10.30.08
homework check
I have a headache. I’ve had it for about a month with very little respite. I’m not whining, just explaining why I haven’t been around much. The whining will come later have no fear. I have (probably stupidly) signed up for nanowrimo so if I can get the jackhammers out of my brain long enough to write I am hoping to find the discipline to do so.
I never forward jokes (in fact I rarely even read forwarded jokes) and it is even more rare for me to post such things on my blog but despite the throbbing agony in my head and current lack of a sense of humour, this cracked me up.
10.27.08
fecal matters
My oldest and dearest bff is batshit. She’s spastic, paranoid, hypochondriacal, a bit of a lunatic and belongs in a rubber room. We were born less than 24 hours apart in the same hospital to parents who were also friends and grew up together. Sallee and I are more like sisters than friends, we’re close enough to be able to fight like family… and still love each other despite our flaws, faults and foibles.
Ten years ago Sal married Guido (Heiny’s best friend) who also stretches the boundaries of sanity… this is why we fixed them up, we knew they were perfect for each other. They tried for five years to have babies and despite several frustrating attempts with intrauterine injections and fertility pills they were unable to conceive. Finally they decided to adopt. They began the process and two years later they were blessed with two beautiful little girls, sisters, Bella and Lita. Both children were abused by their father as well as their grandfather and their mother was a crackhead so despite the fact that our friends may not exactly be Ozzy and Harriet they are in a far better place.
Sal and I had not spoken in about a year and a half. Her paranoia makes her automatically assume that I am pissed off at her if I haven’t called her and I got crabby when I found out she had been in town and didn’t call me so my friend negligence was a big passive aggressive ‘fuck you too!” I knew she had a lot going on but I get to a point where I get tired of being the only one to maintain a friendship so I back off. Well Sallee got her shit in a big old knot over it and decided she was through with me.
About a week ago I noticed that she was on Facebook, we have more than a few mutual friends, so I sent her a private message saying basically, “Hi, how the fuck are you?” She wrote me back a frickin’ book about all of the ways I had been a shitty friend to her over the past few years and how hurt she was by my actions… or lack thereof. She ranted about how she was always there for me when my son was little and how I can’t be bothered to be there for her kids. She said she didn’t have a lot to say to me yet she went on forever about what a jerk I am and how she’s missed me like crazy but as her best friend I suck. She finished her tirade with “You’re an asshole and I love you.”
I responded of course with my side of the story. I am always willing to admit when I fuck up but I refuse to accept all the blame when it’s to be shared. I told her I felt shut out when they got the girls because she made it abundantly clear that she wanted time for them to assimilate into the family before ‘everyone else’ bombarded them. I said “I thought we were family.” And if she thought for one second I didn’t want to be an aunty to those girls then she was sadly and sorely mistaken. I admitted that I am an asshole and that I stopped calling her because she didn’t call me. Writing this out makes us both sound more than a little unhinged and fifth grade. Still, I had to say my peace, She claimed to know that I have been having a ‘rough time’ since my son left home and I straightened her out on that point too. I told her she didn’t have a fucking clue what it had been like for me and that she should not presume to. I completed my response with “I miss you and I love you and you’re an asshole too.”
That night she phoned me.
“Alright, we’re both assholes.” she laughed.
Only real friends can greet each other this way.
We talked for three hours and it was like we’d never been apart. She briefed me on her ongoing medical dramas… her back, her head, her fibro-mangina, her PCOS, her OCD and how the doctors don’t know anything. She told me how she finally threw her overbearing tyrant of a bully mother-in-law out of her house for good. I applauded and told her it was about time, the woman has been a total cuntbag to her (and me for introducing them) from the beginning. She filled me in on the girls, their difficulties and triumphs and told me how Bella (her six year old) had a fight with her best friend across the street so she went over and pooped on their lawn. Sallee had to go over with a bag and pick it up and then explain to the angry child that “When we’re angry we use our words, dogs poop on lawns, people don’t.” I howled at the image of this beautiful little girl dropping trou and leaving a deuce on the neighbor’s grass. She is a sweet adorable child and this is so out of character for her which makes it even funnier to me, more so because I didn’t have to clean it up.
By the time we hung up the phone (and nursed our cauliflower ears) everything was set to right between us and we are making plans to go visit them soon. It’s a five hour drive but it’ll be worth the trip and doubly so since I finally have a place to ditch all of my old craft supplies…since I am so over being crafty and could use the space to store other crap. If only Sal or the kids had an use for the seven unfinished afghans in my basement as well.
