misanthropy

my disdain of stupid people, intelligence is a constant, the population is growing

In-Laws, Outlaws, Tacky Christmas, and It’s That Time of Year

Leave a comment

Ah, the holidays.  Actually I shouldn’t be overly critical as there is not a whole lot between me and the hollers and/or trailer park, but it’s that time of year when I remember why I only visit the in-laws and even certain obnoxious blood relatives when it’s absolutely necessary. 

Every Thanksgiving it’s the same routine.  Before I make the obligatory road trip to Cincinnati to my oldest sister’s house so that I can eat a really big piece of Humble Pie- on fine china no less, I have to make the tribute visit to the in-laws, where I will sit on the floor and eat a small slice of white meat turkey (nobody in his family touches the white meat, which is fortuitous for me) off of a Dixie plate with a plastic fork while his sisters’ assorted kids attempt to throttle each other.   It’s culture shock on both ends of the spectrum.  Going to my sister’s reminds me who is one small step above white trash dumpster diver and who is driving a BMW, vacationing in Switzerland every year, eating off matching dishes ,and who doesn’t have to shop for both clothing and kitchen utensils at garage sales and thrift stores.  Frankly when I go to my in-laws I feel like I am going to be a drive-by victim down in the ‘hood, and when I go to my sister’s they might as well paint a big bright sign across the side of my lowly Yaris that reads: ATTENTION- TURD ENTERING THE PUNCHBOWL.

Everyone has family members who inspire mixed emotions.  Fortunately for me the most creepy of my relatives are departed- most notably Uncle Bob, who was my twin great-aunt’s husband and therefore not a blood relative.  Uncle Bob wasn’t really a bad guy but he really liked nudies.  His entire garage where Mom’s side of the family held their big reunions was covered in 1940’s nudie pinups.  This was shocking to a five year old who is being raised in a household where nudity was strictly limited to going to the bathroom and taking a bath.  Worse yet, Uncle Bob liked to drink beer.  Alcohol in any form was strictly forbidden in Mom and Dad’s house.  I think my Dad just about went through the ceiling when he looked over and there was my sister- who was maybe seven at the time- chugging a Budweiser.  How was she supposed to know that she wasn’t supposed to drink the Budweiser?  Especially since Uncle Bob gave it to her?

Then there was Aunt Frances.  Aunt Frances was the stereotypical Cat Lady.  She weighed about 400# and had at least thirty cats at any given time wandering in and out of her house.  I have no problem with cats, but if you’re going to have them, do something about their incessant breeding.  When she broke a hip and ended up in the nursing home she would complain and whine that nobody visited her, but when you did visit her she gave you hell about everything from pierced ears to perms (I shudder to think about the commentary she would give me on the subject of hair color) to “foreign” cars.  Never mind that my Dad made his living working on ‘foreign” cars.   I remember all too well going to pick her up for my sister’s graduation party.  She took one look at my Subaru and refused to even try to get in it, even though I had carted around many of my large friends in it without incident.  I had to go back home and get my Mom’s Ford (a 1977 LTD II, what a lovely ride…) to cart her large carcass in. 

I miss the relatives that are dead but were cool, especially my grandparents, and my great-grandmother.   The holidays now are just a reminder of how pathetic I am compared to my sister, how much I miss my grandparents, and how much I really want to try to avoid my in-laws.

Diarrhea of the Non-Metaphorical Kind, aka “The Lost Brown Weekend,” and Dog Pack Dynamics

Leave a comment

The above pic is for the benefit of friends who often accuse me of being too graphic and earthy when describing things scatological.  I will gladly provide a friendly disclaimer. I can attest that my past three day affair with the porcelain throne has not been as antiseptic and aesthetically pleasing as the above pic would imply.  Not by a long shot.  I do like the pink toilet seat cover, and if I ever become the weird old lady who lives alone and screams at kids for stealing snow, I will consider this bathroom decor.  Of course if I ever have the opportunity and the budget to pursue my own preferences in interior decor I can guarantee I will be the only one who likes it.  If I ever do live alone and have opportunity to pursue my own preferences in interior decor, my reply to others’ dislike of my incessant use of pink, bright colors, bold patterns, funky old ad art, and eclectic mixes of just plain different stuff will be, “screw you.”  I never claimed to be Martha Stewart.  As long as I like it and the dogs are comfortable, that’s all I really care about.

So after missing a day and a half at work, my church retreat which I had been looking forward to for some time, and plowing through a ghastly amount of toilet paper, (my apologies to the trees) I think I may remotely be back among the living.  Maybe.

Ok, so any excuse to post a pic of a pile of TP is a good one.  I don’t think I had to use quite this much but you get the picture.  Montezuma has been having a lot of fun with me since Thursday afternoon.  Thursday morning I thought it was just a headache until the headache moved south and then you can use your imagination from there.  So much for the Lost Brown Weekend.  The first person who makes any comment about me calling off on a Friday can kiss my rosy red ass.  I would much rather have been at work Friday than crapping my guts out all day, believe that.  I am glad that if I had to get this crud that I wasn’t already at the church retreat, 75 miles from home and at some points along the way more than an hour away from the nearest toilet.   It would have been most embarrassing to shart myself in public regardless- but I don’t want to ruin the upholstery in the car or worse, infect others with this contagion.

