itchy sweaters

Sometimes, I get annoyed,  I'm not gonna lie, it happens.  Sometimes I am beyond the grasp of life's

 petty little swipes at my contentment...more often that not I let the hooks sink deeply into my flesh, sending irritating barbs that wrap around  stubbornly refusing to let go.  Sometimes when one of these little barbs comes in contact with a particularly sensitive nerve, I have been known to utter a stream of colorful words that may include but are not limited to the following: crap on a marshmallow! or poop on a stick!  The problem is that there just seems to be so many things that get under my skin.  Racists and perverts are well beyond annoying me, they send me straight to rage,  but poorly worded advertisements, small mindedness, large white zits on faces, stupid questions(yes there is so such a thing- for example the time when I gave my name and the girl said "is that with a k?")  , house flies that land on your face when you are trying to sleep- in, mosquitoes that swarm you in the evening or dive bomb past your ears when you try to fall asleep, a single beam of light shining in  your eyes while you try to fall asleep in an otherwise darkened room, nasty airport workers(are they on some sort of prison release program?) people who chew with their mouths open, or smack their gum, or who use poor table manners, parents who let their child walk over and dip his chubby fingers in my ketchup at McDonald's, so he can suck them off, loud people who force you to listen to what they consider to be hilarious banter on airplanes in malls or restaurants, people who lie, or finesse you, energy vampires, and about 1000 other things I am too annoyed to write about.  All of these things are like wearing an itchy sweater, you recoil the instant it touches your skin, then you try to ignore it and think of something else, like flannel pj s, but every time you move it it is there, grating on your flesh, cutting it off in long shards.  At which point you decide to rip it from your now lacerated skin, and hurl it to the floor.  It is at this moment that you realize that you neglected to where a t-shirt underneath, believing that you would be able to overcome the mere annoyance of that heinous sweater.  So you are stuck wearing your torture for the rest of the day.  But unlike the aforementioned annoyances, you may not be able to get home and tear it off, if you were to do that to an airport personal, you could wind up with "cavity search" at the top of your list...so what is a person to do when we are placed  by happenstance in such petty,yet ridiculous situations?  I really don't know.  But it does feel a little better now that I have gotten it off my chest.  I hate to leave you feeling all dark, so when I was 4 a neighbor tore down their fence and i found the urge to dance on the boards in my bare felt irresistible.  My brother warned me that it was dangerous, but i was a pretty good dancer and assured him that my moves were too smooth for things like splinters or nails.  Well to cut a short story shorter; I stepped onto, no hopped onto a nail sticking straight up and landed on it with all my weight, forcing it through my foot.  So nails, much like itchy sweaters seem to always get the better of me.

 

the truth of the matter...

