My half sister graduated from high school this afternoon [that's me at my high school graduation, not her]. There's a party for her tomorrow. An invitation to the party arrived in my mail a few days ago, and I emailed a response, declining the invitation. As much as I would like to see Crystal, I have no desire to be in the same room with her mother or my father. It's a recipe for disaster and being uncomfortable. I'm sure if Crystal could escape the torturous situation she would.
I had every intention of attending the party when I first received the invitation. I wasn't exactly excited by the idea, but I felt somehow guilty every time I thought about not attending. Crystal's graduation party should be about her, not the drama that her parents bring to the table.
And then I thought back to my own high school graduation.
My graduating class was small, about 120 people. It was indoors because it was raining, and I only had a limited amount of tickets. I had five. I gave two to my mother, one to my boyfriend, and two to my father. I was happy to be graduating because graduating meant I could get the hell out of my hometown and out of my house. I was excited about it.
The night of my graduation my father showed up to the ceremony wearing a pair of ripped, dirty jeans, a holey tshirt, and a leather biker vest. Oh, and he smelled. I don't think he had taken a shower in a week. Everyone else's parents were dressed up and looked nice. My dad looked like an escapted convict, which [knowing his track record] would not have surprised me in the least to hear he was on the run for the law [again].
It was embarrassing, and it totally ruined my night. I really just wanted to skip the ceremony, go home, and hide under my bed. I was so nervous that my dad would do something further to humiliate me [like rushing the stage or farting loudly during the commencement speech] that I almost fell down the stairs after accepting my diploma.
Luckily he didn't bother to attend my graduation party. That made me feel better. I remember that all I wanted to do was huddle around my friends at the party. I suspect Crystal will do the same at hers. Granted, in comparison to the rest of her family that will be present I seem like the fucking Queen, but still -- she's going to want to spend time with her friends.
And so I decided not to go. Part of it is selfish [I don't want to see my father] and part of it is reality [she's going to say hello to me and then go hang with her friends]. So I sent a check, and I emailed her.
She'll visit toward the end of the summer and we'll have our own party. Without my father.
I keep forgetting to purchase and send a Father's Day card for my dad. I go through this every year. I have nothing new to add.
My half-sister is graduating from high school this week, and I'm attending a graduation party for her this weekend. I'm unsure of whether my dad will be there. I hope not, but he probably will be.
There will be the enthusiastic hug while I awkwardly thump him on the back and fake a smile. There will be the invitation to a barbecue at his house, which I will make noncommittal noises in response to. There will be the ridiculous assertions that Crystal and I are "his girls" and he's a great dad.
And then I will make my escape and long for the day I no longer have to deal with him.
This weekend I went outlet shopping with my mother. There are few things that make me quite as happy as bargains.
As it turns out, it was a kitchen day. I bought new wine glasses, a new wire whisk for my burdgeoning collection, and neat adjustable measuring spoons and cups. I really love gadgets.
On the way home my mother stopped at a local winery. I tend to think of my hometown as a, well, as an armpit of the world. So the thought of purchasing wine from a winery in a locale in which Pabst Blue Ribbon is considered a hoity toity beer, well, it's frightening.
But my mother knows I drink wine, and my stepfather's daughter is always blathering on about how the wine from the winery is so wonderful, blah blah blah. I gave in to keeping the family relations civil.
I bought two bottles of wine and two bottles of hard cider. They're all sitting down in my wine rack, daring me to try them. I'm envisioning Cleetus and Mildred out back in a shed making hooch in the bathtub, to be honest. I fully expect it to have a nice bleach-y aftertaste to it. Or maybe antifreeze.
The winery itself was pretty funny. It was just a shack on the side of the road with a big sign out front that merely proclaimed "winery." Inside there was a counter and about three dozen bottles of wine. Something else that made me very nervous was that one type of wine being sold was simply called "Blush."
You may have figured this out already, but I'm a huge fucking wine snob. I know the difference between swill and something good. I make fun of things like White Zinfindel and wine spritzers. I don't know many people who really like wine who also really like drinking White Zinfindel. It's like the jug wine of the world. And so is anything called "Blush" -- it's the equivalent of drinking pink champagne. You're a wuss: get a real drink.
Oh, and did I mention the winery also sold blueberry wine and apple-pear wine? If that's not hick wine, I don't know what is. Sure, it might be good, but I'm imagining something really sickeningly sweet.
So anyway, there was a very ancient woman behind the counter who offered to let me taste before I bought. I don't like to embarrass my mother, so I declined. There's always a chance I might have tasted the wine and loved it. But there's an equal chance that it could have been so bad that I would have had to have spit it out and demanded we leave immediately. It's better for all involved that we skipped the wine tasting.
Yeah, so it's prom season.
When I was 16 years old the local regional paper offered me a job writing fluff features. My first article was on prom season and choosing a dress. I have sort of a soft spot in my heart for cheesy prom fashions.
But this weekend so far has been really prom-oriented. The first thing my mother mentioned to me when I walked in the house was my half dozen or so prom and formal dance dresses hibernating in the attic space. I've decided to sell them on Ebay when I manage to drag my ass up to the attic to retrieve them.
Now, I don't know who would want prom fashions from the late '80s. Pastel teal, dark teal, vivid red with a poofy peplum -- we're talking real scene stealers. But I'll put them up for auction and some hopelessly stuck in the '80s, big haired fashion victim will buy them up. She'll be one of those people with big ass wall of bangs and still wearing suede high heeled slouch boots with the loose buckle around the ankle. She'll wear my prom fashions from yesteryear with fingerless lace gloves. Oh yeah.
And then my mom and stepfather took us out to eat at Cracker Barrel this evening for dinner. Apparently Cracker Barrel is part of the pre-prom dinner circuit. I would have been mortified if my date took me to Cracker Barrel for my prom dinner. The place has paper napkins and I'm going to sit there in a full skirt satin prom gown?
Of course, I do realize that there isn't a huge selection of fancy schmancy places to choose from in this region. It's Cracker Barrel or Perkins or maybe Denny's. I wonder how many people have pictures from their prom in this area with a statue of the Big Boy?
My mother's water stinks. Yes, I'm here in the lovely rural cesspool that is my hometown. My mother actually lives outside of the city of Berwick, in the rural route division. There has never been regular water hookup out here -- she has a well in the yard and the water runs through a water softener before it's used in the house.
The water here has always been a source of great trauma for me. Growing up we could never keep white stuff white. If I put a white tshirt through the wash it would come out white-ish. It's the rust in the water. In high school the water softener broke and no one noticed until my hair started turning rust-colored. Oh, and did I mention it was right before the winter formal? So I had brassy, rust-colored hair in all my photos from the formal -- I was hot, let me tell you. It was the '80s so I had big ass hair to begin with, and then the color was, um, horrible.
Because I grew up with it, I never noticed the smell. When Craig and I started dating and he came up to meet my mom, after his first shower he said "There's something seriously wrong with your water. It smells like rotten eggs."
Apparently we also have sulfur in the water and there's nothing that can be done about the smell. And it doesn't really matter because no one else even notices it. Well, that's not true. Ever since Craig pointed it out to me, now I smell the water, too.
Bastard!
So now every time I visit my mom and take a shower, I practically gag because now I can smell the eggs. Ignorance really is bliss.
After work today Craig and I are driving up to my mother's house in Berwick. Well, Craig is driving and I will be a passenger.
I really hate going to my mom's house. It's not that I don't want to see my family, but there's never anything to do. I like to make my own fun as much as the next person, but when all you've got going is cows, a couple of stoplights, and bad coffee, there's not much you can do.
Plus, there's the issue of invasion of privacy. My mother is on her third marriage. She and her current husband seem very much in love and I always kind of feel like I'm putting the kibosh on their little love nest. My step-father really likes me and Craig, and we really like him, but I'm sure that they're both glad when Sunday rolls around and Craig and I drive off and leave them alone.
During my mother's second marriage I think she was relieved when we came to visit. It was a diversion from the nightmare. But now that things are good, I feel kind of bad. No one likes to think that their parents are having wild monkey love all over the house, but that's the distinct feeling you get when you walk into my mother's house. Sort of like there was some serious nookie going on just seconds before you walked in the house. It's kind of gross to contemplate, but at the same time I'm happy she's happy.
There's not much on the agenda this weekend. It's supposed to rain, which for those of you living in the Northeast of the U.S., this should come as no surprise. There's probably going to be shopping involved -- there are some outlet stores near Stroudsberg I've been meaning to get to.
By the same token, my mother hates to come down to visit me. She hates large cities. Of course, to her, any town that takes more than ten minutes to drive end-to-end is a large city. So she really hates Philadelphia. Too many people, too much traffic, too many people who aren't exactly like her.
And I'm sure she thinks that she's interrupting Craig and I from getting our groove on. It must be a genetic thing.
Yeah, so, I have to go to church today. Catholic church, no less.
Craig's neice and nephew are having their first communion today, and since Craig is godfather to the nephew he has to be present. And I'm expected to be there too. Whoever thought up this marital "wherever he goes, I go too" crap must have been smoking crack. It's a gorgeous day and I can think of twenty million things I'd rather be doing then spending even so much as one second in a gloomy church being preached at. OK, let's be honest, even if it was fucking snowing like crazy, thundering, hailing, and in the middle of a monsoon, I still wouldn't want to be inside a church.
I'm sure it will come as no surprise to anyone that I have never been to a first communion before. Is this the ceremony when they are accepted into church, and have officially accepted the whole god and jeebus, women are inherently evil rhetoric? These kids are maybe seven years old -- I hardly think they understand the ramifications of what they're signing on for.
I just hope this whole spiel doesn't last too long -- I'm not good in church. And I can't even take something to keep me occupied [journal, Gameboy, marbles, tiddlywinks], since Craig's family is going to be there and I have to act like a fucking adult who doesn't think organized religion is a total scam.
Not to mention that I have to attend a little celebratory lunch afterwards with Craig's family. That means that I'm going to need to mainline some sort of extra strength headache medication. In addition to the two getting communioned, there's a boy who is three, and three girls ages 11-14. Plus there are two grown women [Craig's mother and the mother of the communion-ees] who can't say a word unless they are shouting in their high pitched, annoying voices. Picture Sharon Osborne without the accent and sense of humor, and way less cool.
Think of me today as I am forced to live in my own special ring of hell. Try to brainwave some good thoughts to me. I'm sure to be thinking of new and exciting ways to kill myself until I'm sprung from the Lunch of the High- Pitched Shriek.
As if my day wasn't crappy enough, my wonderful and always idiotic father called today to wish me a Happy Easter. As usual, he didn't have anything to say. And, as usual, he found a way to make me think even less of him than I already do.
For starters, he told his youngest brother to fuck off when the brother asked my dad to donate a kidney to him. Granted, who the hell would want a kidney from my alcoholic, drug-addicted dad? That's really not the point, though, is it? Say no with some class if you're going to deny your dying brother one of your spare organs, eh? Secondly, he told me that he just randomly gave my half-sister $300.00 to buy a prom dress.
I know, I know, I'm 31 years old and I've had plenty of time to be bitter about not having a father and/or money when I was growing up because he ran out on us. I should be over this by now. I don't begrudge Crystal the money -- she has to put up with him in her life much more than I do, and that presents just as many problems. It just irks me that he lacks the sense to know that it hurts my feelings. I mean, it's not like he completely forgot about my birthday this year or anything. Oh, that's right, he did.
See, the thing is, if he was completely out of my life it wouldn't make a difference. At least it would be over. But he keeps fucking calling me, and for a year or two he'll be pretty steady -- you know, pretending that he has always been father of the year. And then, suddenly and without warning, he'll start forgetting that I exist again. So yes, I'm totally bitter about this still. And I get pissed at myself for even letting it bother me.
What really killed me about the whole conversation was that most of the call was spent telling me all about his old buddy Fred, who recently had his 80th motorcycle crash. Fred is the dumbest motherfucker on the planet -- he's a 400 pound alcoholic, drug-addicted biker who recently spent $30,000 to build a new bike for himself but failed to get insurance. And now he broke his leg in four places due to running into a truck. My dad spent more time telling me about Fred and his illustrious crash career then telling me about my half-sister and his brother, combined.
I really think I must be adopted.
My mother has always insisted that something must be wrong with me: I would rather eat cheese than chocolate or cake. In my family, it's all about the chocolate. When my grandfather died and I went to my grandmother's house after the viewing, I was plied with chocolate covered pretzels and chocolate cookies and chocolate cake. Everyone in my family still takes an annual pilgrimage to Hershey Park. When I went to Paris, all my mother wanted was chocolate. And, yes, I lurve me some chocolate, but if given a choice it's not what I would choose.
And that, maybe, is why Easter has never been a big holiday for me [well, that, and the fact that I don't believe in Jeebus and the whole resurrection thing].
