Cold Turkey Blues

This morning, while MDH was sleeping, I watched His Girl Friday starring Cary Grant, Rosalind Russel and Unfiltered Lucky Strikes. The plot involves constantly lighting one cigarette after another with various types of matches, lighters (and sometimes the previous, still lit cigarette), deeply inhaling and langorously blowing smoke out of their noses and mouths, without a care in the world, in each other's general direction. There was some other back story involving a divorce and a newspaper. I couldn't really concentrate because I WANT A CIGARETTE.

I expect I will feel this way for the rest of my life. Wanting something I can't have.

It blows, so to speak.

A Ramblin' Post About My Whacked Out Granny

I spent half my weekend crying with one orifice or another of mine aimed over the toilet bowl and now I've caught some kind of head cold. I feel OK. I'm a little sneezy and snotty, and I've got a bit of a headache and even though I'm not feeling that great myself, I'm still taking care of MDH who has started to recover from his own rotten head cold.

When I'm sick I'd much rather be left alone than pampered. Today's story is inspired by bad childhood memories and attempts made by well meaning, but misguided adults, namely my grandma, to pamper or take care of me.

Get ready for some father and grandmother bashing and exaggerations. Yes. Grandmother. Bashing.

Hold tight, I speak (mostly) the truth!

My mother was always too busy to fuss over me the way that I perceived of other mothers doing. I got what I needed, but she didn't fuss. She worked a full time job, took care of a special needs daughter (my sister) and took care of everything having to do with our household.

My dad, on the other hand, did nothing. Unless you count drink beer, lord over the television and golf. It was a different generation and back then men were only required to earn a paycheck and their household and child rearing responsibilities were considered fulfilled. Dad was basically useless and not to be relied upon for fussing or pampering.

The only time I was ever pampered and fussed over was when my grandma stayed with us and I didn't much like it.

I always had the feeling that she was only being so nice to me so that she could stick it to my mom, as if to say "Watch this, Unworthy Daughter-In-Law - If only you weren't so busy setting the accounting world on fire, you could stay home and take care of this poor, neglected child properly."

Grandma didn't approve of women who had careers.

Grandma never listened to me and always got me all wrong too. Like the time I spilled orange juice down the front of myself as I was rushing out the door for school. I was in the 4th grade. Grandma happened to be on the phone with my mother at the time, who was at work. "Oh Dear God - I've got to hang up!", she yelled, "Lady has just vomited!" Then Grandma grabbed me and ripped off my shirt and told me there was no way I was going to school.

When I told her that I'd only spilled the juice, she thought I was lying and made me stay home.

It might sound like a good gig, but it wasn't. I would rather have gone to school than have stayed home with my grandmother watching game shows and soap operas all day long. She wouldn't let me eat anything all day either for fear that I would throw it back up again and periodically she tried to take my temperature with the old fashioned kind of thermometer.

Yeah.

When my mother got home from work I complained to her that I wasn't sick at all and had been held hostage, starved, tortured with bad TV and subjected to fighting off regular attempts at anal probes. She understood my dilemma, but was unable to do anything about it because apparently nobody ever questioned the wisdom and authority of my grandmother.

I didn't understand the full extent of my family's support and blind loyalty to my grandmother until I was a teenager and my mother went on a week long, ladies only vacation with a couple of my aunts.

Since my father was completely useless in the household and child care department, he took the week off work to stay with my sister and me while my mother was away, because apparently working all day and taking care of children when he got home was way more than he could handle.

It wasn't even like it was summer time - we were in school all day.

So incompetent was he, that merely taking time off work was not enough. He called my grandmother to come and help him out during his time of need. I begged him not to and argued that I was 15 and old enough to take care of all three of us while Mom was away. It was no use.

It was one of the most miserable weeks of my life which started off with a lecture from my dad in which he basically said, "Do everything your grandmother tells you to do - AND NO LIP!"

The madness began almost immediately when my sister asked for macaroni and cheese for dinner. My sister had some pretty significant speech problems and my grandmother never seemed to understand what she was saying. My frustrated sister went to the pantry, grabbed a box of Mac & Cheese and handed it to my grandmother.

Grandma correctly took this to mean that my sister was hungry, but refused to make food from a box as requested by a child, so my sister watched in horror as Grandma threw the Mac & Cheese in the trash and made instead something from scratch that our dad liked called SOS. AKA "Shit on a Shingle", which is essentially flour gravy with ground beef served on toast.

It is every bit as disgusting as it sounds and my sister and I hated it.

In my grandmother's world men ruled supreme, especially the ones she had given birth to, and children should be seen and not heard. Especially girl children. I hated her.

My sister and I both got in trouble with our dad because we refused to eat the SOS. Apparently not eating it would hurt grandma’s feelings so he forced us to choke it down. Now I hated him too.

My grandmother and I had a complicated relationship. I didn't really hate her. I loved her, but I certainly didn't understand her.

The best way I can put it into perspective is to say that if you've ever seen the movie Coal Miner's Daughter, my father's family lived in the the next holler over from where that movie took place, the rural, coal mining Kentucky of the first half of the 20th century. My grandfather, grandma's first husband, wore overalls with a straw hat, mined coal and in his spare time made corn whiskey in a bathtub still he hid in the woods behind their house. Like the perfect caricature of a hillbilly, he smoked a corn cob pipe.

