Crazy

'Tis interesting that in all the few years that I've been slogging through this blog that I've never titled a blog, "Crazy." Considering that I feel crazy most of the time perhaps there's not generally a need to actually label the girl as actually "crazy." I prefer "sanity challenged."

The "management" continues to have issues with the "tenants" (read teenagers). For one, what gives with the locking yourself in the bathroom whenever there's a request to do something difficult like, get up out of the bed you've been ensconced in for 12 hours or to turn off the light in your room? I have keys to the bathroom so locking yourself in there does nothing but make me see those little stars in my peripheral vision (my own personal Leonid meteor shower). 

However, the management did have one break- through with at least one tenant this week.  I keep saying "You have to have a plan. Have a plan. Make up a plan. Strive for something- for so help me God and as God as my witness and we may be dealing with an angry Old Testament God- if you are living in my basement some day, I will just do something undesirable in your general direction."(I don't know what and I'm not commiting to what thing I might do because I shouldn't be using the energy to think about this.)

You know what? One of them came up with a plan. It's a plan that actually has some potential and it involves cash money and college tuition (not paid by me, although I'll happily pay) and a job and an occupation. Of course, I'm not holding the tenant, I mean kid, to this. But, it's a plan!

The other kid doesn't have a plan and no matter how many conversation hearts I speed eat while I type this, I cannot impose upon him a plan. I suppose he'll come up with something one of these days. I hope it involves cash money and maybe a Winnebago for me and Tim. That would be nice.

Back to the crazy, if I have to explain where the crazy fits into all this, then you don't know me at all. For the record, I feel very sane except for the stars.

Good Enough

There's a fine line between perfection and good enough.  Or if you ask the nun I've been working with for the last few months (she's been helping me learn how to stop being insane and just "be." I'm not sure if it's working or not- OK, it's not), it's a big chasm between perfection and good enough. 

(She's a delightful, very centered nun. Probably perfect although I would get in trouble for saying that.)

Perfection: Eye Liner, mascara, contoured eye shadow and $150 eye cream
Good Enough: Glasses. No one can see the bloodshot eyes because of the glare.

Perfection: Iced martini glass, frozen shaker, filtered water ice cubes with suspended raspberries, Dutch vodka and lemon liquor and sugar rimmed crystal glass.
Good Enough: Mid Shelf Vodka and a straw (note that even in the good enough category, it is UNACCEPTABLE to use the bottom shelf.)

Perfection: Even keeled response to all stressful professional situations. (No threats of homicide or bodily injury on myself or others either for affect or as a true threat to the general public.)
Good Enough: Feeling hateful and occasionally spitting.

Perfection: Dressed and fed children reading "War and Peace" on Christmas break while studying ahead for winter finals.
Good Enough: Out of bed before noon, dressed by 5pm, please A&P. And there are frozen waffles, knock yourselves out.

If I can only pound this into my thick, thick skull: good enough is all that anyone asks of you, me or that lady down the street with the perfect Christmas lights. The little voice in the back of my head is really bothered by the laundry in the bathroom and the fruit flies and the cat hair and the dust on the floor in the hall. Said another way, if God wanted things to be perfect I'm certain we wouldn't be celebrating a stable and some stinky shepherds with their equally foul sheep with the accompanying excrement. Or those wise men? Really, Frankincense, aren't those stinky bath salts that the kid can smoke to get high? A savings bond would be way more appropriate.

Lastly, even without the perfect combo of 5 fruits and vegetables per day, my monster children are 6 foot 3 at age 14. God obviously allows for some wiggle room on the requirements.

I declare this post, good enough. If I say it 100 times, maybe I'll believe it.

Carnivale

I feel like an incompetent, out of control, carnival worker- the one who runs the giant, rickety ferris wheel. The loose wheel keeps whipping by, faster and faster, and I can't make it stop. Everytime it goes by it whacks me upside the head because I'm a stupid carnival worker and I'm standing inside the yellow lines. I should be fired for this. Where is my job description for this mom-carnival worker-slave-grocery fetcher-splinter puller-pole dancer? (I made that last part up).

Climb on the insanity wheel with me and you'll feel like a gerbil trapped in a two by two cage with a python, a bedspring and a small bottle of minibar whiskey.

School supplies in bulk (exactly why am I buying Kleenex and post it notes in 5 different colors when my children are color blind?)- the laundry room is torn apart, there are fruit flies in the kitchen from those awful cherries that looked better than they tasted, I can't open my martini shaker and someone had the AUDACITY to steal the radio antenna off of my car. Seriously, it's a psycho mom's minivan, you sickos.

