I’m not generally the kind of person that goes around spouting sunshine out of my nether regions.  At best I’m pragmatic.  At worst I’m downright fatalistic, and that’s when the panic attacks and confusion set in. Anxiety sucks. I’ve taken that trip before, and I do NOT want to go there.  The past few days I’d been heading down that dark spiral, and letting things get on my nerves entirely too much, but today things are looking up.  I attribute the improvement in my mental/emotional state to the positive power of prayer.  Despite my dark mood last night, I dragged myself to my bible study class, and as usual, the conversation and the study material was both timely and spoke to my own dissatisfaction and melancholy.  There are times when I need a bit of a nudge to keep from falling into the same boring rut and despair.  After all, I have much to be thankful for, and I do have some activities to look forward to.

Saturday night I’m taking Steve-o to the Mansfield Reformatory.  This is the old prison where the movie Shawshank Redemption was filmed.  On the surface that sounds terrible, and normally the words prison and fun should never go together, but there’s an event called the Dead Walk that’s held around Halloween every year where you get to go through the prison, and legend has it, get the holy bejeebers scared out of you.  I love Halloween and all things slasher (I’m the only one Steve-o could get to take him to the Saw movies) so it should be a cool trip.

Zombies are awesome.  I’ll have to find a DVD of Shaun of the Dead to enjoy at the campground.

Next week I have actually arranged to take my three sanity days (Wednesday, Thursday and Friday) and I’m taking Clara down to the campground for some peace and quiet.  Since the campground is pretty deserted during the week- especially in the off season- I want Clara with me.  If I want to use the phone there I have to go to the top of the hill, and even then Sprint access is sporadic.

Nobody gets past Clara.  Unless she approves.

Clara, on the other hand, is always alert, and I would have have plenty of advance notice should anyone turn up unannounced.   So all I need to do is bring some DVDs, some reading material, the MP3 player, clean clothes and toiletries and stop off at the grocery store in town for a few days’ meal fixings and it’s all cool.   Hopefully Jerry won’t ruin the blissful silence by coming down there. Then I’ll end up driving five miles one way to fetch his beer, smokes, lottery tickets and so forth, whenever he runs out of any of those.   My dream vacation- driving into the nearest town at all hours to fetch for Jerry.  I’d rather be at work.  It sounds mean, but a vacation with him is just work for me.  He gets plenty of rest at home.  I’m always doing his leg work for him.   He doesn’t need a vacation. The idea here is for me to get away and not be pestered.  However, I have a bad feeling he’s going to end up going down there.  If he stays home he might actually have to fix a meal, or heaven forbid, cart his own happy ass to the drive thru that’s just down the road (well within walking distance) to replenish his beer, smokes and lottery ticket needs.

Jerry, it’s not like we live in the ‘hood.  The drive-thru is not in Detroit on 8 Mile Road for heaven’s sake.

I’ve been on 8 Mile Road in Detroit.  Jerry had bought some wheels on E-Bay from someone up there on local pick up.  The dude lived in a very horrible neighborhood, which we didn’t realize until we got up there. I had both doors locked on the truck, and even at a stop light I kept it in first with the clutch in, ready to take off quick should the truck be jumped- and this was in broad daylight. Suffice to say it appears to be a war zone, and so far is the only place I’ve ever been in my life that is worse than both Cleveland and East St. Louis.   I never lost anything in Detroit and have no desire to go back there.  I did enjoy the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, but even getting there requires one to drive in places one should never attempt to drive- unless you have an armored car.

I’m pretty sure Steve-o wasn’t trolling about in the CVS looking for cosmetics.

I’d warned Steve-o about the diversity he might experience in the area around Children’s Hospital when the baby had to go there a few months ago.  We used to live near that area but now the hospital has bought up a good deal of the real estate, and what’s left has either been “gentrified” (aka: made too expensive for rednecks to live there) or ironically, taken over by crack-heads.  Steve-o wanted to walk over to the CVS to get smokes and pop with sugar in it (which they don’t sell in the hospital) so I cautioned him to watch his back because he’s used to rural locales and rural rednecks.  Steve-o no sooner arrives at the CVS when a rather effeminate man taps him on the shoulder and whispers, “Honey, I’ve got just what you need.”  Steve-o is not a small guy, and he’s also not shy.  Steve-o looked the little dude in the eye, shaked his fist, and replied, “I’ve got just what you need right here.”  Fortunately there was no altercation.  I don’t care about other’s lifestyle choices, but the mommy-claws still kind of come out on that one, which is weird, because Steve-o is perfectly capable of fending off unwanted attention.  It’s still creepy – at least to me.

Other people’s lifestyle choices don’t bother me as long as they’re not shoved in my face.  I could care less- until or unless the bull dykes hit on me.  So far that hasn’t happened, and I am glad for it.  Then I might have a problem, should a simple “I’m straight,” fail to deflect unwanted advances.  I probably won’t ever have to worry about it.  I don’t get hit on by men either.

I am no paragon of good parenting skills, but at least I never did this.

Steve-o did get himself duct-taped to a core support once, when he was about nine, but that’s his just dessert for mouthing off to the guys at the body shop.  Nine year old boys do tend to exaggerate their ass-kicking skills a bit much.  I only wish I’d gotten a pic of him hanging off the core support of that F-150.  Call me a mean mommy, but I made him beg and plead and cry “Uncle” so the guys would cut him down.   I hope that didn’t warp him any more than he warped the guy who he decorated with a Sharpie.  I guess it’s not good to be the first guy to pass out at a party, at least if it’s a party Steve-o is attending.   His buddy woke up with the word “PENIS” emblazoned on his forehead in black Sharpie, backward, so he could read it clearly when he looked in the mirror.

If this is how some people treat their friends…