The other day while I was swimming with a particularly beautiful, and well mannered mermaid, we got on the topic of fairies.  Now up until this point I had thought her to be quite intelligent, but my opinion could not have been farther from the truth.  She flat out told me that fairies were not real!  I said that there were loads of them living in my garden and she gave me the snottiest look, like I was crazy or something.  I don't know if we can repair our friendship, I may need to find a new swimming buddy.  Being shackled to reality, in the way that I am, has oft times infringed on my fantasy world.  For instance, when I was a child, I lived to play Barbies.  My parents got me the motor home one year for Christmas, and as we feverishly assembled the 3 foot vehicle, there were stickers of household objects to make the place more realistic.  There were a row of books for the wall, bottles for the vanity and a picture of a turkey roasting for the door of the oven.  This perplexed me, why would I roast a turkey if I was on a trip in the motor home?  As far as I could tell, the only time that would ever happen, would be at Christmas or thanksgiving, both highly improbable times for a road trip.  I could hardly look at the oven because if I did, I would have to dress the Barbies in warm clothes, and forget about that cute sundress I was going to put on.  One of my daughters was similarly afflicted and found that the weather outside, dictated what outfits and activities the dolls would be allowed to wear, or participate in.  This drove my other daughter to distraction, she was all about fantasy, that is until she had to play with her little brother who insisted that the guy dolls,could jump like 3 stories or even fly.  Then all of a sudden reality would claim another victim and her little brother would be ejected from the room.  I have friends who encourage their children to fantasize about a chubby fairy-priest who brings gifts, but those same friends refuse to consider the possibility of lake monsters or cities beneath the waves.  Somehow, we are only comfortable with our own fantasy, and when someone challenges our version of reality, we hate it. At what point do our dreams and aspirations cease to be goals and become delusions?  I have friends who don't view reality in the was that I do(the mermaid being one example) and I find it hard to take them very seriously.  I also had a friend who used to hang out with mermaids all the time.  The one day out of nowhere she told them that they didn't exist, and she has driven herself quite mad, trying to prove it.  I guess what I am trying to say is that we need to be gentle with each other's dreams, hopes, fantasies and wishes, and be careful not to go stomping around in someone else's garden.  At the end of the day, and all of our days will end... do we want to be found with our friend's dreams smashed into the grips on the bottom of our boots?  So to all the princesses, fairies, mermaids and superheros, keep believing.  I once met Elvis, Elvis's son, Santa, and Satan.  He was a pretty powerful man, feared, adored, famous... a far cry from the frail,young man, sitting in his rumpled pajamas, at the table in the mess hall, of the mental institution. Norman,(which was the name on his chart) had been starved and beaten by his own mother since he was born.  Every bone in his chest protruded through the open neck of his striped pj's , his body would never regain it's strength, his teeth had all fallen out, and he was afraid of pretty much everything.  As he told me about how the beach boys were tenents of his, I knew that what he was telling me, in no way resembled what it said in his charts, and that I should set him straight, the way I had been told to do; I thought of a helpless little boy who wanted to be able to be stop is mother, make her love him, and my heart ached for him and I understood why he needed to be who he was.  My reality was that there was a child in front of me who needed me to love, acecpt and protect him.  And so I jumped into the depths with him, leaving behind at the shore all of my misconceptions.  When his mother died he asked me how he should feel, should he cry, was he bad for not feeling sad...I choked oy words as I tried to answer him.  His huge eyes seemed to look right through to my soul, searching me for any sign of judgement, or condemnation.  There was none.   

So, I have been thinking and for those who know me well, you know that this is a good time to log off or reach a bottle of your favorite prescription painkiller or even a strong muscle relaxant... a mixture of the two would be ill advised.  Then again that depends on your personal level of experience in drug mixing.  Either way, not my place to judge, in fact forget I brought it up at all.  So, how about the  weather...pretty cool.  Pardon the pun.  So here is what is on my mind and don't claim later when you are unable to sleep at night, that you didn't have ample warning.  There will be no law suits or even strongly worded letters, no threatening phone calls at strange hours, or mysterious cars sitting in front of my house or even persons of unknown identity lurking in the shadows .  And yes, this includes you Mr.Dressup, and don't think for a moment that I am fooled by that ridiculous  "marching band" uniform that you seem to love so much. I have it in good authority that you were never even in a band, unless you count that crappy 60's group LSD Love.  I don't count it, and trust me neither should you.  And while we are talking about trust, why do we put so much trust in what other people tell us?  Like what movies are good or bad, what jeans are perfect for out bums, or even what food is nice to get from a greasy burger joint in Raymond.  I recently caved into the pressure and tried a different chain of mexican restaurant while I was in Utah.  Normally the first place I stop to eat is Bajios, I love it.  But everybody always says"you should go to Cafe Rio, it is the best, way better than Bajios"  So finally this time I relented and had their famous salad.  It tasted nice and I enjoyed the experience, until about a half an hour later, while I was in Target innocently trying to buy linens for my daughter.  Out of the clear blue sky, a demon descends in to my colon and the severe cramping in my stomach has me hanging on the cart in order to avoid collapsing to the floor.  I want to run, to the anything but conveniently located restrooms, but the need to squeeze my cheeks together, renders this impossible.  Instead I am forced to make the long walk, face ashen, skin covered in goose bumps, in as stately a manner as possible.  If I hadn't felt so much relief, I would have pitied the poor soul who entered the cubicle after me, but instead I emerged all wobbly,sort of like a marathon runner, who's muscles have had to self cannibalize, dehydrated and exhausted... and yet thrilled to have made it through.  Later my cousin would casually mention that he never eats there because of what he calls "cafe-rhea" . Information that would have been useful yesterday.  However, I am sharing it with you, my faithful readers as a cautionary tale of what happens when you cave in to peer pressure;sometimes it seems well meaning, and then your butt makes a deal with the devil, and you don't even know it. And that is just like life, you try a salad that everyone is raving about, and the next thing you know you are in a world of pain,and still wondering what you did to deserve it.