My mother tried, really she did. She'd stuff my Easter basket full of massive chocolate bunnies and little chocolate eggs, and all manner of chocolate stuff. I would end up eating a few nibbles of chocolate and half a dozen boiled Easter eggs, dyed lovingly by me. Eventually she started adding cheese and cracker packets and string cheese into my basket. And then she ate the pound bag of M&Ms she left in my basket, under the guise of not wasting food, of course.
When my mother comes to visit, she always asks for a trip into the local cheese shop. In my hometown it's hard to find anything beyond Cracker Barrell cheese. There's pretty much no such thing as imported cheese from France or Italy. Fresh mozzarella is unheard of. And it's not that she's a total cheesehead like me [although she surely likes some of those excellent artisan blue cheeses], it's that she's completely amazed by the sheer bounty and choice of cheese in one spot.
By the same token, I almost always attend the local state fair [the Bloomsburg Fair, if you wanna know] when I visit my mother in the Fall. It isn't that I'm so jazzed about eating deep-fried pickles on a stick or winning machetes from the ring-knife toss...it's the sheer volume of hicks in one spot. This year I'm just going to sit somewhere and take photos of the dungaree wearing, wheat chewing, front teeth missing, one brain cell mis-firing, uber religious freaks running around. You'll be amazed.
Somehow this entry got a little off track. What I was really trying to get at was to wish those of you who celebrate Easter a Happy Easter; for those of you who are Jewish, happy seder; and, for the rest of you, happy Friday.
I'm leaving in about an hour to make a run down to Chinatown for sushi supplies. I'll be celebrating in my own special way.
Well, I just scanned my hand so I could unveil my grandmother's ring. My hand looks kinda funny, don't you think?
For being a ring of many carats, it doesn't look real big or really gaudy. It used to get mistaken for a mood ring, which really irked my grandmother to no end. She was a woman who refused to curse, so she mostly just muttered "Oh crumb! It's not a mood ring!" and went on her way.
I'm so happy to have my grandmother's ring back -- I've been showing it off all day.
I get very excited when I walk into a good jewelry store. To know that there's some manly guy getting a work out on the polisher in the back just gets me hot. Maybe it's all the pretty, shiny things.
A few weeks ago I dropped off a ring to get fixed at my jeweler [for those of you who demand to know where I get my jollies -- it's Barsky Jewelers on Jeweler's Row]. It was not just any ring. It was the ring that my grandmother gave me before I got married. She had worn it all her adult life, having been given the ring by my great-grandmother who had worn it all of her adult life. I have severe emotional attachment to the ring.
When I was little my grandmother, brother, and I used to walk up the street to the burger place when I stayed overnight at her house. I would immediately hold her right hand and say, "I'll take the hand with the ring, Grammy." It's my birthstone, amethyst. The ring is a 10 carat cabachon cut stone set in a simple gold band. It's beautiful. I'd take a photo of it, but my computer is being tempermental.
At any rate, my grandmother could not attend the wedding. She had a stroke many years ago and never recovered movement in her left side and was confined to a nursing home. It was impossible to move her around without the aid of lifting machines. So a couple of weeks before the wedding she gave me the ring, and I was floored. It seemed strange that I should be wearing her ring. I wore it for my wedding -- it was my "something old." It made us both feel a little better to know that a part of her was with me that day.
My grandmother died about a year and a half ago. On the day she died the stone fell out of the ring. It just dropped out and landed at my feet. Since then I've kept the stone and the ring in a drawer -- I've been sort of superstitious about having it reset. But I finally got my shit together and took it to be fixed. I just picked it up during my lunch hour and it looks wonderful. And I'm glad to be wearing it again, since it reminds me of my grandmother.
Today is Craig's 31st birthday. It's sort of like a death pall has settled over the house today -- birthdays have become increasingly hard for Craig to deal with.
He woke up and gave him a kiss, and said "Happy birthday, birthday boy!" He grunted at me. "What do you want to do today? It's supposed to be really nice outside -- maybe the zoo?" He looked at me in disgust and spit out, "I'll be doing laundry." I backed away slowly, lest I lose an arm.
I just don't understand the big deal about birthdays. I love my birthday -- I celebrate for a month. February isn't just that month with Valentines Day and Presidents Day, it's the Nicole birthday month. Craig, on the other hand, just wants to curl up and die.
But never underestimate my feminine wiles. He will enjoy his 31st birthday even if I have to strap on some pasties and do the Cool Rider dance for him. Oh yes, I will prevail.
I don't drive. But just because I haven't driven in over ten years doesn't mean I've never driven. I have my license, I know how to drive. I even have some roadkill to my credit.
Growing up in the absolute stick-iest parts of Podunk, it's not hard to rack up considerable "meals from under wheels" type of damage. With 'possums, raccoons, fox, skunk, etc., constantly in the road I don't think I can be held responsible for the deaths of a couple of them. Sure, I felt bad when I accidentally ran over an entire family of 'possum one horrible night but what the hell were they doing there anyway?
They should learn to fear things with loud engines and bright lights, like the rest of us.
My mother hit a deer once. Or, should I say, it hit her. It just sort of exploded out of the woods on the side of the road and plowed right into the hood of her car. I was in high school and waiting for her to pick me up after a game. She showed up, two hours late, front of her car all jacked up. I didn't realize it at the time, but she's lucky she wasn't hurt. It's not unusual to hear of fatal car accidents caused by deer jumping out at your car.
Every time Craig and I are on our way up to my mother's house, I say the same exact thing on the stretch of road where she hit that deer -- "Craig, please be careful. Look out for deer, OK?" Normally, I'm just being overly cautious but this past week on the way up for my grandfather's funeral we must have seen three dozen deer or more by the side of the road, just sort of eating and watching traffic go by.
The strangest thing about our trip last week was all the wild turkeys that were dead on the side of the road. I even saw a few live ones near the road, but for the most part it was just turkeys that hadn't been quick enough to get the hell out of the way.
Speaking of roadkill, I have a relative or two who make scrapple from scratch. One of them, bizarrely enough, informed me that he and his wife made 640 pounds of scrapple the week prior. What do you do with that much processed pig parts? Oddly, they decided to bring it with them to the funeral. I refuse to eat scrapple, having seen it made...but Craig loves the stuff. So we came home with our very own piece of memorial scrapple.
My family is so fucking weird.
There was a lot of buzz last night at my grandfather's viewing regarding a service to be performed by the Freemasons. As some of you might remember, my grandfather was a Freemason.
My brother, stepfather, and I speculated about the ceremony. I thought perhaps there might be a goat for the ritual slaughter out back. My brother wondered if paddles would be involved. Craig was looking forward to seeing the grand poobah hats. There was some talk of the lights being dimmed and the casket being attended to by hooded guys with knives and candles.
All we got were old guys in tailed tuxedo coats and aprons.
I've been told by certain people that the Freemasons aren't really as sinister as I would have you believe. And, of course, looking at these aging Masons in their little canvas aprons bunching up around their spare tires, it's hard to believe that any of them have it in them to do anything much more than play shuffleboard and do their daily walking laps at the local mall. But there's a lot of secrecy involved, and an awful lot of ritual, and so we were all a little curious as to what would actually be going on.
Mostly it was a lot of Jeebus/god talk, and this whole thing with putting sprigs of evergreen in the casket with my grandfather's body. Plus, there was this very ritualized speech with lots of "So mote it be" responses from the geriatric Freemasons. It was over in about 10 or 15 minutes, and then the receiving line started back up again.
I have to admit that we were all a little disappointed.
So I just got back from my grandfather's funeral and viewing. It was not as bad as I thought it might be. My grandmother held it together like a champ.
Just a few thoughts...
I don't find church services [of any kind, but especially for funerals] comforting. The pastor at my grandparents' church [they are Methodist] really just sort of concentrating on talking about how god has a plan and how my Pappap was a pilgrim and now he's going home and blah blah blah. And if that comforting my grandmother or my mother or my aunts and uncle, fine. But then he went into this whole story almost comparing my grandfather's death to the death of his childhood pet who got run over in the road.
I wanted to run up there, kick him in the shins, and duct tape his mouth shut. See, a real use for duct tape.
Also, when I'm trapped in a church for a funeral service or a wedding or a christening, I tend to focus on what the church is decorated like. I once read a book by James Morrow called Blameless in Abaddon wherein it said the INRI on crucifixes means "I'm not returning immediately." So when I see it on a crucifix I usually giggle uncontrollably and then move on to other things.
Catholic churches usually have the gruesome statue of Jeebus suffering on the cross hanging at the front of the church, sort of like the grand overseer of all that's going on. One time at a wedding the Jeebus statue was so wretched looking and gross that I was fixated on it. I shared with Craig how funny it would be if the Jeebus was animatronic and halfway through the ceremony would just jerk a hand loose and start pointing at the congregation accusingly. And then Craig got the giggles. What can I say, I get bored easily in church.
Today at my grandparents' church while I was trying to block out the crap coming from the pastor I was sort of checking out the fake stained glass windows. In one the creepy cross Jeebus was depicted, but he was totally buff. Jeebus had a six pack! So then I had to fight the giggles. But I couldn't stop looking at it.
Jeebus, Mr. Universe. Heh.
It's never nice to come back home to bad news: my grandfather died this morning. And coincidentally, it was the exact time I woke up.
I feel bad that I'm not more upset. Yes, I'm sad. But when my grandmother died a little over a year ago I was a total wreck. It's not fair to compare the two, but yet I am. My relationship with my grandfather was always contentious. I never really liked the person he was -- racist, homophobic, extremely conservative, anti-women's rights, etc. And yet, he could be a very nice man when the mood struck him.
He mostly ignored us kids when we were growing up. My earliest memory of him is making me eat every last morsel on my plate at Bob's Big Boy before we could leave when I was about 6 years old. It's doubtful that he did it to be mean...it's just that he was a kid during the Depression and he was a farmer for most of his life. Being wasteful is bad. He rarely spoke or showed emotion, and that's just the way it was with my grandfather.
And so now he's gone. I really barely knew who he even was.
So most of my family still lives in the town I grew up in. Some of you might know that I grew up in very small town in upstate Pennsylvania called Berwick. There's a nuclear plant in Berwick. I was never nervous about it's presence -- it was always there, spouting steam.
Last year the local government distributed special pills that are supposed to help combat the effects of radiation poisoning, should anything horrible happen at the nuclear plant. My mom has her stash in the medicine cabinet, squirreled away for that rainy day.
But, I have to admit, my family all handled the pill episode with a certain amount of calmness I was glad to see. Now, the recent erroneously raised terror alert...well, not so much.
I received an email from my mother today. First, of course, she did her usual "I wish you weren't travelling during wartime" thing, and then she launched into this whole thing about my grandparents and their duct tape adventures.
Apparently my grandparents have completely sealed their home in plastic sheets and duct tape. First, I rolled my eyes and groaned. Then, I forwarded the link about the terror alert being complete crap and warned her to make sure my grandparents didn't suffocate in their home from lack of oxygen.
I'm just waiting for the first lawsuit against the government for something like that.
But back to my family....
In addition to my grandparents being sealed for freshness inside their home, my aunt and uncle who live behind my mom are building their own little saferoom in the basement. My uncle is one of those strange survival nuts anyway, so you know he's been jonesing to bust out the emergency generator he had on stand-by for the Y2K panic. I'm sure they have small arsenal of weapons stored in their little saferoom to stave off the hordes of frightened people who will no doubt descend on their little hovel of safety when it all goes down. Have you ever seen the movie Blast from the Past? I imagine that something very similar is going on, except that my aunt and uncle aren't brilliant so they probably plan to survive on the jerky made from my uncle's deer kills and the moonshine from their still in the shed out back. And they'll probably suffocate too, since I doubt anyone has given any thought to oxygen.
Of course, should the nuclear plant blow I don't think a little duct tape and deer jerky will save anyone.
My family is not the only one going completely insane, of course. My sister-in-law informed us the other day that she, too, is making a saferoom in the basement of the family home. They live in Fallsington, which is about 40 minutes outside of Philadelphia. Craig patiently explained to her that by sealing the room, they are sure to die of asphyxiation, since her heater is down there. There's a little thing called carbon monoxide.
The whole world seems to have gone insane.
It snowed today...gee, must be Saturday.
I have a problem with snow. True, if I hate snow so much I should be living elsewhere. But it generally doesn't snow here quite this much. Besides, I already moved once to escape the brutal weather.
Speaking of escaping the brutal weather, by this time next week I will be in Paris! I try not to get too excited about it, but I just packed a few things in my suitcase that I won't be using before we leave. I just about broke a rib prancing around my bedroom in celebration. I'm such a dork.
This weekend is going to be spent finalizing a loose itinerary for the trip, and trying to clean up the house a bit. Oh, and laundry....lots of laundry! I hate coming home from vacation to a dirty, messy house. All I want to do when I get home is collapse on the couch, and reminisce about my exciting vacation.
