The Dismality of February, and This Will All Thaw Someday

February 8, 2018Tonya Lanthron Leave a comment

Oh, the dismality of February yet again. There is a reason why February only has 28 days (at least for three out of four years,) and that’s to put a lid on the number of people who die in February. If February were 30 or 31 days, half the damn population would die in February, and that would just be weird. We have to spread the death throughout the year better. Not that everyone should die from heat stroke in July, but jeez. I can understand losing the will to live when it is 90° and 100% humidity if there’s no air conditioning, perhaps a bit more than most, because I am not at all equipped for high temperatures. I can abide cold a far sight better than extreme heat.

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But at least in July there is sunlight, and Ohio winters are notoriously dark and sunless. I can go all week without seeing sunlight save for maybe a ray or two on the weekend- unless there is a damned blizzard going on. And even if the damned blizzard is going on and it’s 4° below, Target still has nothing but bathing suits, tank tops, sandals and sleeveless dresses on display. If I need a parka, I will have to wait until July when they put them back out.

Here in central Ohio we have been enduring a rather harsher than normal winter. Oh, yippee skippy, because I just adore driving in ice and snow. I’m all about those below zero temperatures too. There is simply nothing like one’s ass freezing to the toilet seat unless I break down and turn on the space heater in the bathroom.

“Spring” will arrive someday. Probably sometime in May there will come a day when my back yard will transform from frozen tundra into Dog Shit Lake overnight. Oh, the smell of Spring in the air. Temperatures will go from -4° to 90° and 100% humidity within the span of about 12 hours. There is really no Spring in Ohio. There is just arctic cold and wind, followed by stygian heat, usually accompanied by torrential rain.

This is Brutus, the Catahoula^ (Catahoula Bed Hog Dog)

clara520

This was Clara^ (God rest her sweet soul) the Malinois

Note to self: the 80# Catahoula shits according to his size. For those unaccustomed to dogs, for an example, a 65# Malinois has the strength to overpower a 300# man. The 65# Malinois consumes, and disposes of about the same number of calories as a 300# man every day. Imagine that kind of waste load deposited in your back yard every day for six months from October until the May Thaw arrives.

In all fairness, since a Malinois is an ultra high energy, high metabolism dog, a 65# Malinois and an 80# Catahoula are pretty much identical in strength, energy consumed, and waste put down. My paradigms have been pretty much the same for awhile.

There’s going to be a lot of dog shit to deal with.

Time Passages, Necessary Evils, and Random Mental Excursions

October 8, 2015Tonya Lanthron Leave a comment

Or not. Preferably not.

I don’t want to change any more shitty diapers in my life. I did enough of that when my illustrious EX mother-in-law decided to let my then-20 month old son go through an entire box of graham crackers in an afternoon.

Suffice to say that the graham crackers pretty much didn’t do much to prevent my son from partaking in the “evil” of self-abuse, (face it people, all boys masturbate whether they admit to it or not,) but they did much to make him shit like a horse for a week straight.

Tall Stack of Graham Crackers

Once you’ve had to power wash your kid, Clorox his jammies and the bed sheets every day for a week because he wakes up with the entire bed coated in used graham crackers that have made their way down the good ol’ Hershey Highway, the whole hosing-shit-off-bloody-everything routine gets extremely old. I did have a number of choice pejoratives for my evil ex-mother-in-law, but in her defense, her head never was screwed on quite right. Suffice to say she was never left alone with the POMC again. To this day he is scared shitless (oh, what a relevant metaphor!) of that harpie, even though he was only three the last time he ever even saw her. If she’s still alive- and if only the good die young she’ll live to be 900- she’s well in her 80s. As long as she stays away from me, I truly don’t care where she is, how old she is, or what she does with herself.

I can’t imagine changing diapers for any of my adult relatives. Though it may sound callous, if you can’t make it to the crapper or wipe your own ass, the nursing home is calling your name. I’m weird enough about people touching me, let alone having to touch other people in ways I don’t even want to contemplate.

I understand that the people at the nursing home will have to hose off your carcass from time to time, but 1.) they are getting paid to do it, and 2.) they have a ready supply of disposable gloves.

I was probably the only child who was grateful for a teacher or parent’s admonition to a group of children to “keep your hands and feet to yourself.” Anything that will keep the little snot spewers from fingering me or violating my personal space is a good thing. When I was growing up, people usually only made physical contact with me to slather nasty things on me, throw live stinging insects in my hair, or to kick my ass. I am wary for a reason.

I can’t tolerate itchy, inflexible or binding clothing against my skin. Ever. I still have bad memories of 70’s polyester and those God-awful pantsuits Grandma made for us out of that stuff. Grandma was a fantastic seamstress, but if you create clothing out of fabric that is more like Teflon than cashmere, it’s not going to be comfortable. Mom would add itchy lace socks and turtlenecks to these pantsuits and I literally got welts all over from both the friction and the heat generated by those purgatorial ensembles. 70’s polyester was HOT as well as being inflexible and itchy. It did NOT breathe.

Lord, deliver us from these horrible garments!

I can’t move my LEG!!!

Even denim was problematic back in the day, as you pretty much had to drive over a pair of jeans, then wash them several times in flaming hot water with bleach, then dry them for a few hours with some marbles thrown in for fun. Otherwise the skin-tight (no spandex…) denim would be so crunchy and rigid that breathing was almost as impossible as bending at the knees, or sitting.

