Jersey, Hamburger Helper Lasagna (with added corn) would regularly be on the stove if I didn’t put my foot down.  My extended Italian relatives would disown me.  I mean, they know I’m no cook but there are lines that cannot be crossed. 

Still, last week our household shopper brought home bologna and white bread.  He can’t seem to help himself.  He says I am haughty for insisting on serving chicken caesar salad or a nice pasta fagiole when people come over, claiming hot dogs and Ruffles are the perfect party menu.

If potato chips, ketchup or a can of ridiculously soft mixed vegetables can be added to the mix, the man who lives in my house becomes nostalgic for his Pennsylvanian youth.  That’s the type of  recipe he’d copy off his browser while sitting behind the Chief’s desk, wearing his police uniform & a sidearm.  (I’m desperate to ticket the whole freaking world but don’t have the power; he’s searching dinners that use Campbell’s soup as a binder.)

In the past six months or so I have cooked next to nothing.  It’s one more thing I’ve just given up on completely.  So the idea that I would go to a gourmet cooking class is snort worthy.  The only possible purpose of such a thing would be to find my husband a gay boyfriend.  I can only imagine how happy a nice guy might make him.  I’m not being a bigot here, I totally support gay marriage AND prostate massage.

But seriously, is there really a reason for ME to go to the class?  It seems that having a wife in attendance would only slow the courting process.

Especially because all the gourmet peeps would HATE me so completely.  My eating habits are pretty much that of an unhealthy 9-year old boy.  Do not put mushrooms on my plate or I must tell you their texture makes me think of penis, something you’re not supposed to bite.  Tomatoes make me gag, even the seeds left behind after picking out most of their pulp. 

Most vegetables sit along side the edge of my plate, ixnay on the zucchini, cucumber, cauliflower, & broccoli.  I don’t know anyone else who doesn’t eat watermelon, cantaloupe, peaches, nectarines, capers or eggplant.  I would no more eat sushi than take a bite out of a beached porpoise.  Meat with the slightest hint of pink is raw, I see no difference between bloody prime rib and a tampon.

Do I sound like a fucking gourmet to YOU?

I understand his point.  Scott thought maybe it would give R. and I something to talk about.  I think it would just be easier for Scott to call every Sunday and he and R. could discuss culinary technique and anal sex.

* * * * *

My poor daughter.  The laughter only increased.  I told Scott how Rachel was horrified by the sound of my voice, that she hates it so much when I laugh, when I’m happy, when I make a gleeful utterance.  He wanted me to ask her if she was crying, like she did when he drove us on a winding road through the Kentucky wilds at a rather fast rate of speed, crossing over the yellow line on more than one occasion.  So I asked her. 

She screamed, “NO!” 

Now that I think about it, she was pretty loud, too.  But if I’d drawn myself up into the fetal position and held my head the car would have left the road and then I couldn’t make fun of my step-father.

Scott then did me in completely.  In his deep voice with the drawling southern accent he managed to somehow remain serious as he said,

“Yeah, remember how awful that was when our parents laughed and laughed?  Oh man, I’d go up to my bedroom just to get away from the noise of them laughing so damned loud.  Man, it was terrible.”

The single funniest thing I have ever heard, made perfect with his quick, dry delivery.

The idea of his father or my mother happily annoying us with laughter was so ludicrous it took my breath away.  I mean Mom might wickedly chuckle after making someone so sufficiently miserable it momentarily satisfied her sadistic urges.  Scott’s dad would let out a sigh of relieved joy when Mom went away overnight for the State Bowling Tournament. 

But happiness instead of angry screaming expletives and/or an incredibly high misery quotient plus tears? 

No fucking way!

* * * * *

I still have a smile on my face as I think how lucky I am to have him in my life.  One single person who understands your perspective on the world makes everything so much better.

Follow Your Heart, Aunt Rose &/or Home Alone – Edition 49

This entry and certain photos contained within are potentially offensive

& inappropriate for minors and/or the workplace.

For the last two plus months my pseudo sister-in-law Rose has been staying in my son’s basement bedroom (the size of a small apartment with queen-sized bed, wall-sized flat screen & laptop with wireless internet).  Although in the past decade she once lived in a motel paid for by the State of NJ, next door to the schizophrenic owner of  a dog that bit her, she still managed to complain incessantly about a musty odor that my ridiculously sensitive nose cannot smell.

She is my son’s aunt, his deceased father’s oldest sister, the craziest chick I’ve ever known.  She has no connection to my current husband or daughter (other than driving them nuts & assisting them in creating an unbreakable bond of misery that instigates great eye rolling & whispered complaints).  I have known her for 25 years & love her like the sister you think might have been secretly adopted.

After she had COMPLETELY demolished the room with such an incredible amount of pure crap that it seemed to have exploded from a magician’s trunk (she has a touch of the hoarder) we sent a cell phone picture of his room to Bobby in California.  From 3,000 miles he seemed almost excited, so thorougly entertained he was by the chaos & unease I’d brought into our little world.

How do I possibly describe her?  A heart the size of Montana and a mouth larger than Alaska.  I am so completely entertained & tortured by both.  Following her around, I stay two steps back to (1) jump up & down with glee at her unbelievable antics, talking to total strangers & saying outrageous shit and (2) cover my face & pretend I don’t know her as I groan out loud, twisting with a reflective shame that can’t handle it at all.