Grandma didn't understand me either. She was concerned that I wasn't interested enough in boys or getting married and thought I spent way too much time reading. She thought I was "uppity" and warned my parents, when I expressed an interest in going to college that I was "gettin' above my raisin". I never let her find out that I didn't believe in God. It would have killed her.

Anyhoo... let's get back to the week my mom left my sister and me alone for an entire week with my grandmother and my dad, AKA the Hillbilly Mutual Admiration Society.

OK, so we had to eat food we didn't like, and do chores that we didn't normally have to do while Dad and Grandma laid around all day watching soap operas and game shows. Unpleasant yes, but totally survivable.

Then I stepped on a broken Coke bottle in the garage and sliced the bottom of my foot open and my grandmother tried to kill me with my father's blessing.

Why I was barefoot in the garage and how a broken bottle got there I don't remember, but suffice it to say that it was a deep gash of the won't stop bleeding variety. It hurt too.

Still, in hindsight, I probably should have kept my stupid mouth shut, knowing that under the circumstances I was going to be subjected to my grandmother's favorite backwoods remedy and answer to all problems of the open wound variety - Campho Phenique.

Under normal circumstances and had my mother been home I probably would have gone to the hospital and gotten stitches.

Instead, I squeezed my father's hand off while my grandmother doused my deep open wound with liquid camphor. It was all so very World War One in the trenches. I was surprised they didn't just pour moonshine on it and cut my foot off at the knee with a hacksaw while I chewed on a leather strap.

Needless to say the cut didn't heal. Not only didn't it heal, but I developed a fever and my foot swelled to gangrenous and pus-dripping proportions so large that I was not able to put on a shoe - thereby not able to go to school. Meaning I had to stay home all day, tolerating the painful, periodic reapplication of the Campho Phenique and eating left over SOS with the two people at the top of my teenage shit list.

At one point I pulled my dad off to the side and tried to reason with him. "Dad, I think my foot is infected and Grandma just keeps putting Campho Phenique on it. I think I need stitches and a prescription for antibiotics." But he was too far under her spell. "Shhhh! Don't let yer Grandma hear you talkin' like that", he whispered. "That'll hurt her feelings. Besides she raised 15 children to grown. She knows what she's doing."

Of course common sense, reason and penicillin replaced folk wisdom and Civil War era camphor poultices when my mom returned home. I was whisked to the doctor and cared for properly, given stitches and antibiotics.

In yer face batty old woman.

I still have the scar on the bottom of my foot.

So there you go... this big long gripe about my grandmother to explain why I do not like to be fussed over.

I can take care of myself just fine thank you and stay the hell away from me with that Vick's Vapo Rub.

Patch Key In My Man Hands

Today I am feeling mighty low.

I've got a lot working against my favor as I am recovering from a couple of days with a stomach flu and taking care of MDH who returned home from a Las Vegas red eye flight yesterday with jet lag and a rotten head cold. We've barely spoken because he's been sleeping almost non stop and when he's awake I'm staying the hell away from him so I don't catch his... whatever it is. I slept in the guest room last night.

Then the cashier at the supermarket called me "sir".

Twice.

One time was no big deal, but the second time caused me to question my sexuality and to nearly twist off the rearview mirror in my car in an effort to search my body for signs of a mustache and back hair. Being called "sir" twice in 5 minutes can make a girl a bit paranoid. After I came home and put away the items that needed refrigerated, I abandoned the canned goods on the kichen counter so that I could immediately run to the bathroom to further scrutinize my appearance in the magnifying mirror.

Crazy bitch cashier. There is nothing manly about me.

Even if MDH was feeling up to par this is not a subject I can broach with him. He'd think it was ridiculous and he would be correct.

On a brighter note, yesterday when I was at the salon getting my highlights retouched my stylist Becky offered me something called a Paczki (Patch-Key) and it was fucking delicious. Anyone heard of this? Apparently it's some kind of Polish doughnut made especially for Lent. Anybody ever hear of Lent? This is all new to me. I bought half a dozen cherry filled ones today at the store.

Hey Sailor, Wanna Teach Me Oracle?

I decided that I felt good enough today to try to set up an appointment with a local university that I discovered recently has exactly the degree program I've been looking for. I'm hoping that most of my credits from the degree I already have will transfer and that I can take a few courses and get a second degree with very little fuss. I despise a fuss.

I've known about the program for a couple of weeks and probably should have tried to set this shit up before today, but I tend to put off most things that require communication with total strangers unless it's an emergency - or a pizza delivery.

I set out, as is my usual habit with all things informational, by pulling up the university website and trying to find a "Contact Us" button or link. There was none. I finally decided to click on a "Questions & Answers" link which brought up an e-form that I reluctantly started filling out.

First Name, Last Name, email address, Date of Birth, How did you find out about us, radio buttons to choose my interest in a bachelor's or graduate program that upon clicking opened up another e-form, which I also reluctantly started filling out and soon realized was similar to an admissions form.

