Thursday, July 30, 2009

I found the movie!

In the mail box. Unopened.

I'm speechless.

Hershey Tin full of Bleep

My boyfriend forgot his chocolate tin here, that Hershey one I blogged about not so long ago. I tripped over it and put it on a table in my room, thinking I'd return it to him. But now the kids have become obsessed about reading the outside of it aloud to each other and snickering.

It says:

  • With new taste and new texture.
  • Different--try it, you'll like it.
  • Have you met Mr. Goodbar?
  • Full of peanuts.
  • Good? You bet!
  • For those who prefer milder milk chocolate.
  • A tasty lunch.
  • Eat more Aero milk Chocolate
What's so funny????

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

My Netflix Senior Moment

I lost a Netflix movie that I wanted to watch. Sometime in between driving back from the pool with a crabby teenager, driving another one to an appointment, and listening to Don't Trust Me 3oh!3 for the 85th time this week in my 120 degree car, I lost a movie in that big red envelope in comes in. It was sitting on the table in the dining room and then IT WAS GONE and I know that I picked it up and became delirious from the heat and picked up something else and put that away and then forgot that I had the movie in my hand and left it somewhere really stupid.

I've looked in the couch, under the microwave, through my pile of bills,
Under the table cloth, on my bed, under the bathroom sink.
I've opened the refrigerator and looked in the vegetable drawer.
I looked through the box of popsicles in the freezer and through the clean laundry in the basket in my room,
Behind the television, in Haley's room, and in the box full of rechargeable batteries.
I called the kids at the houses they were hanging out at and asked them,
But they just thought I'd lost my mind.
And perhaps I had.
It was about the time that I slid off my chair.
Which happened right after I wrote that awful post today that's still not funny.
I looked through the magazines on the table thinking maybe I'd used it as a bookmark,
and in the hall closet where I shoved the vacuum, and in the trash can for recyclable paper.
I opened the front door to look on the steps, and in my bookcase,
but I forgot to look behind the toilet. I'll bet it's behind the damn toilet!
This blog is shut-down due to the technical difficulties created by humidity and the author sliding slowly off her chair.

If I could Pick My Family

My family makes me crazy!!!!! And I love Abrah because hers does too!!! I mean, they make her crazy, not me. It's been a day of Discoveries and Enlightenment. Here's what I learned today:

· I was told that someone would trade their crazy aunt and uncle for me and maybe two racist grandparents as well. That's 4 whole people!
. My pudge counts as another person in an odd game of trading family members.
· That the phrase "Blood is Thicker Than Water" is used by family members to guilt you into something.
· I would trade all my brothers for Abrah without hesitation.
· That my ex-husband is worth less than a pet rat.
· It is OKAY to not talk to family members who push their own issues onto me and my own little family.
· That saying "I told you so" after 6 years really feels GOOD.
· That extreme heat makes me unfunny and bitter sounding. I'm really just sweaty and sticking to myself, so don't mind me. Just give me another cold drink.
· I can choose my own family members cause it is my UNIVERSE and that might be just the heat speaking, but what if it isn't?

So I'll be sending my next post from Jamaica with Abrah, Bill, and the girls, while everyone else I traded away can have a big non-family reunion in Island Pond. That sounds like a good place. And Joe can just hang out alone with my pudge and Abrah's which would be like 80 pounds of jiggly fat. The pet rat can come to Jamaica with me cause rats are cute and probably won't call me a crack whore.

But let's get back to me being worth 2 crazy people and 2 racist people. My self-esteem is already higher!!! I don't need therapy anymore!




Tuesday, July 28, 2009

The Birthday Outhouse

So I was WRONG.

Birthday Girl was outside and missed the conversation with her Grandpa.
Poor her.
It went something like this:

"So Rachel called and said your Great Uncle Roy (who is 92 and lives in a house that is slowly sinking into the cistern it was built on) needs a new flush. And won't pay for it. Old people don't like to spend their money and so she called me to go look at it.
I told her I'd just clear a path to the old two holer."

Birthday Girl's oldest sister sat smirking at me, with her back to Grandpa.
Then we both asked at the same time, "What's a two holer?"

"It's an outhouse with two holes," he said.

"What do you need two holes for?"

He didn't answer, but instead offered this: "In the old days sometimes they even had three."

It's a real shame she missed this. It was the best Grandpa story EVER.

Happy Birthday to my Littlest One!

She's complaining already about having the worst birthday EVER. It's not even 10:00 yet. I think she just doesn't know how to have fun.

The day started out with BURNT poptarts.
Then I sang happy birthday to her and changed the lyrics:

Happy Birthday to you.
I made you a poo.
It came out my bumhole.
Happy Birthday to you.

She had asked me for a muffin and I said I was all out of muffin mix and she asked me again and I said that the only way to make one was, well, sing the song.