I had to head off to the post office this morning, but when I returned Craig informed me that I had just missed a delightful call from my father. Apparently my dear old dad awoke from whatever alcohol induced coma he's been in and remembered it's my birthday next week and that we're leaving for Paris on Friday. He informed Craig that he would be sending me a check via Express Mail so it arrived before we leave. Considering he said he was sending me a gift and a check for Christmas that never arrived, I don't think I'll hold my breath.
I just wish he would forget I exist.
I am thrilled to say that I am back in Philadelphia, land of the fourth highest number of obese people in the U.S., home of Brotherly Love. Ahhhhhh!
The remainder of my trip was relatively uneventful. My mom and Ed took us out to eat Saturday night. Normally this would not be note-worthy, since they usually drag us along to their favorite pizza joint. But this place was Special. People they know said it was really nice and the food was excellent. And then I knew why we weren't just heading over to the pizza place.
The last time they came to visit Craig and I in Philadelphia we took them to eat at our favorite restaurant, and they really liked it and were a little disturbed that we wouldn't let them see how much the bill was. The thing is that I knew they would freak out -- the bill was a little over $100 and that seems like a small fortune for dinner if there's no place to eat around you except for McDonald's. So I knew that this was their way of trying to get us back for taking them out.
So we walk into this place and it's almost completely empty in the middle of what should have been their busy dinner hours on a Saturday night, which always makes me nervous. The big draw to this place is that they have a big glassed in cage with half a dozen huge tropical birds in it. Have I ever mentioned how much I hate birds? And I really don't like loud birds. Craig loves birds, so he was interested. So we sit down in a booth and the menu arrives, along with a waitress who reminds me of Flo. There's no pink uniform, but she's got that gum/cud-chewing, down home way about her [including permed frizzy hair that was likely going to end up in my food]. Both my mom and Ed order chef salads, which come with lettuce gleaned from the all you can eat salad buffet across the room and little rolled up peices of lunchmeat. Uh huh. And Craig ordered a crab cake sandwich, which he later told me had the consistency of a brillo pad and he had to hide most of it underneath his burnt pile of fries. I got seafood linguine, which wasn't horrible but tasted vaguely of lemon Pledge. I am an accomplished liar, so my mom and Ed thought the food was delightful and I had received such a huge portion of food that I ate most of it but you just couldn't tell.
The true test of a hick restaurant are what beer they have on tap. And at this place: Bud, Bud Light, and Coors Light. Surprisingly, they did have Yuengling Lager on tap, but there was no beer anywhere on the premises that was any darker than mid-amber. Oh, and a glass of beer was 50 cents. Not that that's a bad thing, but still.
I can deal with bad food at a restaurant. It happens -- not every restaurant we try is excellent. But what made the evening fairly unbearable were two things:
Going to visit my mother's house in the winter is hard to take -- it's so cold you can't escape the house. And the house is noisy. My stepfather is a former EMT who insists on keeping his dispatch scanner on and at top volume at all times. Morning, noon, and night that stupid scanner spits out static and inane chatter about the latest football game, or who's been arrested for DUI, or whatever. I just don't get it -- neither one of them pays any attention at all to world news, but boy howdy if my stepfather doesn't know that Ambulance #10 took a run to the local nursing home to pick up a dead body, his very world will shatter.
It's a shame -- both my mother and stepfather are such nice people. And I know that the lifestyle I've chosen for myself wouldn't suit them, and doesn't suit a lot of people. Country living really does appeal to more people than living in the city, and maybe there is some hidden merit to listening to a police/ambulance scanner 24-7. I just couldn't wait to escape Berwick, and it seems strange to me that anyone wouldn't want to.
I'm so happy that our visits are infrequent.
Here I am in good old Berwick. The fun just never stops.
It took us 2.5 hours to drive up here. The minute we stepped into my mother's house it started to blizzard. Timing is everthing I guess.
Being here makes me depressed. We were driving up the street where they do the Christmas Boulevard on our way to the house and there was one lone decoration here and there, and it made me so glad I still don't live here -- economically depressed and nothing to do [don't ask why I make that immediate connection -- it's all psychological with me].
My stepfather works in a factory which is constantly threatening to close, leaving all the employees out of work. My mom and stepfather don't want to make any plans to actually enjoy their lives in case the plant closes and they have to be more careful with money. Most people who live here work in a factory, and most factories here are always on the verge of shutting down, maybe with the exception of Wise potato chips.
And, of course, hardly any of the factories pay a livable wage. Is it any wonder the population of Berwick is about 10,000 people [which I find hard to believe -are they counting pets?], and there are just about 5,000 bars in the town? I'd want to get drunk every night too if this is what I had to look forward to until I die.
Yes, I am not an upbeat girl when I am here. But it does serve to make me feel incredibly lucky that I escaped.
So I went on a mild shopping spree during lunch today.
Since Craig has already given me my birthday present early [the glam coat], I bought him a watch he's been drooling over and I plan to give it to him as his early birthday gift. And I did the normal beauty product drag up Walnut Street. Now that the new Kiehl's store is open I fear I will drop a boat load of cash on prettying myself up.
But the real mission for today was to finally purchase a book on NASCAR for my stepfather. Since it isn't supposed to be too awfully snowy this weekend, Craig and I are making the three hour trek home to my mom's to celebrate Christmas.
And I will admit that I put off purchasing the book because I'm so mortified to actually purchase it. However, considering I need to wrap the book this evening in order to leave here right after work tomorrow, I couldn't blow it off anymore.
If it's possible, I think it was worst than I anticipated.
I searched Barnes and Noble, looking for the sports section. No sports section was evident to me. I asked, innocently, about the sports section. It was hidden away in a corner. There were no NASCAR books in the sports section. I debated whether or not I should ask. Finally, I bit the bullet.
As luck would have it, this totally hot [and terminally hip] guy was behind the help desk. I gave an inward shudder and hoped an embarrassed red glow was not spreading over my face the way I thought it was.
"Could you direct me toward where books on NASCAR are located?" I asked with great trepidation.
The hottie immediately got an amused look on his face. "Uh, you're looking for a book on NASCAR?" he asked, snottily. "Yes, that's in the transportation section. Right over there in the corner next to Sports." And I swear to you, he snickered.
They probably took a photograph of me and are passing it out all over town with this caption: "this girl is a total hick -- she purchased a book about NASCAR." It was awful.
But the humiliation wasn't over. I felt like a total ass to begin with, and I couldn't very well just buy a book on NASCAR. It would be like going into a drug store and only purchasing condoms and/or a pregnancy test. You don't want to look skeevy or sleazy -- you have to purchase something normal to keep up the outward appearance of nonchalance. So I hunted around and picked up a new paperback: Gould's Book of Fish by Richard Flanagan. I get to the counter, NASCAR book carefully hidden underneath the novel, hoping the ultra-hip girl behind the counter won't notice what I'm buying.
She picks up my purchases and scans them. And then smirks. And then, the worst: she called me ma'am! "Have a nice day, ma'am," she called after me in her snarky little chirp.
My stepfather had better appreciate the fact that I lost all of my street credibility just to purchase this book for him. I'm ruined for ever, I tell you! I will be laughed out of all the cool bars and restaurants in town! I will have to hide my face at clubs! My library card will be revoked!
Next year I will definitely purchase over the internet.
I took the day off from work today. This must come as a total shock to those of you who know how much I love and adore my job [note the biting sarcasm]. It was a fairly peaceful day, thanks to the fact that I had the house to myself.
It became clear on Christmas Day that I wouldn't have the great pleasure of seeing my father for the holidays. See, sometimes good things really do happen if you wish for it hard enough. He called me around 5pm on Christmas Day for his usual shot of attempted guilt at not embracing him for his feeble attempts to be fatherly. As usual, it was not hard to rebuff his weak harrassment. He threw in this weird lecture on It's a Wonderful Life. He made it a point to tell me that he cries at the ending every time he sees the movie, it's his favorite movie, I should really go watch the movie now, blah blah blah. It was ten minutes of stupidity regarding It's a Wonderful Life.
Since my father has never once just had a conversation with me that didn't involve him trying to guilt me into accepting him as The Best Father Ever, I'm assuming he was trying to tell me something.
But I digress. The deal is that he wouldn't be making his annual trip to my house to collect my gift and make me uncomfortable. He sounded hurt when I said I was just going to pop his gift in the mail. Maybe he thought I'd try hard to make sure I saw him. Or maybe he was just stoned. Who can know?
My point is that today I left the house today to drop his gift off at the post office. On the way to the post office I walk through a little community grass plot called Palmer Park [and here's an extra tidbit -- they shot part of the last episode of The Hack at that park] and noticed at least half a dozen pairs of underwear lying on the ground or snagged in the bushes.
What?
What's funny is that they weren't cotton grannie panties or other kind of undies that one wouldn't mind shedding in the interest of a quick sexual interlude. They were nice looking silky, frilly undies. Of course, I didn't pick them up and sniff them or anything so it could have been crappy underwear that just looked nice from afar. But who is having that much sex in the park? It's not like it's secluded or has lots of trees to hide behind or anything. There's a major road on one side of the park, a hospital on the other side of the park, and a row of homes on the other two sides of the park.
Perhaps there is a prostitution ring that operates underneath the park benches? The old guys who are always sitting on the benches are really pimps. Maybe soon on the news you'll see Palmer Park getting busted as the premiere Philly ho spot.
Maybe I should start recruiting my own stable of chicks, and then we could start a turf war. It could be just like West Side Story....
When yer a Fishtowner yer a Fishtowner to the end, from your first gappy grin to your last malt liquor....
I wasn't allowed to date until I was almost 16. My mother was convinced Very Bad Things would happen if I were to be left alone with a boy, regardless of whether or not said boy was a friend or a boyfriend. That's right -- I wasn't even allowed to go hang out with my male friends. Because, you know, all boys have urges.
Yeah, and I'm a gentle flower who can't defend herself against a boy. My best friend at the time was named Jeff -- he was a tall, scrawny guy who couldn't even beat me at arm wrestling. Uh huh, that's a real threat.
But I digress. One day my mom came to me, it was about a month before my 16th birthday, and said, "I've decided that you can date if you want to. But I have some ground rules. I must meet and approve any boy you go out with."
I was thrilled. I had been practicing for my first date since I was 13 years old. My first date ensemble was picked out. My hair and make up strategy was set in stone. I practiced the good night kiss with my teddy bear. The only kink in my plan was that I currently was sans boyfriend and no one would ask me out on dates anymore because the answer was always no, accompanied by a spastic fit of anger at my mother.
My fevered brain pitched in agony. Finally, I formulated a plan. Now, I had to have a date. After complaining to my mother for 4 years that I couldn't date or hang out with my friends it was imperative that I have an immediate date so my mother would see that I had boys lying in wait to date me. So I asked a former boyfriend named John to take me to the movies Friday night. It was perfect.
Friday night came. My mother has known John for as long as I have, and still made him come in and sit down so she could glower at him for a while before we left for our date. I remember that we went to a movie at the Wyoming Valley Mall in Wilkes-Barre, PA, but I don't remember what we saw. And I remember that the idea of smooching him goodnight gave me the willies, so there was no goodnight kiss.
I recently received a Christmas card from John and his wife. They have a four year old daughter. I will admit that it makes me feel a little old to know that one of my first boyfriends is 35 and has a child, but probably the majority of my ex-boyfriends are now married with children. I am, after all, almost 31 years old. But still, on some level, I fully expect all former boyfriends to yearn for me until their deaths.
My grandmother started making ornaments for me the year I was born. Because she had a stroke and never regained use of her left side, I only have 12 of them. They are my most treasured Christmas ornaments.
There are several dolls made of styrofoam and sequins. My favorite is named Polly -- her dress and bonnet are bright peacock blue and she has blonde hair, 'just like me' I thought when I was a kid. The other two are brides. I also have one styrofoam boot covered in red sequins.
I have four that are made of felt and are beaded. This is my favorite -- the Santa. It's the first ornament I remember receiving. The first one my grandmother made for me in 1972 is a felt ornament. It's a cute little rudolph with red glass bead nose.
I also have a bunch of ornaments covered in silk thread and decorated with pins and beads. My great grandmother also made several of those for me before she died.
This year when we decorated the tree I sat there with my homemade ornaments and cried my eyes out. Last year was my first Christmas without my grandmother but it didn't seem real since it happened so close to Christmas. This is the first year that I know it's true.
Before she had her stroke my brother and I used to spend a lot of weekends at her house, since my mom was working her third job on the weekends and my father was who knows where. There was a ritual involved. Saturday for lunch there would be a chicken roll roll sandwich on a hamburger roll, and a snack of saltines and cheddar cheese later on, right before our evening of watching The Love Boat and Fantasy Island. Sunday afternoon there would be a viewing of whatever old movie was on -- usually something with Shirley Temple or the Three Stooges. And somewhere during the weekend my grandmother would read me a story from her Edgar Allan Poe collection.
She used to do the neighbor woman's hair. She had a basket of those velcro rollers and a big jar of green Dippity Do. She smelled like powder and lavender.
