Catnaps

I've often wished i could be Mr. Ed.  I wonder what a talking horse thinks and I wonder what he feels.  He talks to this human, right?  Does he get upset when he is treated like a horse by his owner.  Since Mr. Ed can talk, does he see himself as a pet? Friend? Equal?
I've also wanted to be a cat.  The grace, dignity, agility, speed...what does it feel like to be all furry?  Walk on soft paws with little clicking claws on linoleum.  What do things smell like? Taste like?  Sound like and look like.  What does it feel like to jump at least 2 times my height?
I wonder what it's like to be a mushroom or even mayo.

Why do I wonder such absurd things?  How mentally ill is this person?? 

I wonder these things because i have terrible insomnia and just get catnaps through the night and into the day. 
So, if you see me wearing a (mentally confused and prone to wandering) button......it's probably true.

I wonder what it's like to be a........

I'm going try for sleep now.  Night....oops morning all

Hurts so good

I remember 15!  Nothing felt as good as being slightly bad.  But bad back then, in 1985, was very different than bad in 2012.  I'm afraid "good" is probably more bad than I EVER was.  Quite frankly the "bad" today scares me!
I had my first real kiss at 15.  It was a stolen double date.  We picked up the guys later.  All my Mama saw were me and my best friend at the time Giblet heading off to the movie theater.  Two honest angels going to see Fletch.  I wore Charlie cologne, Calvin Kleins, fluroscent pink socks, linen slight wedge strappy sandals, a fluroscent pink tee, with a white bigshirt over it the bigshirt had fluroscent pink paint stripes in a big square check pattern, with a fluroscent pink cloth tie belt, fluroscent pink round wooden earrings....i forget the necklace, but it may have been my multistrand wooden bead neckalce.  My hair was curled feathered and glued in place.  I had on blue, pink and yellow eyeshadow from my merle norman fan, pink blush and pink or melon lipstick.  Trendy then...horrifying today.
I remember nothing, nada, zip, zilch, zero, naught about the movie.  I do know that we kissed 3 times.  French kissed!!
Giblet was dressed less pink, in painted on jeans from fredericks of hollywood.  (Totally jealous)  She and her date surely kissed way more than I did.  I think they may have made out.  I am pretty sure I wanted to make out.
We were afraid to make out.  The tale started about June 1985.  The highschool choir was singing we were both in it.  He a junior...me, a sophomore.  He wanted to drive my grandmother and me home from the highschool graduation ceremony.  She flat out refused and instead made us ride home with the Stone family.  He started coming over to see me during the summer break.  My Grandmother was growing in vehement anger toward him.  I didn't think he was that cute, but I was falling for him.
The veil of time falls away as I remember that evening.  I temember Giblet smiling up at me from the row im front of me.   I remember the way he looked at me.   A look like I, meant something to him.  A look that said, I choose you.  A look like I was the only girl in the world.  We stared at each other and talked.  He wanted to know my hopes, desires, dreams, favorite color, food...etc.  I felt so special that night.  I also felt that trembling innocence later that summer at Church camp.....I digress.....
My date was magical, and I was floating on air. Giblet walked me in, we were talking animatedly about thrre movie we didn't  see.  Giblet's date had not gone as well as mine, and she had done the making out thing before too.  The guys were in the volvo wagon hiding.  My Grandmother took one look at me and told Giblet to leave.
From there the evening went to hell.  Anything growing between us was crushed beyond salvage.  His name was mud, mine was liar.  He finally began to speak to me again.
After my Grandma died and i moved away..about 2 months later.  I finally told both he and Giblet what happened.  Things were shattered but we moved on.  He and I both decided; despite the outcome, that the evening was magical and somethings are worth doing. 

Getting lost

Sometimes getting lost can be fun.  I travel the same few roads every day.  They are predictable, easy to reach, safe, consistent and generally convenient.  I can often go on a mental auto pilot and just know when it's time to turn to reach point B.

