Way too complicated!!

I have been away from my sanity lately....yes moreso than usual!!  I am having nightmares, tremors and twitching in public.  My palms are itching, I'm breaking out in cold sweats.  I'm having nearly non stop panic attacks.  I keep hearing voices, screaming and crying.  I keep having strange images enter my head and am beginning to feel quite insane.

Why????

I have no freaking clue HOW to choose a decent airsoft sniper rifle for my 13 year old son!!  I have trawled websites, asked sales men, a teen friend.  I've asked my son...I've done everything short of meeting teenagers in dark alleyways, bribing them with itunes gift cards and candy in order to get answers. 

I've been told that each gun is "the best", "all of them are trash", "buy the warranty", "don't buy the warranty", "buy cheap but high fps because they all suck", "buy more expensive they will last", "go metal, It's better", "go plastic It's easier to use"....

I am at this point totally off the rails.  I am insane and may not last until Christmas.  I know that no matter what I do, buy, don't buy, or find out...that it will somehow all be "TOTALLY WRONG YOU HATE ME!!!"  "All my friends will laugh at me!!" 

Soooo...I guess I resign myself to the fact that everything sucks, nothing I do is right, has the chance of being right and all my intentions are to embarrass my son.  No matter how hard I try nothing I ever will do is right.  It won't ever be right, because our children are prewired to find contempt in each of our actions as parents.
When my son inevitably ends up in therapy blaming his nervous twitching mother and his confused father for all the ills in his life, at least we can blame part of it on what will surely be the worst airsoft sniper rifle in the world.  Because no matter what we buy....it will be wrong :)

Complicated Lives...part 29

Didja hear about Dolleen??

They joy of growing up or indeed living in a small town is that...everyone knows everyone!

In the north we get impatient if we have to wait for more than 10 seconds in line while a customer talks to a cashier. We sigh, we tap our foot, shift our weight, start shoving items closer to the cashier, "accidentally" bump the cart into the person in front of us, repeatedly check our watches, move closer to the person....all sorts of passive aggressive techniques.

None of those is the time honored southern..."no way!?" and simply joining in!!

In the south, the cashier is the queen (aside from the beautician) of the gossip train. She starts when the store opens at a civilized 8 or 9 am and goes until a reasonable closing time of 8 or 9 pm...pretty much non stop continuing the grapevine. When one cashier ends another gets right in there and picks it back up. It's how you get news in the south.

Didja hear Dolleen had that baby? No honey when did that happen? Oh yesterdee bout noon time...(another customer) you mean right when the shipyard horn went? cuz I heard some screaming and I knowed it wadn't her cuz we live out to the river and all but they sez that sometimes birds'll scream when a womans breakin her waters...(another customer) oh no I heard that scream it wernt no bird it was tater...he got his toes cut off in the lon mower...(cashier) no way!! not tater he done that last week that musta been henry cuz lenore caught him at the bar with that waitress. (next customer) you don't mean betty jean!! (customer before) no that is betty ann, betty jean run off with derrick that boy from Texas. (cashier) so that's where that feller was from...he sounded pure funny! ( original customer) so when did Dolleen have the baby? (Owner of the store) Are yall talkin bout Dollen? she had him yesterdee bout noontime! Inez was watchin her stories and Clara called to tell her while she was in the hallway pukin...Clara not Dolleen cuz Clara eat that fish and drunk that milk and she orta know'd dang goodn well you don't eat no fish while ya drinkin milk. (cashier) well now you done ruint it! didn't nobody know it was a boy til now!

Ah things about small town life in the south!!!

Not complicated

I'm just having a bit of down time lately.  I have a lot on my mind and too little mind to spread it all across.  Much like marmite on toast with marmalade.....stop cringing my enzed and oz friends....I like the contrast of salty/ yeast/ sweet/ bitter/ and crunch.  I also really like bleu cheese on ginger snaps!   I can not tolerate limburger (sp) however...not even with the suggested onion slices.

HOW did this get on food?  Yet another example of my stressed out brain. 

Life at the moment is a badly run circus...I'm not even ring master!  I'm one of the clowns getting out of the really tiny car!

I'll post something delectably odd soon......

Xoxo :)

Gutted/ Happy

Ok...completely gutted that Morrissey postponed the concert.....BUT this means I get to attend the banquet I've been sad about missing. 

Miracles occur in the smallest yet most profound ways. All those things I worried over, the gifts not arriving, the poster deadline.....they all worked out.  I was and am amazed.  The patterns and works around me cause me to pause and thank God for the care he gives in so many small ways

Flat whites rocked my ass off in New Zealand....I was addicted and needed an intervention.  A local coffee house learned to make them!!!  Yay!!

So...gutted about Morrissey, happy about the banquet, the miracles and the flat whites.....also a couple friends and I can now sing Nugget in a Biscuit...while totally embarrassing our sons!!!

modern complicated

I think I might possibly be going insane! My life is modern complicated. By modern complicated I mean...insomnia, notifications that go bing, alarms for everything, 900 vitamins daily, 3 projects that had a deadline 14 days from now, magically the deadline has now moved up 7 days!! I have an order placed with the first deadline (14 days away) , which will now be completely bollocksed because the gifts won't be ready in time.....also....I won't even get to GO to the party I am doing all this stuff for, because I will be out of town on the changed date. This is the sports banquet for my son's team...he won't even get to go!. If we use the original date (14 days from now), the people who should get the gifts won't be in town...so they get to go to the party but no gifts will be had....Guess who gets to deliver them now??!! Yes, chipper little me!