I miss my grandmother.
To the lady on the subway this morning making a huge show of acting all exasperated that the train wasn't moving fast enough to suit you -- dial it back a few notches, eh? I can see why you are some poor working schlub instead of a famous actress...your play acting is a bit too over the top.
Yep, I was checking people out on the subway again this morning. Normally I don't get completely fixated on one person, but the woman was acting like such an ass that I felt like booting her ass out the door at the wrong stop just before the doors closed.
I'm so easily irritated in the morning.
The funny thing is that I am a morning person. As much as I adore sleeping, I don't like to get up very late in the morning because I feel like I'm wasting time. During the work week I'm up at 6:15 am, but not because I'm getting anything accomplished -- I'm just going to work. On the weekend I'm usually up by 7 or 8 am. It's not to say that I am out shoveling snow or building houses at that hour, but I'm up and I'm enjoying the day.
It's a concern to me that I will miss something by wasting time. Perhaps it's the farmer genes in me rearing their ugly heads, screaming at me that "Late to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise!" My grandfather was a farmer for most of his life, and he and my grandmother rarely sleep. It must be a hard habit to break.
Speaking of my grandfather, he is in the hospital. Craig and I went to see the light show at Wanamakers Lord & Taylor's yesterday afternoon and then stopped for a late lunch at Monk's [I love that place -- excellent mussels, fabulous burgers, and a huge beer selection!], and when I got home there was a message from my mother. Here's the thing: it's nothing serious but he's totally making it out to be life-threatening.
From being around all that hay for all those years, my grandfather has a sort of chronic lung infection. If he takes antibiotics, it's all fine. He can breathe fine, his lungs don't feel like dirt. Now, maybe I have more confidence in doctors, but my grandfather has decided that he knows better than the doctors. He stopped taking his antibiotics without consulting his doctor because he is positive that the antibiotics are making his legs hurt. To this I can only say, "Whhhaaaaaaaa?" So now he's having problems breathing. But instead of reaching the obvious conclusion [i.e., no antibiotics+chronic lung infection=breathing problems] my grandfather has convinced himself he needs open heart surgery.
What is it about getting older than transforms normally normal people into stubborn old coots who are bent on drama? It's not like he needs the attention -- he and my grandmother live not five minutes away from my mother, my two aunts, and my uncle, plus assorted other relatives and friends. Someone is at the house to visit them probably every day. I don't understand why anyone would be so intent on incapacitating themselves, instead of enjoying life.
My grandmother [the one who died a year ago] went through the same thing. She had a stroke when I was about 13 years old [so, about 1985]. She immediately went to the best rehab hospital in the state, but refused to do any of her rehab. She wasn't very old -- I think she was about 56 when she had her stroke, but she spent the rest of her life in a nursing home because she just wouldn't work to get better. And I know, had she done her rehab, that she would have been just fine.
I get so angry at people who do things to themselves that are counterproductive. My grandmother robbed herself of what should have been the best years of her life. My grandfather is refusing to listen to his doctors, which is probably going to decrease the number of years he has left. But it's hard to be angry at someone you love so much. And it's next to impossible to lay it down to someone that you care about -- what am I going to do, walk up to my grandfather and tell him he's being a smacked ass for not listening to the doctors? Tell him I think he's acting like a child?
I guess it's no wonder I'm irritated this morning.
My Aunt Deirdre called me last night to talk about some Christmas gifts for my cousin Cami. Deirdre always panics just about this time of year because she and Cami have opposite tastes in clothes. I can commiserate -- I secretly shudder whenever my mother, my grandmother, or any of my aunts give me clothing for Christmas.
My mother favors cream colored cardigans with seasonal designs on them. She likes chambray a lot. She still wears stirrup pants worn with dress flats. I have never worn any of those things, and it gives me the willies just to think about it. Even our home decor preferences are at opposite ends of scale -- she thinks its the ultimate in home decorating to plaster her house with the latest in country charm kitsch. If I see one more gingham print thing come into that house I will scream. I'm more of a plain black vneck sweater and clean, sleek decor kind of girl.
With this in mind, my mother doesn't just give me gifts that she would like, but she buys stuff that she thinks I will like. Her idea of a great black vneck sweater that I would love is something in black chenille with lots of intricately woven designs. Or a black lacquer accent table with mirrors set into it. This is not South Philly, and I don't hang out with the mob.
It's the thought that counts, right? Right? Well sure it is. Which is why no one in my family truly knows the extent to which I dread receiving gifts from them. I smile, say I love it, and then whatever horrible thing it is usually doesn't even make it to storage in my house -- I either sell it on Ebay or donate it to goodwill. I don't have enough room in my house to let bad gifts hibernate.
Last year my dad bought me this absolutely hideous [and cheap] Tiffany style desk lamp. He said, "Well, I really like stained glass, so I thought you would too." I smiled and said, "Gosh it's so pretty! I know just where to put it! Thank you so much!" As soon as he left I put it up for auction at Ebay. It's not to say that I don't like stained glass, but the lamp was truly fugly and the biggest piece of shit ever manufactured. Some other woman from Ohio was very happy to win the lamp for $10. And I added the $10 into my stash for a really nice piece of jewelry.
That's why I'm so in favor of wish lists, like the kind you can make at Amazon or The Things I Want. Of course, that's not always fool proof either. A few years ago I told my mom I was going to buy a KitchenAid mixer after Christmas, so I really only wanted cash. Instead she bought me this rinky dink no-name mixer from Walmart and was all proud, thinking she had saved me all this money. I immediately returned it and then bought myself the mixer I wanted. She keeps buying Craig duplicates of tools he already owns, despite the fact that I give her a detailed list of stuff. She specifically asks for a detailed list of things the two of us covet for Christmas, but totally disregards the list. I don't get it.
I'm really not this ungrateful. I'm happy to have people who love me enough to want to give me stuff for Christmas. I really am. But I am one of those gift givers who agonizes over what to buy. I want so badly to please people -- and if I don't know what to buy I will sneak around and ask husbands, wives, children, etc. what to buy. I take great pride in being a good gift giver. I have yet to give a really bad gift, and I always have ways of finding out if people are really faking enthusiasm.
Craig tells me I'm really hard to buy gifts for. I will admit that choosing clothes and jewelry for me can be difficult. I'm super picky and have very definite tastes. But I also have quite a few hobbies -- I collect mortar and pestle sets, whisks, and The Nightmare Before Christmas stuff. I cook, garden, knit, plus I'm an artist. I have a deep love of Brat Pack movies and don't have any of them on DVD. Like I said, I think I'm ridiculously easy to buy for.
The person I'm having difficulty with this year is my dad. Since I really don't like him and don't want anything to do with him, it's very difficult to purchase a good gift. In the past I have bought him a fifth of bourbon, which makes me feel like I'm contributing to his alcoholism. He says he likes stained glass, and I know he likes things with skulls but those two generally don't go together. I'm stumped.
The holidays are always so complicated.
I just purchased a gift certificate to Dover Downs for my mom and her husband for Christmas. I had no idea that NASCAR race tickets were so expensive. NASCAR, or any kind of racing, just doesn't do anything for me. I can't imagine paying $90 to sit around a track and watch cars drive real fast in a circle. What's the appeal of that? Is it the crashes? Does inhaling alot of dust turn people on?
Having purchased this gift certificate, I feel good for buying something for them that they'll like and use but yet I'm a little weirded out for it. Am I going to start getting magazine solicitations from Guns and Ammo, New Mobile Home Monthly, or Jugs? Sure, that's a huge stereotype but I'm going to stick by it.
I just don't get it.
Sometimes there are just days when you would be better off at home. I woke up this morning, got the official news of the elections, rolled my eyes, and thought, "If only I could sleep for the next two years."
But I dragged my ass out of bed and schlepped to work. And now I'm in the throes off melodramatic melancholy [ah, alliteration]. I feel like I should be gliding around the office halls in an old fashioned velvet ballgown clutching a white lacy hankerchief to my heaving bosom, lamenting "Woe as me!"
It's true: I'm unhappy with the election results and do not have a very good feeling about what the future brings. I know some of you are very happy about the way things turned out -- that this new government low on the checks and balances will allow for real change to occur. But who will the change benefit?
My grandfather is probably having a party at his house today. He would like nothing more than to return America to the 1950's when white men were kings of their castles and the breadwinners, women were domestic goddesses with little to do outside the house, and anyone who wasn't white and/or heterosexual was not to be trusted. Had my grandfather decided to go into politics he would have made an admirable attorney general...oh wait....ahem.
This is my official pity party for myself, so if you've got something mean to say, save it. I'm going to mope around all I want today and then I'm going to get over it. Really, I'm going to pretend that nothing sinister is happening.
Because, you know, ignorance is bliss.
I have a second cousin who claims to have been abducted by aliens.
The people in my family are mostly former farmers and their children. We have our share of insane people [like my mentally deficient third cousin and his wife, neither of whom are allowed by law to have a drivers license, but bought a car "for the radio"] rattling the branches of our family tree, but my cousin Rachael is one of the fairly normal ones. She is a medical biller who is married and has a couple of kids.
It's silly [and arrogant] to assume that Earth is the only planet populated by intelligent life. There's all sorts of evidence [whether or not it's believable or not is a different story] to suggest that UFOs have been spotted in our skies. I'm definitely not opposed to the idea that alien abductions could happen, but I have a really hard time believing Rachael's story [or anyone's story]. Until I see with my own eyes that she is being abducted or I am abducted myself, I will never truly and concretely believe in the whole idea of alien abduction.
I know you would be upset if I didn't offer up the obligatory picture of myself this morning. I give you black and white business Nicole! Behold the splendor! Heh.
This is my mom and dad at their senior prom. My mom was a pretty rockin' chick in 1969, bouffant hair not withstanding. I'm not sure why she married my dad -- he really isn't a hot guy and he certainly isn't a nice person. I shudder to think what the actual reason is [oww, ouch, my eyes! Jagged spoon!].
I really didn't care when they announced they were getting a divorce. I was in the 4th grade and by that time my dad hadn't been around much anyway. I don't remember seeing him more half a dozen times from kindergarten until 4th grade. I don't remember asking my mom where he was, but I doubt I knew that he just abandoned us at will. Maybe I just thought he went out on a long trip for ice cream, like my dad's father did [and that is a true story, I swear it].
Anyhoo, I had read a book a few months before in which the lead character's parents got a divorce. The girl in the story was at McDonald's with her brother when the parents announced they were divorcing. The girl threw up her hamburger because she was so upset and was traumatized for life: no more McDonald's food for her. I thought that was the normal reaction for people to have when their parents got divorced.
My mom and dad gathered my brother and I in the kitchen of our house and made the big announcement. My mom had this strange half smirk on her face [probably trying to keep the excitement of getting rid of the ass from bubbling to the surface], but my dad was crying his eyes out. Like I said, I really didn't care that they were divorcing because my life certainly wouldn't be directly affected.
However, I felt it was my duty to at least make an effort to pretend to be upset. Since we weren't at McDonald's and there was no food involved, I couldn't reenact the scene from the book. I improvised: I ran out of the kitchen shrieking.
Yes, I'm totally serious -- I should have won an Academy Award. I ran into my room, slammed the door behind me, and pretended to be Deeply Upset. My dad came in and said something or other to me [you can see how I've committed his soothing words to memory], and that was the end of it.
He left [again], my mom flushed a Dunkin' Donuts box full of drugs and drug paraphenalia he left behind, and I stopped pretending like I cared about it. Life continued normally.
Statistics show the divorce rate somewhere around 50%. I'm not saying that the Census Bureau lies, but almost all of my friends' parents are happily married. In fact, I am the only person of all my friends with divorced parents. And I only have one friend who is divorced. Where are all these divorced people?
Of course, considering my mom and dad have both been married three times each, maybe my parents are counting more than once.
I ran away from home once when I was 11 years old. It was just about this time of year.
My brother and I stayed at my grandparents house overnight alot when we were growing up. My mom worked a day job, a night job, and a weekend job in order to keep the house from being repossessed and to keep us clothed. My grandparents lived right next door to us, so it was ideal. But since my mom was rarely around, my father was absent, and my grandparents were really strict, I felt like no one really loved me and no one would care if I ran away.
So my mom went to work and told us to walk over to my grandparents house. My brother left, and I was still grabbing some homework. It was kind of dark outside and it was one of those really spooky moonlit nights, windy, with the cold sting of Fall in the air. I stopped in the middle of the yard and started thinking about running away.
There was a bus stop out at the turn in to the driveway. It's still there -- it's one of those full on shelters you see out in the boondocks where all the local kids gather to catch the school bus. So that's where I ran away from home to. In my nightgown, no less.
I stayed out there for 2 hours. It was getting cold and I wasn't wearing anything too warm, so I finally left the bus stop and went to my grandparents' house. I walked in the door and no one even noticed that I was late. My grandmother gave me some supper and then I studied at the table.
