Oh yes.  This is going to be a glorious day.  How do I know this?  Let me set the scene for you.

I woke up an hour before the clock was set to go off, and I'm trying my best to make it through the morning without hitting the floor in pain.  That is a good decision considering the second I slid nice warm clean socks onto my feet, I walked back through the house and stepped in puppy shit.  How could I have missed that?!  I'm fanatical about clean floors if nothing else is clean!  Oh oh... let's add to that mix the husband who waddled into the room while I'm still on my knees cleaning up said puppy shit and bitches about someone taking the bathroom key again.  Now you know I love him, but he's the dumbass that won't let me change the locks on our very old house.  He says they give it character.  I admit, needing a skeleton key for every.frigging.door does add character, but it also adds fifteen freaking ways a gang of kids can piss off an adult in one day when they lose the keys!

Let me tell you why this drives me ape-shit.  Why did he come all the way in here to tell me that?  That's right up there with the, "Mom, where's my shoes?" shit.  I don't know.  I don't wear your damn shoes.  What do ya want me to do about the missing key?  I didn't lose it.  Go upstairs and drag the likely suspect out of bed by his/her hair, and make them find the stupid key!

I'll tell you what he expects me to do.  He expects me to get up and go find the key for him.  He's as spoiled as they are.  You need an example, don't you. 

We got back into town last week.  We unloaded the car.  It was late, close to bedtime, but the house had absolutely no food in it anywhere.  So I, being the wonderful wife and mother than I am (*cough*), decided to run out and get some basic stuff for the next morning.  I was gone at least half an hour, probably more.  When I got home, husband was wondering around the house all upset because he couldn't find his personal medical bag.  He'd looked all over the house for it.  Then he said, "I don't know, it might be in the car.".  He continued to walk around the house, and look for it.  I rolled my eyes, sighed, walked back outside, opened the car door, grabbed his freaking bag, and brought it back into the house.  He'd walked around inside the house the entire time I was gone thinking the bag was probably in the car, but he waited for me to go out and get it.  Hell-fucking-O?!

Now, I'm not saying he doesn't spoil me in ways, too.  He does.  But not like that!  I never ask any of them to do things for me that I can do for myself.  And they never offer, either.

I've tried.  I really have.  The puppy has to go.  The locks have to go.  Hell, I may have to go... on a long vacation... alone.

Does that make me a bad person?  I don't think so.  I think it makes me a tired, unmedicated, frustrated, pissed off woman with puppy shit on her socks.

 

*UPDATE*  Mere minutes before my husband left for work, Sophie the cat decided she'd had enough of the hamster bitch in the corner so she knocked over the MEGA cage and crap, literally crap, went everywhere.  After checking to make sure Miss Daisy was ok, husband had to leave for work.  It has taken me no less than two hours to clean it up!  I thought Miss Daisy would be upset but instead I'm pretty sure she was laughing at me the whole time... thinking that was one good way to get the damn cage cleaned out. 

So today's theme is apparently animal shit.  Go figure.

I just haven't had anything to say.  Unless you would enjoy reading nothing but extreme cursing connected by colorful adjectives.  I'm talking cuss words that would get me spanked by my dad even at thirty-six.

We started watching that new show on A&E, The Cleaner.  Hey, I'll watch anything with Benjamin Bratt in it.  He's hot. 

Last night's episode, in the beginning, was cutting back and forth between two moms getting their families out the door for the day.  One was the perfect Stepford wife with everything running like a well-oiled machine.  The other was exactly like they picked up my daily routine here and wrote it into the script.

Well, we soon realize the perfect mommy is perfect because she's on drugs.  I joked and laughed about it telling my pharmacist husband that he just had to get me whatever she was taking.  I can joke about it because I know better.  I've lived with an addict brother most of my life, so I know a thing or two about this shit.  The truth is, there are some days when, if I thought I could take a drug to fix it all, I just might.  Fortunately I know the truth and have such a healthy fear of the stuff, I'd never do it.  Unfortunately, not everyone knows that truth.