It would be easier for me in the battles of intestinal distress if I could puke.  It is very rare for me to be able to puke.  Sometimes I wish I could just puke so I could get the misery over with, but for me usually it all has to work its long and torturous way south on the brown agony train.

No matter how good the quality of the toilet paper is, when one has a long battle with Montezuma it gets to the point where you might as well be roto-rootering the One Brown Eye with a scrub brush, sort of like this:

I know, I should refrain from redneck jokes, out of consideration for my in-laws and for the fact that my Dad’s middle name is LeRoy.  Yeah, spelled just like that.  I don’t know what Grandma was thinking, but I’m glad she had a sense of humor.  Still, the idea of someone wiping with a toilet brush is funny.

The dogs are learning how to get along together better.  Sheena is young and stubborn which is a bit of a challenge, but she is learning the routine and proper etiquette.  Getting her to be a bit more polite at mealtimes is taking some work as well as keeping her from trash-digging.  I just hope Sheena doesn’t get in heat before her spay appointment.

 

Just When You Think You Called It Right, Not-So-Innocuous Kids’ Ditties, and “Normal” is a Relative Term

Leave a comment

I dare to show my ever advancing age here.  I graduated from high school (1986) and college (1989) long, long before Columbine.  When I was in elementary school- back in the dark ages when the apex of technology was the Atari Pong game, and people thought we were “rich” because Dad was one of the first in town to insist upon having the wonderful thirteen channels of Cable instead of endeavoring like everyone else to get the three Columbus channels that were almost impossible to get even with an antenna- we used to sing a nice little ditty in honor of teachers we disliked:

(To the tune of Battle Hymn of the Republic):

Glory, glory, hallelujah, teacher hit me with a ruler  / Came in the door with a loaded .44, now teacher ain’t teachin’ no more

I really can’t imagine any kid belting out this little song today unless they really want to be sent to the school psychologist,  suspended , expelled or all three.  Kids get sent home for having plastic Army men with guns on them.  What are the Army men supposed to have?  Earrings and tinklebells?  I shudder to think of the ongoing wussification of the young, but then again, kids today take statements such as “came in the door with a loaded .44” a lot more literally these days.  Back then no one would have actually thought about shooting a teacher- it was merely a humorous visual like the stuff we would see on Tom and Jerry cartoons. 

Now I am all about identifying truly psychotic and homicidal rug rats early on, but singing a funny little song is not quite the same thing as displaying elements of the homicidal triad, which are: 1. Bedwetting, 2. Fire starting, and 3. Torturing animals.   Usually the schools aren’t in the position to observe those signs, unless the kid sets a fire in the school.  We did have a couple of fire bugs when I was in school who set fires in the trash cans so they could get out of school on a fire drill.  I think the principal beat one of them within an inch of his life, and the kid’s Dad whaled on him again when he got home.  I don’t think he set any more fires.   From what I’ve seen of the school system mentality they are so paranoid about a replay of Columbine that the kid who forgets he has his pocket knife in his pants,  or a kid who brings an Army man with his harmless tiny miniature plastic M16 to school is subject to extreme prejudice, but from what I see the little psychos go undetected.  

Another lovely little song we enjoyed singing that would raise eyebrows today went as followed:

Comet, it makes your mouth turn green / Comet, it tastes like gasoline / Comet, it makes you vomit/ So try some Comet and vomit today!

I can just imagine some little dumb ass trying this one.  The lawsuits…

Of course we were not politically correct, either.  Few kids got more teasing than the fat kids.   Granted back in the day everyone was poor so there were a lot fewer Really Fat Kids.  Today there’s a lot more kids in the “fatty fatty two by four” category, so there probably isn’t a lot of fat harassment.  The skinny kids, being in the minority, likely get the shit now.

Who doesn’t remember taunting the Fat Kid with:

Fatty, fatty two by four/ Couldn’t get through the bathroom door / So he did it on the floor / Licked it up and did some more/ Fatty, fatty two by four

I usually left the Fat Kids alone though, because being the Biggest Nerd in School who got beaten up everyday and whose wardrobe looked like there had been an explosion at the thrift store, was even worse than being a Fat Kid.  Besides, I was very tiny for my age in elementary school, and I was very frail for a long time after I had rheumatic fever.   I didn’t want any of the Fat Kids to pin me down and sit on me. 

Normal is definitely a relative term.  What is normal for me is most certainly abnormal for the rest of humanity, which is fine- I am used to my own parameters and I learned at an early age that the only opinion that really matters to me is my own. 