As the oldest of 8 children, mommy’s helper from the age of two, she is a worker bee, she makes things happen.  She is a f*cking force of nature.  However, supposedly her heart was broken when I used those words to describe her after 48 hours in our house.  This from a woman who once walked in and yelled, “Pam, you’re pregnant!  I had no idea!” as a comedic way of mocking my recent weight gain.

She talks . . . A LOT.  Sometimes it’s more entertaining than others.

* * * * *

I moved to North Carolina at her urging in 1985, made a cross country move with a 3 month old and her sick brother.  It was monumentally stupid.  We were there a week when she realized there was no way she could fulfill the promises of help made to entice our nightmare into hell.  It didn’t seem to really phase her as she told me, “Yeah, well.” 

Along those same lines were a few other episodes in our bizarre decades long connection.  She once cut my toddler son’s hair while I was at work, did not call and ask if it was okay, thought it was ridiculous when I lost my mind.  (I can’t really explain why this is equal to felony assault, but IT IS.)

She invited her grandmother to NC, my son’s great-grandmother & someone I’d never met, then became annoyed with the woman & left her at my house for 3 days without even a phone call.  At that point her brother was already deceased & I was on shaky ground.  It didn’t sit well when I called to my toddler and asked, “Do you want a slice of cheese?” & got the reply “Sure!” from a shaky 80-year old.  It was not a good time for extra care duties.

After 72 hours Rose came by to take advantage of our community pool.  When I got angry she locked herself in her car & wouldn’t discuss the situation.  In a burst of maturity I kicked her car & screamed like a maniac.  She has seen me at my worst and accepts me as I am, something I can’t say about many people on planet earth.  She really, really knows me, far better than my own family.  It’s not always an impressive sight to behold.

Her life has always been chaotic, beginning with a 25-year marriage to an alcoholic, but recently she’s been living with a 71-year old Italian who fancies himself Tommy Soprano.  She left twice, he begged her to come back, it’s a rollercoaster.  When they hit bottom again at the end of September she told me a few specifics.  We hadn’t really spoken in months, yet my reply was, “We’re coming to get you.” 

For more than 2 years I’d controlled my impulse to say or do such a thing.  His mocking her appearance was the last straw.  He’d done worse & I’m not sure what instigated those unthinkable words escaping my mouth.  (It happened once before, more than 10 years ago, when I invited the school librarian and her two daughters into our home for a month.  We later found out she’d stayed in someone else’s home for over a YEAR.) 

I should mention Rose has FOUR SISTERS, none of whom have stepped up, who from my perspective have let her down beyond belief. 

Did I mention she can be a little difficult?

(Or that they’re heartless bitches?)

In the mean time, while nearly homeless, she’s still spending money on food & cigarette deliveries to her parents, giving her mother money for unpaid bills when she calls crying.  At least she was until her father chased her out of their senior residence with a skillet because she wasn’t willing to give him the cigarettes he saw in her purse.

This insanity is what my son’s father described as utter nirvana, a family equal only to royalty.  I believed him.

* * * * *

Surprisingly, after a rough start, I really liked having her here.  My daughter & her father did not.  He went along with it, actually went with me to move her things, due to the domestic violence element &/or because he can’t bear confrontation or disagreement with me.  Rachel chose to stay in the car, not carrying a single bag of crap down the three flights of stairs.

That first night, sitting in our den, this child of mine asked, “How do you spell ‘psycho?’” 

Rose asked her, “Do you think I don’t know you’re talking about me?”  Rachel blushed & snickered.  It didn’t get better.  The following day Rose grabbed her in a hug and whispered, “I’ll kill you, ya little bastard!”, then released her with a laugh & said, “You know I’m just joking!”  Rachel took a baseball bat to bed that night, ever the drama queen, although I can’t say I wouldn’t have done the same.

Obviously we would have stepped in if we didn’t think the girl totally deserved it.  She was unwilling to be civil, the expressions on her face mind boggling in their vehemence toward a 59-year old guest.  Time and time again she tried to convince me that Rose was smoking in the house as a way to get rid of her, evidently unaware that I have dog senses when it comes to nicotine.  I did wake up one morning in my upstairs bedroom to the smell of incense from two floors below. 

To her credit, Rose reacted instantly to any request she make a change, including the incense, flowery perfume & speakerphone conversations below the bedroom door at 3 AM.  She completely avoided the TV room.  (It was the only way she could keep herself from chattering throughout entire episodes of favorite shows & unheard movies, a relatively unforgivable sin to every single member of this household.)  We overlooked the cooking smells in the middle of the night and a crazed drunken message left on the counter, something she didn’t even remember writing.

She’s suffering from shoulder injuries (two years now), takes a good deal of pain medication(s), drinks more booze than she probably should considering that fact.  Add in the Sudafed she took multiple doses of daily due to the basement allergy, which made her hyper as hell.  No doubt she’s got Attention Deficit Disorder to begin with, as bad as any out of control grammar school boy.

* * * * *

She was the perfect accompaniment to the gay bar, minus a few nerve-wracking situations. 