Just Don’t Bend Over.

Another drawback of 80’s clothes is that you had to iron just about everything, including the (usually) cotton oxford shirts. Cotton breathes, which is a plus, but those oxford shirts are a bitch to iron. Of course, not liking itchy or crunchy things, I was never a big fan of starch.

Dancing in My Mind, and Memory is Bittersweet

November 26, 2014Tonya Lanthron 2 Comments

No, I don’t believe in that “Happy Ever After” shit.

I’m one of those people who does a lot of living behind my own eyes. I can be remarkably scatterbrained when it comes to things such as “where’s my stuff?” or “what’s that dude’s name?, ” but when I happen upon an experience or an event that I want to remember, those memories remain vivid and in living, breathing color. Believe that.

For me the garden of memory is almost more alive than the real thing, if that’s possible. Sometimes that’s not so good, especially if I am stuck on a scene of disappointment or rejection, or mourning, but some trips to the garden of memory are positively magical.

Over the past few years I’ve allowed myself to fall into the pattern of being constrained by what I see as the limitations of my circumstances. Admittedly being married to a chronic boozer who has ED and a laundry list of other physical and psychological issues is a huge downer, and not exactly good for one’s self-esteem.

Jerry enjoys his beer drinking- and isn’t compelled to do anything about it.

I’m not referring to self-esteem in the vapid sense of “feeling good about yourself,” as in the phenomenon where some people treat their kids as though they deserve a prize for remaining vertical and continuing to suck up valuable oxygen. I’m talking about self image in a realistic way: I may be scatterbrained and wired differently than most people, but I manage to function somewhat effectively. I might be plain and proportioned like a mutant troll, but fuglier people than I still manage to have relationships, and fuglier people than I still manage to get laid from time to time. So I may not be “normal,” but I’m not that screwed up, I hope.

Old, yes, but I’m really, really, really low mileage.

It’s as if his dysfunction colors my outlook, and to a degree it does. I can’t say that going years without participating in the horizontal mambo is a good thing. I didn’t ask for the celibate life, and I truly don’t care for it. Being treated as a glorified maid and gopher doesn’t do much for feeling feminine or desirable or any of that business that I would like to say doesn’t matter, but deep down on some level it does.

A big part of me feels like a failure because in the back of my mind I guilt trip- what if I’d done more? What if I’d been more perceptive, more loving, or maybe less frumpy and boring? I guilt trip because maybe I shouldn’t feel the way I do (and I don’t acknowledge my feelings all too often, and when I do, I try not to give them much credence, which is probably a good thing) and that I should just suck it up and be glad Jerry can still dress and feed himself-for now.

I don’t think I could handle the guilt trip if I just picked up and left, and that’s messed up too. I said I would stay with him, though it’s been a very long almost 20 years. I feel like the life has been sucked out of me- to the point that a mere acknowledgment from a ghost from the past left me almost euphoric yesterday. Someone still gives half a shit! A half of a drink of water in an endless desert! It’s a sad state of affairs when I get that little affirmation.

But there is life beyond my limitations. I did have a life in front of my eyes, at one time. And I did enjoy myself for a moment in the garden of a particularly sweet memory yesterday and it did lift my spirits more than it probably should have.

There was a time- and maybe this is just my own wishful thinking- that I was desired and wanted and pursued. As much as I don’t want to admit to having a need to be wanted by men or even by a man (this reminds me way too much of the fairy tale bullshit shoved down little girls’ throats as they’re growing up) even I want to be more than just the one who gets to clean up the cat puke or dog shit, (Jerry’s really good at spotting it, but apparently unable to pick it up for some unfathomable reason) or the only one to run errands because I’m the only one who’s sober. Living like that – as a sort of an indentured servant- doesn’t do much for one’s emotional and spiritual wellbeing. I’ve said it before that my marriage at best is sort of a symbiotic relationship, but at worst, is more like a parasite-host relationship, which is sad but often true. I try to regard Jerry’s indifference in context because he really does care more about beer and football and cigarettes than pretty much anything else. Therefore I need to stick to my own agenda and interests- and fantasy life if that’s all I have, if I have any hope of staying remotely sane.

I wish I had the courage to reach out to an old friend (though paramour would probably be a more accurate word) and lay it on the line. Even if I risk rejection (oh, and believe me, I do,) my heart hasn’t changed in over 20 years. I have to come clean with how I felt then and still feel today, and admit it, even though the time and the circumstances probably aren’t any more “right” than they were back then.

That sort of honesty has always seemed to me to have far more risk than reward. I am so terrible at reading the motives and behavior of others. I have enough trouble with my own motivations to try to figure out what sort of mischief is brewing in other people’s minds.

I Don’t Wanna Talk About It (But I Will Anyway,) and I Love Lucy

October 2, 2013Tonya Lanthron Leave a comment

Lucy is clearly not a Belgian Malinois (most likely Bulldog and Beagle) but as Mick Jagger once sang: “You can’t always get what you want /But if you try sometimes /You just might find /You get what you need…”

Even considering the insight of the Rolling Stones, I didn’t really need a third dog. Even so, I was surprised it took Jerry from May to September to end up with another dog. I wanted another Malinois for Miss Clara to mentor, (and I still do) but when a stray dog (almost) got into it with one of the ankle biters at the campground over table scraps, Jerry had to intervene, and rightfully so. I couldn’t say no to that face and those eyes.