Of course, that only proved to me that my assessment of my standing in the family was correct. In retrospect, I know my family loved me then and loves me still. But it's not a nice thing to think that you're all alone in the world, especially at age 11.
I'm in full on Christmas shopping mode right now. It's a weird sickness to be close to being done this early, but I'm totally anal compulsive about it. And I absolutely hate shopping anywhere after Thanksgiving.
My father presents a challenge. If I knew it wouldn't cause a huge uproar, I'd say fuck it and never speak to him again. But I'm a dutiful daughter for the sake of world peace, so I at least make an effort.
An easy gift would just be a fifth of bourbon and be done with it. But I really don't like encouraging his bad habits. Last year he bought Craig and I this absolutely hideous faux Tiffany lamp. He said that he likes stained glass so he figured we would too. Um, yeah. Because I'm so much like him.
Anyway.
Now that I know he loves tacky looking stained glass items, I'm using that as a basis for my gift search. He also likes skulls. One can only imagine what his house must look like. So I'm looking in the one spot where one can find such bizarre things: Ebay.
I imagine that eventually I will come up with the perfect gift -- some grotesquely ugly faux Tiffany lamp with a skull pattern. So far I've found alot of other weird stuff though, mostly relating to taxidermy. One item was a turtle skull, but the person selling it specified that no brains were included. Oh darn. Or how about this lovely human skull incense burner? Hey, it's a must for every home.
Oh course, I love Ebay for that exact reason: anything can be found there. My Aunt Jeanne collects giraffes, so I found a very attractive ceramic teapot in the shape of a giraffe for her. I did have to wade through several pages worth of crappy and fugly items to find it, but it was well worth the effort!
Of course, if I don't find the perfect gift I can always buy my dear old dad 15 minutes with this whore -- he can bite her ass on my dime. That somehow seems poetic and fitting.
I attended my mother's second wedding in my cheerleading uniform. There I stood, royal blue and white school spirit blazing, witnessing the downfall of modern civilization.
OK, maybe not the downfall of modern civilization. But my mother's second husband, John, was certainly not a good addition to my family. And it wasn't a huge wedding -- it was a 5 minute Justice of the Peace affair. But I attended in my uniform as a sort of formal protest. The symbolism was probably lost on everyone present, but hey, I'm a subtle rebel!
No one in my family ever really liked John. He was a bully who was missing half his teeth. His first marriage didn't work out because his ex-wife is 500 pound lesbian biker chick with self control issues and a drug problem. His two children by that marriage were terminally fucked up and annoying. One talked non-stop and the other was a criminal in training.
I know it's a miracle that this gem of a guy stayed single long enough to be reeled in by my mom. And boy, do I feel lucky.
Even though I wasn't particularly fond of John, I thought we had a peaceful understanding. I stayed out of his way and he stayed out of mine. That understanding was shattered one day I played hooky from school. John came home for lunch from work unexpectedly so I hid in my closet.
I hear my bedroom door open and I'm wondering what the hell my stepfather is doing in my room. After a couple of minutes he says, "Slut!" and leaves to go back to work. I peek out of the closet and my journal is sitting on my bed. Well.
The funniest part is that there was nothing really in there that would qualify that type of response. So maybe he just couldn't read and was imagining that I was doing all manner of slutty things.
But that earned John my official Mark of Disapproval. My mother's marriage to John was not good to begin with. Like I said, he's a total ass but I stayed far away from any controversy. After the journal episode, I was always two seconds away from throwing down, ready to argue any little point, or make him seem like a bigger schmuck than he already was.
Don't screw with the little blonde girl in the cheerleading uniform, pal! Heh.
I won't go into the specifics because they are long and boring, but John eventually left my mother for another woman. My mom, queen of avoiding marital confrontation, was upset for about two seconds until she realized that she no longer had to put up with his antics.
Last I heard he was supporting his new girlfriend and her nine children from a previous marriage to someone linked to the mafia. Karma is a wonderful thing.
Bart came out to his parents in a letter they received yesterday. Today they came for a visit. I can't even imagine how nervous he must have been. Then again, I don't have to imagine it because Bart is basically living it live in his blog/journal. That is so brave. I mean, I have a tendency to confess embarrassing things here, but nothing remotely as gut-wrenching as Bart is going through. So my love and good wishes go out to Bart today.
I've never had to tell my mom [you know my dad doesn't count as a real parent so I'll leave him out of this] anything earth shattering. I've dated people she and the rest of my family would not have approved of. I guess you could call me an equal opportunity dater -- I've dated men of every race/color/religion you can think of. And if you're wondering, it has actually been mandated out loud that I should never bring home a boy who isn't white. I don't think religion mattered at all, so bringing home a white Satanist who was into human sacrifice would have been OK, but to bring home a devoutly Catholic black guy would have been a Very Bad Thing. I don't know how bad the reaction would have been if I had ever announced I was gay or bisexual or something.
My mother has met very few of my boyfriends over the years. Only two that I can think of, actually. My mom has also not met very many of my friends. I haven't lived at home since I was 18, and she rarely comes to visit me here. I have to admit that I was worried a family member or two would make some of my friends feel uncomfortable at the wedding. Between that, and worrying that my dad would make an ass out of himself, I was on guard and that sort of stressed me out a little more than was necessary on my wedding day.
Every once in a while I used to have this fantasy that I would announce to my mom that I had met the person of my dreams and it was a half-black, half-asian girl, and we were going to adopt a Puerto Rican baby. In every scenario my grandparents both freaked out and started sputtering, and my mom just passed out cold.
Anyway, go you Bart!
There's a commercial I've been seeing on TV recently that is kind of grossing me out a little. It begins with an elderly couple in their bedroom. The old woman is lying in bed in one of those old person flowered muumuus. The husband enters the bedroom shaking a can of something called Vigoroso, leering at the wife. The wife gives the husband a come hither look and unties the top of her nighty. I think the commercial is for some sort of motor oil.
I get the heebies everytime the old woman unties her nighty. It's not like I think old people don't have sex, but I certainly don't want to think about it. It's like the difference between knowing your parents have sex and actually witnessing them having sex. Uh, no thanks.
My grandparents are around 75 years old. My grandfather has had one hip replaced and both of his knees. My grandmother has a chronic back problem and asthma. I love them dearly but I don't want to know anything about their sex life.
When I was in high school I used to spend a week in the summer at their house [they lived in Carlisle, PA]. I remember laying in the guestroom, which is directly across the hall from their bedroom. They didn't believe in shutting doors, so this is what usually transpired on a nightly basis...
...sounds of people rolling around in bed, hopefully just trying to get comfortable...then a fart from my grandfather...
Arlene [my grandmother]: Richard, stop it!
Richard [my grandfather]: Give me a kiss!
Arlene: Stop it! [giggle]
[a belch from grandmother]
[sounds of smooching]
Arlene: Now stop that Richard!
And that's pretty much when I gouged out my eardrums.
The very thought of my grandparents getting it on is icky, and I don't want the visual in my head. But yet everytime I see that commercial I get really really squicked.
My mother is much more subtle. She is a firm believer in closed doors. I'm not home much, but when Craig and I go to visit we sleep in my old room which shares a wall with my mom and stepfather's room. Most of the time there's just a lot of snoring, but every so often there's moaning. And then Craig and I have to abandon the room in favor of sleeping in the car. Because, well, no. Not so much.
I'm not squeamish about other people having sex. But I don't want any sort of window into the sex life of my parents or grandparents. I don't want to go shopping for naughty lingerie with my grandmother, or shop for sex toys with my mom.
Oh great...now I've got the heebies.
My mother was slightly crazy when I was a teenager. Apparently she was driven over the edge by a myriad of reproductive organ problems, including endometriosis. Since she is now well into menopause, my mother has mellowed considerably. But at the time when all this was going on, I thought she was insane.
I was actually a really good kid -- I earned great grades, was reasonably well-adjusted, participated in sports and other after school activities, and was well-liked by my teachers. I read constantly and never got in trouble with the law or anyone else, for that matter.
But my mom had a rule that was absolutely non-negotiable: I had to be home in time for curfew, no matter what. The punishment for being late was being grounded one day for each minute I was late.
I was grounded from the time I turned 12 until I left home to go to college when I was 18.
See, the problem is that the rule was non-negotiable. If I was out under normal circumstances, it was not hard to be in by midnight or 10pm [if it was a school night]. However, one night some friends and I drove to Wilkes-Barre [that's about 45 minutes or so from my hometown] for something or other. We left to come back home around 10:30 pm so everyone had plenty of time to get delivered home. Unfortunately there was a huge fatal accident that shut down the highway. This was before everyone on the planet had a cell phone, and we were stuck out in the middle of nowhere on the highway with no phone anywhere in the vicinity. We ended up getting home at 1am.
Despite the fact that the accident had been on the news, my mother grounded me for 60 days.
Being grounded for me meant that I could go to school, and I could attend my sports practices and games, but nothing else. No TV, no phone, no books....only homework and my bedroom. She once experimented with not allowing me to attend practices and games, but I think my coach called her to complain about me missing so many games.
My mother had other ways of torturing me. Once every other month or so I'd come home to find every drawer in my bedroom overturned onto the floor, and every piece of clothing in my closet tossed on top of the pile. This would occur when my mother was in the grips of some bizarre cleaning frenzy. She'd decide that my dresser drawers weren't organized enough. She was super particular about underwear -- all of my underwear had to be folded in threes and grouped by color. So if the underwear was folded wrong or wasn't sorted to her liking, all the drawers would get dumped. And then I'd have to refold everything and put it back into the drawers and closet while she sat at my desk and supervised.
Every once in a while my mom would decide that she didn't like my attitude [can anyone blame me for being slightly resentful?] and would force me to stand in front of her for an hour while she yelled at me that I was an "ugly person." When she first started to do this I would get upset and start to cry, but then she would just yell at me more and tell me that "crocodile tears" wouldn't help.
It's a minor miracle that I didn't turn out to be an axe murderer.
The funny thing is that my mom and I are sort of friends now. I left home at the earliest opportunity and barely spoke to her for 5 years. Like I said, she has mellowed considerably now that she has gotten medical help for her various problems.
I still get the heebie jeebies in my old bedroom though.
My grandparents and Craig's parents have been pestering us about having kids. Craig and I do not want to have children, so we've been trying to come up with creative ways to make them back off.
Craig's mother is especially pushy. Apparently she's been saving space on her wall o' grandchildren for a portrait of our little bundle of joy. I usually offer to have a professional photograph taken of our cat, Sassy.
And then I have to listen to a diatribe about how I'll change my mind about having kids, and kids are wonderful, and blah blah blah. I just flat out don't want children -- I don't really like being around them and cleaning up puke and shit doesn't really sound like a good time to me. The motherly instincts just skipped right over me. I think all babies pretty much look like Yoda. And I'm 30 years old...I don't think I'm going to suddenly wake up one day and think I would make a great mother.
So I think we've come up with some new and interesting ideas on how to make aggressive grandchild wanters to shut up!
Idea 1 - Introduce them to a photograph of Muthoka from Kenya. $15 per month to sponsor a kid from Kenya is much cheaper than the billions of dollars is takes to support a child of my own, and I don't have to change any daipers or pretend to be interested in Barney. The bonus: Muthoka is not white, which would totally piss off my grandfather.
Idea 2 - I'll bring Nathan, my adopted ex-con, to dinner next Thanksgiving. And than I'll hand over the much-coveted portrait: Nathan's mug shot.
Idea 3 - Maybe we could adopt some snot-nosed little punk named Snake from the local orphanage. I'll show up at Craig's parents house and say, "Well, we're joining the Peace Corps and will be gone for the next year. Can you watch your new grandson?" Sears portraits will never be the same.
Craig has a bizarre request for his death. He wants to be cremated and then have his ashes made into cookies and served up to his enemies. Now, I'm all for fulfilling deathbed requests, but Craig doesn't have any enemies so who he thinks is going to eat these cookies?
My mother used to tell my brother and I that if she died, she just wanted us to tie her up in a plastic garbage bag and throw her over the side of the Berwick-Nescopeck bridge. At the time she had cancer, so you would have thought it would have scarred me for life. But I have a pretty healthy attitude toward death and burial.
With all my recent talk of ghosts and President Bush trying hard to get us all killed, I've been thinking more and more about that fateful day when I meet the Big Guy -- the Grim Reaper.
I used to think I'd donate my body to a medical school. Doing that would prohibit me from donating my organs though, and that's something I'm behind 100%. So I'll likely be cremated. Since I don't want my ashes to be buried, I have it narrowed down to two choices: 1) have my ashes scattered inside the Haunted Mansion at Disney or 2) throw my ashes overboard into the ocean.
Being buried seems unnecessary and kind of disgusting to me. I know I'll be dead and all, but I'd feel much better if I were ashes and not worm food. One thing I definitely don't want is any type of memorial or funeral. The only thing that would be acceptable to me is some kind of a party -- maybe a Nicole Memorial Day at the local amusement park or something. No one enjoys funerals and memorials. They're always sad and people are crying and trying to come up with excuses not to go.
