Awesome summer camp letter!

I am cleaning out my filing cabinet today. What could be more tedious than that??? Oh, it's not all bad. I found this letter Haley wrote me from summer camp when she was maybe 10 that still cracks me up:

Today wasn't as bad but it still was bad. I had to go to fishing first then I had to walk up to riflery and then I had to walk back down for sailing then I had to walk back up line up walk back down for lunch walk back up for cabin time walk back down for kayaking then walk back up for farm and garden then walk down for dinner walk back up for poetry then we go to sleep. I miss you.

A Revision

I have to post this because it's a masterpiece and it's never too late to laugh about the stupid relationships I've had ever since leaving Wyoming.


Runaway James (to the tune of Runaround Sue)

Here's my story, its sad but true
It's about a boy that I once knew
He took his stick then ran around
To every pool hall in town
Ah, I should have known it from the very start
This boy will leave me with a broken heart
Now listen people what I'm telling you
A-keep away from-a Runaway james
I miss his books and his pajama pants
His voice as he asks for just one more chance
So if you don't wanna cry like I do
A-keep away from-a Runaway James
Ah, he likes to travel around
He'll love you but he'll put himself down
Now people let me put you wise
He goes out with other guys
Here's the moral and the story from the one who knows
He'll leave so fast that he'll forget his clothes
Ask any fool that he ever knew, they'll say
A-Keep away from-a Runaway James
He likes to travel around
He'll love you but he'll put himself down
Now people let me put you wise
James goes out with other guys
Here's the moral and the story from the one who knows
He'll run so fast that he'll forget his clothes
Ask any fool that he ever knew, they'll say
A-Keep away from-a Runaway James

So besides rewriting songs and laughing about them I also have decided that I do in fact have hobbies. I may not hunt or fish or make anything right now (unless this song counts) but I do like vampires. Vampires are a hobby. And I like wine. And I do like to bitch sometimes. That's a hobby. I wear sweatpants too, which is this new hobby I just picked up a couple of month ago when I stopped caring about what I look like when I'm at home. And I am really good at loud sighing. I'm just full of hobbies!
How did Haley get to school if one of her new shoes is under the coffee table??? I'll bet she forgot to put shoes on. I'd better go find her.

Many Random but Important Events That must be connected Somehow

Today I got the birthday present I bought myself through the mail. I am now feeling supported and separated, lifted and somehow thinner. Is this really where the boobs are supposed to be? I keep hitting my chin on them and I can definitely see the six pack of small rolls where my abs should be but aren't. When not dragging against my knees they look really HUGE. I am so amazed that I keep looking down and then feeling them, cause I can't quite believe they're mine.

I took Haley to Dartmouth yesterday where her doctor (who I LOVE) thought there's a good chance most of her issues are caused by a sleep disorder. So she filled out the paperwork (one piece of paper) for a referral to the sleep clinic to at least rule this out before we go the ADHD route. She said that when she faxes these down to the sleep people they somehow lose them and so she wanted us to walk it down (2 buildings over and 3 floors down) and hand it to them in person. When we found the sleep clinic all the doors were shut and because it's a small city I finally decided to enter the business office.

The three women who were sitting there chatting were AGHAST that I would walk in. They spoke ANGRY INTEROFFICE language at me that sounded something like "You can't hand this to us! You have to send it by interoffice doctor transportalator facsimile machination" and each one looked up at the sky (or ceiling) like whatever it was lived above us. So maybe they meant I had to talk to God first, and when I refused and said "The doctor said to walk it down here and hand it to you" they were even more AGHAST that I would refuse to bow down and worship this thing they so feared and revered. "The doctors keep doing this to us, instead of using the interoffice doctor transportalator facsimile machination," they said to me so that I would be on their side of the interoffice schism. And maybe I was or maybe I wasn't, I didn't really care as long as the paper got to where it was going.

Then they just looked at me like I should apologize for bring this nasty piece of paper to them. I turned to the one nearest me and asked politely "I have no idea what you are talking about, but can you please get this to where it's supposed to be."

She took it from me and said that she would fax it upstairs so that it would be faxed back down to her, the way things are supposed to work in the hospital. If this order was not kept apparently the whole system would fall apart. I don't doubt that she made a paper airplane out of it and threw it down the elevator shaft after I left. And I now realize that she may have been merely following the Pathetics on the Way to Gof, in which case I commend her attempt at trying to make me feel like she was doing me a huge favor and as long as the paper made it up to God and back I'm okay with it.

The third thing that happened was what I found when looking back through the history on my laptop to find a walkthrough for LOTR for Emily that she looked at on Thursday. I haven't seen so many bizarre sites since the days of Joe and Jim in my basement. No, no, no! I wish I'd never seen those pictures. When I was a kid you had no access to these things and now all you have to do is find the five minutes when MOM has locked herself into the bathroom and type Animal Porn into google and there it is!

Can you tell that they've been home sick all week and I haven't had a break since a week ago Friday?