Either we took Lucy with us, or she’d have ended up with an ass full of buck shot, as the owner of the ankle biter in question would not hesitate to do it. It was a no-brainer. We took Sheena, messed up as she was, because she needed a home and we had a space. Lucy, even though I have little to no experience with either bully breeds or hounds, has a lot more going for her than poor Sheena did.

This is a young female Malinois- not Lucy!

Unlike Sheena, Lucy can hear. Lucy also has teeth. She has a bit of an underbite, (normal for Bulldogs) but she still has 42 sturdy, clean, white teeth. She’s also young (about a year, according to the Vet) and to our shock, had already been spayed. I feel bad that she was put under anesthetic and cut on only to find out she’d already been spayed, but how were we to know? In spite of undergoing what proved to be an unneeded surgery, she’s in impeccable health- aside from having to lose a pound or two from her incessant moochings at the campground. (Who can resist those eyes and that face?) She should get down to a proper weight now that she’s on Diet Plate with Lilo and eating pretty much just dog food. She also has a microchip and tags now, should she manage to wander off from us.

I don’t know why anyone would bother to spay a dog and then not microchip her, or bother to put a collar and tags on her, but that’s not my call. Against my first instincts, I love this weird looking little dog, even though she waddles when she walks and drools in her sleep. Even the cats are chumming up to her and kissing on her, (Jezebel especially loves dogs) which makes me wonder if she really went off on the ankle biter, or that if the ankle biter’s owners were just paranoid that she was hanging around and mooching. Then again, in our house the cats don’t compete with the dogs for food. The cats eat in a dog-free area, otherwise the cats wouldn’t get to eat at all. As far as competing with the other dogs, Clara and Lilo are both a lot bigger than Lucy, and she strikes me as being smart enough not to pick a fight with either one of them.

I’m starting to think my tits have mistaken themselves for migratory birds, as they have moved so far south. I know my grandmother warned me when I was 13 that I should always wear a sturdy bra, and for the most part I have heeded her advice, but the effects of gravity, like those of other forces associated with entropy, are inevitable.

Aging sucks, especially when it challenges your deeply held belief that it won’t happen to you.

I’ve been trying to avoid the political landscape as that whole scene is just plain depressing. I knew what a piece of work our illegitimate president was before he cheated himself into office the first time. I’m not at all surprised by what’s going on, even though it’s puzzling to me why the illegitimate fraud squatting in the White House hasn’t been impeached, removed and deported by now.

-Apparently playing the race card can still get you very far even with no experience, talent or ability to cooperate with others, and apparently not enough people care that you are illegitimate and lacking any sort of merit, if you can claim a favored minority status- and that makes my blood boil.

Anyway, I told myself I would avoid political tangents today so I am trying very hard not to. The bad part about trying to avoid doing something is that if you avoid it too hard you step right into it, sort of like when I try to go out in the back yard and try not to step in dog shit. Usually when I’m hell bent on avoiding dog shit is exactly when I step in it.

Oh, the parallels between stepping in dog shit and the illegitimate, destructive and dangerous Obama administration. The only difference is that dog shit washes off.

The Things We Do For “Health,” and the Scourge of Domestic Drudgery

July 31, 2012Tonya Lanthron 3 Comments

Tapeworms, tapeworms, jolly jolly tapeworms, eat them up- YUM!

The tapeworm diet was featured on an episode of 1000 Ways to Die not too long ago. I know I probably shouldn’t watch that show so much, but it is entertaining in a dark way to see the convoluted manners in which some people have managed to earn their Darwin Awards. While the thought of going from a size 12 to a size 2 in a few weeks is tempting, the thought of flatworms burrowing through my vital organs and feeding on my blood and other important stuff gives me serious pause. If we give dogs a monthly de-wormer (essentially this is what Heartgard and other products that contain Ivermectin do- kill off any worm larvae that end up in a dog’s bloodstream or intestinal tract) to prevent them from getting tapeworms, heartworms, and other assorted wormy life forms because they’re harmful to dogs, then it would stand to reason that it’s not healthy to harbor tapeworms in one’s innards.

It’s interesting to note that dogs are always susceptible to worms because of the rooting around and scavenging that they do in the course of their daily activity. There are even worms that are spread by fleas and other disgusting insect life, which is yet another reason to avoid insect infestations. Dogs’ preoccupation with all things feces also predisposes them to exposure to all sorts of nasty things (sort of like little kids.) The difference with dogs is that they seem to have much hardier immune systems than humans- at least in regard to infectious disease- and digestive systems that can metabolize almost anything.

Lilo (and every other dog on the planet) might consider cat poop to be the highest of rare delicacies, but she won’t eat lettuce. Unless it’s soaked in Ranch dressing, that is.

I wonder if the health “benefit” one would gain by losing weight on the tapeworm diet would be negated by the effect of the tapeworms munching on stuff they shouldn’t be munching on. It’s one thing if they’re sharing that chili dog you had for lunch, but quite another if they are making a meal out of your liver, or your brain. I guess the bottom line on weight loss by parasite is that it’s probably ill advised.

