Month: May 2012

This may or may not have happened to me in the last 24 hours…………………..

Had three adult children, two dogs and two cats in the house all afternoon after an awful night’s sleep.  Locked myself in the bedroom just so they would leave me alone.  They did not.

Have run a one-person shuttle service with multiple trips here and there every day.

Nearly lost it at the local hardware store because they don’t give a shit about shit.

Painted half the staircase.  Left the other half unpainted for traffic.  Had a cat run up the painted side AS I WAS PAINTING IT and chased him under the bed.  Dropped the ef bomb about twenty times then laughed hysterically on the floor of the living room for twenty minutes.  Crazy, scary, irrational laughing.

Have no recollection of brushing my teeth today.  Did I?

Went to pay some bills.  Checking account is a complete cluster and hemorrhaging money.

Ate the entire day, including frosting out of the can every time I opened the fridge and a couple more spoonfuls before bed.

Am hoping this is the cure but skipping the candles due to mildew.

The Big Daddy and I were invited to a going-away party this weekend for one of the guys in his bike group that is moving.  He loves these guys, but I don’t know them very well and let’s face it……………..I crack on bikers rather often.  Add to that, I am not a good mingler, and oh how I wished I could stay home.

When we got there, The BD immediately made his way to his posse and other than saying “hi” I didn’t converse with them very much.  They inevitably start talking the bike lingo………….hills, sustained m.p.h., bonking……..and it is a subject which I am not interested in.  I ended up eating at a table on the screened porch and had a lovely conversation with my table mates.

Two of the other wives that I have recently gotten to know in this group we’re in the family room and I walked into their conversation about mother-in-laws (MIL).  That’s when I heard the story of Classic Peg (name changed for reasons you’ll know soon).

Classic Peg had no filter when it came to talking about personal matters and while they were in the car one day with two young girls in the backseat, Classic Peg started discussing her vaginal dryness.  Oh, you can’t believe it.  I’m so dry up there it’s like it’s cracking.  Don’t even talk to me about sex.  Hurts like hell.  Daughter-In-Law tried numerous times to divert the conversation to something else, but Classic Peg wouldn’t hear of it.  I got some of that Prempro from the doctor.  You put it in the applicator, and squirt it way up into your vagina and let me tell you it does the trick.  Sex is much better once you get a few doses of Prempro up there because it’s not so dry anymore.  You’ve got to keep up with it, though.  If you miss a few doses you’re back to Crustyville in no time, and the sex starts hurting again.

She wasn’t done.

I never moved from the couch the rest of the night.  I had found my peeps.

We are less than a month away from our big wedding and there is much to do.  I am not a list maker, but this is one big party that requires a whole lot of coordination, taking care of the deets and oh those logistics.  That is the part that is seriously messing up my brain.

I am feeling overwhelmed so…………..

The Boy Child, Mallie Bee and I tore the carpet off the stairs.  I have hated it forever and so a couple of weeks ago I pulled it up off one stair and The Boy Child said, “Oh geez, no Mom, this is NOT a good idea.”  I let that percolate awhile then showed The Big Daddy.  He told me to go for it.  When he was out of town.  And the day came when that carpet bug crawled up my butt and it had to go.  Now.  It was some kind of job and The Boy Child yanked and yanked that carpet and Mallie Bee and I pulled staples until the cows came home.  It was a group effort and at times the group couldn’t stand each other, but we got the job done.

The risers have been stained and I need to decide what color to paint the stairs.  My original idea of black won’t work because the stain is so dark it looks black.  I thought about white but that is so uninteresting.  When I went to the paint shop I found out I could get floor paint in any color I wanted and I am thinking turquoise………..an aged-up, weathered turquoise. 

It’s either crazy of brilliant……….a place I often find myself.

Many years ago, I sat with some friends in the bleachers of the gymnasium of the elementary school and watched the Christmas concert.  First the choir would perform and then the whole school would have a sing-along.  It was great fun and the ending meant the official start of the winter break.

When the last song was sung and the kids started filing back to their classrooms to get their things, nobody moved.  Finally, one mom spoke up and said, “Well, girls…….our party’s over.  Kids are home for the next two weeks.  Merry Christmas.  I’m stopping at the liquor store.”

I remember it like it was yesterday.

Our summer break began much sooner than usual this year.  The Boy Child was done the first week of May and Mallie Bee got out early since she was a senior.  My quiet days alone are now about dirty dishes, food disappearing, a constant messy house, youtube videos played over and over, and the t.v blathering on.

I will miss this all come September, but for now I wonder if it is possible for kids to get bedsores.

I believe it is. 

The Boy Child is home for the summer and a thrifter like his mama, so we made a trip to Savers the other day.  As is our routine, we separated to look at different things as soon as we walked in the door.