Our household has returned to some semblance of normal since last night.  I didn’t think Jerry could bear to let Sheena go, but we were really surprised when someone contacted us from the Craig’s List ad (and yes I am extremely cynical of using Craig’s List for anything) wanting to take a look at Sheena.  Come to find out the guy is former military and had experience with military dogs, which is why he wanted a GSD.  To make a long story much shorter, we interviewed him pretty heavily.  He brought his dog to come and visit and see if he (the dog) and Sheena would get along.  I think it will be a perfect fit for her as they have a good sized home and lot up in Delaware County and he has promised to keep in contact with us.  He is taking Sheena to the Vet today to get the ball rolling on her vacs, determing health status and hopefully to schedule her spay surgery.  He and his kid and their other dog seemed delighted with her and I feel good about the placement.  I don’t mind just having two dogs.  Clara and Lilo are used to each other and we’ve already gotten past the high-maintenance phase with them.  Of course if this guy changes his mind about Sheena we will gladly take her back, but at this place and time I think this is the best thing both for her and for us.   We can care for her well enough but this guy is equipped to do even better for her than we can.  Fluffy-Butt and Fanny have finally come back up from being in hiding in the basement.  It was nice to actually see and interact with all three cats this morning.  Isabel isn’t phased by dogs one way or the other, but the other two cats really only tolerate Clara and Lilo.  In a way I will miss Sheena- and she is a lovely dog- but I don’t miss playing food referee or going through the attention and territory wars that are inevitable when you add a dog.  Heidi was easy because she was old and only really concerned about meals, comfortable napping spots and an occasional roll in the warm grass.   I missed the judgment call on that one- I didn’t think Jerry had it in him to let her go- but I really believe Sheena will do as well if not even a bit better in her new home.  It will certainly be a damn sight better than scavenging around the campground all winter or being confined in a small pen and left to gnaw on cage bars, which is what would have happened to her had we left her there, or even worse.  We may not be the Ritz-Carlton but our home is very dog-friendly.  Clara and Lilo are not lacking anything, and I think they prefer their close knit little sorority of two.  They complement each other, and they got their fighting and competition out long ago.

 

Expiration Dates, Fascination With the Macabre, and Sheena of the Jungle

Leave a comment

I hesitated to say anything about Sheena for a number of reasons, one, that Jerry insisted that we were only taking Sheena home to *find a new home for her.*  Famous last words.  He said that about Isabel (our very tiny but domineering black cat) 12 1/2 years ago too, but once I had her spayed and declawed and all that, suddenly “three cats aren’t that many.”  At certain times we have had four cats at one time. Now we are at three cats and I’m cool with that.   For most of the past 5 years we have also had three dogs.  We have three dogs again now.

Sheena, like every other dog that has crossed our threshold, is a basket case.  She is a very lovely GSD/Husky mix, about 70# of unsocialized, attention-starved dog. 

Her story is yet another that inspires the misanthropist in me though.  She came from near the campground, from a nasty little trash pile that I shudder to think was a habitation for scavengers, let alone humans, but there were people living there in a derelict house trailer with various car parts, disassembled appliances, a PortoJohn, and piles of filth and trash.  This poor dog was a refugee from this disaster hole when the human denizens disappeared a few weeks ago.  She had been scavenging around the campground and accepting food from anyone who would give it to her.   Sheena was more fortunate than the min-pins they had locked in cages behind this cesspool- they were still alive but half starved. We left them food and called the Humane Society.  The Humane Society picked the min-pins up.

The main thing that breaks my heart about Sheena is that she lived most of her live in a small pen.  Because of this she became a cage biter- gnawing on the metal bars of the pen until she wore her incisors down to the gums and her canine teeth are little stubs.  She also appears to have had multiple litters of pups from the look of her belly.  I just hope she’s not preggers now, and that she doesn’t come into heat before we can get her spayed. 

Some people just plain suck.  Sheena is adapting well to life with the crazy dogs (Clara and Lilo) but nothing can fix her dental issues.  For the rest of her life she will have to either eat wet food or dry food stuck together with wet food or gravy, because the only teeth she has that are intact and functional are the molars in the back.  I have heard of military and police dogs getting dental implants and/or protective crowns, but short of us coming into some sort of fantastic and overwhelming financial windfall, I can’t see us being able to come up with thousands of dollars for poor Sheena to be fitted with crowns – an expensive endeavor which is only nominally successful in dogs anyway.  Since her gums don’t appear to be inflamed or infected I really don’t think her existing tooth roots/stubbies need to be removed or that her dental issues are going to impact her health or quality of life too adversely.  That will be another question for the Vet.

I find it amazing that everything from car wax to Cheetos has an expiration date stamped on it.  If modern packaging is supposed to halt the inevitability of decay for an inordinate amount of time, who sets the arbitrary limits?  Who is to say that an unopened bag of Cheetos is good until December 15?  Does this mean you can’t eat them on December 16 or even February 4 for that matter?  Is there research behind this and if so, why was I not stamped with an expiration date?  That would be an interesting tattoo- not that I am into tats nor do I ever anticipate getting one- but for the sake of the argument, let’s say the tat could say, “Fresh until July 14, 2041” or something like that.  It would be a conversation starter if nothing else.  Obama could get an expiration date tat too: “Discard Immediately: 1-20-13.”