As far as burning up calories the old fashioned way, a rousing round of housecleaning can do that. Even though it can count as exercise, I hate cleaning. I consider exercise to be a necessary evil also. I don’t like it, but I also don’t like the prospect of my ass being as big as the front end of my car. I don’t want to be the one trolling through the Newark WalMart in search of size 20 underwear.

These could also be a car cover for my Yaris. Just sayin’.

The problem with cleaning, in my house, is that it is an ongoing effort in futility. Jerry can destroy hours’ worth of scrubbing and cleaning in one drunk-n-stupid episode, as was evidenced last night. All he has to do is get good and besnookered, go out to “water the garden” at dusk, and then traipse back on in the house, flopping about, soaking wet with dog shit caked on his shoes.

Let me fling poo on your linoleum! YAY!!

Yes! My purpose in life has been fulfilled- scraping dog shit off of the linoleum in the foyer, and then in the kitchen (thank God I got to him before he made it to the carpet, which I had also just scrubbed and cleaned Saturday) and then getting to (joy and rapture) scrape the dog shit off his old-man velcro shoes and hose them down. Then I got to peel his wet and dirty clothes off the bathroom floor, and had to clean the floor up too. Never mind that I had scrubbed down and mopped the foyer, the kitchen and the bathroom on Saturday. Apparently I needed to do it again.

I would hire cleaning people. If I could afford them- and if I wouldn’t be embarrassed at what they might encounter.

I have found beer cans in places where beer cans should never go. Beer cans next to the toilet (why not just eliminate the middle man and pour the Natties right on down the john?) Beer cans in his underwear drawer. Once I even found a beer can in the litter box, which is making me wonder if Jerry is going down there (the cat boxes are in the basement) and helping the dogs sample the recycled feline buffet. If it were only beer cans, it wouldn’t be so bad, but Jerry’s filth parade goes far beyond beer cans.

Jerry is also an incorrigible smoker. If he removes a cellophane from a cig pack, it ends up where it lands- on the table, on the floor, in a house with a mouse- wherever, as long as it’s not in the trash. The cellophanes are just the tip of the iceberg, not to mention the bane of all vacuum cleaners, especially when encountered in combination with copious amounts of dog hair. Jerry also has essential tremor, so the world is his ashtray, literally. That’s part of the reason why it pisses me off so much when he smokes in my car. I don’t think he can actually make the ashes land in the ashtray, (in the car or at home) and I’m doing good when he actually puts the butts out in the ashtray instead of (acck, acck, acck) the toilet (bad enough) or in the sink. Removing nicotine stains from porcelain is just so much fun. I need just such a hobby.

It’s just depressing to spend an entire Saturday cleaning and the place is trashed again by Monday night.

Some more enlightened souls may ask, “Doesn’t Jerry do his share of the cleaning?” I know that there are some men who understand the importance of helping with errands, cleaning and stuff like that when their wives also work. However, the fact that I don’t have 24/7 to fetch stuff for, clean up after, and cook for His Nibs does not register with Jerry. Not at all. He was raised by wolves. He willingly wallows in squalor as long as it means he doesn’t have to think about where the beer cans, cig pack cellophanes, or dog shit lands.

So forgive me if I’m no Martha Stewart.

I can cook, but you can leave the decorating and cleaning to people who don’t live with Jerry.

Simply Enchanting, Insect Apocalypse, and Solitude is Elusive

June 12, 2012Tonya Lanthron 1 Comment

When I was a child I was terrified of almost everything- strange people, especially strange men, cops, other kids (because left to their own devices they generally beat the hell out of me,) strange places, being shoved and locked in closets, and I had an obsessive fear of being shot to death through the window, which considering the neighborhood we lived in until I was about 7 years old, wasn’t as irrational as it sounds. People in that little slice of redneck heaven liked to get drunk and shoot off their shotguns in the middle of the night, so who’s to say? But my most overwhelming childhood fear by far was of flying, stinging insects.

I still have a pretty hearty dislike for these bastards.

It didn’t help that my sisters (especially the oldest one, who was sadistic as hell) liked to toss live wasps in my hair. There’s a number of reasons why I wear my hair very short today. It is cooler, easier to color, and much easier to style, granted. It is also easier to keep it insect-free. It was bad enough to have live wasps tossed in one’s hair, but far worse when you have insanely thick hair that goes down to your waist. I still really hate anyone or anything- besides me- touching my hair. I’m weird about any kind of touching anyway. Going to the hairdresser every month or so for a simple cut (I color my hair myself) is a necessary evil, but I can’t say I enjoy it.

Anyway, I found it most distressing to be informed that the insect apocalypse has arrived in what was my grandparents’ house. Dad had rented Grandma’s old house out to a dude for the past two years who paid his rent and lived there without incident, but said dude died about three days after Dad landed in the hospital. The dude’s girlfriend had been keeping a dog there and for some reason the electric had been turned off. So she left the place- rotten food in the fridge, dog shit all over the floors, and unauthorized insect life- just as it was. Poor Spencer went in to examine the disaster and ended up completely covered in flea bites. God only knows, but I’m sure in that neighborhood that the roaches are living high off the hog in there, and possibly bed bugs too. There’s no way in hell I’m going anywhere near that.

Just call the exterminator, or the crime scene clean up people. It’s not worth it to try cleaning up that nightmare without having the Extreme Prejudice to do it.

I still don’t like bugs. Especially ones that leave welts.