He was looking for shorts, I was in the home goods.  As I was making my way to the back of the store, a woman stopped me and said, “Will you look at these?  Can you believe how cute they are?”  I looked around to see if she was talking to me as I had never seen her before and she sure seemed familiar with me.  “This is my first time here.  It’s amazing.”  Yes, but it’s a secret.  Don’t tell anyone.

I made my way to the pillows and there she popped up again.  “I mean it’s just crazy how much great stuff is here.”   I know.  I come here all the time.  Once, I found a pair of Donald Pliner shoes…………..$200.00 shoes………..for $7.99.  Never. Been. Worn.

“Donald?  Donald who?  What are you talking about?”

Donald Duck, and now you need to move along.  I’ve no time to chat with strangers.  This business takes concentration.

These are my hydrangeas.  I have five of them.  They are all this big.  I think they take steroids at night.

These are my roses.  I have eight of these.  I think they’re buying steroids from the hydrangeas.

When all of this was planted ten years ago, we also put in two blue hydrangea bushes.  I would get maybe 2-3 blooms combined from those two.  One day, I was talking to a gardener and she said to yank them.  They don’t do well in this zone, they’ll probably never bloom, get rid of them.  I was going to, but they were healthy-looking and so I left them alone, content to live with their measly output.

This is what my blue hydrangeas look like now.  I look at them a couple of times each day.  I do the happy dance.  If you stop by my house I have to show them off.  I can’t believe they’re so gorgeous, and all those cold, spring days over all those years when I’d whisper, “Come to Mama”……finally paid off. 

I was driving The Big Daddy to an airport shuttle at 4:30 a.m……….why does he keep leaving me……….and we got on the subject of gambling.  I know plenty of people who do it and like it, but I have never been inside a casino let alone dropped quarters into a slot machine.  Not once.

It is not because I’m tight-fisted and don’t want to part with money, but because I am afraid I would be one of those people who got instantly hooked.  Intoxicated by the next big “win” and before you know it the savings account is gone, the checking account is gone, the car’s been repossessed, the house is in foreclosure, and we’re sitting on the stage of the Dr. Phil show.

I would be crying.  The Big Daddy would be saying he loved me, I complete him, something about wind and wings and together, baby, we’ll make this right.  Dr. Phil would give me a righteous stink-eye.

That’s the t.v. version.

The real version would be him tossing me out on my risky ass for losing everything we earned.  So instead, I end up at Target.  With milk on sale at forty cents less than the grocery store, times two gallons, why, that’s an eighty cent savings……………and $76.00 later I’m thinking I should kick my own ass and head to the boats.

In the twelve years Henry and I have been cruising the hood, he was never one to poop on a walk.  He preferred his own backyard, and while I always carried a bag I rarely had to use it.

That changed about a year ago when he decided it wasn’t a bad idea to use a public space for that purpose and would sometimes go twice.  Thanks.  While I see people swinging their bag of crap all the way home, I like to clean it up and get rid of it.  Fast.  Pronto.

In my effort to use less plastic bags, I am often searching for a bag to take along with me.  As a last result, I will use the bag the newspaper comes in.  Not only our are daily papers too thin these days, the bags they come in are even thinner making them a poor choice for scooping poop.

On Henry’s 2nd movement of a twenty minute walk on a lovely spring morning, I only had a newspaper bag left to do the deed.  I strategically rolled it down my arm so I could get this job over fast.  I picked up the poop and it felt hot………like right out of the oven which I guess it was.

That’s when I discovered there was a hole in the bottom of the bag and I was clutching a pile of shit in my bare hand.

I screamed.  I freaked.  I wiped my hand ten times on the grass.  I cut the neighborhood stroll short and went home to take a long, hot shower.   When that was over and I had taken some deep, relaxing breaths, the rest of the day went much better.

Bare-handed shit picking up.  My new barometer.

We are five weeks away from The Big Wedding.  Many things are starting to move at a faster, more frenzied pace.

But not everything.

In January, after The Big Daddy and I had feasted at the table of Holiday Munchies and Spirits for a solid month, we had a Come To Jesus about getting in shape for this wedding.  It would be the perfect occasion to get our act together with family and friends coming from all over to celebrate with us.

It’s not going so well.

Every Sunday night I have a conversation about starting the week with a longer walk at a faster pace and better food decisions.  Eight hours later I’m nursing my coffee and looking for a reason not to walk.

The Big Daddy is better than me about exercise with his bike riding.  This week, he was going to ramp things up with an early wake-up twice a week to do a hard ride before he goes to work.  Day One had him bagging the idea and sleeping in another hour.

Slack is the glue in this marriage.

If we don’t get our asses in gear, we’ll need to RSVP for two more, what with the extra 10# and the gobbler that used to be our neck.

It could get us another helping, though.