Complicated Lives…part 19

Can you hear me now??

Ok..you have one, you know you do; that one friend constantly calling and telling or texting you the most bizarre things. Maybe you have two or three..perhaps they are your kin. There is no escape especially in the world of cell phones. It is almost like picking a scab, opening a scary looking box or scratching a mosquito bite, you know you will regret it but you just HAVE to look and see what insanity is happening now. Time and time again you swear you won't get sucked in, but each and every time you do and three hours later it seems like just that little bit of your soul is gone. You want your minutes back but you know you can’t have them back. They’re gone, kind of like that glob of toothpaste stuck in the sink.

You hear your phone buzz pitifully at four clock in the morning and know there's some new crisis. Lately I've been lucky and the drama has been quiet. It has given me time to reflect on the fact that I have some delightfully crazy friends! Part of me wants to check in and see how they are doing, part of me wants to let sleeping dogs lie, yet another part knows deep down they’re slamming me behind my back (gee who would do something like that talk about a friend like on a blog or something?? how rude) and still another part knows their lives have grown even more complicated simply because I know them....

Concentrating on Scooter (because I know he doesn't read my blog) his life has been complicated for 40 years or more. Everything is always someone else's fault, or everyone is out to get him, or he just hasn't ever had a break, or everyone else has had it so much easier, but absolutely no one deserves the success they have

I haven't heard from Scooter in months, but did have a horrible dream about him last night. I dreamt he had a girlfriend 40 years younger than he is and that they came to live with us. That is quite frightening; also a dark possibility. In this dream Scooter had lost his house, cars, clothes… Pretty much all he had were debts, a 20 something-year-old girlfriend, a pile of excuses for not working, and a bicycle. He arrived at our house on a bicycle, wearing a sheepish grin, and salvaged Army fatigues. Sadly the dream seemed quite real. The last time we talked to Scooter he called and left a nasty message telling us to stay out of this life because he was sticking with his hooker girlfriend. He was not going to get a full-time job, and was going to continue dodging his bills. His hooker girlfriend really is a hooker and she shared a venereal disease with him at least once.

Giving a nod to someone else I'm fairly sure doesn't read my blog...I also have another friend who thinks God is punishing him because he's cheating on his wife. He has four little girls, has been married about 16 years and pretends to be a very upstanding, moralistic person. He fell and broke his arm while he was drunk heading out for a tryst. He had surgery on his arm to fix it, but refused to push himself in therapy. His arm is now much weaker than the other one; he took a simple injury and turned it into something cataclysmic just to get sympathy because his life was a mess. His life is still a mess, but now his arm doesn't work either. The lady he was having an affair with just got married herself to an older handsome man. He was so desperate to try and continue their relationship that he invited them both over for celebratory drinks. It was a party of four, two husbands two wives! I have no idea what he was thinking inviting them or what she was thinking when she accepted. Pretty complicated! Also very awkward!! I am so thankful I'm a boring blabbermouth

Complicated Lives...part 18

I see London I see France…

Underwear, most of us wear underwear on a daily basis. This started sometime around our first or second year of life, and hopefully we change it often. Many times in my youth I was a victim of bad underwear choices. There was this one time I had on red underwear with white pants. I also wore polkadot underwear with white pants. I had even been known to wear day of the week underwear with white pants. In the South the white pants thing was only a problem from I think Easter until Labor Day. Or was that white shoes and a white purse? I'm pretty sure you couldn't wear white after Labor Day at all. I stopped worrying because now I don't wear white at all! My underwear was always clean, if at times inappropriate or embarrassing. There is a deep-rooted fear of being caught in dirty underwear in an emergency situation by paramedics or doctors. I never understood this but I never wanted to embarrass Mama by being caught in dirty underwear so I change mine twice-daily day whether I need to or not. When mama died, I even made sure her underwear was clean before the paramedics came. I owed her at least that much! I mean after all she would've done the same thing for me, right? She was always worried about appearances and I was kind of afraid she'd come back and haunt me if I let her go to the hospital in dirty underwear. I love mama, I miss her, and I hope she understood that I checked her underwear...( also why I'm sharing this now)

Changing clothes in PE was never pleasant, but even worse for children of those who live complicated lives. There was one in every locker room, sometimes two, but rarely more than that. There was one in our locker room but I'm not going to say if it was junior high or high school. For all you know it could've been both and probably was. J

Okay so this person, who shall remain nameless, as always, usually seemed to be wearing the same underwear. We weren't sure so few of us took to watching and comparing dirt levels and or small holes. We weren't entirely sure until this person wore the same day of the week underwear for at least three days. We thought this person came from a fairly decent home; it wasn't until later that I learned this person was responsible for doing their own laundry. It was supposed to teach them responsibility. I'd say it missed that mark entirely, and also failed to teach them much about hygiene. We also learned this person really didn't wash their clothes, because they didn't know how. This person was also quite lazy, and couldn't be bothered to read the detergent information including instructions for clothes washing.