So, I hope, when Dad is able to deal with his rentals, that he just gets the exterminator in there and lets them de-bug the place. I do not envy anyone the task of cleaning out a rotten fridge in high summer, but I would want the bugs annihilated first. Again, I think the crime-scene people are the way to go.

Some things may not technically be considered HAZMAT, but should be.

I did attempt- with little success- to get some quality leave-me-alone-dammit time in over the weekend. Mom calling me at 7:30 on Saturday just after I’d fed the dogs, let them out, got them back in, and then got Jerry out the door was a nice, annoying touch, since she usually never gets up any time before 10AM. I was hoping to be left alone Saturday at least between 8AM and noon but that wasn’t happening. It’s my own fault for forgetting to turn the damned phone off. It would be one thing had she been calling me for emergency purposes, but she was pretty much only calling me to bitch at me because Steve-o was rude to her and it was a rant that could have waited until later in the day, or even a rant she could have saved for one of her nosy friends.

To make it worse, when she got off the phone with me, no sooner than I’d hung up, and before I had the sentience of mind to turn the damned thing off, Steve-o called me with his own 37 minute rant on why he’s pissed that I’m not paying for his emergency room visit back in April. I listened to him vent, but pretty much responded with, “It’s called ‘you’re an adult now,’ so now you have to pay for your own shit.” It sucks enough that he’s still on my farking health insurance so my deductible and my weekly premiums are even higher. Needless to say, the cougar nap was out of the question Saturday morning, because I was so pissed by the time I got off the phone with him- after both his and Mom’s tirades- that I figured I might as well screw attempting to nap or read or even to put in a Journey DVD. I decided I might as well work off some of my aggravation and start the day’s business early.

Step one for a nice, solitary day: turn this son of a bitch OFF!!!

Admittedly since Dad’s surgery and stay at the rehab I have been loathe to turn the phone off just in case there is some sort of emergency. The sad thing is that I have no way of knowing the difference between a bullshit/nuisance call and an emergency call. Mom will call me for the most banally stupid things- usually when I am not in a good position to waste an hour listening to her vent about how she’s pissed that the WalMart messed up her scripts, or how much Dad whines about the food at the rehab place. Believe me, she is going to hear his whining about the quality and quantity of food available to him even worse when he gets home. He knows how to cook. I would suggest to him that as part of his rehab and recovery that he get really good at preparing his own meals.

Steve-o will whine and cry to me about virtually everything from how much he can’t stand how hot it gets at work, to how much he doesn’t like having to get up with his daughter in the middle of the night when he’s home, to how torqued he is that he can’t spend every dime of what he earns on playing with his cars. That gets old too. I feel for him as he does have a grueling schedule right now, but he sort of brought a lot of that on himself.

There’s no rest for the wicked. I ended up most of Saturday in WalMart with Mom (I don’t believe in purgatory, but dammit, that comes close- she’s slow and she knows everyone she sees) though I did get about half an hour in the Cougar Pool when I got home. Sunday I ended up going back up there and spending most of the day with Dad at the rehab. I hope he gets out this week, because I am going to stay home and in bed at least for a little while this weekend. Unless I have to bring him food he can actually eat.

I think we all know how to prevent these- but I love antique posters and such. This one is from WWI.

Not very politically correct, but it sure gets the message across.

Everyone Has a Purpose, Apparently Mine Involves Graciously Accepting Others’ Shit

May 17, 2012Tonya Lanthron 2 Comments

Suffice to say I’m not in a terribly great mood today. The pragmatic side of me says that Jerry was a bit overdue for a drunk-n-stupid episode- it’s been almost a week- so I should be happy with conveniently being out of town and missing the Monday Night drunk-n-stupid. The only problem with that was I got the Wednesday Night make-up round complete with two of the three elements I hate about the drunk-n-stupids. One, he started in about money, blissfully ignorant of how much I just plain pay out for his skank ass, and also blissfully ignorant that when you sell crap on E-Bay you have to pay a fee on it, and you have to pay to ship it. Explaining anything involving money or expenses to him when he’s trashed is like nailing Jell-o to a tree. I should have just nodded my head and agreed with him- because when he’s shitfaced (even more than when he’s sober) he thinks any crazy shit that pops up in his head is Gospel truth, but I was stupid and decided to set him straight on a few things. Mistake.

So I got the oat opera torture until midnight and an attempt at drunken groping that was not only futile but just plain disgusting. The problem is the only time he even gets horny is when he’s shitfaced, and the only thing he can do about it is slobber all over me and wave his nasty cigarettes around and spill beer all over everything. Blecch. My standards admittedly are low, but that’s just plain nasty. There are a few things that can put an old cougar off doing the wild thing with the quickness:

Cigarettes. Even back in the day when I smoked, I had the common courtesy to wait until AFTER the deed was done to light up. Now that I haven’t smoked for years, just smelling cig smoke is enough to make me gag- without waving the damn thing in my face, ashing all over the place, and getting way too close to putting burn holes in my sheets and my skin.

Few people are more passionate about their hatred of smoking than ex-smokers. Believe it.

Being shitfaced. Natty Lite is not good for the breath. Especially when you’re belching up used Natties in my face. Waving the half-full beer can around in my bed, and possibly even spilling some of that embalming fluid swill in my bed sheets while doing so, does not earn any points for charm either. Go back to your own hole and be shitfaced by yourself.