I swear I am the lady who stands in the kitchen and screams...on top of all this....my stupid $%^-&*!@ phone won't stop giving me the notices I've turned off!!! OMG!!! Seriously??? This phone must be possessed! I have turned off notifications!, I have disconnected the internet....how is this Mephistopheles phone doing this?? I signed the no demonic possession of phone contract! I gave them a friend's first born's blood...do you think the contract carrier Mephistopheles knows it wasn't my first born child's blood?? I am trying again to disable the machine that goes BING-bing-*vibrate*. I am hoping this will buy me a week of mental health while I pull this deadline together.

I soooooo need a nap!!

OMG!! they are having a sale on cloven hoof covers at Hades Topic!! I probably should pick up a few......

Complicated Lives....part 28

The lady in the van.....

Our next door neighbors for a time were a bit 'odd'.  We thought they were strange when they first moved in.  It was about late summer early fall in 1980.  Aunt Effie ( the make-up confiscator ) was visiting.  When they moved in, it was a lady going through a separation, and the elderly gentleman she kept house for.  We'll call them Uncle Fred (physically disabled but working and volunteering) and Louise (lay minister and not working).  Louise was separated from Milton.  Milton has been, or was, or might possibly have been seeing another woman...Marion.  I went to school with one of Marion's daughters.  We talked a bit, but weren't really friends after she learned what 'nerds' were and after I learned what 'trashy girls' were.  I desperately wanted to be a trashy girl, but Scott Baio, nor Shaun Cassidy would EVER marry a trashy girl!! (Maybe)....I digress....

At any rate, one day Louise showed up crying, tearing at her hair and possibly rending her garments....because Milton had once again shown up drunk.  None of us had ever met Milton.  Uncle Fred detested Milton.  Of course Uncle Fred didn't want Milton to stay, Louise did, Milton did, Mama didn't seem to trust him, I don't think Aunt Effie thought it was a great idea...I just wanted to find out how to be trashy.

We heard the following story from Milton.....loosely re-told....Milton broke up with Marion because he quit the poison (drinking) and realized he deeply loved Louise.  Marion and a couple of guys slipped him (Milton) a Mickey and loaded him into a van.  They forced him to drink liquor against his will (recovering alcoholic) and tried to brainwash him into continuing to date Marion.  Milton was mentally too strong for them, they realized it was useless to even continue trying so they dropped him off in the driveway, drunk to reconcile with Louise.

Uncle Fred pointed out that Milton came to realize this deep abiding love after he (Uncle Fred) bought the house next door and offered Louise a job cooking and keeping house for him.  He paid her little, but gave her room and board.  He felt that Milton just wanted to move in and live off him. 

Louise felt that all God's children deserved the benefit of the doubt. 

Milton had a bit of a wandering eye and was also somehow 'disabled' and hopelessly unemployable because no one in the town would give him a job, because Marion bad mouthed him, because he needed to help Louise, because he lost his license driving drunk, because, because, because....fit neat excuse in the box.

Uncle Fred couldn't really walk, didn't have full use of his arms, was visually impaired, yet rode his adult trike a mile or so to town every morning about sun up. Swept a parking lot with a push broom, then rode back home again.  He was a widower and played organ at a local church.  He did volunteering and was a wonderful person.  He didn't trust Milton because he considered him free-loading and shiftless. 

Uncle Fred gave Milton the evil eye and the cold shoulder as long as I lived there.  So, another 5 years...

Milton stayed with Louise until she died as far as we know...never again dating the lady in the van.

Complicated Lives.....part 27

Halloween 1974

I want to be a princess!!!  Back in the 70's ALL masks were designed to kill children.  We had these tiny mouth slits, small eye holes, and ridiculously minuscule pinprick nose holes.  Our faces sweat profusely, they were held on with elastic with those vicious metal ends.  Mama or Daddy...usually Mama would tighten it so it smothered you the most effectively, by tying knots in the elastic so it "fit better" meaning flush against your face with the only escape chewing out of it, or sadly cracking the edge of it as it was clawed off for fresh air!  My poor mask!  It was sort of flesh-toned, it had pink lips, plastic molded blonde hair and some bright blue overshadow, with painted on pokey lashes.  It was beautiful!!!
I went trick-or-treating with the neighborhood 'big kids'.  We went next door where we bobbed for apples, went inside to get our fresh popcorn balls, we went down the street getting apples, oranges, nuts, cookies etc.  We then went to "her"house to get "her" to go trick-or-treating.  "Her"parents were divorced and "she" lived with....(gasp) her Father!!!   I was told not to go in "her" house because 'Lord only knows what goes on in there!'  We rode the school bus together every day.  Her goat often hung out with us at the bus stop.  She had the coolest dresses, AND she was the oldest of our neighborhood group.  The big mystery of what went on was....she had a job and only a few of us knew it.  My first HUGE secret, from the age of about 3 on was not telling Mama and Daddy she had a job.  That was why she didn't hang out with the neighborhood kids much since the divorce...now back to Halloween night.

We were NOT supposed to go inside her house and were NOT supposed to take anything from her Dad.  We all went inside, we all ate caramels and cookies, he was a single Dad and only had the know how to open a package of cookies and a bag of caramels.  He totally won us over because he had storebought cookies AND candy!!!  We made him smile, he hugged her tight and made us all promise to be careful.  He admonished her as the oldest to pay special attention to me, the youngest.  After we got "her" we collected the more blabbermouthy people in our group and headed off to visit the rest of the neighborhood.  This was back when we went inside everyone's home if we were invited.  We had cocoa, milk, sometimes soda and snacks.  We went inside to show our costumes to the grand parents who couldn't make it to the door.  Everyone over 60 was your Aunt or Uncle whether you were related or not.  We all spied witches flying in front of the moon and we knew what sweat and plastic tasted like.

I never wanted to be a princess again!!  But "her" secret was safe with all of us :)