So next it's swimming lessons, a trip to Walmart to buy her her first camera, then to Grandpa's house to take pictures of snakes, eat shoofly pie, and listen to Grandpa's lists of things he has to do now that he's retired:

"And on this road there's 6 more beech trees to cut, and then 4 maples on this other road, and I took 10 hydringinias to whoosey's house but he wants 6 more of the bellhopfinators, and then I've got to split 24 cords of wood, and once when I was five, you know the old parking lot across from whoever's house in that town by the border . . . well I ran into that old man who was the third cousin of the neighbor of that lady who . . ."

I'll be in the basement doing laundry and missing all the fun.

Happy Birthday Gina!

Thursday, July 23, 2009

I AM A NORMAL MOTHER--I think???

Before I discuss viruses you can pick up at the pool--ICK--I want to say that today I tried to be a normal mother for about 30 seconds and it was difficult and I sounded really fake and no one could mistake my sweetness for sympathy when my youngest smacked her head on the hard arm of the couch. I think she didn't even hear me, but I COULD HEAR ME and I sounded like an intoxicatingly sweet commercial for bandaids or hamburger helper.
I think I should stick with what I know, which is this odd and somewhat disturbing sense of humor that leaves people wondering what I just said and laughing nervously with me, while in their heads they are filling out the paper work to have me involuntarily committed.
My daughter tells me not to change, not to be like the NORMAL moms and then in the next breath tells me she's already found the SPECIAL place to send me when I get old. I sure hope it's Abrah's house!
What is normal anyway? Stuffy adult strict do this-do that. I would rather they have many memories of me so that when they have children they can tell them how crazy I was and smile sadly at each other. Then they can visit me at the SPECIAL PLACE and I'll just lie and say none of it is true.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

I May Never Look at a Burger the Same Way and Hopefully I'll Forget All About This Tomorrow Like I do Everything Else

I'm okay eating things that were once alive if I don't have to think about what they are. Like lobster--I can't crack a whole one, but give me a claw and I can pretend it's a shell with treasure hidden in it and I'll suck out all the meat with a smile on my face, because I'm not thinking that this was once attached to a whole living creature. I'm easily distractable.
So I was sent this today by email: I've heard of the same type of thing being done with cows, putting them in a some kind of mechanical hug before the slaughter so they are relaxed and the meat is more tender.
Which now has me looking at my once yummy burger off the grill in a new way. Oh, yes, let's hug that cow and then BUTCHER IT. Let's lull it into thinking life is pretty good and then SLIT ITS THROAT. I am disgusted. Humane treatment of cows? This feels like a big fat karmic lie.
So I looked it up and found that stress from the butchering process can cause dark cut beef.
The adrenaline causes glycogen breakdown, which in turn causes low lactic acid which means the pH is higher and the meat is less tender.
I'm wondering too if the increased cortisol in the cow's blood at the time of slaughter would effect us too.
Mostly I'm wondering why anyone would ruin my happy little burgers-are-awesome world and tell me these things so that I am afraid of hugs and hamburgers at the same time. Stop trying to make me tender!
(Let's not even talk about how some cows are fed the blood of the slaughtered cows. Why aren't people worried about creating a superrace of Vampire Cows??? That's what I would be thinking about when I was feeding Bessie the fresh salty warm blood of her ex-bestfriend. If this is making you sick, just wait for my post on viral infections at the POOL tomorrow.)

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

The Answers To Everything, what Being a Mother is all About

At 9:30 I decided it was time to go wake up Emily, who was sleeping in because she was up late playing Legos Indiana Jones. I walked into her room, turned off the window fan, turned on the light to the goldfish tank, said good morning to the fish, and had a whole conversation with Emily about life and the meaning of everything including how her 13th birthday is making me feel old.
She didn't reply or move, groggily bundled in her blankets.
So I walked back down the stairs and found her sitting reading a book on the couch.
I wasted my fifteen seconds of brilliance on a pile of pillows.
And the sad part is that it would have made no difference if she was really there, looking at me with unfocused eyes.
That's what being a mom is all about. Brief moments of brilliance no one pays attention to, followed by 23 hours, 59 minutes, and 45 seconds of cleaning, whining, demanding, begging, and saying moronic things because all that brilliance exhausted me.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

One Second of Heaven when My House is Really Clean/Toilets are my friends

Everything comes back to the toilet. I think I spend a lot of time there, cleaning, sitting, reading, looking for lost things.

I cleaned today in a real way, not just wandering around moving the obvious clutter from one spot to another thinking that I've made it more organized. That's what I usually do. The kid weren't home and so I filled 3 bags with trash that they'll never even miss and if they do ask I'll say "We were Robbed?!" like it surprises me too.