I am hoping that with all the time that's passed this person is regularly changing their underwear, and also washing their clothes. I would rather be boiled in oil I think, than iron my clothes. Okay so maybe that is a little bit strong, but I really don't see the point in ironing. I figure as long as my clothes are clean how straight they are doesn't really matter, Mama probably would not agree. Mama,in still in me the importance of clean underwear and how one could die of embarrassment and possibly bring shame on an entire family name simply by being in an accident in dirty underwear. I am hoping that when I finally die I don't soil myself because I might carry that embarrassment straight to heaven. Complicated lives or complicated underwear?

Complicated Lives....part 17

Crazy Clydie

Crazy doesn’t just lurk in the south or northern wilderness. Crazy complicated lives can exist anywhere from the backwoods, to the big city, complicated lives are rampant.

We lived in CA for one year. I attract crazy. I attract insidious crazy like a nutbar magnet. I made friends with crazy Clydie because her son was throwing unripe peaches at my son and I wanted the boys to talk it out. We all went over. Crazy Clydie seemed so freaking normal! She was a sick mother on medication for some oddball disease, though she did smell a bit like rotting fruit. Her eyes were slightly jaundiced but I figured ,ah bless, poor sick thing! My husband and I fell into a fast friendship with Crazy Clydie, Scapegoat Sam and their demon spawn child Bloody Brat. The friendship seemed to go ok, we really enjoyed them. Scapegoat Sam was our favorite.

We made friends with them in August or September.

By October…I wanted out!!

Crazy Clydie kept talking about how hot I was, Scapegoat Sam said he knew the marriage was a mistake 9 days in. Crazy Clydie drank non ‘freaking’ stop. She didn’t have a disease just DT’s!! Scapegoat Sam was being convinced that he was an alcoholic because he had a beer or two per night to deal with Crazy Clydie’s drama. In all sincerity she told us that she went camping wearing a rain poncho, daisy dukes, knee high socks and hiking boots. She repeated the same story over and over again. She walked down the street holding cheese she borrowed from a neighbor to lure her dog back home. She almost got in a fight flinging racial slurs on the front porch. Scapegoat Sam had to hold her back, but she spilled my drink, knocked over the ashtray and broke the radio. I nearly wet myself laughing. Ah the awkward times didn’t end with that. She had me outside with her husband and talked about how we could be in appropriate together!! I heard about the runway modeling, anorexia, shoplifting, drinking and driving, etc etc….Her son was a demon and he shot the movers to ‘keep us from moving’ when we finally left in February.

That was the LONGEST 5 months of my life. Even now with all the crap I deal with on a daily basis…nothing NOTHING will ever be as long as that 5 months was….at least I hope not.

Complicated Lives....part 16

Impetigo and pus sores

Ok…I’ll admit it. I’ve used mountain medicine! Egg shell lining on a splinter or sticker (small thorns) in your skin…it’ll have that bugger festered out by morning! Sore throat or cough? Shot of Kessler’s blended whiskey in a cup of hot water with a slice of lemon and some honey…that’s a hot toddy! As a child of the 70’s we took a lot of injuries and laughed them off. We DID NOT want to tell Mama that we had fallen out of a tree and broken a leg..we’d walk it off until she made us set the table and then fall down writhing in pain. I got a knife stuck in my thumb once…(loads of neat stuff inside a thumb btw!!) I was trying to carve a wooden sign with a paring knife..it didn’t go well at all! I snuck inside the house hiding my thumb, went to the bathroom..pushed a lump of something back inside..taped it, put a bandaid on it and went back out to the sign. Ah memories!

One day my cinderblock throwing cousins and I had seen a great episode of some tv show about Native Americans using mud and plants for things. We decided that we must use this new and forbidden knowledge of healing. We played some character building game, possibly with thrown hammers or knives. I ended up getting a nasty scrape on the side of my knee. YES!!! Native American leaf healing could begin! One cousin spit in the dirt, I chewed up a chinaberry leaf, and another cousin got leaves from the Catawba worm tree. Cousin 1 applied the dirt poultice, I applied the chewed leaf plaster, and cousin 2 slapped a big leaf over the top to hold it all in. We had a really great time playing even though all the ‘medicine’ fell off. Time passed

I woke up with odd sores on my body. My Mama tried scrubbing me..I got more sores!! We went to see the doctor. The ‘medicine’ gave me impetigo!! {Mama called it infantiego, so when I saw impetigo listed in a book or something I of course used the proper pronunciation of infantiego.} Impetigo! OH NO!!! I had pus sores! Only the dirtiest kids had one admirably large pus sore on a knee or something. I now had oozy ugly sores all over but not one single one was an impressively large playground worthy pus sore. I had shunned girl sores!

I had to wash in Safeguard soap, use some medicine..I forget, but it wasn’t our leaf/dirt concoction.