I bought way too many school supplies. I have a fear of running out of red pens on a frosty night in November when its really hard to find erasable blue pens in bulk. (And this is especially weird because I'm worried about the red pens so why I'm looking for blue pens needs some introspection.)Peter goes through a pencil a day so the effort my family puts into judging me because I have a container with 300 pencils in it is entirely unnecessary. Some people stockpile paper towel (Matthew), I stock pile writing utensils. Odd because A&P have horrible handwriting.

Oh, the laundry room, you must be wondering. I had it ripped apart because it was horrible and needed a makeover and tile backsplash and beverage cooler. Who doesn't? (Are you judging too?) The new cabinets were in place for about 6 hours before the cat opened a base cabinet  with his short toes that can't even open a cracked door and barfed right in it. Really, the new cabinet? Wouldn't you prefer the white carpet?

Is your head spinning off yet? I hear I can get prescriptions for this kind of thing. Andrew grew an inch during a 4 hour mid day nap last week. You think I'm kidding but he's nearly 6 feet tall and he wasn't that tall when I left for work that day. I started to wear even higher heels and now my feet hurt. Stupid feet. Dang tall kids. Note to self: buy more coffee and bricks for their heads.

Are you feeling whipped around on this giant wheel yet?

Tomorrow is the start of 8th grade. I remember 8th grade so the fact that I have 8th grade kids is just ridiculous. I told someone at work that I was 32- it went like this- "you need me to work on Section 32 of such and such? Sure, that's the same age as me." Pause- no comment- total silence. She said "You're 32? I could be your mother." I burst out laughing hysterically (that's what happens off the medication) and she said "you look good, but not 32 good." Nice.

So I'm hysterical, hateful and hyperventilating the night before school. At least we have pencils.

Knocked Around

In my quest for some good TV, I stumble around the dial of 200 channels like an inebriated housefly desperately searching the screen for a hole big enough to cram into and escape. Surely TV is an escape for most everyone. After an hour slogging through the machinations that is a VH1 reality show, I flipped over to a narrative of The Wreck of the Whaleship Essex and Hermann Melville. It's one of my favorite stories- gruesome but wonderful language and allegory.





Ever feel like you've been whacked upside the head by a 2 ton right whale? I can't be the only one. But when that happens, there's always the little stuff to get you through, hour by hour, if necessary. Like some of this stuff...





Andrew has a beautiful, young soul. He's not an old soul- I know you know what I mean. He doesn't look at me with those eyes that say "I've done this before, leave me alone." His eyes say "Hey, this is the first time I've seen this and I'm having a wonderful time, thank you very much." It's rather refreshing after a day or two of being knocked about in what feels like a very small, hole riddled boat.





Yesterday he told me that the new shampoo I got him made him so happy because it was a great shade of blue. "It actually made me smile in the shower." How cute is that? It's shampoo so I think that's rather delightful. He never said anything profound when peering into the Grand Canyon a few years back- he said something more like "That's a big hole." I suppose if he can appreciate the small things, I've done my job.





This is what he picked out for me for Mothers' Day...

I've received a variety of opinions about what this means- including one that suggests that he is trying to butter me up should he end up in the slammer. He's not the felonious type generally so that can't be it. Regardless, he was quite proud of the purchase and insisted that I take it to my office. So I did. Hopefully the nuns don't mind the mild profanity. (Incidentally, Peter got me a very nice vase.)

Being knocked about is generally worth it, even when the boat springs a leak, or 12. I found at my local Big Lots a nifty four pack of root beer that helped me focus on what's important even when someone else is yanking the life jacket and pushing my head under water.

It was way up on the top shelf, but not out of reach. Nothing is, if you try hard enough.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to bailing me boat.

Fib Practice

I have a colleague. I don't like this person one bit. Not one iota.

This person thinks I fib. Either that or she likes to check up on me. If you know me at all, you know that this makes me crazytown insane.

So this is what I'm going to do. I am going to call it out. I am going to call it like I see it. If you don't believe what I say and you insist on going behind my back like a 5th grader to see if I what I tell you is true, then I will call this out.

Here's the thing. If I fibbed or made stuff up, I wouldn't be mundane. I would go big. I would tell the biggest whopper you ever heard. So, if you think, Dear Miss Checkerupper that I am lying about someone being out of town, just see what I might tell you if I was really fibtastic.

No, we wouldn't be out of town at a meeting (which for real! it's the truth!) We would be...

Eating tea sandwiches with flying monkeys at a garden shop in Queensland Australia.