Once I went to the car and got this text: “In bathroom, fight with tranny.”  I don’t know anyone else who would ever send me just such combination of words.  She met people, got phone numbers & used them!  After telling us about going to this same place previously with her sister

and pushing her into the pool with both cell phone & flip-flops,

which then got stuck in the filter and had to be retrieved by an employee, we carefully avoided standing near the water.  Now remember, we’re talking about women in their 50′s, late 40′s max at the time.  Both are really attractive, you would not guess their ages accurately, even minus the behavior factor.  This is me on the left, you’ll have to guess which of the other two is Rose and which is really a man.  Seriously, would you guess anyone in this picture is 59?

The first night she came along we immediately lost her.  Eventually I realized she was the woman on stage doing a spectacularly nasty humping move with a cute young man.  Since then not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES I have watched her dance with such enthusiasm & creativity that she accidentally ended up on the filthy floor. 

BOOM!

On Halloween I headed for the stage once again to see the costume contest.  There stood Rose with a husky man, his arm wrapped around her tightly, blonde hair cascading down his broad sweaty shoulders.  He was wearing gloves & a cute skirt with tights. 

We’ve since learned John’s preferred name is Tiffany, that he has Asperger’s & believes he lived previous lifetimes as (1) a German SS officer and (2) an extra-terrestrial on a planet where people morphed from bears instead of monkeys.  He was thrilled I’d done a past life regression myself once.  He desperately wants to make me over.  I’m not glam enough for his taste.  Yeah, no shit.

During our last conversation at the bar he used a vice grip to hold my attention.  His spiked wrist band was causing me discomfort, as was the fine mist of saliva he sprayed me with more than once.  His breath was horrendous.  When I mentioned it to Rose in the car she said, “Oh God, I told him he smelled like a gremlin as soon as I walked in the door!  Why didn’t you say something?!”

This is why I love her no matter what.

Can you believe it?  He later told Rose he thinks I have Asperger’s, too, because of my ability to concentrate on his words so completely. 

It’s not fucking Asperger’s, it’s called growing up in the midwest.  It’s having ridiculous manners, non-existent boundaries, and the concern that people like me to such a ridiculous extent that I don’t even want to offend some crazy dude in a dress.  (As I write this I want to puke.)

* * * * *

But that’s not even my favorite story.  She met another dude who took a liking to her, one who dresses like a man.  He’d rented a room in the attached hotel so he could avoid driving home drunk.  Evidently ATTORNEYS are very careful about DWI’s.  She had no interest in him as a date, but he was perfectly acceptable as long as he kept buying her drinks.  When I found them she already knew his life story. 

He was quite inebriated & got thrown off the dance floor for unzipping and allowing the ventriloquist’s dummy in his pants to take a peek around.  As the bouncer escorted him out of the room, Rose’s new pal yelled out his room number & requested after hours party-goers.

She felt bad he’d been forced upstairs before closing time (by just 5 minutes) & immediately began assembling a ragtag group of young people to accompany her to his room.  (Her fantastic sales skills are transferable to any occasion.)  I was laughing so hard I was crying.  Next I knew, I was standing in an elevator & Rose was nowhere to be seen.  I was surrounded by what could only be described as a group meant for casting in the next John Waters film (if he hadn’t died recently): men who look like women, women who look like men, varied colors of the rainbow & me (prior pale PTO secretary). 

I felt a moment of panic as I reconsidered my decision-making abilities & thought about what the fuck I was doing.

These things don’t happen when I go places with Roxanne.

When the doors to the elevator opened Rose had already arrived via the stairs.  She began rapping on the door as the diverse crew stood around, excited to see what was behind curtain #1.  They had no idea what prize awaited.  When a 300-plus pound man opened the door naked & excited there was a screaming chorus of

“OH MY GOD!” and “OH FUCK NO!”

and an avalanche of 20-somethings running for the exit signs.

Rose couldn’t believe they were so disappointingly appearance-oriented, yet she would no more go out with this guy than she would date a woman.  She probably would have been willing to enter the room if I had even given a HINT I might spend time in that potentially bedbug-infested cave with a man carrying a minimum of 30 pounds of impacted feces in his colon. 

It wasn’t happening.

* * * * *

I know you’ll be surprised to hear this, but she did a few things that left us nervous about leaving her in the house alone for long periods.  She lit candles & left them burning, forgot to lock doors.  So when a trip to Florida was planned back in October it was with the presumption Rose would be gone.  Otherwise, it was agreed that I would stay home.  I am not a huge fan of heat, pavement, traffic, or sheets previously used by multiple patrons, so it wasn’t like I was denying myself some fantabulous pleasure-filled treat.

I didn’t care for her story about paying for car repairs with Vicodin (the whole police thing).  So when I woke up Wednesday & the car dude was in our driveway using spray paint I was not happy.  She went to her son’s for Thanksgiving weekend and upon return mentioned the boyfriend had called.  It didn’t seem like a big deal until she left the house Tuesday on a date & never came back, for practical purposes disappearing from our lives in a matter of 12 hours.  I did call to make sure she was alive.

Just the day before my husband had actually had his first real conversation with her & advised he believed it was a serious situation worthy of a restraining order.  When she almost immediately chose to do the opposite it really pissed him off, not an easy thing to do.  More than once I suggested she come back & simply date the guy until receiving reassurance that things were really better.  She would hear nothing of the sort, not surprising since when she’s with him her personality undergoes a radical change that’s all about meeting his extensive needs.