School is almost here.  I've caught myself going over my mental checklist of everything I'm going to do differently this year.  I'm going to join the PTA and actually attend the meetings.  I'm going to have breakfast ready by the time I wake everyone up, backpacks locked and loaded, clothes ironed and laid out, and shoes in neat rows by the door.  I'll have the hairbows out for the princess, and NO ONE will leave the house in two different socks.

Then I wake up.  And suddenly those curse words are back on my tongue.

The bees are attacking the Rose of Sharon bushes outside my window this morning.  I got lost watching them buzz from blossom to blossom.  I can't believe how many of them are out there.  I don't think I've ever seen so many bumblebees at once.  I've always thought they are such cute little bugs.  Too bad they hurt like hell.  I'm a pretty brave person, I think, but two things I'm afraid of... snakes and bees.

If you look out my window, right now the scene is very misleading.  The sun is beginning to creep across the neighborhood.  Everything looks so sweet and cheery.  The breeze is blowing just enough to billow the flags on the house across the street.  Sitting here looking out, it all seems so perfect.  You'd never know that if you opened the front door the heat would knock you on your ass and take away your breath.

 

I'm married to a man that absolutely keeps me on my toes.  He has a wit and sense of humor that drives me crazy, and I go from wanting to smack him to laughing so hard my sides hurt.  One part of him is this History Channel, double degree, duck loving genius nerd that leaves me shaking my head in confusion, and the other side is a goofy, stumbling, fly by the seat of his pants sweetheart that makes me fall in love with him all over again every single day.

My husband is a pharmacist.  I'm sure everyone has a story about an extremely long wait for a prescription, or a miss-fill, or a mistake of some kind at some point.  I get that.  Pharmacists are people, too, and  you honestly wouldn't believe the working conditions they have to put up with. 

Examples:  My husband was threatened with a gun last year.  It's illegal for the pharmacy to be unlocked or open without a pharmacist present.  Translation:  If there's no bathroom inside the actual pharmacy, you don't go unless you close down the entire thing.  You can even leave the pharamcy techs behind the counter.  Guess how well that would go over with customers that bitch about you closing for a thirty minute lunch on a twelve hour schedule.  He's developed kidney stones at least once a year since I've known him.  I know that couldn't possibly have anything to do with not being able to pee for twelve hours at a time, huh.

I could go on and on and on, but the point is, I think no one knows how tough a job is until you work it.  I never knew how tough his is until I married him.  But he rarely complains.  There are times when he comes home exhausted, and I can see it all over him, but he doesn't complain.

As a matter of fact, sometimes his attitude totally pisses me off.  He puts in sixty-seventy hours a week for them most weeks because they've been so short handed for the past year or more, and they take complete advantage of him.  He lets them call him the night before they want him to drive two hours to work the next day.  They send him the absolute worst help ever, and he says nothing.  He doesn't stand up for himself, and it makes me want to punch him.  Honestly.

Yes, I know I have no clue about how to deal with the inner runnings of it all.  I'm sure he handles it the correct way, he knows what he's doing.  But I love him, so it still pisses me off.  He just isn't a rock the boat kind of person.  He hates conflict, and he'll do whatever he can to avoid it.  (Makes ya wonder how the hell he ended up loving me, right?)

Well... just let me tell you that last night my husband surprised the hell outta me!  He came home, and for the first time ever, I saw something in him that, well, it made me go all mushy wet for him.  He was pissed.  Not a ranting raving kind of pissed, a getting even kind of pissed.  A fellow pharmacist has finally pushed him too far, and I saw it in his eyes.  I don't think this is going to be one of those times when he vents and then gets over it.  This guy has been making work hell, and I think he's about to meet a side of hubs no one around here has ever really seen!  I admit, I'm excited about him showing them there is a breaking point to his patience.  I honestly think it will do him some good.

The truth is his job is really stressful.  He knows how important it is to do it right.  It isn't like he sees people at their best.  It gets to him at times, and I just think he'd feel better if he didn't hold everything in the way he does.  He's good at his job, and they know it.  He needs to know it.

On vacation last week, he was watching another show on travel or history or something equally boring, and he decided he wanted to move and become a duck herder.  Of course I laughed and shook my head, but the truth is, I'd let him.  If that's what he wanted to do, I'd move anywhere and do anything because I know no matter what he's doing, he's going to be good at it.  And I'm still gonna want to punch him at least once a day.