Or wait, this is better. We would be riding blue dragons to a luncheon with the King and Queen of Luxemermia. (That's where I'm from after all. For those of you who don't know me well, I was kidnapped by Russian spies out of my castle in Luxemermia back in 1981. I was only 6 months old and I woke up in an orange crib in Wauwatosa Wisconsin with Paula and Stu. I'm just waiting for the King's people to hook me up with my fortune. Still waiting!)

So here's the deal Miss Checkerupper, if you're too dumb to figure out that I know that you're going around checking up on me like you're some kind of insecure 5th grader, then when I meet you next week, we're going to have some fun. You just won't know it's happening because the whopper will be so big, well, I'll stop there. I don't want to give away my secrets.

Lunch Break

Here's a snapshot of what is floating around in my head (if you watch South Park, I'm probably a bit like what Cartman sees when he closes his eyes). It is nearly noon as I type this. Where does the day go?

I am inspired by the following two things today (beware, things are going to get sappy around here)...

• A quote from Moulin Rouge "The greatest thing you will ever learn is to love and to be loved in return."
• Time spent serving and preparing a community dinner for people who need it on Sunday.

First, the quote... it's just a great quote. I am going to give my boys and the kitty and Timmy and maybe the guinea pig (Not all at the same time) a big squeeze. Peter really needs a big squeeze. He was feeling a little low yesterday. So, if you see him before I do, squeeze him until he squeaks.

Second, the dinner... A&P and a friend needed some more service hours for school so off we went to the community dinner. The boys all worked very hard and made me very proud. They worked for four hours straight to help get dinner on the table for about 50 people who come off of the street once a month for a meal. Some of the people leave prayer requests behind.

I should tell you that Sunday was a miserable rainy day. People came in dripping wet and cold. Some smiled anyway.

I have to tell you about these prayer requests.... if I was homeless or downtrodden and needed a meal... I would be miserable. I would be a pill and a half. I would be pulling my hair out and I would pray for indulgent things like a job and an income and a place to live. This is because I'm selfish and I have too much to learn about how to live my life. Do you know what these people left prayers for? Not a single prayer that I picked up was for something indulgent.

They prayed for...

• the missing oil rig workers
• miners in West Virginia
• peace
• beauty
• happiness
• some signed their names and said thank you
• some didn't say anything at all

Remember, give Peter a squeeze.

Worms: An appreciation

This is a post about worms. If you think worms are icky, you should probably not read this. Although I think worms are icky so I probably can't type anything too gross or I'll make myself sick.

Shall I explain the picture? In preparation for a newsy little post of vermicomposting or some such thing, I decided to find a picture of an earth worm. Instead I found this lovely photo of the Nibelungen Bridge over the Rhine at Worms, Germany. Obtuse? Indeed.

Curiousity got the better of me so I turned to google to find out some more stuff about Worms. Did you know it was founded by Celts and that the people of Worms fight with the people in Cologne about who has the oldest town in Germany? The only thing I ever knew was that Worms was where Martin Luther had his temper tantrum.

Now get this about the name... the Celts back in the olden times before calendars named their little town Borbetomagus which means "settlement in a watery area." How nice and direct of those Celts. Anyway, the Romans came along and started calling it Vormatia and that's just a fancy way to say "worms." I'm not sure the Romans did them any favors with the name change but with Romans stomping around, I'm not sure that the Borbetomagusians had any room to argue.

So there we have it, worms.

I bought a composter. I don't know anything about worms, but I'm going to compost my coffee grounds and my black and white inked junk mail.

All Hail Mighty Worms.

Rapunzel

How much would you charge me to lock me in this tower?

TCWICRN (The Child who is crazy right now) made me so mad yesterday I could have locked myself into this tower forever. He was ranting and raving and hollering and exhibiting various kinds of buffoonery. I had been secretly congratulating myself for a week that I had not jammed him into a UPS box and mailed him to Russia with a note that said "I know he didn't come from Russia, but it seems like a good place. Thanks."

I tried to wrap my head around the insanity. I said supportive things like "this will pass"; "you are great", "I sure do love you and would never sell you to gypsies." But after 7 days of this nutso wackiness, all I wanted to do was climb into a tower and grow my hair for 25 years.

So I hollered "you can't be crazy anymore! you are driving me bananas! pick a different kind of crazy! if you're going to stay crazy, make it different every time for goodness sake!"

He stared at me. He regarded my red face and snarl. And, he stopped being crazy. I called out the crazy and he left, just like that and in his place was the regular kid.

What did I wait 7 days for?

I still want to be locked in the tower because I think crazy will come back sometime before high school graduation.