She’d actually been surprised at how much she came to enjoy living in our house, the most low-key environment she’d ever experienced, my husband different than any other man she’s ever known.  No anger, no raised voices, no insistence that things be done a certain way in a specific time-frame. 

But Rachel’s advice?  “I think we should tell her to follow her heart!  CACKLE-CACKLE-CACKLE!” 

* * * * *

The trip was set for Friday.  Rose’s STUFF (3,000 small items and a busted up car bumper) is still in our house.  She also still has a key, thank God, or I would have had to get in the car and head south.  Instead, the girl and her father are staying in a 2-bedroom suite with 3 TV’s, 2 bathrooms and a kitchen, while I am home alone in New Jersey.

I am incredulous over what it feels like to be completely alone, loving it beyond my possible imagination.  Now I remember why people like living alone, choose to have no children and no spouse.  The rabbit in a hutch outside is a little more commitment than I’d choose at this moment.

It seems that even though I knew my daughter’s attitude and presence had an effect on me, I was unaware of the extent to which it changes everything.  As a pre-teen she does not like going anywhere, does not want to do anything I want to do, and is quite verbal with her complaints.  It’s like having an anchor around my neck.  I love her dearly but the experience of being on my own is so freeing.

My husband is another story.  When we are apart he tends to get a whiny tone to his voice that indicates he doesn’t like being alone.  Fuck me.  He has been instructed on how to deal with me but refuses to listen.  “Ignore me, don’t call me.  Be mean.”  He can’t do it.  This will be his downfall, the refusal to take my advice. 

On the other hand, he is the dreamiest father you could imagine.  She will have a better time alone with him than if I were there.  He is more outgoing, comes up with his own ideas to have fun & even sings in the car in my absence. 

WTF?

They had not yet been there 4 hours when he asked about finding a cheap ticket and flying me down for the week (they drove).  Meanwhile, I’d already been to a book sale, had lunch with Roxanne & watched “Slumdog Millionaire” until 5 AM.  What do you think my answer was to the idea of getting on a plane during a winter storm & leaving behind this opportunity to breathe on my own? 

You all know me so well.

Summer: POTUS, Travel, Concerts & Taco Bell

Summer is supposed to be down time, but it hasn’t worked out that way.  It complicates my blogging cause there’s stuff to write about but my ass is kicked before I can put it into words.  I LOVE my blog and I’m not into the idea of slamming something out just to get it on-line.  However, my electrician is starting to complain . . . (look on the blog roll under “Naked On The Roof.”)

Just in the last week we’ve been to two concerts (Raven at Great Adventure & The Jonas Brothers at The Izod Center), Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum & Ruby Foo’s restaurant in NYC, and a show called Drumline at the Mann Center then lunch at Reading Terminal Market today in Philadelphia.  Each activity was worth the effort & worthy of its’ own blog entry.

* * * * *

In the mean time, my husband met President Obama this afternoon, shook his hand and had his picture taken.  I wasn’t invited.  Probably just as well cause he had to wait behind a stage in the heat for over an hour before his 15 seconds came along.  I would have been like “HELLO!  I’M HOT!  WTF?!”

Last October he was in the unusual position of meeting President Bush, which means we will now have two outrageously incredible photos to hang on the wall.  Fortunately, he has very little hair and so there is no issue in that regard, he always looks fab.  Forget the president, my hair would have been the focus of the day, that and my chiclet tooth.  North Korea could bomb us to smithereens and I would still be commisserating the fact that my bangs separated in the middle and my chiclet looks weird with a flash.

My husband voted for Nixon in 1968, that was it, before he met me.  (Nixon brought him back from Vietnam, a super-duper reason to throw him a vote.)  His relatively objective opinion is that Bush’s handshake and demeanor were more manly (firmer) and charismatic.  But then all around him people were passing out in the heat and being taken by ambulance to the hospital.  Perhaps Obama was wilting, too. 

  * * * * * 

This morning my worst nightmare happened, people showed up at my door while I was still sound asleep.  Yes, they were invited!  I even set the time.  These are my favorite peeps, not like those OTHER peeps, the ones I might want to purposely annoy.

I am notoriously late for everything, partially due to my insane sleep patterns but mostly just because it’s a character flaw.  In addition to the usual issues my alarm clock was meeting with Secret Service and SWAT teams this morning & so he forgot to call and wake me up.  Eventually the ringing phone or the door bell or the screaming people in my driveway woke me from my dreams!

After a 2-minute shower & a lackluster attempt with the blow-dryer we were slamming down the highway.  It took 90 minutes to make it to a free show that lasted less than an hour (30 minutes less than advertised)!  By 12 p.m. we were left wondering what we could possibly do to make up for hauling three pubescent teen-type people on an extremely hot wild goose chase.  (Did I mention the air stopped working once we were 50 miles from home?)

What would you do?

We did the sensible thing & drove into downtown Philadelphia in search of fireworks.  We parked in Chinatown and then found out that such things are illegal within city limits.  So instead we went to Reading Terminal Market and bought various and sundry food items like Philly cheesesteaks and a beautiful pink sprinkled cupcake and chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream in an extra-special cone and cherry butter and fudge and Whoopee Pies and iced coffee and one tiny little bag of sugar-free red candies for moi.  (F*ck me!)  I will be returning to the Reading Terminal Market.