So Now What, Creative Ideas for Avoiding Confronting My Past, and Other Inevitabilities

Leave a comment

I had one of these. An 83 GTI just like the one pictured, with the cool wheels and the funky red trim. Too bad my dumb ass sold it because the A/C didn’t work and I damn near gave myself a concussion every time I tried to get Steve-o in and out of his car seat.  People with kids prefer four door cars for a reason.  It’s been awhile, but trying to manage those damned car seats is hard enough without having to do calesthenics just to get in the back seat to screw with them.  Now that the powers that be are requiring kids to be in car seats until they are old enough to vote, I say screw that.  Give me four doors because it makes it easier to get the dogs in and out, and if I had to deal with carting rug rats around these days the rear seat DVD player sounds like a plan too.

Being a motorhead I have had many cars in my lifetime.  Some magic, some tragic, some forgettable.  A few of them, I wish I could have kept.  The 1972 Super Beetle was one of them.  The GTI of course, the 1994 Toyota truck, the 2000 Celica would have all remained in my possession if not for one thing: poverty.

Then again you can’t take it with you, and what’s the point of becoming a hoarder?  Need what you use and use what you need and move forward from there.

Of course getting rid of emotional baggage is a lot harder than getting rid of stuff.  I know sometimes Mom means well but I don’t need Grandma’s entire wardrobe or her entire collection of cooking utensils to remember her by.  A few keepsakes are fine but I really have no use for 50 year old stockings or all that cheap crap she bought from various mail order joints.  Some things I just threw away.  I shouldn’t guilt trip over that.  Part of living and moving on means getting rid of the things that hold us back.

Perhaps at my age I should be thinking more along the lines of the bucket list.  One of those things (and I need to stop putting it off) is to get back in contact with old friends, sooner rather than later if for no other reason than I am honor-bound and will regret my neglect if I continue to put it off.  I’m rather tired of being bereft of virtually all human contact.  I need to hold an intelligent conversation with someone for a change.  Dirty jokes and politics can only go so far.

I did get moderately good news at the Dr.’s Monday.  I don’t have hepatitis or any other Really Serious Illness- just a bit of bizarre liver chemistry that is caused by diabetes.  As long as I can keep my sugar down this condition should (in theory) right itself.  Famous last words.  Nothing about my health is routine, simple or uncomplicated.  I try to starve and eat healthy when I do eat, get the 30 minutes a day of mind numbingly boring exercise in and all that and still my health sucks and I’m still working on losing that 30 or so lbs.  Then you get people like Jerry who maintain just fine, all lean and mean, no diabetes, no sucking down blood pressure meds, on the Bacon-n-Natties diet, which puts me in mind of Gustavson’s Dad in Grumpier Old Men.  Jerry will be like those Russian dudes who live to be 115 on vodka and cigars.  I’ll probably drop dead before I’m 50 of something.  While I’m at it  with the bucket list I need to check into the urban legend that OSU will give one $250 if you donate your cadaver to them when you die.  Sounds like a sorry bargain to me, but hey, a lot of medical students have gotten some lessons in unusual anatomy off of my living carcass.  I bet my autopsy would be a real education in Murphy’s Law and what can go wrong with the human body.  Too bad I won’t be able to observe my autopsy, should one be done, or even to request that Dr. G gets to do it.  I’d love to hear her commentary on my abnormalities.  But if someone will give me $250 so med students can have a Mutter Museum type learning aid, where do I sign up?

I just answered my own question really quickly.  OSU does accept donated bodies but they don’t pay anything for them.  I should do the donation thing since I was planning on getting cremated anyway.  Might as well let someone learn something or at least see stuff they don’t see everyday.

I don’t know why I’ve been in such a morbid state of mind lately.  So now what?  Just keep on getting ready to take that “dirt nap?”

Creative artwork.  I need some whiteout and a red marker to make the fangs look more real.  I can’t die yet- right now this country needs as many conservative Republican voters as it can get!

Humor Is Where You Find It, Somewhere in the Generational Disconnect, and I Hope the Stupid People Stay Home Today

Leave a comment

I can imagine Steve-o’s embarrassed indignation yet again at Mom as she is trying to pry into his sex life.  Steve-o is not Catholic and wasn’t raised Catholic so he really doesn’t understand that Mom learned sex-ed- from nuns.  I tried to impart to him at least a nominal Christian education in the Lutheran tradition.  Therefore the oddly Catholic concept of “sex-is-sin-except-if-you-are-married-and-actively-procreating-and-even-then-you-better-not-enjoy-it”  is not a concept that is dear to his heart.  I will add, that as in line with is correct Protestant theology, he has been taught that abstinence is the correct course of (in) action before one is married, but after marriage sex is perfectly hunky dory, and you can enjoy it without procreating, as long as it is consensual and with one’s spouse.  Of course for me, this concept of  “sex after marriage for recreational purposes” is merely a theory and not something I’ve experienced any time recently.  But I am an old cougar whose carnal drives went away pretty much completely after the hysterectomy anyway.  In contrast, Steve-o’s a 19 year old male for heaven’s sake, and there would be something wrong with him if he didn’t have a healthy case of cat scratch fever (as Ted Nugent called it.)  I was going to say “perpetual boner,” but I don’t want to imagine that.  Ever. Eww.