If you drink your dinner, do the world a favor- sleep alone.

Country music. Country music has to be the #1 anaphrodisiac for me, save for extreme body odor. Being that I am nothing to look at, and am proportioned like a mutant troll I can’t be terribly picky. But start playing that awful song about saving a horse and riding a cowboy and you might as well understand that you’re not getting any action from me until you turn that torture off.

I may be poor and white and mostly self-educated, but my family tree does actually fork.

Needless to say, even though he hasn’t had a woody since Bill Clinton was president (and probably never will again), last night was not the time to try to resurrect the dead. It was certainly not a good time to start in pawing and slobbering on me.

Normally his drunk-n-stupids are just part of life, but last night’s really got on my nerves. Dad is in the intensive care up north awaiting bypass surgery on Monday. I spent most of the day Tuesday with Mom while the Dr.s were trying to figure out what was going on with him and what to do. Now that they know what’s going on and what they’re going to do, they’re pretty much just watching him and trying to get his sugar and sinus infection under control before then. I decided he can watch History Channel just fine in the meanwhile without me sitting around up there not getting anything done except exposing myself to exotic germs and various funky assed diseases- whilst sticking to the god-awful uncomfortable vinyl hospital chair.

Even so, I’m worn out and freaking out at the prospects of Dad having to have open heart surgery and all that, so I don’t need a ditzy assed drunk keeping me awake and being an obnoxious little titty baby. Granted, I know that Jerry is both a ditzy assed drunk and a titty baby- he is truly helpless -which is aggravating as hell to me.

Shit: one of the most common elements in the universe. Stupidity is the other.

This is a guy that if one of the dogs gets a case of the shits and unloads on the floor (fortunately the girls are trained, and this does not happen often) the first thing he will announce when I come in the door is, “Somebody shit on the floor and you need to clean it up!”

Oh, how many times I have wanted to rub his nose in it. I don’t expect him to get the rug cleaner out, but at least make an attempt. Scrape it into a bag or something. It’s just shit. As long as you don’t eat it, it shouldn’t kill you.

I know he was raised by wolves, but come on.

Drunken Tilling! Everyone Has a Double, and Here’s to the Mysteries of Life!

May 3, 2012Tonya Lanthron 2 Comments

Sometimes I am truly amazed and humbled by things I don’t understand.

Especially how Jerry has managed to live 55 years and still has all of his fingers and toes. Then again, since he only has ten of each, he may have lost some in the past. It’s probably in poor taste for me to make a West Virginia joke, but it’s not uncommon in some parts of WV for entire families to have six or seven toes on each foot. Maybe he had more genetic diversity in his family than in others, because I think he was born with the customary ten toes and ten fingers, which is a good thing. I went to school with a guy who had six toes on each foot, and he also had a thing for eating boogers, paint and dead bugs. I don’t think extra digits=extra intelligence, but I’m no geneticist, so there may not be any correlation between having too many toes and whether or not your mamma and your sister are the same woman. (“Aunt Mom??”)

Anyway, back to more of Jerry’s drunken activities. Last night’s drunken activity of the evening was tilling. For those who are extremely urban and have never grown a garden, or observed someone grow a garden, tilling is what you have to do to break up the ground so you can put seeds or plants in it. Our garden plot is somewhat large, which means manual tilling, with a shovel or hoe (also a digging tool, but not to be confused with “ho”) is not practical. Tilling a large garden plot requires a roto-tiller, which is a funky thing that is powered by a lawnmower engine, but in the front of it there are vertical, rotating tines that dig up the ground (versus a horizontal blade like a lawnmower.)

It would be in one’s best interest to be relatively sober when operating such a potentially dangerous machine, but Jerry was at least a 12 pack into it. So he is traipsing through the mud with the tiller dragging him along. His shoes ended up so caked with mud that I am surprised the dog shit he stepped in on the way in the house managed to stick to them, but of course, dog shit sticks to anything. I could have killed him for tracking in dog shit (again) but in his defense I don’t think he could see it and I’d be surprised if he could have smelled it as shitfaced as he was. I retrieved the shoes, tossed them on the back porch and of course, had to clean up the shit that got tracked all over the floor.

Just a quick passing observation. Legend has it everyone has a double. Even Obama. I couldn’t stop laughing the other night when Jerry and I were watching “The Legend of Awesomest Maximus,” which is about the most corny spoof of Greek mythology I’ve ever seen in my life. The movie was funny in a puerile, sophomoric way as most National Lampoon humor is- nothing highbrow here-but my uncontrollable, blow-iced-tea-out-my-nose laughter was caused by the uncanny resemblance shown here:

This is King Erotic, the evil king of Greece (from “The Legend of Awesomest Maximus”)

I think they look alike. Too alike. Creepy.