On the way home we made just one more wrong turn & then followed signs for the single fireworks store advertised along the I-95 corridor.  We found it and made a 16-year old boy bounce with glee, which was worth it all as he so adorably said, “What a great day!” and then mocked the hideous show we forced him to attend just one more time. 

We also stopped at a 7-11 to get a Monster Energy Drink (against his mother’s best judgment) for the 14-year old, hopping him up on caffeine instead of the other posed option (a Wendy’s Bacon-ator.)  Do you burn out the brain or clog the arteries of a teen-aged boy first?  Which is preferable?  The quarter-pound of fudge he’d already eaten seemed to be the deciding factor.

 * * * * *

My daughter’s recompense for being pulled from bed at such an early hour? 

After her father met the President of the United States (known as POTUS or Leader of the Free World) he went back to life as usual: side trip to Taco Bell on his way home for the #6, two chicken chalupa supremes, no tomato, hard shell taco and a Cherry Pepsi.

The Great Adventure

As mentioned in tonight’s prior post, we went to see Raven Symone in concert at Great Adventure with the “new friends” I’ve named “Control Freak and DD.”  Well, sometimes it’s so much more ridiculous than you even expect. 

The mother seemed entirely sane this evening, in comparison with her daughter.  The first thing her girl said to mine upon arrival was, “I didn’t think your house would be this big.”  The mother noticed the Christmas tree, still up in July, and didn’t blink an eye.  The woman impresses me in unusual ways.

Then I made the fatal error and got in her car to drive to Great Adventure.  It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time, and when she pulled out her handicapped placard in the crowded parking lot my face broke into a grin.

We went inside.  They rode the Teacups.  The other girl begged and wheedled to do the log flume.  (We have season passes and they do not.)  Her life was going to be over if she didn’t do the log flume.  The sign at the back of the line said “120 MINUTES FROM HERE.”  My daughter and I acquiesced because I am a jackass.  I find myself regularly doing things for other people’s children in situations where I would laugh at my own.  Her mother sat comfortably on a bench talking with another woman, a stranger, while we stood in line with 500 other people waiting to spend 90 seconds in a plastic log.  The girl had the nerve to ask me several times, “Can’t we cut the line?”  I told her we would either be thrown out of the park or punched in the face and she finally shut up.

I hadn’t been in a crowd like this in a while.  It’s an art to avoid such large groups of people and I’ve become a master.  People are dirty, nasty, disgusting.  They sneeze, they cough, they sweat.  Their arms display gang tattoos.  But none of those individuals even came close to being as disgusting as the woman in front of us.  She didn’t expose her piggy side until we were about halfway through the 75 minutes.  Then she proceeded to hold her 4-year old daughter between her legs & finger her way through the braids at scalp level.  There is only ONE REASON I am aware of that causes a human woman to pick at her child’s scalp like a monkey.  When she began picking things OUT of the hair and flicking them to the floor my meltdown was in full swing.

I began testing the wind velocity and direction.  Ten feet became the minimum I could bear between my group and these disgusting menaces to society.  We had another 30 minutes to go.  As other patrons stood shoulder to shoulder, the lepers stood out.  Suddenly it didn’t matter that another child was with us, as the words “PIG” and “SCUMBAG” and “I HATE PEOPLE SO, SO MUCH” began flying out of my mouth.  It’s really not great for my daughter when I get that crazy look in my eyes.  She might believe that I can shoot people with my finger or electrocute them with my steely eyed stare, that’s how tense she gets while waiting for me to take one more step toward insanity.  The other girl LOVED it.  Really, it was the happiest I think she was all evening.  And I must say that when she’s happy she’s delightful!

We survived but not before the little buggy girl also SPIT ON THE FLOOR.  Seriously, what in the hell is the world coming to?  I was truly shocked at the level of hatred I could work up for a pre-schooler.

Finally someone showed up with a Fast Pass and cut the line.  The bug people were no longer directly in front of us.  Those folks aside, if I get any kind of disease in the next 72-hours I know where it came from.

The girls enjoyed the ride, they screamed, they got wet, they said it was worth it.  Whatever!  We headed for the concert.  The 12-year old we were with is a very unhappy child.  I didn’t notice it so much previously, but tonight she was a monster.  Nothing made her happy.  She pouted and complained for hours.  Her mother is either a saint or a monster-maker, perhaps both. 

We bought 3 VIP tags for $10 each and headed for the front of the stadium.  It was great until she wanted to use my daughter’s camera, then my phone to take photos.  When the answer was “No,” the girl ended up sitting back with her mother in the stands as my daughter and I had a blast.  At one point she said, “I want to go now.”   I told them “Go ahead!  My husband will come and get us!”  I guess they didn’t think we had any other options and suddenly the girl was trapped in her own web.  So she proceeded to sulk for the next 90 minutes. 

Fortunately the VIP tags came with bags of Starburst, which they ate while we danced.  They both have metabolic problems that are the reason for their weight gain, unrelated to Starbursts in any way, also unrelated to the french fries purchased on the way into the concert.