I would rather have Steve-o be honest with me.  I know he has been doing the dirty deed ever since Jerry caught Jezebel riding him like a pony when he was 14.  I am glad to have been spared the visual, and no I don’t approve of it.  However I am a realist, and I know that I didn’t practice abstinence until I was married.   If  lust is a difficult thing for women to resist, (and I struggled with it for many years, and still do in some ways) I know men in their impulsiveness have it a lot worse.  It’s a high standard, and even if I expect him to uphold the abstinence standard, I would rather he trust me enough to be honest with me if he doesn’t.  I understand.  Really.

Mom on the other hand does a very good impression of the Spanish Inquisition, which is what she did to him the other night of her own admission.  I know she means well because she fears for the state of Steve-o’s soul, (and I think Catholics still regard fornication as a mortal sin) but the Inquisitional method isn’t going to work with him.  The old-school Catholic guilt complex doesn’t register with him.  He was never taught to be terrified of dying with unconfessed sins, and I don’t think he’s even heard of the concept of mortal sin.  I wasn’t about to tell her what I know about Steve-o’s amours and break Steve-o’s confidence. I know that she more or less browbeat and cornered him into a sheepish denial, a denial arrived at specifically to appease her and to avoid her wrath.  I don’t think she really wanted the truth anyway.  Sometimes the truth is exactly what you don’t want to hear.  He told her what she wants to hear to avoid her inevitable diatribe about fornication and mortal sin and how the “pecker leads the way down the path to perdition.”  I think she learned that speech from the nuns way back in 1960 and can still quote it verbatim. While as I said earlier, I don’t approve of what is technically fornication, and in my own life transgressions of that nature have caused me a great deal of regret and heartache.  God put the boundaries around our behavior for a reason, and when we cross those boundaries there are consequences.  Even so, I can think of much more harmful offenses.  In spite of my Catholic upbringing, I find it hard to believe that sex is the unforgivable sin.  I know that sin doesn’t have categories and one is as bad as another and we are all guilty.  I am not the one Steve-o or anyone else will have to answer to.  We can sound the warnings but ultimately each one of us is going to make mistakes and each one has to live with the consequences of those mistakes. 

I have to find some humor in the fact that I got the same Inquisition from Mom, years ago, and I pretty much reacted the same way.  I was the Queen of Denial (he-he.)  My sister was nominally less fortunate, as she got the Inquisition after Mom found her birth control pills.  That was not a pretty scene. 

I think my generation views things carnal in a different light than Mom’s generation.  While technically she and Dad are “boomers” (came of age in the 1960’s) one has to remember they grew up in a town that is chronically 20 years behind the rest of the world.  The 1960’s for them meant 1940’s social mores, not hippies or Woodstock or free love.  My generation was into the whole “love the one you’re with” thing- at least until the advent of AIDS.  Then we started getting picky.  When I was in high school it was not uncommon for girls to get pregnant and not even know who fathered the child.  When Mom and Dad were in high school if a girl got pregnant either she was Sent Away to have the baby and then give it up for adoption, or forced into a shotgun wedding at age 16.  Neither of these scenarios are good, and both of them underscore the fact that behavior has consequences.  Waiting is better but waiting isn’t easy- especially when you’re 18 or 19 and a month seems like an eternity.  All I can say is time moves faster the older you get.

Today is election day and it is long awaited for those of us who abhor Obama and his dreadful administration.  I hope for a few things.  One, that the stupid people stay home.  Two, that we here in Ohio get a new Governor, and three, that enough Republicans make it into Congress to stop the Obamanation in his tracks.  I have never loathed an American President this much.  Carter was terrible- I remember writing him letters as a nine year old kid pleading with him to do something about the coal strikes and the hostage situation in Iran- but Carter at least had some humility if not sensible ideology.  Obama has abhorrent ideology as well as he is an arrogant fool.  May he please be a one term president!!!

History is Written by the Winners, the Vexing Scourges of Cougardom, and Halloween=Diabetic Hell

Leave a comment

Yikes.  Sometimes when I look in the mirror I see my mother.  I am not saying Mom’s a bad person or anything- her heart is in the right place, but sometimes she can be scatterbrained.  Maybe my surprise comes from my own presumption that I was going to be more flexible, more with it, more cosmopolitan, etc. than Mom was.  When we were kids she seemed to be (and truly was) incredibly naive.  Working in the public school system has done much to erode her naivete, especially now that she works in one of the poorest sections of Crack Town and she gets to see exactly why some people should be forbidden to breed and/or to have custody of children. 