Whoa! Slow down there Sailor. I barely know you. Can't we sit down and have a drink and some harmless flirtation before you feel me up?

At some point another little window popped up that asked me if I wanted to chat live with a university representative. I clicked the "Yes" button and started asking my questions via chat with "Angela", who was no help at all.

Angela: I will be happy to email you all the information you need.

She then proceeded to email me exactly the same useless shit that I already had looked at from their website.

Me: Can someone just call me?

Apparently this isn't how they do things. I have to fill out the forms and give them, my name, address, phone numbers, email, and left tit before anyone will be able to contact me to answer my questions.

Does this seem dubious to you? It felt wrong. It seemed cheap and impersonal and now I'm furious and sure I'm going to get a dozen spam emails a day from this place.

All I want is to ask some questions and possibly set up an appointment to meet with someone. How fucking hard is that?

Why do they need to know my birth date?

After I cooled down I looked them up in the good old fashioned phone book. There are about 10 numbers and I intend to call them all, one by one, until I speak to a real live human being who can answer my questions and convice me they are on the level and not trying to screw me before I agree to go there in person. Not today though. Tomorrow for sure.

Hello I'm Miserable

For the first time in I don't even remember how long I am ill.

Nasty ill.

You can read about it here. I haven't got the strength to post about it twice.

Tink Itt's Brocken?

Haz annyboddy elst notaced tat teh spelcheker on Blogger iz nit werkin?

True Romance Really Stinks

Long ago when MDH and I first met and fell in love, we agreed that we would treat each other with love and kindness every day of the year and that we would never, under any circumstances celebrate Valentine's Day.

As a veteran single gal I spent many a Valentine's Day alone and dateless watching other women gushing over roses sent to the office while they twittered excitedly about engagement rings and candlelit dinners.

Of course I wasn't single for that long without recieving my fair share of cheap teddy bears, heart shaped Whitman's samplers, awkward greeting cards addressed to "My Special Friend" and single red roses wrapped in plastic tubes purchased as an afterthought from a stooped over old lady selling them from a bucket in a bar (a single wed wose, how womantic). These empty gestures almost always seem to be followed by the inevitable break up.

Valentine's Day = bitter disappointment

MDH shared my feelings about this trumped up Hallmark holiday and I was enchanted.

I knew that MDH was the man for me after we had been dating about 8 weeks. Not because of all of the mushy stuff that people normally wax romantic about. In fact, it's probably kind of gross. We had been to the movies and were walking quietly, snuggled close, hand in hand in a misty rain through the parking lot back to the car, discussing our feelings about romance in general and ours in particular. When the rain started to come down harder I quickened my pace. He let loose of my hand to let me run ahead and when it seemed I was just out of earshot, he farted.

I was astounded.

MDH always looks as if he has just stepped out of the dress shirt section of the Eddie Bauer catalog. Starched button down shirts with pressed khaki pants and polished dress shoes is his standard uniform. He is very put together and corporate looking, always freshly shaved and not a hair out of place. He dressed this way for our dates, even when we went drinking at dive bars or out for pizza slices and it was a welcome change to the sorts of bewhiskered slacker clowns I had become accustomed to dating. He was a well groomed breath of fresh smelling Irish Spring air.

Honestly? He seemed a little too perfect. It was intimidating.

We were at the stage in our courtship where we had become intimate, confessed a true and deep emotional connection to one another and had spoken out loud that we each saw this relationship as "really going somewhere". But our love was still quite new and although we had been open minded in the boudoir, we were still getting to know each other and had not yet reached that place where either one of us had admitted to the other or to ourselves that we were human.

The man gave every indication that he believed I was a goddess and I planned to keep it that way for as long as possible, which meant a closed bathroom door and gaseousness in all forms supressed. That fart, and the fact that he waited to release it until he thought I wouldn't hear it, spoke volumes about his high opinion of me and I was honored.

But at the same time I realized I could finally relax and then I couldn't resist...

Me: Did you just fart and then pretend like you didn't?

Him: I had to clear an obstruction.

His authoritative and official sounding response still makes me laugh out loud to this very day, and it opened the floodgates, so to speak and set the tone and unspoken rules about openness and bathroom humor we follow to this very day.

Romance isn't flowers and candle light. Real romance is being kissed with morning breath and finding someone sexy while they run the sweeper or mow the lawn.

It's knowing that you are free to be yourself and share opinions.

It's looking at that person in a new way every single day, seeing them change and grow, but knowing they are exactly the same as they always were.

It's knowing that that person will be there every single goddamn day for the rest of your life, in your face, behind your back, in and out, back to front, upside down and not only not minding, but looking forward to it.

Finding sweat pants, messy hair and stinky feet adorable is true love.

I say Fuck Valentine's Day, but if you do choose to celebrate this bullshit holiday - DON'T BE LAME. At this point you've got 2 whole weeks to plan something meaningful so don't wait until the last minute - book a reservation at the romantic restaurant now so you don't end up at the fucking Sizzler.

Seriously, it's better to not give anything at all than to end up resorting to one of those goddamn bucket roses or a teddy bear purchased from a gas station.