And then there are those people who act really inappropriately at these types of events. My grandmother died last October and I was very upset about it. My great Uncle Ed raced around the house before the funeral, the church during the funeral, and the cemetery after the funeral acting as chief photographer. Who wants to get their picture taken when you're trying hard to hold it together and not get all snotty? He even made us pose with the urn. A few weeks after the funeral he sent me a picture of my grandmother's gravestone and me. What a keepsake...what a cherished memory!
According to the Death Clock, I'll bite it in 2051 on May 7. And according to Spark's Death Test I will be pushing up daisies on September 30, 2044. Whichever is right, I guess I have a long time until I need to worry about it. I kind of hope that I die before I get too old, though.
I worry about getting old and infirm and needing to spend the rest of my days in a nursing home. My grandmother spent the last 10 years of her life in a nursing home [after her stroke] and she hated it. And I hated going to visit her there. She was the only sane person in a sea of Alzheimers patients. I have repeatedly warned Craig that if I ever get to the point where my memory is failing and/or my body is failing that I will put myself out of my misery. I would rather enjoy life than regret having to live every day.
Crystal just left a few hours ago. I think we had a pretty good trip, but she is so inscrutable that I'm not sure if she had a good time or not.
We had a small problem with the first Fringe Festival show we were supposed to see. We got to the theater where the show was supposed to be an hour ahead of time to pick up the tickets, as specified on the website. Instead there was a sign on the ticket window that said tickets would be available 15 minutes before the show started. So we had an hour to kill, so we thought we'd get something to eat. Unfortunately, the chef was slower than molasses and, even though we were the only ones in the restaurant, our food hadn't come an hour later. So we paid the bill and bailed and got to the theater about 5 minutes after The Higher the Hair, the Closer to God started. But we weren't allowed in because it would disrupt the actors. I was kind of pissed off since there wasn't a sign posted, but whatever.
Crystal and I walked over to the next theater on Bleecker Street and then shopped around the area until 7. Luckily we did manage to see the show at 7. It was called Heroin(e), and was a dance piece based on addiction and recovery. Parts of it were very well choreographed and cool, but some of it was just cheesy...like the part with exercise treadmill and the Beat It-style dance fight. Oh, and it's coincidental that I was so focused yesterday morning on the Rerun dance, because they did that too.
This morning when we got up we went for breakfast and my dad was waiting for us when we got back at 10am. I should be surprised considering he was 2 hours late dropping her off yesterday morning. And then he tried to convince Craig and I to attend a Labor Day part-ay at his house [the Casa de Midlife Crisis].
I'm a little concerned that Crystal might be a homophobe. It might be because she lives in a small town where there are no openly gay couples, but she made some crack yesterday about how "they" weren't "shy"...I had no idea who she was talking about, so I asked and she gave a kind of nasty pointed look at two women who were walking down the street holding hands.
I didn't want to delve into her whole attitude about being gay, because who wants to get a lecture from your older sister about how love is love, and you should feel lucky to find it in any form, blah blah blah. I guess I just didn't know how to handle it so I just said something like, "Well, it's easier to be who you are in a big town where no one cares who you're attracted to." She didn't say anything more about it, and and neither did I.
Not that I didn't already know this, but my dad's a total asshole. He was supposed to pick up Crystal and deliver her to my door by 7pm. I just got an email from Crystal saying that my dad has arbitrarily decided that he's going to drop her off tomorrow morning now [which means I have to change our plans for this evening]. We have to be on the train to NYC by noon tomorrow in order to get there and catch the shows that we have tickets for. I would be willing to bet that he shows up with her around 6pm.
I know exactly what this is about. My dad is a) pissed off at me because I refused to attend his July 4 shindig and b) pissed at Crystal because she couldn't take off work last weekend to go to Knoebel's Grove with him. So since we want to spend the weekend together instead of with him, he's going to fuck everything up. Argh.
There was just a bit of surreal excitement on my floor. A bat invaded our space and freaked people out. Brooke screamed and hit the deck. Since I am easily amused, I was in hysterics to see people running maniacally away from the bat, arms flailing and sheer terror on their faces.
It's just a bat, but you'd swear it was the bubonic plague. I watched all this drama play out until Amber got sick of the screaming and captured it with a sweater. Amber is the great white hunter.
So I have finally gotten together an amazing plan for Saturday -- who knew my travels to Manhattan with sister Crystal [is that like Sister Christian? Can I get an amen from all you Night Ranger fans?] would be so serendipitous? The Fringe Festival starts Friday which means lots of cheap ass things to see! Woohoo! We're going to see The Higher the Hair, the Closer to God and a dance piece called Heroin(e). So we've got lots to do away from the heat inside, and it's all cheap fun! Hopefully Crystal won't be freaked out by the drag queens.
OK, so you know that my grandfather is a Freemason and I found his little pamphlets, right? So above are the scans of the covers [you can click on them to get a bigger view].
I haven't had time to read all of them, but I did start to read Booklet No. 4: The Master Mason. It reads like cult material....
This is a little something from Booklet No. 4: "It is safe to say that among the countless thousands who have in the past been raised to the Sublime Degree of a Master Mason, no one of them realized at the time the full implications of the ceremony. This would be clearly impossible. Yet it is vitally important that the deeper meanings of this degree be understood if one is to become a Master Mason in fact as well as in name."
OK, "full implications of the ceremony"? Um, that just reeks of having sex with goats and sacrificing virgins. And the rest of it just sounds like they're all waiting for the aliens to come by and pick them up at the end of the world. I have this funny vision in my head of my grandfather hanging out at the lodge wearing a Grand Pooba hat and a purple robe while there are these guys around him preparing for the coming of the mother ship.
Maybe there isn't anything to it at all. Wouldn't it be a laugh riot if Freemasonry is really just a bunch of garbage put together to fleece money from impressionable men? Since all of the Freemasonry language is so convoluted and full of double speak, maybe no one really knows what the hell Freemasonry is all about. They just dazzle the masses with their collective bullshit. Or maybe they really are an evil secret society....
Speaking of evil, I promised a shot of my deep dark tan from vacation and here it is. 
Yep, just 4 short days ago this was me, sitting on the end of the dock with a glass of wine and a doorag. I feel a sudden need to flee work.
I have a deep dark family secret. OK, not really -- I am seriously unable to keep anything a secret. If you read regularly, you know that I have no shame and no secrets.
Here's the deal: my grandfather is a Freemason. So is one of my uncles, and I'm sure there are plenty of others in my family who are too.
It squicks me that my grandfather is in a secret society that has ties to Jack the Ripper, satanism, the assassination of JFK and MLK, Jr., and the creation of the Ku Klux Klan. I know that it's a punishable offense to let any Freemason secrets out of the bag, so imagine my surprise when, while sorting through the huge boxes of photos that I am handling for my grandparents, I came across three pamphlets from my grandfather's lodge!
I haven't read them yet...I am slightly scared that I'm going to find out their initiation is having sex with sheep or something like that. I will eventually read them. I'm sure I won't learn any deep dark secrets that haven't already been reported.
Craig and I made plans to have breakfast with Kristi and her current snack, Brad. I dragged my ass out of bed at 8am and we were at May's Family Restaurant by 9:30...Kristi and Brad were absent.
Nothing makes me crazier than not being prompt when you're meeting someone. Especially when I'm on a schedule -- things to do, people to see, towns to escape. They finally showed up at 9:45. Argh.
Kristi had talked Brad up when I saw her Friday night. Of course, she was just impressed because he has both ears and his tongue peirced. It takes more to impress me than a few peircings, and I was less than enamored. He's semi-pretty, but can barely string sentences together. Sometimes I think Kristi needs to get out more.
The ride back to Philadelphia was uneventful. And I almost cheered when I saw the skyline. It's good to be home!
I knew it would come up and be an issue, and I was right. My mom started to bitch about Bush today while we were eating lunch [to which I always reply: "You didn't vote, so you have no right to complain"], and I mentioned that I had gotten so wound up that I wrote him a letter about the Pledge being ruled unconstitutional.
Ed chimes in with, "Yeah, that really drives me nuts." I just looked at him and said, "I would bet that our views on this are completely different." And then I went on to say that, while I don't think the Pledge should be ruled unconstitutional, I don't believe the phrase "under god" should be included. I don't think Ed knew what to make of that -- so he told me that there should be more religion in the country. When I asked why he said that this country is lacking "morals."
"So you're equating religion with moral fortitude?" I asked incredulously. He got a little flustered and muttered, "Well yes."
I must have gotten a gleam in my eye, because Ed looked scared and backed away slowly. "I'm not religious. Does that mean I lack morals?" I asked. "No," he bleated. "But you just said that religious beliefs and morals go hand in hand," I said. Ed sort of looked stricken and ran the other way.
Craig is highly allergic to something at my mom's house. It might be pesticides they use on the corn fields behind the house, or maybe it's my mom's perfume. Everytime he visits he gets all bleary eyed and sneezy. So do I, but for different reasons: I just miss civilization.
Here I am in Berwick. Already this morning I had to plan an attack on the maniac who woke me up with a chainsaw at 5am. I know that there is that whole "early to bed, early to rise" and "the early bird gets the worm" mentality, but 5am????
I'm convinced that every inbred moron in the world descended on the Allentown Service Plaza on the Northeast extension of the Turnpike yesterday while we were there. It was probably a planned sneak attack. Every mullet wearing idiot within a 50 mile radius decided it was a great time to hit the Roy Rogers. Considering these people can't seem to walk and make decisions at the same time, it's a minor miracle they could get a license to drive.
I just had to buy something on Ebay for my mother. It's not complicated, but she and Ed are convinced that it's rocket science.
I'm ready to escape already. Help me. Must. Resist. the. Draw. of. the. Slack. Jaw.
Christmas is only 5 months away.
I am completely anal retentive when it comes to Christmas shopping. I usually start shopping at the beginning of summer. I squirrel things away in hiding places. I congratulate myself on starting early, getting things on sale, and generally avoiding buying into the Christmas rush.
It's a sickness.
It is with a heavy heart that I admit that I have not bought one single thing this year yet. I have my list made and I've thought long and hard about what to buy, but I haven't actually bought anything yet. You know what? I'm getting the shakes.
I do have a problem this year -- I have no clue what to get my mother and stepfather. Last year I bought them a bunch of little stuff in London and also a gift certificate to a bed and breakfast about 45 minutes from their house. The gift certificate doesn't seem to have been well-received. The two of them are total homebodies and refuse to travel [although you can hardly call driving 45 minutes to a B&B travelling], unless it's to attend something NASCAR related.
Did I mention that I think I might have been adopted?
Yeah, my family is a bunch of mouth-breathers with mullets. And my stepfather has an Amish beard.
So I'm now thinking about what I can get for them for Christmas that they'll like. What do you get for NASCAR enthusiasts?
It gives me the shakes just thinking about it.
My dad really is the worst parent in the world.
If you're a regular reader, you remember the early morning stupidity when my idiot father invited me to a shindig at casa de dumbass. Crystal emailed me today and told me a short version of the story -- basically, my little brother [who is 27] brought along some friend of his and my dad invited all of his dirtbag neighbors and the swell bartender from the club that he frequents...and then all of them sat around and got absolutely piss drunk. Keep in mind that Crystal is 17. I'm sure she isn't some innocent, but it can't be good for her to be around that kind of crap. Parents are supposed to be the responsible ones...
In addition, my drunk brother made Crystal drive him and his little friend to the local tattoo parlor at 2am so they could get tattoos [not Crystal]. Crystal doesn't have her drivers license or even her permit. She's not allowed to drive because she has seizures for no apparent reason.
So it sounds like it was a good idea to skip that shit -- I can't imagine what a travesty that would have been. My dad really has no concept of correct [or even acceptable] parental behavior.
Yikes.
I realize after reading yesterday's post, you may think I am a Domestic Goddess. Laundry, cooking...do I bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan? Well, yes, I do...but I'm hardly a typical haus frau: I haven't cleaned my house in 5 years.
Before you get grossed out, let me clarify: Craig cleans the house. I don't mind doing laundry or washing the dishes, and I actually love to cook -- but don't try to get me near Windex or furniture polish.
It's an aversion I grew into because my mother is a clean freak. I don't mean that she had OCD or anything [although there were times when I wondered], but she grew up in a family that was two steps away from being Amish and everything had to be cleaned every single day and it had to be perfect and reflection-full. In her freakier moments, I would come home from school only to find all of my bedroom dresser drawers pulled out and dumped in the middle of my bedroom floor because my mom didn't like the way I had put my clothes away. According to the Book of Cleanliness™ thou shalt put your underwear [folded in thirds and then in half, of course] away in neat, color-coded rows and thy socks shall be paired, folded in half, and divided into more color-coded rows. So the Mother says it, and so shall it be!