I have my own brand of naivete that comes from spending the past 20 years or thereabouts firmly entrenched in white middle class suburbia.  I freely admit I have absolutely no idea (nor do I care) what songs are on the Top 40- I despise rap music and don’t care for country either, so my knowledge of popular music ends around 1985.  I also really don’t give a rat’s ass about fashion other than it pisses me off that it’s hard to find shirts with frigging sleeves and I really hate the “hipster” style pants which obviously were not made for women who have a.) given birth, or b.) had abdominal surgeries, in which case I am disqualified from attempting to wear them on both counts.   I want pants that go up to my waist, thank you.  And I want shirts with sleeves to cover my meaty arms that are still meaty, although thanks to the shake weight thing, the flabby flaps underneath them have mostly been replaced with muscle.  See, these things sound like Mom talking, as she would repeat the nuns’ admonitions (she went to an old school Catholic school ) about modest dress and all that.  Mom learned about coverage from Catholic nuns who wore the full length nun habits:

Back in the day I had no problem with mini-skirts, fishnets, displaying cleavage, etc.  My quest for modesty today springs more from a desire to be polite.  There are things the rest of the world shouldn’t have to endure, namely the visions of an aging cougar’s thunder thighs, meaty arms or sagging boobs.  I don’t think I am to the point of needing to don the nun’s habit, or even to resign myself to the muumuu, although the nun’s habit would save on hairspray.  I hope if I get to this point though, that someone will put me out of their misery, or at least cover the important stuff up.

I am surprised that there is a TV commercial pawning a prescription cream to fight the scourge of female facial hair.  It is a lesser known scourge of cougardom that post-menopausal women grow facial hair.  Yeah, I mean like beards and mustaches, and I am not talking just about certain ethnic groups whose women are hairy from birth, but about women of northern European descent like myself.  I’ve been using the face Nair for the past few years.  Unlike leg hair, arm hair and unmentionable hair, shaving face hair  just makes it grow back worse.  Plucking is just too labor-intensive even though I have had to tenaciously fight the unibrow since my teens.  It’s not just about the unibrow these days, although Mom was wrong about that.  I pluck and pluck just as much as ever and my eyebrows do NOT “naturally thin out.”   Two days of no plucking and The Unibrow Returns.  With a vengeance. But now it’s the unibrow AND chin hair and upper lip hair and farking sideburns for heaven’s sake. 

I can’t afford to pay $60 for a month’s worth of a script cream to keep face hair from growing in the first place, but I can pay $5 for a bottle of face Nair to burn it off every week or so.  I so wish I could afford laser hair removal, and that I could get rid of leg, arm, pits & bits, unibrow, and face hair forever.  I think Permanent Unwanted Hair Removal needs to be #1 on my Bucket List.   The Bucket List is something I need to start putting together.  Assuming that at 41 I am middle-aged, if I’m lucky I might have another 40 years to accomplish it.

I love Halloween.  It’s one of my favorite holidays even though some people argue that Christians shouldn’t celebrate it.  I don’t have a problem with it as long as nobody is sacrificing black cats or damaging property or anything.  But for a diabetic, Halloween is difficult.  I can’t have the candy.  I used to love the candy.  I hope Mom keeps Dad away from the candy. 

As a kid I wasn’t diabetic and I could enjoy the candy cornucopia with impunity.  KitKats, Snickers, Mounds, Milky Ways, Milk Duds, Smarties, Tootsie Pops, Sweet Tarts, Reeses, Hershey bars, I loved them all.   Today I have to be satisfied with watching Steve-o and his buddies stuff their faces with chocolate,  as I am wistfully chomping away on sugarless spearmint gum. Dammit.  But I can still dress up.

Golf Spelled Backward is “Flog,” and Other New Things I Learn Every Day

Leave a comment

I would have to think that advertising a “Blowout Sale” at the porn emporium is somewhat counter intuitive.  Think about it.  This is a place that sells inflatable dolls, ya know?  I sure would hate to think that “Hunky Hank” would spring a leak on our first “date.”   I highly doubt if Lion’s Den takes returns even if the merchandise is defective.  I  can’t imagine being the one to explode the love doll OR having to be the poor sucker who would have to verify defective returns.  Can you say contagious bodily fluids?  Nasty!

I have a whole week to make these kind of observations as I’m on vacation next week.  Since I can’t really afford to go anywhere I have plenty of time to simply muse upon things I normally wouldn’t have time for.  I discovered today while playing word find on the DS that “golf” spelled backwards is “flog.”   Yes, I would rather be flogged than to be forced  to play or even watch golf, so that was a minor epiphany.