Ah I really miss childhood!! Poultice anyone

Complicated Lives....part 15

Mange

It seems like every person with a seriously complicated life has some seriously weird diseases going on too. Case in point…mange on kids.

Truly this can happen!! Mange is caused by a type of mite…what your mama told you about lying down with dogs and getting fleas was true…also mites. We had a bunch of people living near us. I was NEVER allowed to play with these children because “they’re dirty white trash!” I felt kind of put off by this because we lived out in the sticks and friends were hard to come by. One day the troupe of white trash children came up with a dog on a rope. The dog looked ok, so I pet it. My Grandma having super human powers of fun ruining detection immediately bellowed for me to “Get in this house now!!!” With sassing and reluctance I complied. I was fully disinfected, yelled at and spanked. I sat around having Barbie and Ken go on vacation to some fabulous faraway place…like New York city, we lived in Florida in the boonies everything was faraway and fabulous. Days passed. I was outside climbing a tree and throwing rocks at friends when I saw the dog…it’s fur was patchy and it had some bloody skin showing..that seemed odd. The dog started to run around in a circle and chew on the bloody skin patches. I stayed hidden in the tree. Mama had warned me all about this thing called hydraphobie (later I learned this way hydrophobia or rabies). I had no idea what hydraphobie looked like but Mama told me you got bellyaches, foamed at the mouth and were afraid of water. I didn’t want to take any chances with that mess!! After the dog passed by the tree…I ran inside screaming “mama, mama thewhitetrashdogsgothydraphobie!!!” She looked out the window and said it’s got mange. Mange?? “Mama what’s mange?” Mama carefully explained “that’s when an animal’s fur falls out and they die” I saw the kids a few days later…again from my tree perch. This time I was doing something equally nefarious such as rubbernecking at the cars going by. I was shielded by the tree leaves..the white trash kids didn’t see me. But I saw them…their heads were shaved, even the girl!! They had these big red patches on their scalps with crusty sores. When they passed by I went sneaking silently into the house and told Mama…what the white trash kids looked like. She opened the curtain to look outside..Mama NEVER rubbernecked…I made the mistake of suggesting once that she did…my spanking was heard round the world. She solemnly proclaimed that the white trash kids had mange. They disappeared a few days later…all of them, even the parents! I later learned they had moved in the dead of the night but I was sure they had all died because….they had mange!!

Complicated Lives....part 14

Pigs, peanuts and rain boots

All good redneck children eat peanuts. Boiled of course! But first you have to find peanuts to boil. They must be raw and boiled slow and long over a low flame in water more salty than your Grandma’s denture bath. You also MUST add some spicy stuff to the peanuts…crab boil, cayenne…Uncle Jessie’s socks. Whatever you add should make the house smell lovely for hours. I wasn’t allowed to have boiled peanuts as a child because that was a different type of “from the south” than my Grandma was. We were from KY! We had unsweetened cornbread like normal people (lol).

I must have been about 5. I had these pretty red rain boots. I was still VERY much a Kentucky city girl then; pretty dresses, little outfits, no dirt aside from sandbox sand or dirt in contrived situations. I had no “brogans” as my Grandma called them. Not sure, I guess we have some Irish tucked away too in the mix. When I was asked if I wanted to dig for peanuts with Wilbur on Sunday after church I said yes. My Grandma might not have been so happy. We took rain boots for me to wear digging peanuts. I was excited when I discovered Wilbur was…….a pig!!! Me being a city girl I had to give back the piglet Uncle Love gave me (didn’t make that up it was his middle name)!

I went out with a shovel, Ed, my rain boots and Wilbur. Wilbur was supposed to be great in helping dig peanuts. We were working together when I felt this horrible pain in my foot. I looked down…Wilbur was biting me! I jumped back with my shovel. Apparently Wilbur was supposed to root around for a while and he thought I was doing something wrong..I was unclear on this me being 5 and being assaulted. Then I saw the peanuts, it was my job to get them out with the shovel.

I grabbed a shovel full and……chomp went Wilbur…I held my ground and started to dump them in the barrow. I went to the next plant and then all hell broke loose, Wilbur attacked my boot full on in a shrieking pig fury. Apparently Wilbur is very possessive of his peanuts! Farmer Brown locked Wilbur in his pen with some peanuts…what a happy piggy!

We took the rest of the washed off peanuts inside to Mrs. Farmer Brown. I was anticipating some lovely roasted peanuts. My Grandma and I were totally confused when she set them on to boil. We saw other pots of boiling things but nothing smelled overly food like. My Grandma asked what she was doing. The look on her face was a mixture of merriment, and shock when she found out we had never heard of boiled peanuts!! She happily gave us some that were done…they were horrible!

I never touched them again until I was mid 20’s..I LOVED them!!! I have absolutely no idea what she did to hers but they had no flavor at all…the good ones rocked!

I now live up north and when I find raw peanuts I get my boil on and I must say…I boil a fine peanut!!

Peanuts