I am relieved to have worked everything out and cleared the proverbial air. I hate having those clouds of discontent hanging overhead and now that one at least has blown away. I am sure that after 41 years Sallee and I will always find a way to be friends (even when we’re not speaking) but next time I piss her off I’ll be watching for a little present on my lawn.
10.20.08
survivor type
A good portion of my dad’s family is mormon…though many of them have removed their magic underwear and are finding that life outside the church (cult) is not as scary as they were led (brainwashed) to believe. When we were kids we’d go to visit our LDS (Latter Day Saints) relations and I was always amazed by their food stocks. Now granted most of them had six or eight kids (breeding is the best way to manufacture more mormons) but their storerooms held groceries enough to sustain them for what I thought must be a year. It turns out it was two years worth. This was the first time I ever saw peanut butter in a five gallon bucket and gunny sacks of flour and I remember thinking it would take me way more than two years to eat that many PB & J’s. My aunt explained that everyone should have enough food for two years in case of an emergency.
I never gave this a lot of thought, dismissing it as Mormon paranoia until Y2K. People went crazy…even the ones who were non culters…stocking up, storing up and preparing for the worst. I refused to be part of the madness but I did start to consider the possibilities and potentiality of our lives being forcibly turned upside down.
I love disaster movies. I know it sounds terribly sick but I love the idea of the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine). I have put a great deal of thought into how I would live and what I would do if there were some major disaster that caused us to return to an olden way of life. Now for the record if it’s nukes that set us back a few generations then I think I’d prefer not to survive. Mutants and food that comes pre-microwaved is a little too much for me…unless I am a mutant or a zombie in which case bring on the live brains! No, in my post-apocalyptic world we’ve just gone back about a hundred years. There is no electricity, no internet (*gasp*), no running vehicles…I think it might be an oil/gas shortage. We have to ride horses or bikes or walk to travel…oooh stagecoach would be cool too. I’m wondering if I was born in the wrong time, I should have been a wild west girl I think. Bennie get your gun!?!
There has been a lot of talk lately about another depression…worse than the last depression…which could be very depressing…and all I really know about that is what I saw on The Waltons. All of the talk of doom and gloom has made me consider the possibilities.
I am quite sure we could survive for a very long time given our resources and what we know…along with my dad’s ability to hunt and my mom’s butchering experience. I typo’d ‘bitchering’ and that’s true too but it wouldn’t really help us in a crisis. We have access to plenty of firewood and we are near a river so heat and water are fairly easy to obtain. There are plenty of fish and edible wildlife in the area so as long as someone else can kill and clean it I can cook it (if I had to do the killing myself I think I’d probably become a vegetarian) and between my garden and the wildberries I am sure we’d not starve or die of scurvy.
Giving up running water, flush toilets and immediate hot water would be difficult but having to do laundry by hand (there is a masturbation joke in there somewhere) could very well be the deal breaker for me. My husband does most of the laundry now but if he’s out killing food and cutting firewood that leaves me with the domestic duties. This is where my fantasy of a simpler life goes sour…and bitter…and the romantic ideal of the peace and tranquility of a Laura Ingalls world without trappings and ‘jobs’ and bills and everyday stresses falls flat against the washboard where I see myself scrubbing Heiny’s dirty undies. Gross.
I guess my point…because I am sure when I started this there was one…is that we could survive an earth altering event…but would we really want to?
How would you fare?
10.17.08
fare game
As we sat by the fire having a few drinks on Friday night, Harry and I got into a discussion about American politics. While he was the one who was half canned it was his wife Trixie who piped up with the jewel of the evening. I explained that if I were American I would be a Democrat and why I would vote for Obama. Trixie said, “Who?”
“Barack Obama, the black guy who is running for president?!”
“Oh shit, I thought his name was Brocko Bama.”
It was only 2 degrees Celcius in the bus on Saturday morning at 4:30 am. Heiny (bless his heart) got up and walked down to the generator shed (we are all hooked into it but we only run it when necessary…and that morning it was very necessary) and fired up the old genny to power the tiny electric heater in the bus. By 7:30 am it was a balmy 7 degrees inside. If I had not slept with my fleece toque on I would have been a bencicle by morning.
We all huddled close to the fire having coffee and brekky while we waited the rise of the sun. Harry was feeling a little under the weather courtesy of his tour of world beers the night before but he blamed his morning hurl on what he figured must have been an undercooked burger from Friday’s dinner.
