Things Your Momma Didn't Teach You

Thing Your Momma Didn't Teach You #3,839

Fresh baked goods, like blow jobs, should  never become so commonplace in your home that the man of the family fails to react with appropriate enthusiasm.

"Oh! You baked today!!"

I'm just sayin'.

I hate this...

There are four dogs living at The Institution. Maybe next week I'll get it together and post pictures. Each one is, in his own way, awesome.

 

No one else would want them.

 

There are...five cats. I think. Oreo is ours. He's old and blind in one eye and he gets to come in by himself and eat every day because the other cats are mean to him. HA! I show them.

 

Casper was white when he was born, he is Siamese-colored. Sparky is black & white and Casper's brother. Casper is aloof and a roamer. Sparky is...sparky. Mean to the other cats, and cuddly as all get-out if you sit down with him. He reminds me of The Not Nice Kid.

 

Ben is ours. He's an orange cat and AWFUL. Passive. Needy. When he sits down with you? It's not NEXT to you or BESIDE you...he lays his head up by your neck and curls into your body. Super smart and not too worried about anything...he's The Nice Kid.

 

Last two are...wait. That's six, isn't it?

 

Damn.

 

Spitz was the runt when he came out...that didn't last long. Feisty and funny and take you OUT...no fear. Groucho has a black mustache...get it? Very polite...he probably wore a tux in a past life. And wore it well...

 

So there is this cat in our outside garage...she is actually Spitz and Groucho's mother. Homeless. Shows up, eats my food, breeds, reproduces and leaves. Only this time? She left too soon and even though she was no Mother Teresa, I'm pretty sure something happened to her. There are five two-week-old kittens in my garage. There were. We haven't seen Mama Cat in four days. The kittens never stop screaming.

 

We tried feeding them but...five kittens? They weren't interested and if it was one? You might could coax it but...five? And then we're sitting here looking at everyone being gone all weekend and...

 

I hate this. I really really really hate this and I will cry all weekend in public places but...

 

...we took them to the pound to be put to sleep.

 

It's better than starving to death or dying of thirst or freezing to death.

 

That's what I keep telling myself. I hate this.

 

I really really hate this. 

There's this friend of mine...

...who is awesome. He grew up in a small town in Tennessee and while his roots are still in the small town, his heart travels the world. Specifically, Nashville and Savannah. In between Boston or New York or a lovely excursion to England....

 

So we're talking this morning. The Inmates just spent the weekend on the road...two hours to a morning soccer game in Bham. An afternoon soccer game in Bham. Another two hours on the road to a hotel in Montgomery and then four hours of soccer Sunday afternoon. Home at nine o'clock on a school night.

 

Lesson learned? We forgot a pillow and blanket this trip. Makes it hard to sleep when The Mama insists on keeping the air blowing full force on Max AC. We took two small coolers, instead of one small and one larger which makes it really hard to explain why the kid playing soccer in 100 degree heat doesn't have a cooler. MY BEER!!!!! What am I supposed to do with the beer? (Not really, that's a JOKE! before someone calls DHR.)

 

(It was only 98 ;-)

 

 So ANYWAY. When we got home at nine o'clock last night, I started lists. Car lists. Food/hydration lists. Clothing lists. Lists that the people who are participating in these events can check off and handle themselves. I'm tired of refereeing over who-forgot-what. Just check and go. It's a list.

 

And then this morning? Talking to my bad ass friend?

 

He has lists. He even offered to send me one of his lists. You know what for? Was he sharing car-packing tips? Was BadAss sending me USTA accredited food lists? Did he have a list of how many sets of soccer socks you need over a four-game/two day weekend?

 

No. He's sending me a list for a long weekend in Savannah. It has restaurants, bakeries and cafes. It has galleries and shops and favorite artists at said-galleries and shops. It has best tours and best walks and best historical houses and events. It has pictures of the warehouse he converted into a loft.

 

Nowhere in his lists are drugstores that carry Imodium for kids with stomach viruses. There's no mention of emergency clinics for pulled hamstrings or broken wrists and for SURE no shops that carry shin guards and the cleats we forgot.

 

I'm thinking? We're gonna swap spots for a while. I'm going to hand him the keys to a vehicle filled with an assortment of kids...some mine, some not, all laughing and spilling stuff. Half of them missing necessary sports equipment, none of them with homework done and ALL of them hungry.