Did I mention that my daughter told me this girl asked her, “Why don’t you straighten your hair?”  Did I mention that?  Because nothing could piss me off more than someone trying to convince my kid to make her beautiful curls disappear.  No doubt it was out of jealousy, but I don’t care.  This lanky-haired little bitch was trying to mess with my kids head in more ways than one.

The worst was after the concert ended.  First it seemed okay, the girls rode three different rides, one rollercoaster twice.  They were laughing and running and getting red-faced with excitement as I sat talking with the other mother on a bench.  As you may remember, she recently had a TIA, which has now been upgraded to a full-blown stroke (no surprise there).  She cannot ride rides and her doctor actually has recommended she should use a scooter.  She does not because her daughter told her it would be “too embarrassing.”  I don’t know what to believe.

The aunt who died last week?  She was 91!  She was the daughter’s great-great aunt!  This is worthy of histrionics on Facebook in an effort to obtain sympathy?  It came up that she also cried about something entirely different during the funeral event, actually I believe she said, “I just sobbed.”  I was looking at her, trying to imagine her face melting, trying to imagine my discomfort if she should ever do such a thing in my presence.  I might run.

The highlight of our conversation was mind-boggling.  I asked how her daughter’s appointment with the endocrinologist went.  She told me she hated the doctor.  The reason she hated the doctor is because she “had no personality” and at one point in their time together the doctor began “squeezing her n*pples.”  As she said that statement I felt a buzz of electrical shock flood me, no different than if I tried to pet a horse across an electrified fence.  I remember thinking, “Oh my.”  I said, “What?” with a dumbfounded spacy sounding voice.

She said, “Oh, she was trying to see if she was lactating!  She was trying to see if she could express milk, to find out if they were making milk!  Endocrine problems can typically make such things happen!  But she just began twisting her n*pples with no warning!  I was like, ‘Don’t you think you could have told her in advance you were going to do that?’”  She doesn’t plan on returning to that doctor again.  It was at that point she mentioned for the 7th or 8th time that her feet were now “covered in blisters.”  We had barely walked the length of the park.

But that’s not the bad part.  The bad part was that at 10:00 at night this girl became insistent that we go to THE CHEESECAKE FACTORY, three words she repeated a minimum of 27 times as her mother nearly drove off the road in frustration while yelling at her daughter to stop saying “THE CHEESECAKE FACTORY!”  This is after I had heard about her desire for MEXICAN FOOD over and over throughout the evening, across the park, in every venue we visited.

When the Mexican food was mentioned at 10:00 at night I said, “I suppose Taco Bell is not your idea of Mexican food?”  She went on a tirade regarding fast food restaurants.  She, this 12-year old girl, said, “I just want to sit down at a table AND HAVE A NICE MEAL!  I HAVEN’T EATEN ALL DAY!”  It was as if she were channeling a 60-year old woman.  The girl would not stop.

This is where I don’t understand my own behavior.  I should have just said, “Take us home.”  But there is a part of me who never wants to disappoint.  I want people to be happy.  This girl had been happy for maybe 30 minutes of the 6 hours we’d been together.  We finally found a Ruby Tuesdays open until 11 p.m.  She was not satisfied with TGIF, absolutely threw a shit fit, she would not eat there.  She would not consider Sonic, which both she and her mother thought would somehow damage their car!  I mean I’m making suggestions and the girl is acting like I’m an assistant to the devil.  She’s acting as if her palate and taste buds are worthy off an exquisite French vineyard.

So we go into the restaurant and her mother refuses to purchase her first choice, A SIRLOIN at 10:00 on a Thursday night.  So what do you think she orders?  What does her mother proceed to tell me she orders everywhere they go?  You guessed it.  MOTHERF*CKING CHICKEN FINGERS. 

For the 437th time in 6 hours the girl spoke to me and I said, “WHAT?”  She is a mutterer.  She talks fast AND she mutters with braces on.  I can’t understand a word she says.  The other mother asked MY daughter if she was ”in a bad mood.”  I think I may have heard her swallow the words, “No, your daughter is just an obnoxious idiot and my mom won’t let me speak!”

At that point I began texting my husband, “Please come pick us up.”  I had a horrible fear that when they drove us home they would somehow come into our house and never leave.  They would sleep over and the girl would ask me to cook up some quail eggs and escargot for breakfast.  She would cut my daughter’s hair off in her sleep, then suggest she’d done her a favor. 

My husband tried to call but I wouldn’t answer the phone as it would blow my covert operation.  He texted, “Call me.”  I text, “NO!  PLEASE!  I’M BEGGING!”

So my husband, who paid for this magical trip to Great Adventure, took off his slippers and pajama pants.  He threw on a pair of sweats and made his way to the car.  He did not complain, he did not get angry.

As we sat at the table the waiter asked ”Is that your car out there with the lights on?”  We both said, “No.”  Meanwhile, I was thinking “Superman has arrived & I’m f*cking Lois Lane.”  I didn’t tell her until we were out the door, “Oh, that’s my husband over there!  This will be so much more convenient for you.”  She couldn’t believe I would do such a thing.

I left actually feeling bad for the woman.  We’re supposed to see them again in 76 hours.  I’m flabbergasted by that fact.  Clearly, part of me feels good when I’m in a situation where I appear all together in comparison.  There’s gotta be a better way.