Running away from home and joining the circus is a thought I entertained more than once.
So yeah, I'm traumatized by childhood übercleanliness. Craig cleans the cat box, takes care of the trash on trash day [although I will take the trash outside], and cleans the house. In return, I am in charge of the dish-washing and clothes-washing, and I am the Official Cook of the household. I'd like to think it's an even trade, but I know I have the better end of the deal.
Oh yeah! I'm official sprung for the next 4 days -- lock up your children! Not only have I officially begun my weekend, it is sans Craig! I love having the house to myself overnight every once in a while. The possibilities seem endless! What to do, what to do? Maybe I will watch Season 1 of Buffy on DVD all night....or I'll have ice cream for dinner...or I'll go to a movie by myself! I'm giddy with anticipation!
Of course, this whole weekend I have to avoid answering my phone. Yep, I'm screening so I don't accidentally have to speak to dear old dad. Who am I kidding, he probably has surveillance on my house. I always sort of associate the Fourth of July with my dad -- and with your garden variety dumbass [in which category my dad can certainly be included]. Aside from the various episodes during which he set off fireworks in his own hand [his friend Phil actually lost fingers because of some idiotic stunt they were pulling with M-80's], he also thought it was hilarious to give my brother and I fireworks and matches of our own to play with. It's a miracle that I have survived my childhood.
My favorite Fourth of July memory: when I was 17 my dad decided he wanted to meet my high school boyfriend [Scott] and play the dad for the holiday. So he forced us all to accompany him to watch fireworks from an alternative location: the quarry. It must have been the secret dirtbag meeting spot, because every loser from a 20 mile radius decided to watch the fireworks from the quarry. Scott and I sat there for an hour, all the while trying to avoid being set on fire by the firecrackers my dad was throwing at us. Ah, memories.
Imagine, if you will, that it is 6am and you are blissfully asleep, dreaming of sheep and dessert. Now imagine the phone ringing, jarring you out of your peaceful slumber and seriously ruining your good vibe.
Yep, that's what happened to me this morning. I, of course, practically pole vaulted out of bed to get the phone. Who calls at 6am unless something horrible has happened? After crawling around blindly ['cause there are no contacts or glasses at 6am] for a minute trying to find the phone, I answered in a panic.
And it was dear old dad. Bastard.
Oblivious to the fact that I am half asleep and panting in nervous panic, he leisurely asks me if I can come to a picnic at his house sometime this weekend and then tells me all the other kids will be there and we can get drunk! Hooooeeeee! Drunk with my dad -- there's a real selling point.
So I stutter for about 4 minutes and basically end up telling him I'll get back to him. You know, 'cause it is 6am and I can't think of a tactful way of telling him to fuck off. He finally let's me go back to bed, but not before telling me his whole schedule for the week.
It's worse than I thought: my dad is now inspecting carnivals.
I have always been frightened by the idea of riding a carnival ride that was put together in 10 minutes by a guy who probably didn't graduate from high school. But the deal has now been finalized: if my dad is the one inspecting rides for safety I will never ever ride one. Nothing says safety like a disoriented possibly drunk man prone to acid flashbacks.
Craig was livid over the phone call. It's funny -- for a long time he thought I was overexaggerating the whole issue of my father being an ass. My dad can fake being a normal person if he chooses to, and he acted fairly normal around Craig for a long time. Craig thought that my dad had not been a great role model while I was growing up, but he was making an effort so why not give him a chance? And then little by little Craig got the idea that my dad is to be avoided at all costs. He's manipulative and crude. And now Craig understands completely.
So I have to give a call later and make up some excuse. But I'm not going to let this bother me all day -- I refuse! Instead, I will focus on the fact that I only have to work 3 days this week. Focus, dammit!
I feel slightly weird about the situation at hand. I have a half sister named Crystal. She just turned 17. She is my father's daughter by some chick that he was dating when I was 12-ish. One day when I was 14 my dad came to visit on one of his infrequent visits....we were rounded up and I was, as usual, less than thrilled to have to spend time with him. He just sort announced it: "You have a sister! She's 1 year old!"
I was stunned and pissed off. I mean, what kind of asshole keeps a secret like that for almost 2 years? And we were just expected to step in line and be happy about it. Oh boy, a sister! Now you can ignore one more kid you made!
Anyway, I haven't really ever been in close contact with Crystal. I hate her mother with a fiery passion for many reasons and we all know that my father is the root of half my various psychoses...and so I sort of rejected her on the principle of the thing.
Last year my grandmother died. I was very close to my grandmother and it hit me pretty hard. Crystal never really got to know her like I did because my grandmother had a stroke before we even knew about Crystal. But she still loved her as much as I did, and it was really hard. But anyway, I realized that Crystal really wanted me in her life.
I didn't know how to react to that. Crystal just turned 17 last week and I sent her a card and put my email address in it, asking her to email me. She emailed me right away, and we've been exchanging emails every day. She's not your typical 17 year old....aside from the issues she has likely faced with my dad, her mother is just pure evil and she's had to deal with a lot. I've been much luckier than she has -- she has actually had to deal with my dad much more often. We have avoided the topic of my dad, and I'm really not sure how she feels about him.
I invited her to spend a weekend with me and Craig in August. It will probably be pretty weird, and I will do my best not to talk shit about my dad to her. It's so raw though -- Crystal just brings up all this bitterness in me that I'm not sure how to deal with.
The assignment of reading for this week in British Literature was mostly literature about the role of women in Victorian England...you know, what was proper, what wasn't, what should have been proper, etc.
There was the prevailing opinion at the time that women should be seen and not heard. However, there was also the school of thought that women should be educated, but only to the extent that she would be sort of an entertainment to her husband. Almost like a geisha. Women should learn how to play music, how to cook, how to be a domestic goddess, but at the same time the woman should learn how to carry out a conversation as to ease the burden of her husband's troublesome day. One of the funniest [and most disturbing] things I read was Elizabeth Barret Browning's Aurora Leigh. [I've read other pieces by Browning but never Aurora Leigh, and now I wonder what took me so long. It's fucking brilliant!] Aurora is being schooled by this idiot aunt of hers and the aunt makes sure she "danced the polka and Cellarius,/Spun glass, stuffed birds, and modelled flowers in wax"...why? Oh because the aunt "liked accomplishments in girls."
Is that not the funniest thing you've ever read? Because knowing how to stuff birds is a HUGE accomplishment. I may have to make a study of this type of thing for my next paper.
But what is so strange is that woman are still facing alot of the same prejudices today. In 1859 John Stuart Mill wrote a proposal of sorts condoning equal rights for women..."The Subjection of Women" is part of a larger piece called On Liberty. It was such a revolutionary idea, but Mill basically said that since there was never any scientific study done to determine that men should rule dominant over women, there was no evidence to suggest that it should be so. Popular opinion at the time, according to Mill, believed that the nature of woman is to "live for others; to make complete abnegation of themselves, and to have no life but in their affections." And Mill equates the forced submission of women to the treatment of slaves.
While women have more and more control over their lives with each passing generation, it is still obvious that many of these old prejudices about the "female nature" still exist. Issues of abortion and birth control are still hotly debated -- and, contrary to what people will have you believe, it isn't about saving the lives of unborn souls. At the heart of all these issues is the religious right. The religious right is headed by men who can't possibly believe that a woman should have the right to dominion over her own body. Francis Trollope wrote a travel narrative ["The Mississippi" from Domestic Manners of the Americans that points out the absolute hold that religion had on early Americans. Trollope notes that there are no other diversions in Cincinnati except church. The theatre is not attended because it is "an offence against religion to witness the representation of a play," yet going to church is a fully approved activity -- but "it is the churches and chapels of the town that the ladies are to be seen in full costume." So the church took its hold over early Americans and has ruled their collective consciousness ever since.
It's ridiculous.
I only have to think of my own family to see how the whole issue of women's rights plays out over generations. My grandmother is wholly subservient to my grandfather. He sits on his ass watching TV while she cooks and cleans. He got fat, but fully expects my grandmother to stay thin and pretty. They seem to hate each other, but they will never get divorced. My mother at least graduated from high school, but she was discouraged from attending college by my grandparents. She told me once that she had an affinity for languages and thought it might be fun to become an interpreter, but my grandparents talked her into going to beauty school and marrying my dad. My mom has been divorced twice, married three times. With each husband she has had, she has given up all her interests to conform to the interests of said husband. With John it was football, with Ed it is Nascar. I was never encouraged to go to college, even though I went. My mom never paid even a cent toward my college education, but she paid a portion of my wedding, which goes to show what she holds more important. I am completely independent of Craig and I don't intend to have children. It's really bizarre to look at the family history to see how things have changed.
I called my mom Monday night to find out where my grandparents are currently residing. Being the dutiful daughter type that I am, I wanted to make sure that my grandfather receives his Father's Day card [side note: my grandparents have a winter vacation shanty in Florida, are selling their house in Carlisle, and just bought a house in Berwick...so you never know where they're going to be].
For years my mother has obsessed over the fact that she will one day become just like my grandmother. On some level we all worry that we're going to turn into our parents, but this is a little different. My grandmother is and my great-grandmother was a total loony.
My great-grandma Lucy used to wear her Easter egg colored polyester pants backward because they fit her better....that gives you some idea of the genetic mayhem I'm working against. She lived in a ramshackle house in the middle of no where. She liked to crochet dolls and toilet paper holders. She smelled weird and had a mustache. She was the scariest woman on the planet. She died when I was 11...she was 101.
My grandmother is less frightening in her own way. My grammy Ink [I'm not kidding] is 71 this year and has an 8th grade education. She writes postcards from wherever she and my grandfather are vacationing that say, "Dear Nic and Craig, Weathers good. 80 today. Humidity high. Wish you were here. Love, Grammy and Pappap." She talks constantly about absolutely nothing. If she tells you something once you will hear the same story until the end of time. She refuses to believe anything the doctor tells her. She fights with my grandfather just to hear herself talk. She donated money to the Menendez Brothers and she loves Oral Roberts. She gave me a pair of bubble gum pink high top velcro sneakers for Christmas last year -- she said that she had bought them in 1983 but misplaced them until now.
At any rate, my mom told me a story about my grandmother that is insanity at its finest.
My grandparents are moving to their new house in Berwick within the next three weeks. My two aunts took a trip to my grandparents house two weekends ago to help start the packing, since my grandfather is too cheap to pay someone to do this for them. My grandmother had about 100 empty flower pots in the shed [just plain old plastic ones]. My grandfather told her that she had to throw them out, and my grandmother argued....blah blah blah. My aunts went back to help out last weekend and noticed the pots weren't in the shed anymore. They asked my grandmother if she threw the pots out. My grandmother smirked a little and said, "Well now. I filled them up with dirt and planted flowers in them. Otherwise your father wouldn't let me take them with us."
Oh my.
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love my grandmother. I do. But, like my mother, I am beginning to worry that I will end up just like her, arguing to no one, coming up with skewed logic.
It's a scary scary thought.
I am a dutiful daughter. No, really. I am.
I have no loyalty to my father. Rather, I am civil to my father in order to spare my mother from having to hear my father blather on about what a crap daughter I am.
This morning before I came into work I stopped at Hallmark and bought Father's Day cards for all the birth fathers, grand-fathers, and quasi-fathers in my life.
I have a formula when I'm purchasing a card for my father.... it has to be totally impersonal. It can't be sentimental or say anything more than it has to. If I could find a card with nothing on the front that just says Happy Fathers Day on the inside, I'd use it. I used to buy cards that I felt were little personal jabs at him -- cards about drinking too much beer, or letting mom do all the work, or stuff like that. I got tired of being clever....'cause really I doubt my dad has a deveoped sense of irony and sarcasm. I'm sure the drugs took care of that long ago.
He hasn't called since late April. I'm sort of relieved...I doubt he much even remembers calling me that last time. He will likely call me at the end of the month to thank me for the Fathers Day card and his birthday card. I will make small talk and try to get off the phone without making any plans to see him.
I'm not really depressed or sad or anything that my dad is a joke, and that he wasn't around when I was growing up. In fact, I'm sure that I'm a better person for not having him there. But I must admit that sometimes I get really sad looking at Father's Day cards. Most of them involve golf and neck ties and references to being taught how to drive or stuff like that. A more appropriate depiction of my dad would be a crack pipe and semiautomatic weapon, with references to my dad being absent. That sounds so "I'm feeling sorry for myself"....but really, it's just me sort of wishing I had a normal father with whom I could have a normal father-daughter relationship with.
Luckily, Craig's father is a bastion of normalcy.
I bought cards for my dad, Craig's dad (and am I dutiful wife or what?), my grandfather, Christy's dad, and my step-father. Actually, I think I may have only bought 4 cards now that I think about it. I guess I need to make a pit stop for an extra card later.
Because I have to be dutiful.
Something unheard of has happened: my mother actually said she was proud of me. I almost fell over. Really.