 

In return, I'm going to take his neat, luxurious SUV and head to Savannah. I'll have breakfast curbside, sitting at a bistro in a little round-back metal chair at a tiny table. I'll stroll around, with his credit cards, and shop brightly colored art. I'll laugh at witty, funny people who can create things out of their minds. For lunch, I'll drink an entire bottle of wine, with meat and cheese and good bread and then I'll go take a nap. On clean sheets with no cookie crumbs or cat hair. When I wake up, I'll shower and walk the streets under the trees with the breeze blowing. No snot or peanut butter on the shoulder of my shirt. I'll stop somewhere...ANYWHERE...and order interesting things off the menu and not have to referee a fight over who gets which color. I'll drink another bottle of wine and taste complicated things someone else cooked...and that someone else is going to clean up. I'll keep strolling and find a cool bar and drink good bourbon and, if I'm lucky like happened once in Atlanta, Mitch Wood and His Rocket 88's will be playing and the saxophone guy will dance down the bar while blowing his horn.

 

I'll stumble back to the loft and take two ibuprofen and wonder where the needy kid and the needy cat are, every time I roll over. I'll get up in the morning and go buy that picture of those people at the market and then....I'll take that clean SUV back before I spill something and I'll come home and wonder why the HELL I haven't put up the new garage door and I'll open the front door to be greeted by the smell of sweaty tennis clothes and stinky soccer shoes and wet dog and mildewing towels.

 

And then I'll go sit in my side yard, look at the weedy flower beds and the rusty grill and the lopsided chicken coop, and yell at the NEXT DAMN KID who kicks a ball in my direction.

 

The next morning, I'll go check BadAss out of the facility he ended up in.

 

I'm nice that way ;-)

(no subject)

Every time I sit down on the couch in the big den, I feel like something is crawling all over me. Upon reflection, I've decided it could be one of three things.

 

Something COULD be crawling all over me. With one Golden Retriever and one feline Golden-Retriever-Wannabee in-house, and three mutts and five cats in-and-out-of-house, we could have fleas. I don't have any bites, but....there could be fleas. In which case, I need a beer. Maybe if I put a spoonful of beer in a saucer by the couch, the fleas will jump in and then we'll ALL be happy!

 

I could be having DT's. In which case, I need two beers. Fuck the fleas.

 

I could have a serious muscular disorder and I'm going to be wheelchair-bound in two weeks and my children will be poor motherless waifs. So I might as well finish the entire 30-pack so it doesn't go to waste after I'm too frail to lift the can to my trembling mouth. (This one only occurred to me because of City Girl's revelation about cross-country flying and blood clots.)

 

Luckily, it's Friday. I can do whatever I want to, including going into the LITTLE den and sitting there ;-)

Train Wreck Waiting to Happen

This is too long to text to CG1 and too random not to share.

So, big news, two weeks ago I had the last remnants of my nonfunctional girl plumbing removed. By force. I hung on to those parts for as long as possible, but in the end, we had to call in very expensive plumbers to rip out the pipes.

Such a removal results in one of two scenarios: You grow a mustache and stop sleeping or you get whore-moan replacement. Guess which one I picked. (Hint: facial hair makes me squeamish. Even on him.)

Today I went to - I shit you not - The Pellet Center. I felt like a Grizzly volunteering to be tagged. (CG1 has been threatening to have me pelletized for years. Well, sister, Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday - it finally happened).

They take me into the little room, I joke with the nurse about growing a mustache, she weighs me, I do a dance because I've lost five pounds, and then the (female) doctor walks in and it's all business. Until....

Doc: (blood work results in hand) Wow! It's a good thing you got in here today because you are a trainwreck waiting to happen.
Me: I beg your pardon?
Doc: Your readings are (direct quote) a crazy mess. How are you dealing with your symptoms? Are you sleeping? Are you depressed, anxious, irritable, flushed?
Me: Nope. I was just telling your nurse that I'm amazed I don't feel any different than I did before the surgery.
Doc: (nodding, knowingly) Because you felt so bad before the surgery.
Me: No, except for the pain, I would never have known anything was wrong.
Doc: (confused) You feel no different than you did two weeks ago?
Me: I don't feel any different than I did 10 years ago.
Doc: (blatantly skeptical, not even trying to hide it) It is not possible that you feel no different than you did before. Your levels...are a mess. You need help.
Me: So maybe that's why I'm such a bitch?
Doctor has nothing to say to that.

Memo from the Greek chorus: It is never wise to use an expletive in front of people you don't know when in a very conservative, small, conservative, close-knit, conservative community. People might get the wrong impression about you. Fuck people.

Me: So what you're telling me is that what is 'normal' to me, is actually completely screwed up.
Doc: That seems to be the case, but don't you worry. We're going to get you fixed up.
Me: Not to be disrespectful or...weird...but you aren't going to make me....nice...are you?
Doctor looks at me.
Me: I don't really trust nice people. I wouldn't know what to do if I was nice.
Doctor looks at me, nurse is about to tinkle herself laughing.
Me: I'd rather have the mustache.
Doc: Pull down your pants.