I have a pinched nerve.  I know this because I've had several in my lifetime, and it's a special kind of pain radiating from my neck down through my shoulder.  Nothing to my left exists because I can't even think about turning my head in that direction.  That along with the freaking cold sore and headache, let's just say painkillers are my new snack food.

Husband showed appropriate amounts of sympathy throughout the evening and only managed to slip into his normal self at bedtime when he "innocently" reminded me that it's probably my fault since I moved furniture on my own yesterday.  He's cute when he's sarcastic.  I only wanted to smack him for a minute.  After that, I just wanted more drugs and sleep.

He has a special way of laughing at me without laughing at me.  Normally I am a stubborn little shit and refuse to let people see my weaknesses, but this man can turn me from an adult to a whiney kid in two seconds.  It doesn't even seem to bother him when it happens.  I hate people who whine and yet, I become this weepy little puddle of immature moans and whimpers, and there's nothing I can do about it.  He giggles.  He loves it, and it makes him giggle.

Something else going on that's giggle worthy?  Okay, I live in a small town.  I've mentioned this a time or twelve.  I'm not quite sure about its population, but I'm guessing probably around ten thousand inside city limits.  So while we're not New York City, we aren't exactly Mayberry, either.  I live right smack in the middle of town.  On a busy street completely surrounded by houses and stores.

My newest neighbor/house guest?  A family of opossums has taken over my back yard.  As dusk falls they begin to terrorize my kids.  We can't sit outside on the deck or play in the yard because we have a opossum infestation.  How do you even begin to deal with that??  You'd think they'd stay away from the most populated house in the area, that they would be afraid of us!  But nooooo.... Bella came screaming into the room last night.  Apparently she'd gone out onto the deck and was charged by a opossum.  She was so upset she couldn't catch her breath.  When I got her calmed down she finally admitted that part of the reason she was so scared was because a couple of the neighborhood kids had scared her with other stories.

Her exact words were, "First the aliens, then the ghosts, and now a opossum is trying to kill me, mom!"

Once I convinced her that not only were the stories about aliens and ghosts made up, I explained the opossum wasn't trying to hurt her.  It was only making sure she didn't try to hurt it.  It was a pretty emotional episode for her.  The kid who has never met an animal or bug she doesn't like is going to have nightmares about this animal.  I just know it.

So now I have to find someone to relocate the opossum family from my yard.  I can't wait to find out what that's gonna cost me.

The heat followed me home.  It's sweltering here, and the threat of storms isn't easing the temps at all.  It's just making it muggier and almost impossible to deal with every day.  I don't even want to think about the utility bills next month after running the central air constantly.  We're a spoiled lot, I know.



I'm trying very hard not to let stress cancel out every positive feeling I had while we were away.  I grabbed hold of every smile and laugh, and I'm refusing to let them go.  I knew everything would be waiting for me when I got home.  I just wanted to come back with a rested body and brighter outlook.  Renewed energy would be a plus.  To some degree, I have all those things.  However, it would be easy to let things overwhelm me again.

School starts in about three weeks.  The little girl in me gets excited this time of year.  I want to go out and buy pretty pens and notebooks.  I want new shoes!  I want to decorate a locker!  I'm hopeless, huh.

UGH... four kids in school.  I have no idea how we're going to manage it, but I know we will.  J is a senior this year.  He thinks he's ready to face the world.  He pouted yesterday because I made him iron his own shirt.  Yeah, he's ready.  Lakie is getting excited.  But of course she would... she's fifteen and popular and ready to get back into the thick of things.  L is becoming filled with anxiety.  He knows he's facing an uphill battle trying to catch up this year.  Pickle couldn't care less right now.  She has no idea what "three weeks" means as far as waiting it out. 

Part of me can't wait to send them, but a bigger part of me is already anxious about what they'll face and how they'll handle it.  Not to mention how we're going to handle the costs of it all.  I mean, I'd love to know how bringing the lottery to the state was supposed to make our schools rich, not want for anything, and yet I have to buy tissue for snotty noses every flipping week. 