I ran in the Race of the Cure yesterday, which is a 5K run (3.1 miles) to help fight breast cancer. I'm not a real runner....I run 1 or 2 miles once or twice a week. So I wasn't sure how I would do -- that said, I finished in about 42 minutes. Which I guess evens out to about 13 or 14 minutes for each mile. Personally, I'm impressed with myself -- I never thought I'd be able to do as well as I did. But my mother saying that she is proud of me for running and finishing is astounding. I think the world may end soon.
Running the race was sort of an emotional experience for me...more so than I would ever let on to anyone. There are survivors running it, and little kids with signs that say they're running in memory of their mothers....and people cheering and clapping for us on the sides of the street. I feel, oddly, honored to have run. And totally proud of myself for doing it -- it was one of my goals this year to run a race and now I have. And I want to do it again!
Not anytime too soon, of course....I'm totally sore this morning, and my right knee feels bruised inside....like I bruised the cartilege, which is entirely possible, all things considered. What I found odd about the experience of running for 3 miles is that at one point I started to walk but my knee felt funny walking, so I just started to run again. I actually found a pace where I didn't feel like I had to walk.
Craig was waiting for me at the finish line....I was so happy to see him there and so gratified to have him cheering for me. I actually felt pretty crappy that morning -- Craig wasn't going to go.....and all of that sort of "no one loves me" crap from all those years of no one supporting me in high school came right back up. He could tell I was upset about it, although I don't think he quite knew why....but he got up and got dressed. I just wish I would have remembered to bring my camera so I could have gotten a picture of myself crossing the finish line.
Saturday was my more relaxing day....Craig and I went to the Italian Market in the afternoon. It is always so zen to be there....so much sensory stimulation.
The only truly bad part to my weekend was Saturday morning. I went to yoga class with Christy, which is not the bad thing. I was dragging a little -- I hadn't been to class in almost 2 weeks, and so I was seriously out of practice. Some guy totally passed out during balancing stick pose. I mean really just lost it entirely.
Joel told us that Gretchen was attacked Wednesday or Thursday morning and that she is in serious condition -- she lost her eye. As soon as he said that I knew what happened. Thursday I heard a news story about a woman who was attacked in Southwest Philly -- it was an attempted rape, and during the struggle the woman was stabbed in the eye. It struck me because of how absolutely horrible that must have been. And to know that it was Gretchen just breaks my heart.
I am a dutiful daughter. No, really. I am.
I have no loyalty to my father. Rather, I am civil to my father in order to spare my mother from having to hear my father blather on about what a crap daughter I am.
This morning before I came into work I stopped at Hallmark and bought Father's Day cards for all the birth fathers, grand-fathers, and quasi-fathers in my life.
I have a formula when I'm purchasing a card for my father.... it has to be totally impersonal. It can't be sentimental or say anything more than it has to. If I could find a card with nothing on the front that just says Happy Fathers Day on the inside, I'd use it. I used to buy cards that I felt were little personal jabs at him -- cards about drinking too much beer, or letting mom do all the work, or stuff like that. I got tired of being clever....'cause really I doubt my dad has a deveoped sense of irony and sarcasm. I'm sure the drugs took care of that long ago.
He hasn't called since late April. I'm sort of relieved...I doubt he much even remembers calling me that last time. He will likely call me at the end of the month to thank me for the Fathers Day card and his birthday card. I will make small talk and try to get off the phone without making any plans to see him.
I'm not really depressed or sad or anything that my dad is a joke, and that he wasn't around when I was growing up. In fact, I'm sure that I'm a better person for not having him there. But I must admit that sometimes I get really sad looking at Father's Day cards. Most of them involve golf and neck ties and references to being taught how to drive or stuff like that. A more appropriate depiction of my dad would be a crack pipe and semiautomatic weapon, with references to my dad being absent. That sounds so "I'm feeling sorry for myself"....but really, it's just me sort of wishing I had a normal father with whom I could have a normal father-daughter relationship with.
Luckily, Craig's father is a bastion of normalcy.
I bought cards for my dad, Craig's dad (and am I dutiful wife or what?), my grandfather, Christy's dad, and my step-father. Actually, I think I may have only bought 4 cards now that I think about it. I guess I need to make a pit stop for an extra card later.
Because I have to be dutiful.
There is talk at work about "staffing" being "looked at". I wonder if I cross my fingers hard enough if they'll offer me the position of Staff Casualty? I could use a summer off to collect unemployment. Think of the possibilities! A whole summer to make art, take classes, spend quality time at the shore!
I've been reading some other journals here and some of them are very interesting, and heart breaking, and gut wrenching. I just read an entry in one that said that some ass linked to her journal so she went to check it out and the journal entry that linked to her said the person felt sane after reading said journal. Doesn't that just seem deliberately mean? In another a man was complaining about having to attend a dinner with his mother in law because she is a racist homophobe. And I feel for him since my own family probably personally supports the KKK.
Speaking of which, my grandparents just bought a house back in Berwick. They are moving across the street from the florist on Spring Garden Street, which of course is owned by what has to be the only [openly] gay couple in town. The minute I hear either of my grandparents refer to them as "fags" or some other stupid name I might have to freak out....it's no wonder I'm out of the will....arguing with my grandparents for years over their ridiculous stereotypes (my grandmother actually said to me once "They like their colors, don't they?", referring to black people in general after seeing a black guy in a red car) has left me with very little affection for them. My mother claims to be much more enlightened, but she has this bizarre idea that every person of mexican or puerto rican descent who lives in the area is bringing the property values down and/or causing crime. And you can't talk any sense into any of them -- maybe I should just start calling them "crackers" or something like that and see if they like the stereotype.
What really makes me laugh in all of this is that I'm the one who is odd.....all of them are good god-fearing people, real christians, etc. I'm the one who refuses to participate in organized religion, yet I'm the one who isn't full of hate for others. I'm the one who isn't afraid to live and take chances.
Probably my favorite moment was many years ago when I was still cheering at college, my mom and grandparents came to see me cheer (which was, in itself, a minor miracle since none of them ever took an interest in anything I've ever done). I forced them to take the subway down to the stadiums with me....they were all so uncomfortable in a situation where it was multi-culti. I thought my grandfather was going to cry.
I really had to have been adopted.
I'm finally not feeling like dirt, even though it sounds like I'm a 30 pack a day smoker -- I have that whiskey voice. Maryellen says that I sound like Barry White.
The truth is that I probably could have come in to work on Friday, but I just couldn't see the point of coming in for one day. And Craig came home early and we went to see a matinee of Spiderman (which I wasn't overly thrilled about seeing, but it wasn't the worst movie I ever saw).
Saturday my mom and Ed came to visit. It was all about the zoo, which was fine -- the weather was perfect and almost all the animals were out and about. They seemed to have a good time...dinner was at Il Cantuccio. They seemed to like the food quite a bit, although they were weirded out at first over the fact the menu is (in parts) Italian. They're not used to having wine with dinner, or even courses. It's usually a McDonald's hamburger or a slice of pizza somewhere. And then my mom wanted to go to Franklin Mills mall. Luckily we timed it well -- the mall was only open for another hour. By the time we got home it was about 10pm and that's way past the old folks bedtime. So they went to bed, and I have to admit that I was pretty wiped out too -- being sick will do that to you.
Yesterday we went to breakfast at the diner and then they left. The rest of the day I basically laid on the couch like a vegetable and watched Frontier House.
That is the oddest show -- I mean, why would you bring teenager girls into the wildnerness without makeup, deoderant, or music and expect them to be slave labor without bitching about it? Not to mention that there were NO teenage boys there! 6 months without boys would suck! And it doesn't seem like any of them actually prepared for it -- I know that if I knew I was going somewhere for 6 months where I wouldn't have any modern conveniences I'd be studying up on botany, farming, carpentry, etc, etc. I'd know how to do everything -- make soap, cure warts, blah blah blah. And then this one family totally kept breaking the rules by bringing in modern conveniences and "escaping" to modern society.....
I really don't want to be here today. I kind of wish they'd fire me and then I could collect unemployment all summer -- but no one even cared that I was out, except hoping that I was feeling better. I guess I would need to do something majorly wrong to get the boot here.
So my father called last night, drunk as usual. If I would have asked, I'm sure he would have owned up to a few drinks but would have denied that he was drunk -- but his speech was slurred and he was in his "I'm the best dad ever" mood.
He called under the pretext of finding out how my trip to Seattle was, but he wasn't interested in the slightest. I tried telling him about it and telling him about what Craig and I did this weekend but I'd get one sentence out and then he'd completely change the subject or spout out some totally nonsequitur fact. He finally got around to telling me that Crystal is having seizures and recently got arrested with two of her friends for breaking into a locker at school.
And then he got to the real root of why he called -- he wanted to bitch about the fact that none of his children find his fatherly ministrations useful. He complained that the only time he ever heard about any of us is when we had done something bad, and then brought up some imagined episode from when I supposedly stayed out until 4am with Scott when we were in high school. That would never have happened for several different reasons, but he insisted that it happened and that he had to "give me a talking to". Yep, because my father's paternal advice always meant so much!
At any rate, he seems to have a completely different version of his role as a father than anyone else....he actually said that he was always willing to be around. I'm thinking, uh, when was this? It certainly wasn't when my mom had to work 3 jobs to support us, or when my grandparents had to watch us because my mom couldn't afford a babysitter. It wasn't when I had to drop out of college because I couldn't afford the tuition on my own.
The attempted guilt trip wasn't the most bizarre part of the conversation though. Somehow school was mentioned. I think he may have asked me what classes I was taking this summer. So I told him and then he asked when I might expect to have a degree. I told him something about "if I quit working and went to school full time I'd be done in 2 semesters" but that it would never happen because we can't afford for me to stop working full time. He immediately perks up -- and offers me and Craig a room in his house. It was all I could do to keep from laughing hysterically. I said "I don't want to move in with you. I'm 30 and I'm married - I'm certainly not going to be moving in with my dad." He got all offended! It was one thing to move in with him for a summer when I was 19....it's another to move in with your parent when you're a married adult. And that summer I lived with him and Sharon was a nightmare.
I think he must get the 3 kids confused. I'm not sure how Crystal feels about him...I mean, she lived with him for longer than the rest of us did and he at least made some effort to be fatherly for most of her life. I don't remember him living with us at all, except for that year on 4th Street. I don't have ANY good memories of him at all.
My earliest memory of my father is backing my mother into a corner of our house, screaming at her, and then slapping her a few times. I had no idea what that was about, but I found out many years later it was because my mom flushed his drugs down the toilet. And I remember him forgetting my birthday and Christmas almost every year. And then I remember being forced to visit him at his house in the summer for a week for a few years when he decided it was time for him to be fatherly for a while....I want to say that it was between the ages of 9-12. And the last summer I consented to go to his house I remember him making me do his laundry and bake some sort of a boxed dessert, despite the fact that I had never done laundry or cooked something in my entire life. He told me to ask the next door neighbor. So I did his laundry wrong and burned the dessert....and then he screamed at me so badly that I hyperventilated. And then I remember him coming to my high school graduation wearing dirty jeans and a ripped tshirt.
It's a minor miracle that I was able to grow up into a functioning adult. It's not to say that I don't have issues that can be directly attributed to my father's antics. I mean, I'm completely suspicious about marriage and I'm panicked about the idea of having children and I seem to be incapable of handling other people's anger well.
Anyway, the whole call ended with my father inviting us to a barbecue at his house, not a specific date, just an open invitation. I was noncommital.
It basically ruined my night and I couldn't sleep. And now today I'm left to ruminate over the details of it. The thing is that I don't hate my father -- I just feel sorry for him because he's lost his grip on the reality of the situation, and I'm annoyed at him because he's, well, annoying. I don't have any love for him. People say all that time that you have to love your family, but I don't. He is just a casual acquaintance to me that tries (and fails) to act like a parent when the mood strikes him.
I have fantasies that Craig and I move across the country and neglect to hand out the new phone number and address to him.
This has to stop....and I have to stop dwelling on it. Sometimes I feel like I'm a bad person because I can't cut him any slack for fucking up my childhood....but I think I'm justified.
On a lighter note, I had a nice weekend. Craig and I cleaned the house for most of the weekend because my mom and Ed are planning to visit this coming weekend. I hate to clean so it wasn't a great time but I do like it when the house is clean so the end result was worth the effort. Craig finally installed the bedroom shelves and we got rid of the bedroom dressers. I'm sad to see them go because I've had that furniture since I was about 4 or 5 years old, but it was really just crap and I was happy to get rid of them. The bedroom is much bigger now and looks nice. We went to Target and I took Craig out for lunch at Red Lobster....I hate chain restaurants but the lunch wasn't too bad. Sunday we went to see the latest Friday the 13th movie...Jason X. It was totally silly but highly entertaining for what it was....I was happy to have seen it. I didn't get any art work done, but I did manage to list a bunch of my journals on Ebay....with a little bit of luck someone will buy a bunch of them.