Then I Lysoled my desk, the television stand, all the doorknobs, the floor and the computer tower. That last one seemed important like I was doing the computer a favor by keeping it germ free. I cleaned all the dust off the baseboards and vacuumed the corners. I vacuumed the pine needles that appear every day where I put the Christmas tree in the winter. I think of the never ending pine needles as my own on purpose potpourri and not sloppy cleaning 8 months ago. And I lifted the toilet seat, which if you know me at all, I never do because we are all girls here and it never occurs to me to lift the seat. Why would it be dirty under there? And it was!!!! I should clean it more often for all those toilet seat inspectors who stop by. You know who you are!

Then I sat on the couch to sit in my nice clean home. And took a deep breathe enjoying the lemony Clorox smell AND THE PHONE RANG and it was Haley asking if I'd pick her up. I took pictures before I left so that I can post them on the wall in the kitchen and when I ask her to pick up she can see what I mean by that. That popsicle sticks are actually trash. That shoes should not be kicked into the middle of the floor in front of the television, that pillows don't have to be jammed into the cracks of the couch, and that dirty dishes do not add to the decor. And that cobweb that magically appears above my wall art is not a part of it, bringing the outdoors inside and adding a three dimensional effect.

And sometimes I do lock myself into the bathroom and when one of the girls call for me I yell out "I can't help you. I'm taking a poo" when I'm just sitting on the toilet cover reading a book. Now when ever I escape to my reading room I'll think about the grime that has somehow attached itself to the underside of the seat and I'll still probably ignore it.

Friday, July 17, 2009

The Bear and The Squirrel Attack

Last summer my mother called to tell me her neighbor had seen a bear on her back porch. This was days before the rabid woodchuck incident, who soon became one of my closest non-rabid friends. Anyway, this bear turned out to be me taking some clippings from her plants (as she had asked me to) before the fall frost killed them. Yes, there was a GIANT bear with SCISSORS on her back porch.

Moving on to yesterday. She called and talked to Emily and said someone had seen a bear in the driveway. What is it with the bears?

So we all had a good laugh. And Emily went upstairs to her room.

"SQUIRREL. SQUIRREL. SQUIRREL." She screamed in a way that only Emily can, that sounds like an Elk bugling at that pitch that makes me want to shove my fists in my ears to make it stop hurting.

I thought she was mocking her grandmother by screaming about a GIANT RABID SQUIRREL in the house. She came running out and met me as I was climbing the stairs.

"It's really a squirrel in my room MOM." Well, okay. I went to look and there he was, sitting on the edge of Gina's desk. He saw us and bounced off two walls and then straight at us, flying so fast that only Haley, who was at the top of the stairs, saw him fly into my room. We chased him in and I shut the door behind us.

"How are we going to catch him?" someone asked. I sent Emily out for 3 hand towels and the broom. But with all of us screaming every time I scared him out from under the bed with the broom, and with all of us jumping around because he was running so fast he was a scary blur of squirrel tail and squirrel claws, I thought he'd probably only be caught once we gave him a heart attack.

I sent Emily to her Grandmother's. She was happy to go share the Squirrel story first. And I left Haley in my room with the towels, broom, and an empty laundry basket. "Sit there like Buddha," I said to her as she sat on my treadmill waiting. "When he thinks we've all left he'll sneak out and then you can grab him."

I went to take a shower. The shrieking and laughter continued to come from my room.

"I caught him!" she finally yelled. The squirrely squirrel had climbed up my floor lamp, sat on my bed, and ricocheted from wall to wall until somehow she captured him.

We let him go outside. It was a beautiful moment. Here's the AMAZING video of his return to the WILD.

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Candy and Mosquito Poisoning

I found the carrots yesterday in Dad's garden and felt compelled to free them from the clutches of the rain-loving weeds. But the rest of the garden scares me because I don't know what's a weed and what's not, and so I ended up pulling out whatever was bigger. Weeds are bigger, right?

Ha, that was for Dad in case he accidentally finds a computer in the middle of Yellowstone and trips over his own shoelace and accidentally lands on my blog. I weeded the carrots because I KNOW what a carrot plant looks like but as far as the RUTABAGA I have no idea. It sounds like a root vegetable that I wouldn't eat. And that he would drown in Miracle Whip. I found some bean plants too. But the weeds didn't like them so I guess they just smell bad or something. And I found one bean plant in the carrot row so I left it and I'm sure when he gets back he'll laugh at me and ask me why I felt compelled to leave one Hasslethornweedthingy in the carrots.

It's like when I used to help him string lines of tubing in the woods for sugaring season and I'd be happily humming and going around the pretty trees in my way and he'd say "Why are you wrapping that around a BEECH tree?" and I'd be all "It doesn't have leaves so how do you know what it is?" and he'd look at me like I was from Pluto. He doesn't ask me to help with that part of sugaring anymore.