Back to Nature, Hardware Salad, and “Mother” Does Not Start with “S”

May 11, 2011Tonya Lanthron Leave a comment

Kids change a lot in the span of about ten years. Ten year olds and (nearly) twenty year olds don’t really have much in common. Ten years ago, Steve-o was collecting Beanie Babies and Pokemon cards. He slept with a night light until he was twelve because his evil biological grandmother decided he should sleep in a dark basement when he was four years old (that ended her visitations…) and that experience must have done something to traumatize him for a long, long time. Admittedly my evil ex mother-in-law was pretty damned scary, even for adults. I am glad she didn’t have life insurance on me and I didn’t have anything of any real value for her to inherit had I been stupid enough to put her in my will or make her executor of my estate. No wonder her son turned out to be the poster child for OCD and all sorts of other psychological abnormalities. (must…not…offend…Mother…) I think she still has some pretty hefty life insurance policies on my ex and she would score big if he dropped dead. She is probably still sitting on the million or so that she inherited when her various relatives all died- and left all their cash and other assets to her. But enough about my evil ex mother-in-law. She is quite fine where she is, with her Hardware Salad and her measuring cup.

Today Steve-o is collecting Snap-On tools, various performance upgrade parts for his ’68 VW Bug, and empty Jagermeister bottles. I think he has moved on from sleeping with a night light on to sleeping on compliant females, but even to this day he does not like to sleep either alone or in the dark. Creepy. I have to wonder if the old bat tried to make him eat Hardware Salad too.

I know I wanted to get off the subject of my ex mother-in-law, but Hardware Salad deserves a bit of an explanation. I think she was trying to do Waldorf Salad or something of that nature, but Hardware Salad, as near as I can tell, included:

Pretzels

Carrot peelings

Apple pieces, core and seeds included

Red Grapes, including pits (I assume because non-pitted grapes are cheaper)

Assorted Nuts (nut assortments are cheaper than just walnuts)

Loads of greasy mayonnaise (acck, acck, acck, my throat is filling up with snot drainage just thinking about it)

Celery

Sauerkraut? I swear that’s what it was- as a substitute for coconut??? I have no earthly idea.

Marshmallows (????WTF??)

Vinegar

All of the above is set in lime Jell-o, (???) and topped with a tiny teaspoon of watery, off-brand Cool Whip.

Between the grape pits and the pretzels and the occasional apple seed, (not to mention celery and I suspect sauerkraut,) this had to be the most vile dessert ever known to man. Thankfully on the rare occasion she invited you to dinner, she measured out portions with a measuring cup so that she could budget for every penny she spent on food. It was only necessary to gag down precisely 1/2 cup of this stuff for politeness’ sake, and I’m assuming that one teaspoon more of it would induce projectile vomiting. I only gagged it down because I was taught from earliest childhood that when you are a guest at someone’s home you eat what is served, even if it is lacquer thinner with bat turds in it. To do otherwise would be rude, and the Wicked Witch actually thought her Hardware Salad (I forget what she actually called it) was the best dessert ever. I don’t puke easily, but that stuff was nasty. I cringe to this day just thinking about it. It’s sad that after all these years I can still see and actually taste this disaster of a dessert. Acck. I hope poor Steve-o was never subjected to it. The Graham crackers were bad enough. It would have been OK if she’d had enough sense not to give a 20 month old toddler the entire box.

Steve-o looked a lot different before the Puberty ~~Fairy~~ Demon hit too. He had a pleasant soprano voice not unlike my own, complete with Central Ohio Newscaster Accent. On the rare occasions when I would answer his phone (cruel, that, but fun in a mildly malicious sort of way) his buddies would mistake me for him. Oh, the things his buddies would say to me until they realized it was not Steve-o, but Steve-o’s Mom, which brought about a distinct change in their subject matter and tone. Then he woke up one morning six inches taller, with an unfamiliar and ominous sounding baritone voice, a hair style reminiscent of Robert Plant in 1971, 7/8″ earrings, back hair, a libido to rival Casa Nova, and an Attitude from hell. That testosterone is pretty powerful stuff, apparently.

What an odd resemblance. Above is Steve-o in the outhouse, below is Robert Plant sometime in the early 70’s.

There’s a long, long way between pic#1 and pic#2, believe that. He parted with the Robert Plant hairstyle shortly after this pic was taken, although the earrings and the funky beard remain.

He looks better with short hair, and even maybe a little less evil. If he does bother to read my blog, which I doubt, because he would have had a major tizzy fit about the Feces Fountain Incident being recorded for posterity, and for all to see, I’m sure he won’t like me using his Facebook pic. Oh, well. If you post your pic online without explicitly stating that no one else can use it, I guess you’re asking for it. At least I didn’t Photo Shop it first and do something outrageous like put Boy George’s head on his body or something.

I am trying to decide which annual plants to put in my flower beds. I think I will stick with wave petunias- they did well the last couple of times I bothered to plant flowers. The rose bushes have a lot of buds on them and I am looking forward to the roses blooming. That’s as close to nature as I like to get. Flowers- and the Cougar Pool when it gets here. I am looking forward to that.

elysianhunter’s “Inferno” (Hell as I See It) and Its Denizens, Swamp Life, and I Need a Hobby

May 4, 2011Tonya Lanthron Leave a comment

I believe in a literal hell. Dante did too, although he was a far better writer than I, and his perspective on hell is distinctively colored by Roman Catholic traditions and the political intrigues of his day. The French have a saying: “Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.” The literal English translation is, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” The Cliff’s Notes English translation is a simple acronym: SSDD. (Same Shit, Different Day.) It can be not only good satire to envision the populace of hell from time to time, it can also prove cathartic. The thought that greater punishment awaits those who offend me might keep me from throttling someone, who knows?