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Mr. Dressup-what is really in your tickle trunk?

I was about 2 when my family decided to take in the town fair; not our town, someone else's town.  Our town was too small for a fair, or a hospital, which is why I was not delivered in my home town.  Instead my first breath, and my first near death expiriance took place in a town where the local paper mill provided most of the jobs and a foul stench that earned the coveted tile of "stinkiest town in Canada."  So if you are ever in Ontario, and feeling a little like you want to vomit, you may want to swing by... airsick bag in hand.  I am not sure what town we were in for this fair but it was evidently quite the hot bed of entertainment because the popular host of everyone's favorite tv show was there.  The loveable Mr.Dressup.  I had seen enough of his shows to know that he had a magic trunk that produced a different costume every time he opened it.  And for reasons that I can not fathom, my parents let my brother and I sneak into His tent, and for reasons that I can explain, we could not resist seeing what He had in his trunk.  It was at that moment when a very angry Ernie(his real name) burst in, eyes bulging, his face contorted with rage.  I have no memory of what happened next, possibly I have blocked it, due to the trauma.  My brother never got over it.  I continued to watch the tv show, always straining to see the contents of the tickle trunk whenever he opened it.  It became a proverbial Pandora's box for me, forbidden to know what was really inside, only ever seeing what he wanted me to see, his costume for the day.  Years later I would wonder why it didn't seem strange to anyone else that a little boy with no parents lived in a tree house alone in His back yard and spent so much time playing "games" with a grown man... this was around the same time that I noticed that the Smurfs lived in a communist cult like world and that there was only one girl, and all those blue brothers, who were totally subservient to Papa, and somehow smurfett managed to get pregnant... but I digress. Mr.Dressup, although a gifted artist(his sketches were excellent) clearly had issues, and maybe his secrets were buried there at the bottom of this trunk, buried beneath the disguises that we all wear, the clown, the good daughter, the rebel.  And that is pretty much life, we all have parts of us that we really don't want people to see, but eventually the contents of your tickle trunk will be strewn across the front lawn for the whole world to see, if not the whole world, than at least some curious toddler,in a tent in a small town fair, who now has access to the entire world... 