Once again I would like to thank my mother for pummeling my self-esteem into something that resembles a kernel of corn, a dull jelly bean that’s spent some time on the floor.

Turning 49 & Fine Tuning My Twisted Religion

Every year on June 16th there is a (SCHIZOPHRENIC) part of me that likes the idea of a sash and crown.  I have an alter ego who wants people to wave & honk at me from their cars, mouthing: “I KNOW YOU!  IT’S YOUR BIRTHDAY!”   This egomaniac wants others to thank me for gracing the planet, to love me with glee in their hearts. 

So it’s really f*cking disappointing when none of that ever happens! 

To change it up a bit, this year I decided to host my own First Annual Birthday Party.   (Hosting people in my home is one of the most stressful things I could ever do to myself).  I went with it anyway because this hideous number of 49, so close to 50, has given me the philosophy that I’ll be dead relatively soon (if I live to anything less than 99 I’m over the freaking hump & on the downhill side!)

so I should do EVERYTHING!  

To keep it interesting,  I brought in a hostess with www.pureromance.com and she demonstrated her wares for entertainment.  I’m way more of a prude & far less experienced in this area than my obnoxious mouth would lead you to believe.  Thus, I now realize that my husband and I have been living like neanderthals, using things like fingers and toes & Kool-Whip instead of C.rings and Pick.le Pleazers and Strawberry Cheesecake flavored whip. 

By the time it was over I was concerned that with some of the more complicated devices my husband & I might get twisted and wrapped up to the point where we’d need to yell for help.  (Some implements were more out of a Star Wars re-make by Larry Flynt, rather than anything romantic!)

I was hoping for silly, idiotic nonsense & laughter.  At that we succeeded.

* * * * *

I knew there would be people who didn’t show up, people who didn’t even acknowledge the invitation.  My quite reasonable solution?  Girlfriends who didn’t appear would be written off like a tax exemption (no excuses, not free trips to Paris nor amputation).  But then Roxanne’s kids got swine flu and I couldn’t hold true to my very simple plans, just like always!  Well, except for Donna and Kathy & Diane, who . . . wait a minute.  Who?  I don’t know anyone by those names.

My ditzy wack job friend Kim replied with this nonsensical diatribe:

“Just realized your party was a fu.kkerware.  Call me old fashioned, uptight, a jerk, but make sure it starts with pro American and add Christian so it sounds even better.” 

Then she adds this little piece:

Call me when you want to go to church!

God bless your hubby!

My reply:

“Regarding church, there was a time you had gotten away from the sanctimonious bullshit . . . Otherwise, I love Jesus:)  But I’d rather deal in dil.dos than fake ass m*therfukers:) 

How’s that for honest?  I’m working on it.

49 is magical!

Love Always,

PAMAJAMA”

As for blessing my husband, what in the world does she think he prays for?  Cause I’m pretty sure you’re getting very close when it comes to cotton candy flavored massage oil that warms when blown on.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, I didn’t start party planning until the day before & we were driving the streets at 10 p.m. looking for an open liquor store so I could find brandy for marinating the sangria.  Our 11-year old was in the backseat yacking on and on about how “I can’t believe I’m driving around with my parents looking for an OPEN LIQUOR STORE!”  She’s never had to go out at 2 a.m. for a pack of Marlboros either, but it’s not like children don’t do that every night of the year here in America.  I’m sure there are roaming children on the streets right now!

The morning of the soiree I had old bowls of cereal still on the counter, books on the floor, garbage overflowing!  (To say nothing of cookies or cake or tiny hot dogs wrapped in bacon.)  In the end I remembered what I should have known from the beginning: women don’t eat!  No need to cook unless you’re inviting men and children.  Throw a vegetable tray on the table and open the wine.

* * * * *

My birthday brought about a level of negativity that made me nervous, a newfound depth of nastiness.  Even my blogging fell to the wayside as I sat in a chair, numb with the realization that my mommy days are ending and I need to get a life, one based on my own thoughts & desires & decisions.  I don’t want to.  I don’t want to succeed or fail based upon my own actions, I so prefer hiding behind my children.  I don’t want to get old, I don’t want to grow up, I don’t want to be mature, I don’t want to behave appropriately. 

I’m railing against an imaginary entity! 

I can do whatever I want! 

 I’ve got no f*cking idea what I want!

Sweet, simple people speaking of their normal non-obscene lives still make me cringe and feel nauseous.  If I hear one more young mother coo over her babies I will surely slam myself to the floor in an attempt to dull the pangs of jealousy, the annoyance at the naivete. 

We were supposed to go to New Mexico for a wedding August 1st and it’s probably a good thing that my husband has called it off.  The perfectly beautiful girl getting married AND her sister both have new infants.  They are psychotically happy, as fortunate in their current lives as any lottery winners.  Their mother (my husband’s sister) oozes with a syrupy sweet, orgasmic, grandmotherly glow that gags me. 

Recently on Facebook she replied to the utterly uncreative commentary between her two daughters with

“You two are hysterical!”

HYSTERICAL?  Jim Norton’s “Monster Rain” on HBO, created by a man who hates himself and everyone else, the blackest humor imaginable, that’s hysterical.  

The scene in “Jackass 2.0″ where a guy puts powder on the crack of his ass and then farts in the face of a sleeping dude, engulfing him in a fine white mist, THAT totally hits the mark for me. 