You think I'm being bitchy over something so small, but you need to add it up.  Last year we spent over $200 just on the kids' lists of supplies.  Five - eight packs of crayons?  I couldn't just buy one big box, I had to buy five - eight packs.  If you add up the tissue, specific pencils, crayons, notebooks, folders, binders, papertowels, cupcake liners (seriously), paper towels, rulers, markers, specific backpacks, etc... mulitply it by four, and you'd bitch, too.  Yet the governor decided to tour the state to hear people's concerns, and it's taking SEVEN plane loads to get all his people and materials about.  He's a dumbass, and I admit, I'm enjoying blaming everything on him the way everyone else did our previous governor just because of his party affiliation. 



This cold sore?  Entirely his fault.



So essentially I have about three weeks left to break every child labor law ever written and get things done around here.  I fully intend to take complete advantage of the situation.  They have no idea what's waiting for them when they wake up today.

Oh my gosh there's no way to put the last week into one post, so I'll just get to bits and pieces of it when it hits me.  We didn't get home until last night, so I was way too spastic to get much sleep unless you count about two hours as enough.

The week started out sort of stressful and more taxing on me than I realized.  This can be seen from space right now in the form of a gigantic cold sore on my bottom lip.  I'd never had one until my late twenties, and I didn't realize what a true affliction the things are until then.  We all know my immune system is a coward on normal days.  But there are times when my body goes under attack and even though I'll get a slight fever which is its way of pretending to fight back, I still get my ass kicked and the result is this nightmare on my lip.  Thank goodness it didn't show up until the best part of my week was over.

The best part of my week happened when I got three days alone with the husband way down in South Carolina.  No kiddies.  No stress.  Just unbelievably hot humid weather that still makes me whimper when I think of it.  Had it not been for the breeze coming off the ocean, I'm sure I would have melted.

We stayed in a beautiful hotel suit in Charleston.  Unfortunately I can't tell you which one because I may eventually share a really embarrassing detail with you, and I don't want anyone calling the hotel and telling them what to look for and where to look.  I will tell you that you can see the water from it, and it wasn't cheap.  It was beautiful and old.  That's it.

Husband planned the entire trip, and when we started shopping, just as always, I gave him that little look... the one that says, "How much do I get to spend?"  Apparently, he felt so sorry for me, I pretty much had a blank check!  It was fun.  The whole trip was fun.

I had my very first boat ride.  Yep.  You're reading that right.  I'm thirty-six years old, and until last week, I had never been on a boat.  Okay, I vaguely remember being on a paddleboat once when I was too little to reach the paddles.  My dad had to move us.  But I don't remember another single thing about it.

It was wonderful.  It was amazing.  It was just what I needed. 

But now I'm overwhelmed with everything I want to say and everything I want to read and catch up on.  There may be more than one post today!  For now, I'm enjoying my coffee and going to catch up on all my blog reading!  Let's see... nine days of posts multiplied by about ten blogs... I'll need another pot of coffee!

I forgot it was Saturday!  I forgot because I've been so stressed over getting everything ready to go that when I went to bed last night, it felt like just another day.  Know how I remembered?  The care bears are dancing where my morning news should be.

I would love to be able to say I'm just so put together and organized that I'm sitting here relaxing in front of the computer because I have all this extra time before we leave.  Yeah, right.  The truth is no matter how tired I am, how much sleep I get, how many drugs I do or do not take, if I have something serious going on the next day, I sleep zero the night before.  There is no way I'm getting anything done without a cup of coffee, and since I'm up way early, I get to read all the blogs I'm addicted to before I have to get up and be mobile!

The truth is I'm so stressed about parts of this trip.  My anxiety levels are through the roof.  However, there are parts of it I can't wait for, like I'll get to see my mother-in-law a bit.  I love her dearly.  She's such a breath of fresh air compared to the woman who used to hold that spot.  Maybe it isn't a coincidence that the bad seed was raised by one and the wonderful man was raised by a wonderful woman?  I don't put complete faith in that analysis.  I know for a fact children don't always turn out the way their loving parents raise them to be, but I do believe that if you aren't raised in a good stable environment, the odds are against you a bit more.