I share some of George Carlin’s feelings about golf and golf courses.  It’s a tremendous waste of real estate for a bunch of pretentious, pompous fools to wander about chasing a ball.  When I worked at the Infiniti dealership we dreaded the whole Memorial Tournament deal as we would be invaded by every PGA wannabe who needed car repair. Infinitis are popular among the golfer set- and the out of town owners were notoriously demanding and rude.  Granted there is a lot of money in and around the sport of golf, but I have no use for it other than it is sort of fun to ride around in the golf carts.  I still for the life of me can’t understand why the real estate surrounding Muirfield is so ungodly expensive, as if it would be a good thing to live right next to a golf course where you run the risk of wayward duffers putting their little white balls clean through the picture window.  I guess if you can afford to live in that zip code you don’t give a rat’s ass about having the glass guy come out a few times a year.  It beats living in the hood where they break out your glass so they can steal your stuff.


Toilet Paper Love, Canine Communication and More Medical Fun

Leave a comment

You know you’re getting old when your significant other measures the depth and intensity of your love for him/her based on whether or not you have left him/her sufficient toilet paper to handle the “morning paperwork.”  Jerry expects me to leave him a whole roll of TP in the mornings, and I can understand why. 

I am continually amazed at how my dogs communicate with each other.  I’m not talking so much about the dog greeting that we humans think to be so nasty, even though I wonder why a creature with such an infinitely acute sense of smell will readily plow its nose into a fetid pile of trash, a steaming pile of shit, or into another dog’s asshole.  I am a dog lover, but I find their preoccupation with offensive (at least to humans) smells rather bizarre.  Kayla (rest her soul, and yes I do believe dogs have souls) used to love to roll in dead things, and she would come in smelling to holy high heaven of some partially decomposed carcass from time to time.   I miss dear Kayla, (she is much of the reason why Clara is such an excellent dog) but I certainly don’t miss that dead carcass smell.   Luckily for me Clara didn’t pick up that nasty habit.  Lilo likes to carry around dead things, but not necessarily to roll in them. She spent two weeks playing with a dead bird before it got so gross I took from her and put it in the dumpster.   Heidi as usual is in her own little world, happy simply to have food to eat and not have to spend her whole life in a 6X6 pen outside anymore.

It is amazing how dogs read behavior- not only among other dogs but also human behavior.  Since I am very weak in intuitive skills (I gravitate more toward the concrete that I can see and understand and prove) I gain much from observing my dogs.  They speak primarily through their body language with the others.   A head nod or a nudge or a glance speak volumes in the world of dog communication, which makes me wonder if they are not more visually oriented than many researchers think.   We know they are heavily reliant on  olfactory and auditory input (far more than humans who are primarily visual) but I believe there is much said in the visual signals.  I don’t know exactly who did the study, but even the way that dogs carry their tails is a form of communication.  It’s more than simple up or down but even the direction of the tail wag means something- subtle visual cues that are likely used in combination with the auditory and olfactory information all dogs both emit and translate.  They know and understand more than we give them credit for.

Thankfully (hopefully) for the next month or so I will not have any more medical fun to endure.  Yesterday I had the liver ultrasound, more blood draws, and the paper nightie visit.  The scary part of this is that as many times as I’ve had to have medical tests, procedures, etc. it is becoming almost second nature.  For the most part I know the drill a lot better than I want to- where to park, to make sure to ask the phlebotomist to draw blood from my left arm because that’s where the good veins are, and to have my laundry list of meds neatly printed out so I don’t have to try to remember them all and/or scrawl them all down in a space where there isn’t enough room to scrawl them all.  I am thankful most of the Dr.’s offices have gone to an automated format so all they do is input your information. It saves me time too.

I’m trying not to get too freaky about the liver tests, etc.  The abnormal readings are likely a result of diabetes and may not mean a whole lot.  I know they want to rule out really nasty things like hepatitis or cancer.  The whole idea of cancer scares the hell out of me not so much because I am afraid to die but I am afraid of a long,  painful and expensive death.  I can only hope and pray that when it’s my time to die I go quickly, painlessly and inexpensively.  Sometimes I wonder why the medical profession tries so hard to delay the inevitable rather than do what they can to make a person more comfortable if they are terminally ill anyway.  I don’t have the answer for that.    I am glad that I don’t have to endure the paper nightie visit again until next year.

The Wussification of America, Blame it on the Bullies, and What a Crock of Shit

1 Comment

In all fairness I can’t really say my parents beat me, at least not intentionally.  My sisters and their friends and kids at school beat me pretty much daily and with impunity, but I didn’t get too many parental beatings.  Mom could be rather severe when giving whacks or other physical punishments (i.e. being dragged out of church by the hair as any good Catholic mother would do if a child slips up on the proper performance of the Catholic calesthenics during Mass) but I really wouldn’t call those physical punishments “beatings” as they were probably deserved, or at least Mom thought they were.  Mom is bi-polar and at that point in her life she was both undiagnosed and untreated, so she deserves a lot of slack on that one.

It’s in the news again- the media and others raising a stink about cyber bullying.  Granted, the most recent case of cyber bullying in the news is rather shocking- someone broadcasting a video of a guy with his male lover in compromising activities- and I can imagine the emotional trauma involved, but suicide is a little extreme a response. I have to think the guy had problems long before his comrades took their nasty video into cyber space.  There is no way to rightly justify the invasion of privacy and the just plain malicious nature of broadcasting such a thing and I don’t condone such activities, but to hold the perpetrators responsible for a suicide death or to call it a “hate crime” is a bit much.  A lot too much. 