I DETEST making left turns with no signal.  I lost part of the range of motion in my neck and there are times I feel panicky when trying to figure out when it's safe to turn.  At times my right hand will not want to cooperate in mid turn and I end up swinging wide, so I generally drive with my left hand...but I often drove with just one hand before...one of them HAD to hold the coffee!!...I digress

Today my choice was to make a left turn with no arrow or turn right and head to a store I didn't feel like shopping in for something I really needed.  I turned right anyway then boldly made another right.  I decided I would find a place to turn around then take advantage of the turn arrow on the street from which I had just turned.  I kept driving up the road feeling small instances of panic, all the roads were off to the left and traffic was fast on blind curves.  I decided, oh well.  I know what road lies ahead I can just turn there.  Granted it was a left but the left was an easy one.  A strange thing happened at the corner.  I turned right!  I was on a brand new section of a familiar road!  As I followed this new path, I saw new things, I felt at peace not knowing what was coming but knowing what ever came..I would make a right.  My road dead ended...I turned right onto the new road and saw the most beautiful house and yard!  I saw a deeply shaded road section.  I felt even more relaxed because I didn't know what was coming, I didn't care...but I did have a plan.  Just turn right.  It all ended too soon.

I found myself on a very familiar highway.  I turned right.  Then left at an arrow to reach the store I wanted to shop in today.  I got to see the newly promoted teens up town enjoying this, their last day of school uptown.  I didn't see my son, he was up to ruckus at a sponsored event.  I reached my destination in one piece and turning out of the lot...I turned right.  I was zoned out at the red light, some zippy mcfast pants decided he MUST turn on red immediately, and I just wasn't moving fast enough for him, so he cut me off in the outer turn lane for the turn on red...fine by me.  I need to play it safe with my life.  Zippy made it through the turn about 2 seconds before my lame self did.  I just wait for the green light there, traffic moves too fast. He still got stuck at the red light waiting so he could make that all important left.

Sometimes speed is fun, sometimes knowing where everything is heading is fun, but sometimes what you really need is to get lost and enjoy the scenery.

I've seen it by the dashboard light

I never saw paradise by the dashboard light, but I did see thorazine.  In the 70's life was a bit more archaic than it is now.  Now when children are nauseated or car sick we give our children Dramamine, Cola syrup, Emetrol, or Nausene.
Not so back then!  I remember the little brown pills.  I also remember taking benadryl capsules to school.  I learned how to open and close them again, only losing small amounts of benadryl powder.  Now kids can't even bring an aspirin to school.
So much has changed some for the better some for the worse.  We no longer give our children antipsychotics for tummy troubles and night terrors...now we do the unthinkable!  We cripple them emotionally.

We assess the situation and soothe ourselves by conveniently labeling our children and placing them on shelves to be taken down, dusted off and shown about like trophies. We boast about how many sports they play and how over scheduled they are...just to tire the darlings out. We wouldn't dare swear at them, or tell them they are anything less than perfect and the world owes them everything.  We wouldn't dare raise a hand to spank them or correct them in any physical manner.  To do so would harm their delicate  psyche's!  Instead, we medicate them to oblivion and promise ourselves we are doing the right thing as they plod along in a drug induced stupor never learning that they are less than perfect.  Never knowing that there ARE people bigger, stronger, meaner and much more cruel out there they drift off into life and become utter failures as teenagers.  They lie, cheat, steal, and have to hide in alleys to learn the ways of life, but the ways of life they learn in alley's isn't the true way of life.