Anyway, the most exciting part?  Hopefully, if the planets all align just right, the gods are all in a good mood, the fate sisters have all recently been laid, mother nature has temporarily quieted her havoc, no world wars have been declared, and no child has lost a limb in a freak tree climbing, bicycling, tight rope walking accident, maybe by Tuesday night or Wednesday, I'll find myself relaxing all alone with my husband in a nice hotel room.  The children will be tucked in safe and sound with grandma and grandpa.  There will be no dishes to do, no laundry to fold, no bills to pay, and no mind crippling bone crunching pain.  If I'm extremely lucky I'll find myself having hot monkey sexy with my husband in that hotel room.  I have a few surprises for him.   I'm positive he'll like them. 

I know I'm asking alot, but geez... just one freaking mini break in the middle of all this!  Who's it gonna kill??  The fact is, if I get one, the odds are stronger that no one will die.  If I don't get down time soon, I can make no promises on that.

I took the teen girl out yesterday to get our last minute errands out of the way.  We got manicures and splurged a bit on makeup and clothes.  I was a little nervous to tell Screw last night, but he acted genuinely happy that I'd done it.  It's not like the man has ever acted upset or resentful toward a single penny I've spent.  I don't think he'd show it even if he felt it.  It's just that old habits die hard and even now I get a bit freaky about spending money I didn't earn.  Screw eases my anxiety about it by saying I do earn it.  He could really be happy that I'm trying to relax a bit and feel better, or he could just be praying it's going to get him lots of hot monkey sex in a few days!  Hey, either way, I'm happy!

So it's finally time for me to get up and get moving.  I'm properly showered and caffeinated and ready to face the obstacles before me.  Okay, maybe one more cup of coffee.  Then, I promise to get up.  Maybe I'll come back with some really hilarious stories!  Not about the hot monkey sex, though.  Some things are better left to the imaginaion.

Have a great week!

If I tried to list everything I have to do today, it would take me all morning.  At this point, I'm going to have to pick and choose what gets done and what gets hidden underneath my bed until later.

I have to run errands today, and I have to pack.  We're going out of town tomorrow morning and won't be back until next weekend.  During this week we've planned to get three glorious days to ourselves, that mini vacation I've been whining about for months.  Hopefully I'll come home less of a crybaby and more inspired to write something worth reading.

Right now my mind is on the new iphone.  My husband is getting ready to purchase one for himself.  He'll wait until all the hoopla has died down.  What I'm wondering is exactly what I'll have to do to get him to take mine and let me have the new one.  Probably not going to happen, but a girl can dream!  However I'm having a premonition of sorts.  I'm seeing mine only lasting a few months because somehow it will mysteriously fall into the toilet.  Creepy, huh?

If you're a small town southern girl like me, there are so many things in life that you haven't experienced by the time you spread your wings into adulthood.  Unfortunately, there were a few things I was forced to go through long before I should have, but I think every person has a story like that about something.

When I woke up and found myself living smack in the middle of Frankfurt, Germany, I'd never felt more insecure and unprepared in my entire life.  I was only twenty-one at the time, but still, I'd never ridden a subway or even a public bus.  I'd never taken a cab or made an overseas phone call.  I had no idea of what the real world was like outside my small town.

Up until that point in my life, I hadn't been very many places.  We'd vacationed in surrounding states, and every year I flew north for two weeks in the summer to visit my aunt in Boston.  Just doing that made me the most traveled person in our extended family.

The first time I flew was on my mother's birthday.  She cried and hugged me like she was never going to see me again.  She begged me not to go, made me feel guilty for leaving her on her birthday.  She said she just knew the plane was going to crash and I was going to die on her birthday.  She was still pouting when I came home two weeks later.

That summer was also the first time I saw the ocean.  It overwhelmed me.  I cried.  It was such an humbling experience for me that even being a typical selfish teen couldn't protect me from the emotions it evoked.

Standing on the beach in Ogunquit, Maine I made all these plans for my life.  Dreams began to sprout from thin air.  If you could bottle the exhilaration and hope from a young girl's heart when she's standing before the rest of her life feeling like the world is at her feet, it would be the only cure anyone would ever need.