Once the sun shone it became a beautiful day (although it never got above ten degrees) and we all set about prepping food and Special Olympics activities. All of the non-campers arrived at about 1 pm and the games began with the Project Runway challenge. We drew names for teams and each group of four was given a roll of toilet paper and instructions to create an outfit (which one team member would model) out of the TP and anything in nature. Trixie, auntie Ellen and cousin Jess and I built a fabulous toga style number trimmed with sweat pea vines and a maple leaf hem. Jess, who is 6’3’’ and well over 250 lbs was our model and he rocked the vine and flowered headpiece but the piece de resistance was the giant green bean (I grew some in a pot out there this summer) we hung from his crotch. We called him The Potty Green Giant. We won.
The other models were also male and hardly the type to make spectacles of themselves but they did us all proud and worked the leaf-strewn runway like professionals. Cousin Barry shook it like I didn’t know he could and I have not enjoyed a moment like that nor have I laughed so hard in a very long time.
giving 'going green' a whole new meaning
Hillbilly bowling (with a frozen chicken and beer cans) was funny too but for a different reason. Barry invited a couple of his friends out for and one girl brought her dad Al (a sixtyish British fellow) who went from somewhat standoffishly sober to completely competitively congenially canned in about six drinks. By the time the fourth person tossed the chicken at the beer cans the wrapper came off so by the last throw the bird was dirt encrusted and beginning to mush. As we all made our way to the next event Al put the chicken on the fire to roast. We all thought it was a joke but later that night (after he’d already eaten three or four platefuls of dinner) he was found with the bird in hand gnawing the meat off the bones. I asked him about the grit but he said most of it had cooked off and that the bowling had made it extra tender. We found out later that his wife (who is back in the homeland at the moment) is a vegetarian and feeds him little more than salad and tofu at home…which explains his carnivorous appetite.
As the end of the games approached I realized that my husband was completely pickled. He’s usually pretty boisterous but I can tell when he’s had that fourth drink too many. Harry slurs when he’s had too much, Heiny sways and gets really quiet. He goes from giddy and giggly to not being able to stand up straight in a matter of seconds and from there it is a short trip to the spew. He stood in the doorway to the shed while we did the cornholing (corn cob toss) mumbling about the ‘bad burger’. “Honey my gut isn’t right, something must have poisoned me. I’ve never thrown up this early in the day.”
“Riiight, I think you’ve been spending too much time with Harry. You’re drunk. Period.”
“No, it’s more than that, I threw up twice already, something’s wrong. I’ve never been this drunk on New Year’s before.”
Three times he hung his head in the outhouse which is enough to induce vomit in a sober person so by the time dinner was over he just wanted to come home. He didn’t eat because he couldn’t keep anything down and I was busy breading and battering while my dad did the frying so I didn’t eat either. After everyone was finished I tidied up and put my soused spouse into the truck and brought him home.
Heiny hasn’t been that hosed in a very long time and while I wasn’t mad at him for having too many I was exhausted and ready to relax and maybe have a few drinks myself. I didn’t put up too much of a stink though since I knew coming home meant I could have a hot bath and sleep in a warm bed. I do however have little sympathy for anyone who overindulges to that point so I did not make the drive home easy on him. I hit every bump and made no attempt to take the corners gently. Twice as I turned sharply his head knocked against the passenger window causing him to grumble and whine which in turn made me giggle. Being a bitch is not easy but someone has to do it. Bah, sometimes it is pretty easy.
The next morning right after breakfast we headed back out to pack up our shit for the season. As my husband was putting away all of the lawn chairs he noticed corn husks and bits of the veggie on the ground. “Where did the corn come from?” he asked in all seriousness.
“The grocery store?”
“Fuck off!”
“It was one of the games yesterday.” I laughed.
“Are you messing with me?”
“Right, I’m lying, while you were passed out we took turns shoving the cobs up your ass.”
“Well I don’t remember a game with corn.”
“Well maybe that’s because you spent half of it yakking in the shitter!”
It was then that cousin Barry called him over to show him the video where he sits (falls) down during the corn toss and Harry has to help him up all the while he’s yelling “Bad burger, Trix fed me a bad burger!”
He wrote on the calendar the next morning that he was quitting drinking. I asked for how long and he said “A year, maybe two.”
I laughed, rolled my eyes and said “Ok, whatever.”
Today he had a beer.
Boy how time flies.
10.14.08
birthday boy
I was standing in the greeting card aisle at the grocery store. The card I was reading said something like “When you were a little boy I often had glimpses of the man you’d someday become.”