Life IS hard work.  There will ALWAYS be someone bigger, faster, stronger, meaner, smarter, more cunning. Your child WILL lose.  We have in essence emotionally crippled our children in our desperate bid to save them from all of the hurt feelings we experienced as children when we learned early on;

1. Don't hit; people hit back and it hurts...also sometimes you bleed but blood washes away.
2. How to defend yourself when you are being bullied instead of hiding from life.
3. Words hurt and the pain on a friends face showed us that, or the slap across the face did.
4. Work it out!  When problems arise find common ground and man up.
5. F's don't mean fantastic, they mean you fail, not that your parent has to decide if you need to be held back.
6. People have talents, not all deserve to be treated like winners in all areas.
7. Losing sucks but it happens; To win takes work.
8. Playing yourself tired with some free time and a bike felt great!
9. To have friends you have to give a little.
10. Being punished doesn't feel good

We are destroying our children and causing violence to escalate by not allowing violence to wear itself out early on.  Most of us had fingernail files in school but we didn't stab each other, we already knew pokey things hurt!  We learned that because we were allowed to make a few mistakes.  If I never had learned that my friends cry when I hit them I wouldn't know it.  Had I never been hit, I wouldn't know that it hurt.  Had I never been spanked I would never have felt that anger inside that made me swear to be a better person to my own child.....then turn around and spank him for running in a parking lot.  That spanking taught him it was dangerous to run in a parking lot.  He might be alive today because I spanked him.  I cared enough to tell him he was stupid, to watch where he was going...that it isn't the person's fault if they can't see you...YOU watch out for you by being safe.  It is my job to watch out for my son, to teach him empathy, right from wrong, winning and losing, how to be careful...also that sometimes life hurts, or sometimes life is a bitch but we call her Mommy.  Sometimes (hopefully) the kids get so angry with  Mom they call her other nasty names too, and swear that they are going to kick Dad's butt one day.  You know what?  Your kids are supposed to be unhappy because you make the rules and they don't like to be told no.  But no is a really important word to learn.  Kids also like boundaries.  Boundaries are safe.  Kids also need to learn how to negotiate a fair deal for themselves too.  They need to have the ability as teens to say that they don't like a consequence, make a decision and help choose punishments and rewards.  We need to grow with our kids, not go with them and chase after them hoping to catch up.

Far too many parents are letting the kids lead the family...if you don't feel like a failure at times then you probably have failed your kids already.

complicated lives 33

Ringworm and pinkeye

I was fairly pest free as a child..sure I had the errant pinworm, or chigger...but I was a relatively clean child.  My friends all had exotic crap like sandworms, or roundworms...some even got ringworm and pink eye!!  I was terrified of mange and of course....dreaded lice!!

I finished my eventless childhood with very few gross things happening.  :(  Shucks!!

Enter my teens.  I had some reaction to a button on a pair of jeans.  My Mom and I thought it was dry skin, or a nickel allergy ( never had one before)...It was later decided...I had......RINGWORM!  Yay!!  My first disgusting infestation!  Then I found out it was just a fungus thing and not a real worm....bummer.  Though still ringworm, I was expecting the dramatic extraction/extinction of a worm.

Enter my job at the elementary school...I have covered this under the incurable strain of lice in an earlier post but it bears revisiting.  Also It bears repeating that NOT all people are allergic to the bite, thus the tell tale itching never occurs.  People near you can be literally CRAWLING with lice, yet not one of them will ever scratch.  You hug a friend good-bye, hello, hold their hair as they vomit on your shoes....holy heck, you now have lice!!

Pinkeye entered my life post child.  Yes, they are small germ factories.  My son got sick, he was roughly an inch long and still quite cute. Torrents of mucus were erupting from his nose likely reaching 10 feet in length, snot bubbles abounded. his eyes looked mucus-y..he was a disgusting little mess that day!  Off we trotted to the happy pediatrician.  I got medicine and a  stack of towels to take care of my slime producing child.  The next day I had a horrible headache, itchy painful eye and felt not so great.  I let it go.  The next day I looked hideous!  I took myself (and my now pink cherubic child) to my doctor...who quickly diagnosed me with pinkeye...oh...conjunctivitis! The doctor not the child diagnosed me.  Although I am sure he played some part because his eyes looked yucky before and he had some eye goo going on too.

I have now had most odd childhood gross things....still no sandworms or roundworms...Thank heavens especially for the latter! Those suckers look NASTY!