A Letter to Joe

I am angry. I am just completely wrecked and murderously angry. A while ago I made a long list of all the things I lost when I finally ran with my kids and my life. But really very little of that hurts me all that badly anymore. I don't care that you stopped paying the mortgage and I had to lose my house. I don't care that I gave away all the furniture, the swingset, the lawnmower, or all my books. Today, it doesn't matter so much that I lost most of my friends, that I became homeless, or that you continue to threaten me. It doesn't even matter that I lost the ability to eat cheesecake because of all the stress you've put me through. And I love cheesecake. Today all that matters is that you stole the last six years of my cat's life from me. It matters that I had to give him away and that because you are irresponsible and unpredictable I could never afford to rent some place where I could get him back. I wasn't there when he died. For this I will never forgive you.
I don't believe in forgiveness for things like this. Not even that old forgiveness is for yourself bullshit. There was no reason for any of this to happen. No excuse. You knew exactly what you were doing to me by making me make that choice and by keeping me running and poor. I am not sad that he died Monday night, on the full moon, as any black cat should. He was old and it was good that he died in his sleep. I am angry that I couldn't spend his last 2000 days with him, that I had to sacrifice him in order to leave you. The cost was impossibly high and my soul is forever scarred.

The Cheese Nip that Almost Joined Jesus

Gina was happily eating a bowl of cheesenips next to me last night in my big futon chair, watching Heroes. You know the kind of cheesenip with two flavors in the same box--that kind. Cheesenips are awesome, but you NEVER want to feed me any. Anyway, suddenly she opened her mouth wide in AWE and held out an orange cheesenip in front of her, to see in better in the light from the television. The light shown on the cheesenip and it glowed a powdery orange.

"MOM!" she exclaimed.

And I knew what she was thinking. She had found another crazy piece of highly processed food, created in the weird image of Jesus, or miniature like that flour tortilla, or musical like a carrot, or bumpy like the badly twisted pretzel. She had found a cheesenip that would join Jesus on the holy shelf of all things weird and not to be eaten.

I looked at it. I looked some more. I couldn't see anything weird about it, except that a corner had broken off, leaving the cheesenip as a rough triangle shape. She flipped it over and over in her hand, until she saw that the edge was indeed ragged and not accidentally shaped that way by an error of the cheesenip manufacturers.

She was SO disappointed. But I laughed and laughed and laughed and then bit the corners off more cheesenips to show her how it's done. This cheesenip would not be joining Jesus and neither would the others.

She was so offended by my laughter that she then confused herself for a cheesenip and said "But I thought that the Gina was special."

Yes the Gina is special. The cheesenip is not.

Swine Flu, the Swine-ASS, and spilling my wine

We've been struck down by the flu since Friday. One at a time they fall down, call me to pick them up at school, and spread mounds of used kleenex all over the house. They share the same thermometer in a contest to see who is the warmest. They cough day and night and race each other to the bathroom. I'm running out of toilet paper.

But that's not really the digusting thing I wanted to talk about tonight. The truly disgusting thing is that my children don't want to talk to their father and so he sent me this tonight:

I am going to assume that your phone has been cut off. I will call you at work tomorrow to set up a way I can talk to my children.

At work? Seriously? Now, this appears to be a bluff but then sometimes he really does the things he says he's going to do. Like calling my employer to tell them I'm selling crack in the parking lot. And maybe that time he said he was going to call the financial aid office at the college I was going to to tell them I had inherited money from my dead Grandmother so that they wouldn't give me grant money.

All she left me was a Rubik's Cube.

Is he really going to call a counseling center? In his demented head this forces me to

• Do what he says, which is to force the girls to talk to him on the phone which makes me a hypocrite and a bad parent
• Tell everyone at work all about him in case he does call
• Live with the anxiety that at any minute he could start calling my work over and over and over and tell them I'm selling crack in the parking lot.

The problem with this twisted manipulative plan of his is that THEY ALREADY KNOW. I tell everyone I work for and with, all my friends, every school my children go to, the mailman, the street cleaner, and the guy who wears the orange vest and directs traffic at deserted intersections.

It's true that some people do believe his stories. But I don't need those people anyway. They are easily bought and suckered. I need people like the police chief in my town who listened to my ex talk about how he was moving to my town and they needed to be prepared because "something is going to happen"--and thought he was completely off the wall.

So yeah, call my place of work. I just hear MC Hammer in my head singing "Can't Touch This" which is very bizarre but so true.

Oh, and I spilled my wine on the carpet in a moment of spaz, not unlike Meg Ryan who throws the best fits in movies I have ever seen. I admire that.

Dentistophobia

Usually I don't mind going to the dentist. I end up fighting them off like used car salesmen when they try to sell me services. If I ever agreed to having my wisdom teeth removed for no reason other than preventing possible future cavities and having them taken out at some later time, I would no longer be able to spread my wisdom all over this blog. I also don't need fillings especially since they've refilled the same tooth three times already. I finally caught on to that little scam.
I was surprised to have a male hygienist this time. It feels a little personal to have a man looking in my mouth. They've looked in other places--but never there. He was a very short little man and when he stopped quickly and I tripped over him in the hall I reached out to steady him. Sorry little man for hurting you. When he put on his weird sci fi surgeon style goggles I closed my eyes so that it wouldn't seem so intimate. I thought he'd be timid and gentle, the way other male doctors and other professionals usually are. (Except that surgeon I went to, let's not forget that incident!)
And then the pain began. A half hour cleaning turned into an hour of torture. Okay, he was good. And vicious. I practiced deep breathing. I counted to ten instead of slapping his goggles right off his close little face. I wondered if he did this to children as well. I wondered if anyone ever requested him. I tried not to cry. I thought about happier times. I kept telling myself it could only last so long.
Not entirely unlike other intimate moments with men.
I now have a healthy fear of the dentist.
Thank goodness he didn't decide to become a gynecologist instead.