idle chatter

Lately I've been thinking, and by lately I mean the last 17 or 18 years, about  the affliction that many of us have, but few are willing to talk about. A fact which is itself a bit of a mystery, when you consider that people will openly admit to all manner of hideous acts, latent desires and an entire array of pure stupidity.  Many of these being admitted to strangers on busses or to television audiences.  It seems you have really get to know a person, and then one day out of the clear blue sky, they will admit that they have word-a-phobe.  Just the other day as I swooned over particularly beautiful plant at the Farmer's market, my friend giggled, but refused to say the name of the plant(clematis) due to it's perceived similarity to a certain STD. She confessed to hiding her fear for years.  Another friend recoiled in disgust when the word bulbous was used in reference to her toes,  which honestly bear a striking resemblance to very thin men in old fashioned diving helmets.  Another friend simply can not abide the word moist, and so her entire extended family endeavors to bring up topics like cake, and how it was not dry at all, the condition of their armpits, or towelets.  My best friend despises cheese and cites some early childhood sandwich, with thick slices of sharp cheddar,  prepared for her by her auntie (not the same one who served her horse meat) as her reason.   Her husband hates clowns, although I suspect that it is more a fear, that and he has an aversion to makeup, but I digress... For my part, I hate the creepy little word of "pym" I had to close my eyes to type that.  I hate it for it's wimpyness, for the fact that they couldn't even scrape up enough courage to use the letter "i" I mean "i" is not exactly a tough or overly intense letter.  What a bunch of creeps!  Ok now I have that off my chest, I feel a flood of relief washing over me, like a tidal wave of pre moistened lysol wipes.  Now, where once grew bulbous, carbuncles of fear and loathing, clematis blooms in my heart.  There is  a street in Nanimo B.C. named Pym St. so maybe me and all my similarly afflicted friends should go there and shout "the words" out loud, thereby releasing it into the air and in turn releasing ourselves from the stranglehold we have been suffering from in silence.  Or if you too have word-a-phobe you could just go to Nanimo and write it in a slip of paper and tape it to the road sign, symbolicly  leaving your fear there and moving forward... at the very least, knock the stupid sign over.  On a less serious note, I saw a clown bang his head during a trapeze act at the circus when I was 4, and he just fell to the ground, and never moved again.  An attempt was made to divert out attention to one of the other rings, but to be honest, it is pretty hard to ignore some dead clown sprawled out in the sawdust.  Being the type of kid I was I made a mental note that although I admired the attempt at a glamorous death, I felt that he lost points on his outfit, and the distasteful way that he landed.  And that is pretty much life, even the best laid plans can sometimes go awry.

The saga begins

So here it is, the long awaited first installment of my blog.  Let me preface my remarks by mentioning that this is not my idea, in fact one could almost describe me as a hostile witness.  While it would be unfair to say I was forced, it would be apt to say I was compelled, by a few misguided souls to write (what will later be described as strange or perhaps even sinister) about my life. I should also warn any potential readers that this blog will never contain cute stories, recepies for cookies, or photos of cats wearing clothes.  If that is the kind of thing you are looking for, I can probably provide some links for you.  And while we are talking about blogs and their owners, can I just mention what an incredibly cool page I have?  This is not as self serving as it sounds, I  had my close friend create it for me, she is a wizard and I am pretty much Amish...which is why I am feeling inconceivable trepidation about this blog.  But I digress;best get used to that.  I really don't know where to begin, at the beginning seems as likely a place as any but it is for that precise reason, that I doubt very much that I will start there. The end is anti climactic, and more difficult to describe. So that leaves us all here in the middle. One of my babies is leaving for university, she is 17 and i am not.  I am so proud of her, she has shown me courage and grace, she was my first new heart beat, my first angry cries at the injustice of being pulled from her warm safe watery world into this this one. She was my first soft breaths against my neck while I rocked her, first smile, and who knew that two teeth could be so cute?  She has always been in a hurry, why walk when you can run?  And now is no different, I am so excited for her and so sad for me,those little feet are still running, but now I won't be right there jogging to keep up, or scooping her into my arms, kissing away her pain.  I will be on the other end of the phone listening, on my knees pleading, or in my truck driving 12 hours whenever she needs me.  From this awkward vantage point I find it difficult to be as flippant about my life as I have become comfortable with, and the emotions a little too raw to really be all that amusing.  So on a lighter note, when I was 4 I got my head slammed in the second story window. I called for help but my voice was going outside, combined with the fact that the window was probably crushing my windpipe against the sill, so nobody heard me. I was pretty sure that I was going to die, and being the sort of kid that I was I considered my demise and knew that it was not a very glamorous way to go. Some how I was able to get my hands at an angle that allowed me to slide the window open and free myself.  And that is pretty much life. Something bad happens and then something good happens. Remind me to tell you about the time my little boy took a severed deer's leg for show and tell...