I’m going to start off my virtual tour of hell with Beezelbub himself, even though Ol’ Splitfoot is on a brief hiatus from life in hell, and is currently wreaking nine kinds of havoc here on earth:

As you can see, right now, Lucifer has been loosed upon the earth to deceive the masses and to gather up his minions. He is acting swiftly, and with a vengeance, because his time is short. I hope his time in office is very short. My countdown to January 20, 2013 reads 626 days, 7 hours and 53 minutes as of the minute I am typing this.

Fannyzilla, at the Gates of Hell, says: “Yoose is Skrewed! Abandonn Yer Chezebooger! Yoose No Can Has Chezebooger No Mo!”

The first level of hell belongs to People Who Drive Like Assholes.

You know them. We have all been behind the idiot who doesn’t realize he is tooling all over creation with only one (barely) working tail light. That’s bad enough, but if you rear-end the prick, the cop is going to cite you. I’ve had more than a few ABS checks (believe me, you will know it when you lock up your brakes and engage the ABS system) because some people are too stupid to occasionally check their bulbs. Included in this category also is the idiot who insists in staying in your blind spot and not letting you over, the rapper whose car vibrates his car, your car and the pavement at every stop light while he’s treating everyone in half the county to a hideous diatribe about cop killing and sister-rape, and the bimbo who can’t talk on the phone and operate her turn signal at the same time.

The first level people will get to spend eternity forced to sit in a Dr.s’ office waiting room whilst being bombarded with whatever swill is on daytime network TV,i.e., Oprah, Montel, Jerry Springer, Judge du Jour, and you will be surrounded by sickies who are snotting and sneezing all over you. The worst part is, just like in Dr.s’ offices here on earth, you will wait and wait and wait and you will never be called in.

Level Two is reserved for people who fail to control their heathen rugrats in Target, Wal Mart, Kroger’s or any other public emporium where everyone must go at some point to buy survival items (such as food, hair color and toilet paper) that can’t generally be purchased online.

The punishment will fit the crime. Level Two residents will be condemned to walk the aisles of Target for eternity, surrounded by Queen Banchee (the memorable five year old who once stood in the end of the shopping cart screaming her lungs out all over Target while her Mom just kept plodding along in an apparent Valium-induced catatonic haze) and her minions as they scream, writhe on the floor, run all over the store, throw pointy things, and generally make you forget why you went to Target in the first place. You are doomed to wander the Target store, with these wretched urchins as your constant companions, and you never will remember that you went to Target in the first place because you were out of toilet paper.

Level Three is for corrupt politicians and bold face liars, such as those who gravitate toward pandering careers in media.

I won’t just go ahead and just say “Democrats” because there might be one or two good ones out there, and there may be a GOP’er or two that lands on the shady side. I mean corrupt politicians on the scale of a Bill Clinton- a guy who seriously questions things like the meaning of the word “is,” and who answers to a moral dilemma by stating that oral sex isn’t really sex. I also mean media personalities who can flat out lie to the American people and spin the truth a 180- with a straight face. Level Three residents will be doomed to an eternity of living in a giant cat box. Imagine if you were about the same size as a Barbie doll and you were forced to stay in the cat box forever, even when the cat, who is three times your size, drops in to drop a deuce. On your head. And the cat “offerings” are also your dinner. That would be Level Three. In life you fed people shit and expected them to eat it and like it. Now it’s your turn. Bon Appetit!

The Fourth Level (and this is the final level in my version of hell, because you can’t get much worse than living in a cat box and eating cat shit for eternity) is reserved for the most vile of them all. Child molesters, rapists and murderers end up here.

Fourth Level scumbags will receive kerosene enemas 24-7, with eternally burning kerosene. While the enemas are taking place, all will be forced to listen to the song “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?” by Culture Club, and watch the accompanying video. All Boy George, all the time.

Yes, for the record, I would like to hurt him. I’d kick him in the crotch, but I doubt if there’s anything there.

Life here in the Central Ohio swamp would be a bit nicer if we actually did see the sun once in awhile (this pic was taken last year) but the torrential rains (yes, I know May is still Monsoon season) this year are a bit much. Poor Sheena had to drop a deuce in a driving downpour this morning. They have the “Potty Patch” for ankle biters so they can do the deed in the house, but that’s not practical for bigger dogs who put off gallons of liquid waste and solid wastes are measured in “shovelfuls.” For reference: a dog will eliminate ten percent of his/her body weight per day. A 50# dog will leave 5# of waste per day. Given that my dogs are 55#, 65# and 65#, that’s 18 1/2# of dog waste generated by my girls every day. They are not going to use the inside of the house as their toilet. Short of them actually using the toilet and flushing, I can’t think of any containment device that can deal with that volume of toxic waste.

Big dogs need a lean-to relief station- outside, sort of like the beer tent at a street festival, only the dogs would be more discreet in relieving themselves. This way they’re still outside but they don’t have to stand and squat in a downpour. I have to contemplate this one. Everyone needs a hobby. Keeping my dogs dry while they pinch a loaf would be a very good thing.

The Squattin’ Station. For big dogs, so they can drop their loads outside and still stay dry. The only thing is that in Central Ohio you would need to be sure to anchor it securely otherwise the wind will pick it up and drop it off in the next county.

ELYSIANHUNTER, ALWAYS INCITEFUL:

Because comedy is the flipside of tragedy

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