I burst into tears.
My husband came around the corner to find me blubbering between “Get Well” and “Halloween”.
Seriously, who sends Halloween cards?!
“What’s wrong?” Heiny asked panic stricken.
I handed him the card and started laughing through my tears at the absurdity of the situation. It’s one thing to have an emotional breakdown in the privacy of one’s home, it is quite another to be shedding tears next to the produce department. I felt like a dork and it wasn’t the kind of thing I could explain to the random strangers staring at me looking a little concerned, a little curious and more than a little fearful that in my obviously unstable state I might lose it completely and… well what trouble could you really get into in a grocery store? Throwing eggs? Shoving grapes up my nose? Setting free the seafood?
I know I write a lot about my son and how much I miss him but it’s always worse when he’s having a bad day or when there is something to celebrate and I am unable to be there for him.
Today is my son’s twentieth birthday and beyond the fact that I don’t feel old enough to have a child who is an adult I can’t get over that it’s been so long since I brought that tiny (10 lb!) bundle home from the hospital. It’s no wonder that it’s so hard for parents (mom’s especially) to let go, he’s been my purpose for half of my life and frankly I don’t want to let go. I can loosen the apron strings but I’ll never untie them completely, even when he’s an old man I will still be his mom and I will always be grateful for the connection that I have with him. He is as much my friend as he is my child and despite the distance between us I cannot imagine my world without him. Yesterday was Thanksgiving here but I am grateful every day for the gift that he is to me.
When he was about three years old he told me that he was going to live with me forever. I should have asked for that promise in writing.
Happy Birthday Baby Boy, there aren’t enough words to tell you how much I love you and my one wish for you is that your life be filled with as much joy as you’ve brought into mine.
10.09.08
bird brained
The maple leaf version of the giving of thanks is upon us this weekend and we will be heading (surprise!) to the lake for the festivities. This is traditionally the final weekend we spend out there although we’ll continue to take day trips out to work on the cabin…at least until the depth of the snow prevents the drive.
I am usually more than a little blase about the feast of the gobbler as I am not a fan of the foul fowl. In fact I really hate turkey. Yes, HATE. I must admit I am not even a fan of the accoutrements that accompany the dinner., nana’s gummy creamed carrots, my aunt’s dry, heartburn inducing stuffing, mom’s lumpy mashed potatoes and my cousin’s bland gravy, a real family effort. Several years ago my dad and I tried to convince everyone that roast beef (prime rib to be specific) should replace the big bird for all family functions. This year however it was my aunt Eddie and cousin Barry who decided we should skip the roaster and dive into the deep fryer.
My father would be happy to eat fried food every day, he lives for (and will probably die by) the highest fat content he can possibly squeeze into a meal. He bought a propane turkey deep fryer several years ago but he had zero interest in using it for its intended purpose. He just wanted his own portable deep fryer. Many times he has tried to convince, coerce and badger us into partaking of his hot oil cooked concoctions but a little goes a long way and it’s a huge pain in the ass to heat up all of that fat to cook a meal for just the four of us. One afternoon out at the lake he had a brainstorm, “We should do a big deep fry out here!” he exclaimed excitedly “We could do fish and chips and mushrooms and onion rings and and and…” on and on he went in a Bubba Gump shrimp sort of ramble. The rest of the family got into it, my aunt said she had some halibut in her freezer, Heiny was into chicken fingers, Trixie started talking about battered mushrooms and it…erm…mushroomed from there.
I made a beer batter for the fish, shrooms, onion rings and zucchini sticks, and I used spiced flour and eggs to make a delicious crispy coating on the chicken…the kids said they were the best chicken fingers ever and kids know chicken fingers! I made some honey mustard sauce and my own tartar sauce and it was all quite delicious albeit more than a little heavy.
Eddie and Barry figured the big fry would be the perfect meal to celebrate thanks this year and while I thought it would be a very long time before I was up for such a slick supper again if it gets me out of having to dine on dinde (french for turkey) count me in! I did insist that we have some salads and some non-fried veggies to go with the meal. I am quite certain nobody will eat them but I will feel better if at least they are available.
Saturday will be the day for the revelry. We’ll have 15-20 people joining us, my parents will make breakfast (bacon eggs and pancakes cooked on a griddle over the fire) and after we eat the games will begin. We will commence with the opening ceremonies of the second annual Thanksgiving Special Olympics! Since cousin Barry won most of the events last year I think we’ll have him parade around as some kind of outgoing princess. We probably should be official and sing O Canada but I think something silly would be more appropriate….The Wheels on The Bus or Camp Grenada or I’ve Got A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts maybe
So far we have quite a few events in our line-up…
There will be a scavenger hunt where each team will have to find something that begins with every letter of the alphabet.