So many of those dreams are unrealized.  If I thought about them, it would destroy my heart.  I'd rather think about the ones that have come true.  I did go on to get a good education and have been successful in a career.  I'm a mom and a wife, and I love every second of it.  I dreamed of the day I'd watch a street artist paint in the city of love.  I've been to Paris and climbed the Eifel Tower.

So what that I haven't written a book and become famous.  June Cleaver, I'm not, but I do my best.  I still have to see Ireland and Scotland.  I still have to learn to swim.  I want to learn to play the guitar, how to use a telescope, and if the stars align just right, someday I'll hold a grandchild in my arms.

I'm not accepting that I haven't reached these goals.  My decision to be positive and focus on what I have accomplished isn't an admittance that I'll never realize the rest.  Quite the opposite.  I use the knowledge that I've made it this far to prove to myself that I can go the rest of the way.  I will.

However, just let me say that the whole grandchild thing had better still be a while away, and the book... let's just say if you love me you'll buy it no matter how horrible it is or the fact that I've probably written it and put it on one of those pay to print sites where EVERYBODY is an author.

I think I've written a good dozen blog posts this week and deleted every single one of them.  I'm not unhappy with the posts, I'm not forcing myself to have something say.  My mind is just shooting in so many directions it's hard to focus on just one idea and see it through.

I've hit a depression of sorts that I can't seem to shake.  It's not really a depression, I guess.  I'm sort of numb.  It's like, I see all these things around me.  I know what I should be feeling and doing, yet I'm not.  I'm not, and I have no desire to.  I look around me, and I'm apalled at the things I'm letting go, but that feeling doesn't push me to do anything about it.  Have I lost the ability to care?

I'm beginning day four of a massive headache.  Pills and rest weaken it from time to time so that I'm functioning, but it doesn't completely go away.  The nausea is back.  I made it almost a year this time.  Sure, the occasional bout still happened, but I'd gone almost a year without having to medicate myself before every meal just to keep it down.  Not that it matters.  I don't have an appetite, anyway.  Nothing has a taste for me.  Everything seems like it tastes the same.

I want to write.  I want to write something.  Maybe a short story.  But I can't remember a single thing I ever learned in writing classes.  I need to learn technique and technicality.  Can you be taught to be a writer?  Does there have to be at least a little natural talent in order to write well?  I don't mean I want to write as in professionally.  I'm not planning to humiliate myself anytime soon by trying to write something and submit it anywhere to anyone.  It's mostly for me.  I want to see if I can write something fictional and entertaining.  Oh well, it'll come to me, or it won't. 

We'll see.

My mother, in all her crazy slightly pyschotic glory, used to plan her funeral at least once a year.  Among many other things, she suffers from seasonal depression, and every year as the leaves began to change and the air became cooler, my mother would slip into the most morose crippling dark despair.  That's when she would sit down beside me and tell me everything she wanted when she died. 

I was somewhere around ten years old the first time she did it.  I remember that time better than  any of them.  She wanted everything to be peach.  The inside of the coffin, the flowers, her dress... everything was to be different shades of peach.  She didn't want her cheeks to have big circles of blush on them the way most women ended up back then.  I was to make sure my dad knew not to let them do that to her.  She wanted to be buried in a nightgown and not an actual dress.  It had to be peach.

Year after year, I went through this until I was about twenty-six.  That summer my mother faked a suicide attempt.  I was at work when I received the call from my older sister crying and mumbling inchorently.  It took a few minutes for me to decipher her sobs enough to realize that she was saying my mother had taken a bottle of pills and locked herself in the house. 

At first, my own heart stopped beating.  I thought she'd finally done it.  She'd finally flipped for good and wanted to die.  I screamed at J and asked her if she had called an ambulance and why she wasn't on her way to our parents' house.  She said that mom had told her that she'd better not do either thing.  Now, understand, my sister lived about three miles from my parents.  I was twenty minutes away.  Then, when my sister calmed down enough to tell me that mom called her, told her that she'd taken the pills and wanted J to talk to her until she died, the light came on in my head. 

My mother was faking.