I understand more about bullying than most people probably ever will, even though the Internet was unheard of when I was in high school and college.  I endured not just name-calling and embarrassing pranks- but regular full-on physical beat downs that would be referred to as aggravated assault today.  Yes, it’s traumatic.  Yes, it sucks.  Yes, I do agree that kids should face severe repercussions for inflicting physical abuse on others, unlike when I was growing up and everyone just looked the other way or just joined in on it themselves.  But I draw the line at holding another culpable for someone else committing suicide.  After all, suicide is defined as a self-killing, an intentional act of the will, and a conscious decision to end one’s own life.  Believe me most people have had times in their lives when they have considered suicide for whatever reason (been there…more times than I can count) but thought better of it.  In my mind I would want to live and to overcome if for no other reason than to stand in defiance to those who would destroy me, and to fulfill whatever purpose God has for me- even though I am far from clear on that one. 

I don’t agree with the whole “hate crime” mentality, either.  The motive and intent behind an action does not make the action itself more or less severe. The whole concept of “hate crimes” seems to violate the First Amendment in a way to me.  In a free society we are entitled to our opinions and our thoughts as long as our actions do not violate the law.  Who cares how much someone hates a particular group or person or behavior as long as they obey the law?   A crime may begin as a thought, but the act of a crime is defined by what’s actually done, whether it be bodily injury or defacing property or even murder.   Why should any crime be considered a more heinous offense simply because it is committed against a “protected” group?  Does one group merit more protection than another under the law?  Is it more evil to kill a gay man than a straight man?  To me that idea – that killing a gay man may carry a heavier penalty than killing a straight man because the killing was done out of hatred for gays-perverts justice by placing a higher value on the lives and property of certain groups than others.  This is disturbing.  Aren’t both killings equally wrong? Aren’t both lives of equal value?

It bothers me that kids today are so sensitive to every slight.  It bothers me even more that we are being conditioned to be ever so careful of sensitive psyches, that we can’t call failure what it is.  I used to get beat up for “throwing the curve” in school- the rest of the class got D’s and F’s because I was the only one to get 100% on certain tests when the next highest grade was 75% or worse.  I don’t agree with grading on the curve even though I usually benefited from it academically because it is individual achievement that should be measured when testing.  Let each one stand on his or her merit.  Today no one grades on the curve for a different reason- not to make the overachiever stand out, but to attempt to keep the underachiever’s failure under wraps.  Instead of saying to the underachiever, “You have failed, you need to improve,” there is this horribly misguided idea that ignoring failure, or worse, dumbing down the entire class to the underachiever’s level, that everyone will be equal.  All I can say to this is that everyone will fall to the same level of mediocrity and failure which is readily evident in the public schools today. 

It’s about accountability.  It’s sad that anyone would be driven to suicide by the callous prank of another BUT when all is said and done, suicide is an individual’s choice.  The prankster didn’t physically push him off the bridge or take the pills or pull the trigger.  No one wants to take accountability for their own wrong choices or failures.  It’s easier to blame the bullies.  I could do that.  I could wrap myself up into my own little world of PTSD and blame everyone who ever smacked me around for all my shortcomings and failures.  They did it because they could.  They did it because it was funny.  But that’s n the past and today I need to choose for myself what I would do today.  I would rather be a thorn in their sides.  I would rather stand up and overcome- learn from my failures, stand up to opposition and succeed in spite of all the circumstances in my life that drag me down. 

I would rather be the one to take such nasty little bastards who would invade my privacy and publicly embarrass me to court and sue their butts into poverty for the rest of their natural lives.  I know a lot about passive-aggressive revenge.

Another thing that bothers me is all the fussing about “sexual harassment.”  To me as long as you keep your hands to yourself, say what you will.  After 20+ years in the automotive industry I’ve cultivated a rather thick skin as well as a catty sense of humor. I’ve been called everything but a fine upstanding white woman at one point or another.   So what.  There aren’t too many things one could say to me that would really bother me much.  Again there is such a thing as the First Amendment.  Say anything you want, but touch me and you cross the line.  How difficult is that? 

Society needs to lighten up.  There are plenty of beatings, shootings, stabbings and robberies being committed in the pursuit of illicit drugs.  The illegality and the harmfulness of the drugs is eclipsed by the illegality and the harmfulness of the violence perpetrated in the pursuit of them.  Legalize all of it, and destroy an entire black market economy in one fell swoop.  When the junkies can get all they want and then they OD on it, then they will automatically chlorinate the gene pool as it were.  The economics of supply and demand state when there is no more demand (i.e. the junkies have pretty much all OD) there will no longer be a market, hence no need for a supply.  Human beings have been getting high for millenia and will continue to do so, legal or illegal.  Might as well thin out the gene pool and let the stoners do as they will without the collateral damage.