Anyway, while I was weeding the carrots and letting them breathe again I got bitten by like 20 mosquitoes and when I get bitten I swell up like from bee stings and today I feel VERY TIRED and a little ill and I don't know if it's from mosquito poison or the box of Good & Plenties I shamelessly scarfed down in my room yesterday afternoon while the kids were busy elsewhere.

Gina found one under the passenger seat in the car and looked disgusted and I know she was thinking that Haley snuck some more candy, and I didn't want to look bad so I said nothing. Although I should have said "I'm an ADULT and I can do anything I WANT" like I do a million other times every day when she asks things like "Why are you wearing your shoes in the house?"

I love being an adult.

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

You Don't Want To Know Who Drank More

My friend and I used to drink alot. Most of it I don't remember, except for late nights spent drinking water and trying to scrape my contacts out of my eyes. We'd get up the next day and say, hey that was stupid. But we never promised ourselves or each other never to do it again. A couple of days later and we'd forget the hangover. Someone suggested to me that we never drank that much and so never got to that point of vowing not to drink again.
And in my head I was thinking I should be dead, I drank so much but I didn't say that out loud cause then I'd look like I had a problem. Listen, this was 18 years ago!!!! Give or take a couple.
I am a shining example to the world that

  • You can drink too much and live
  • You can have your heartbroken by your first love and live
  • You can eat too much of something bad for you and live (and be really healthy)
  • You can ignore teenage girl attitude and live
  • You can walk through the Old North End alone at night and live
  • You can do a bunch of random stupid things and live (and not have a police record)
  • You can eat unwashed mushrooms and live

I think perhaps because I never tried to find enough will power to try to quit that I just moved on without a struggle. I never felt guilt or wished that I hadn't done anything. I just did whatever made me happy and now I've moved on to other better things that make me happy like

  • good friendships
  • good relationships
  • vegetables
  • long walks
  • music
  • books
  • breathing
  • yoga
  • vampires

Or maybe the Stupid Ones live longer.

Unlike the mouse I ran over yesterday. It was a mouse exodus from a lower strip of grass along Route 122, which must have flooded from all the rain this nasty summer. So instead of jumping in the river on the other side they were choosing to cross the road to higher ground. Just as I was zooming along. I am so sorry.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Hard Beds Suck Ass and I believe in God just for today

I sleep on my stomach. I like to feel attached to something so that I don't just float off into the air while I'm sleeping. But there's no place for my boobs on a rock hard mattress. They just flatten out like they do at my yearly mammogram. A mattress needs to have some give so that my boobs are happy instead of being treated like they aren't even there. Or boob holes for me to place them in while I'm sleeping. It's like seatbelts. I hate those things too. They either lay over my boob, showing the world how flat it can get, or slide under it and hold it up like a poorly behaved underwire bra.

But my attention moved onto something else a few minutes ago when I listened to my messages and my ex husband is in the hospital getting a pacemaker today. So just for today I do believe in God. I will be praying all day and not for what you may think I'd be praying for. If you've never had someone chase you around with a knife threatening to cut your stuck wedding ring off your finger, when you'd happily throw it at him, well, you wouldn't understand why I'm heading over to Burlington to protest the unnecessary expense of putting a pacemaker into someone to prolong the time they can torment their ex family. I'm making signs right now. "Economic Responsibility Starts Here!" "Let the Bastard Die!" "Why is the State Paying for This?" "You Could Feed a Nation Instead." If you see this on the local evening news remember that I am not a lunatic.

Now where did I stash that voodoo doll?

Sunday, July 5, 2009

Housesitting and I want to go HOME.

I seem to not be able to sleep for very long.
The beds are harder than the wooden floor.
The windchimes outside ring loudly and inconsistently as the storms pass through every half hour.
One dog shivers endlessly and the other hides under the bed, ready to snap at any passerby with teeth as sharp as an allegator.
I put a sheet over all the blankets on Dad's bed because sleeping in it would be just too weird and there's no where else to sleep. It's still weird.
Chinese food sits badly in my digestive track.
There's a dead bat in here somewhere.
I have a giant L stamped on my forehead because I couldn't even place next to last in any game we played yesterday.
I worry that I'll have nothing to blog about while Abrah is on vacation.
I don't want to miss the 3 seconds of sun first thing in the morning before the clouds roll in.
I swear Sheffield Heights creates its own weather.
I miss my alone time in the evenings, but I'm always so tired here that I go to bed early, and then I get up to be alone in the morning. OMG, like a NORMAL person.
And why is it that the cat, the dogs, the girls, the visitor, and my boyfriend are all still asleep upstairs at 9 a.m.?
And why do I cook frantically for 45 minutes only to sit down just in time for everyone to be done eating?
If being a mother is so rewarding, where's my enormous check?
Cause all I found is another pile of dirty laundry that I swear was clean and folded yesterday and nobody wore.