I called for an ambulance on my way to the house.  I knew she didn't really need one.  I wanted the satisfaction of having her put through a good stomach pumping.  I knew there was no way she'd admit to lying.  She'd have to go through the whole thing.  When I got to the house, my sister was already there, and my mother was lying across her bed with her eyes rolling around in her head like she was having some sort of seizure or something.  She pretended she couldn't sit up or move any other part of her body... until I told her an ambulance was on its way.

That's when apparently a miracle happened because she suddenly had enough strength to come off the bed try to attack me.  She screamed and yelled and told me how much she hated me.  I yelled back and told her that was fine.  If they couldn't save her she wouldn't be buried in peach, I was going to cremate her to save money.

About two weeks later I gave away everything I owned and moved to Montana.  I didn't speak with my mother for about six months.  Our relationship was more than broken for years.  It had been strained before that, but after that it was completely broken.

Until she really almost died about four years ago.  I was so afraid she'd die before I could get home.  I was a sixteen hour drive away with no hope of getting a flight.  The entire drive I prayed like I'd never prayed before.  I just wanted to get home to her.  Obviously I made it, and my mother is still with us today.  She's still the same crazy psycho she has always been but it's only a shadow of what it used to be.

Last week was my turn to tell my mother what my last wishes are.  There are some legal issues surrounding my little B, but I won't go into detail here.  It's going to take about a year to get them straightened out and in writing.  (Write it out, people.  No one can read your mind, especially if you're dead.)  During this time of red tape and bullshit, there are a couple things that are sort of just swinging in the wind.  So I had to tell her that, heaven forbid, something happens before everything is settled, there are certain steps she must take, and take quickly. 

While I was talking to her, I couldn't help but laugh at her expression.  I never said anything but I kept thinking payback is a bitch.  As I finished with the real instructions, I added, "And if you bury me in peach, I'll come back to haunt you.  I promise.". 

She didn't think it was funny.

Our holiday passed sweetly but really unremarkable.  We didn't have a huge family event or anything this year.  I just wasn't up to organizing it.  We stayed home, barbequed here, and finished off the evening with milkshakes and fireworks.  Our house is located almost directly in the center of town so we can see the fireworks display just by walking down to the end of our street.

I'll just say that while I've made fun of my husband all week for making me sit through at least a dozen history documentaries and movies, I've learned so much I didn't know.  I realize my country isn't where it wants to be right now.  We could name a million things we're doing wrong and even more that we've done wrong in the past.  But, for the privileges and freedoms it does provide me, I'm thankful.  When this country was born, those forefathers' hearts were in the right place.  They made sacrifices and faced struggles we will never understand for rights they knew they would never experience.  They did it because they wanted us to live freely.  And even with all our current restraints, we really do live better because of them.

*fade John Denver*

I'm surprisingly awake considering how early it is on a Saturday morning after having gotten absolutely no sleep whatsoever last night.  Not to mention, I'm only on my first cup of coffee.  It's a dark rainy morning, and I'd rather be cuddled up in bed, but I live in the real world.  Maybe I'll get to nap later.

For now, I just want enough energy to get up and get some things accomplished.  The only reason I'm up this early is because Screw has to work today.  It's only until this afternoon, though, so maybe we'll both take a nap once he gets home.  That is, if I can find enough rope to tie up all the kids between now and then.

One thing I want to definitely get to today is actually opening the box that has my new sewing machine inside.  I've only had the damn thing for about three weeks now.  I don't know how to sew, but I want to learn.  My husband, who indulges me far too much apparently, was all smiles when I asked him if we could buy one.  I didn't go for a fancy, do everything for you but pee, model.  I just wanted a basic machine easy enough to understand and yet not so simple that if I really do like sewing, I'll have to go out and buy a better one within the first month.

I was talking with a friend of mine a few days ago, and when I told him about it he said, "I just can't see you as the domesticated type.".  I wasn't sure whether to be thrilled or offended.  Did that mean he didn't see me as a dried up housemaid of some sort, or that he saw me as a frivilous priss not willing to get her hands dirty?  Then he explained that it's still really hard for him to get the career me out of his head after all these years.  Back then, I managed to keep my house somewhat tidy and the laundry done, but time for sewing?  Yeah, right.  Still, "... the domesticated type..." makes me feel like I'm a cat or something.