When I tell my daughter that’s how I’m going to wake her the next time she bitches about getting out of bed and then she punches me in the arm 27 times as we’re driving down the road screaming at each other & laughing maniacally to the point where we can hardly catch our breath upon such a disgusting thought, yep.

I seem to have found a dark place and I’m beginning to grow mold.

My Sister Reminds Me of Mother Teresa, Which Makes Me Anna Nicole Smith

Yesterday I returned from my second trip to Kentucky.  Typically, after purposely avoiding the place for 25 years, I visit twice in less than three months.

Really, I should leave home more often.  This time my husband opened the pool, painted the kitchen AND a bathroom.  It looked so different that I said, “Oh my God, I even love the new light fixture!”  As it turns out, it wasn’t new, I just hadn’t noticed it in the three years we’ve lived here.  The previous wallpaper was so ugly I could see nothing else.

He also dealt with the 11-year old (who suddenly acts 17), the one who grew an inch taller than me in only a week’s time after counting the minutes until my departure.  (“Not to hurt your feelings or anything Mom, you understand!”)

It’s so unusual for me to be completely alone that for a good portion of my initial driving time (after dropping my son off at his university dorm) I continued to catch myself believing my daughter was in the backseat.  I would turn to check on her or begin to say something and then remember she wasn’t there.  After the fifth or sixth time I wondered how long it would take to get the hint, so I could stop feeling really stupid.

* * * * *

After 25 hours in the car, I’m not so good with adjusting to the return home.  My body continues to quiver as if I’m still moving at hyper-speed.  Actually, being on the road was fun.  I love driving 80 mph in the Charger, blowing people away with the hemi, pretending I’m part of a video game.

Of course, there’s the other piece where I’m crossing myself and begging God that I don’t die until my daughter grows up.  The various personalities in my head begin arguing, one suggesting she’d be better off without my influence TODAY, IMMEDIATELY!  Now I’m flying down the road with two bitches slugging it out as to whether my influence on her is positive or negative.  Actually, I’m sure it’s both. 

I am certain of NOTHING after spending a long weekend entirely on my own with a 1, 2 and 3-year old.

When the voices become annoying I put on the radio or a CD.  Sometimes I listen to books on tape, but it’s hard finding something to love & most are disappointing.  For this trip two new music CD’s, Duffy (it’s been years since I’ve fallen in love with someone the way I have with this chick, especially the song Mercy) and Elliot Yamin (my boy).

I do not stay in hotels on the road, preferring to sleep in my car (with embarrassingly dirty hair & a look that screams CRACKHEAD with a secondary donut addiction) rather than deal with bed bugs or filthy phones or invisible jism on the walls (cause you KNOW it’s there).

(Side Note: Does anyone reading this communicate with Red (who convinced me that every coffee pot in every hotel in the USA has been shit in at least once)?  Has anyone heard from her or know she’s okay?  I think of her daily, since she deleted her blog, and miss that crazy chick.)

I did get stopped once.  I’d been on the road since 9 a.m. & after 18 hours a young, slow-talking Tennessee Sheriff’s officer wondered why I was weaving in a confused manner.  I’m sure he expected me to slur my words and stumble, but it was just a case of serious darkness in the middle of nowhere and no clear lines on winding asphalt.  I was tickled pink when he asked, “Ma’am, do you carry a concealed weapon?“  Even the idea gave me a thrill!  I laughed out loud & said, “No one would EVER give me such a thing!”  (My dear friend Roxanne claims I should have said, “Only my rapier-like wit!” but I don’t think nearly that fast.) 

Thankfully, I left with no ticket, possibly because he was pleased I was about to leave his state behind, thus becoming Kentucky’s problem.  He happily provided me with directions.

* * * * *

I went back because I was already making a trip south.  When I came up with this brilliant idea the extra eight hours of driving time sounded utterly reasonable, sort of like making pancakes for breakfast.  So I told my sister, “I’ll watch the kids!  You just make a plan to have fun.”  She’s had her grandchildren for three months now.  The entire situation is truly mind boggling once you are there and realize the difficulties involved.  The magnitude of issues & complications does not translate well onto paper.

Well, when I said, “Make a plan” she took me literally.  I thought

perhaps an afternoon of golf,

she thought

53 hours in the Smoky Mountains, 300 miles and six hours away, with two overnights booked in a hotel. 

We never bothered to compare our visualized experiences until I was standing in her living room and her boyfriend was carrying enough clothes to the car for a Mexican honeymoon.

It was about then that the 2-year old little boy plucked a tick off the dog bed and said, “Here, Gramma!”  She told me then that they’d just treated the two huge Boxers for an infestation and went on to say with pride and amazement: “He’s been finding them everywhere!  He’s really got an eye for it!”  (It took me several hours to sit on anything other than a coffee table.  I never did pull the cover down and climb into the bed, choosing instead to stay on top the bedspread fully clothed.)

An hour later they left and I found myself looking at 3 children under 4 years of age, all completely dependent upon me to behave as a mature adult & keep them alive for an entire weekend.

It was quite a learning experience.  If I ever had any fairy tale dreams about (1) how I should have had more children closer in age or (2) how my (fill in the blank) makes me somehow superior to my sister in any way . . .  they’re gone.