Kayla wants to do a Project Runway challenge where each team picks a model and has to make an outfit for them out of nature. The most creative use of materials wins. I hope there is no poison ivy on the island.
The egg toss and the race with a quarter between the knees were such hits last year that we will be doing them again.
We’ll also have a dress-up relay where people will have to put on gloves, pantyhose (over their clothes), a bra, a dress, a hat and high heels then race around a predetermined route, take off all of the items and the next person will go. We are calling it the Drag Strip.
Each person will be given three crackers and a piece of bubble gum, the first person to eat all of the crackers and then blow a bubble will win.
Dani…formerly Zelle suggested Teabagging where (unlike the other teabagging) you toss the tea bag for distance much like a hammer throw.
Yesterday I found a site that had a game called Cornholing where you toss ears of corn through holes in a piece of plywood…which really is not that different from the other cornholing.
I can’t wait for the kids to go to school next week and tell everyone what fun they had teabagging and cornholing.
If anyone else has any more silly event ideas I’d love to hear them, we’ll have all day to play games before and after our feast of gratitude (we’ll need to move after that dinner or we might just coagulate)…and we might need to drink a fair bit too to keep our blood from icing up. It’s supposed to be sunny and cold all weekend with a nighttime temperature of -6C (21F)…that is below freezing and there is no heat in the bus. I think this will be our last camping weekend until the cabin is finished. We know when to say when and that’s just before hypothermia sets in.
When we come home I’ll let you know what I am most thankful for, that we didn’t freeze to death or that we didn’t have coronaries…that is providing neither has transpired.
10.06.08
insight edition
I am convinced I have some psychic ability. I can’t predict the future (although I’m pretty good at predicting the past) and I don’t talk to dead people (or at least they don’t talk to me…and I’m very ok with that). Every once in a while though there is an event (or a series of events) that compels me to believe that either I have some kind of gift or my intuition is in overdrive.
It is not uncommon for me to know who is calling before the phone rings. I also often think of a person and later run into them in a restaurant or at the grocery store. This is a small town but it’s not so small that I see everyone every day. Then there are times where the deja vu is so strong that I know what my day will be like before it begins, I usually even know when a client is not showing up or going to be late. My sixth sense (or whatever it is) also guides my driving. There are two routes I can take to exit town on my way home. The first road is shorter and goes across the train tacks where my husband works, the other is an overpass which (funnily enough) overpasses the tracks but takes a minute or two longer to hit the outskirts of town. Most of the time I listen to the voice in my head that warns me to go one way or the other but inevitably when I ignore it there is a train blocking the highway or there is an accident on the other road. It’s freaky but every time I test my intuition there is some reason I should have gone in the other direction.
This latest episode however was a first for me.
I had to go to the grocery store after work last week. It is no secret that I despise food shopping but it’s not so bad when I’m getting ready to go to the lake and I have a list. I think it’s the deciding and having to make all of the choices that irks me the most. I think I might also be a little (or a lot) antisocial lately too so I’m not crazy about running into people who want to chat. Usually they are clients who just want to tell me how hairy they are or show me their feet…it’s the nature of the business and I smile and chat politely and tell them to call me when all I really want is to get the damn food and get the hell out of there.
I was walking through the produce section, I picked up a watermelon, some berries and a lime. I looked at the small green fruit and asked myself “You don’t need a lime, why are you buying that?” I answered myself “I don’t know.”
Do not be surprised that I have conversations with myself a) I spend a lot of time alone and b) I am pretty freakin’ great company, just ask me. I looked at the sour citrus and pondered for a moment what I would do with such a purchase. I couldn’t think of anything but something told me I needed it so I left it in the buggy.
I was in the dairy section when my phone rang.
“Hello.”
“Hi, where are you?” It was Trixie
“I’m at the grocery store.”
“Oh good, I was just there but I forgot to get a lime, could you pick one up for me please?”
“Would you believe there is one in my cart?”
“You don’t use limes.”
“I know, something told me to pick one up.”
“You’re freaking me out.”
“Yeah and apparently I’m reading your mind so you bloody well better be thinking nice things about me!”
Now if only I could figure out how to channel this ‘gift’ to pick winning lottery numbers, racehorses or sports teams, I don’t need esp to know to stay the hell away from the stock market.