Martha Stewart, I'm not, and don't want to be.  I'm just not a status quo kind of person.  I like to change things up often.  I have probably twenty windows in my house that over five feet tall.  It would be so cool to be able to make the curtains everytime I decide I want a different color or fabric instead of spending half a college tuition on buying new ones.  I might not be bringing home a paycheck anymore, but I want to contribute when and wherever I can.

I'll let you know how it goes.  I'm sure you're anxiously waiting to hear every last detail.

Ladies, do not believe that crap about those razorblades that supposedly have the cream and moisturizer right there on the blade.  I'm telling you this as a public service.  How do I have the nerve to boldly stand up against these claims?  Because bitching about it takes my mind off the pain. 

I didn't take the time to shave my legs yesterday morning.  I have to shave every single day.  I can't stand to have my legs touch in bed at night and feel stubble.  It drives me bat-shit.  Yesterday I had other things on my mind.  So last night before bed, I grabbed this supposedly really awesome new razor blade, stuck my foot into the sink in the bathroom, wet my leg, and shaved it.  Repeated those steps with leg number two.  Now I have razor burn on both freaking legs, and it's killing me.  It's like I dry shaved with a rusty razor!  The thing is, it felt like it was shaving smoothly last night!  It felt like there actually was something on my legs!  If not, I would have stopped!  False advertisement on women's products sucks ass.  Like I didn't have enough body parts in pain, already.

However, taking positive from a negative, it's put me in just the right mood to wake everybody up and kick their asses around the house until they do their chores. 

You do realize I'm rambing about this useless stuff because to think about anything important would surely bring me to my knees, and not in a good way, right?  I can't think anymore.  I can't worry and wonder.  I can't deal. 

I want to curl up in a little ball somewhere in the dark and put Joni Mitchell on repeat.  Why is that asking so much?

I want to record the last couple weeks of my life.  Mostly because once everything is ok again, I'm never going to believe I survive this shit on a daily basis.  Now, obviously aside from having a loved one die or some life shattering ordeal, this is the worst phase...

Let's start off with spraining my foot when I got mad and kicked the dehumidifier across the basement. 

Next the third degree burn across my right hand.  A new iron that gets incredibly hot slipped right outta my hand and right across the top of it before I even knew what was happening. 

My husband wrecks his car, manages to hit the biggest idiot in the neighborhood.  Okay, not the biggest but a close second at the very least. 

The bigget one is the woman I had to threaten standing in my driveway the same evening he wrecked because I'm tired of her bully of a kid picking on mine who happens to be four years younger and half her kid's size. 

I'm trying to take care of my mother who has severe bronchitis and major kidney stones. 

The overwhelming responsibility of it all is making me fall way short on everything.  Right now my house looks like a Sunday morning after a frat party. 

My husband thought he'd be nice and buy me new knives because I was complaining about not having good ones.  Immediately upon picking one up for the very first time yesterday, I dropped the damned thing and proceeded to slice the top of my thumb all the way down into the nail bed... right to the bone.  This is my left hand, btw.  So now both hands are bandaged.  (Thank God I still have my typing fingers, right.) 

Today I will be walking around with gauze patches on both my hands and both my hips trying to deal with my own pain while trying to meet with my mother's Urologist to make sure he isn't a quack because some fuckwit told her that he's a quack and now she doesn't trust him.  So I have to meet her and play be big bad bitchy daughter and question him to make sure he's ok.

Oh, last and probably least, I guess, considering the rest of this crap... I lost my own pretty pink slippers.  Can't find one of them anywhere.  So Screw lets me wear a pair of his around the house.  His are only about twelve sizes too big for me, not to mention he doesn't wear normal ones.  The ones he lets me wear are shaped like big mallard ducks.  So I get up this morning with nothing on my mind but how good the coffee is going to taste, slip my feet into his ducks, and walk all the way to the kitchen before I realize that one of them has cat piss in it.

I have things to be thankful for, though.  Honest.  And if you'd buy me a bottle of patron, I could come with all sorts of them.