Thursday thirteen (on Friday)... dirtiest story #1

Of course the first story that popped into my head involved poop. We aren’t talking run of the mill, oops the diaper overflowed a bit poop – we are talking – ‘Dear G-d, where did all of this come from, this child isn’t that large. – let me set the scene –

We were early married, and broke, and we had an 18 month old daughter and a 3 month old son and a cat that would not stop getting urinary tract infections. (ps. just as an added stinky note, male cats with urinary tract infections are stinky independent of anything else going on!) So the day arrives that the cat is miserable and cannot pee, he is groaning and moaning and spraying (ugh what a stink) this crystallized bloody nasty foul smelling stuff all over my dirty laundry – well actually he generally preferred for whatever reason to spray husband’s laundry, but I still had to deal with the mess. Our truck isn’t running, so husband has taken the only running vehicle to work, in another town, pretty far from home, and I have no way of taking poor little miserable cat to the vet (which I can’t really afford to pay for, but when we have pets we have a responsibility). I call my mom, and she was flat out nasty to me, I don’t know to this day why she was so reluctant to be helpful, because that is the complete opposite of the norm. I call the husband, can he get off early, etc… it ain’t happening. My best friend, who has an 8-5 job, that she can’t ordinarily get off from happens to call me, I am in tears, no one will help me get my poor miserable cat to the Dr. and my two babies are making me crazed. She happened to have the day off, she drives right over – she loves my children, she loves my cat (in spite of an allergy) and most of all she loves me. We load both the darlings’ car seats into her small little Dodge Colt. The car seats fill up the entire backseat – but this wonderous car is a hatchback – oh yeah, I said hatchback – shhhhh don’t tell anyone that I was in a hatchback. We load the poor miserable cat into the cat carrier and put it in the back of the car. Then we load the darlings – who are in a wonderful mood – Auntie B has come to visit and they get an ‘outing’ what more fun could a person have. Now we lived in a small town (Golden, Colorado) and the vet was in our town, so not more than 15 minutes away. However, Grunt (the cat, why I named him that is another day’s story) hates the car, hates the cat carrier, does’t feel real good anyhow, and is generally an ass when he’s not getting his way… so he shits himself (and the cat carrier), well let’s be honest, he projectile shit all over the carrier which then got all over him… wet nasty cat diarrhea dripping off of the cat carrier onto his fat hairy body, and it did manage also to project out of the slats of the carrier with enough velocity to create some sort of splatter pattern on the hatchback window that Crime Scene Investigators would have to comment on. He also managed to pop off a little squirt or two or ten of cat spray… so now the car, in the summer heat, smells like cat shit, some sort of strange musky skunky piss odor and my darling 3 month old son begins to giggle and laugh. We arrive at the vet moments later, literally not more than 3 minutes – I go for the cat, because my friend who loves my cat is gagging hideously and well who would want anyone else to deal with that mess for you. She sweetly offers to take her time getting the kids out of the car and into the stroller and into the vet because we will have to wait for the appointment anyhow (and oh yeah, who wants to be around smelly cat)… I carry the dripping mess of cat and cat carrier to the back door of the vet’s office and gingerly set it on the sidewalk in the shade to go in and explain that they don’t want me in their lobby with ‘that’. The girl says “oh that happens all the time, just bring him on in”… apparently I did a poor job of communicating just how awful it was, because I cleared the waiting room in seconds and we were shown to an exam room with much haste where a tech joined us to begin assisting in the hideous clean up. I confess, in a moment of selfish confusion or intense maternal instinct – I left the tech to deal with the cat and went outside to check on my children. That’s when I discovered that the cat had NOTHING on my son… the giggles that followed the cat explosion could only have been some sort of sick male pride thing. Remember this was the 90’s – car seats were huge hulking buckets that could probably hold somewhere around a gallon of liquid… my son filled his car seat to overflowing, it was running out his neck, it was running out of his shoes, it was all over the car seat, and running out of that onto the seats of my friends car (my childless friend)… it was on the floor of the car – it was that seedy weird baby diarrhea that won’t wipe off of anything, you just chase it around… and it stunk – you would have thought that I had killed the cat and served him to my son to make such a stinky BM. And, I was broke and frugal (read cheap), so I had brought about three torn in half baby wipes in my small little diaper bag baby wipe container. My friend was using those crappy brown paper towels (you know the ones they have in school that absorb NOTHING) trying to make a dent in the flood of brown goo that just kept spreading out and coming from places that made no sense at all. My daughter was in the stroller in the shade of a tree, my son was lying on what used to be a small white receiving blanket that I usually used under the changing pad in the same shade still fully dressed and fascinated by some bits of poo that were on his fingers – I took to the kid with a few of the towels, it was useless, I grabbed a bag and threw all of his clothes in it and tied it shut. I took my naked child inside and asked if I could please just hose him off in a sink – the receptionist freaked out of course, who would put their child in a veterinarian’s wash sink????... my friend continued singing to my daughter while she gagged and puked and attempted to get the car back to at least drivable so we could go home. The vet tried to give the cat back, I refused, I told him these infections were chronic, I was sure he was dehydrated and needed IV fluids and could I please just leave him til my husband could pick him up after work. We lined the car seat with newspaper, put the near naked (I did have a clean diaper left) child back in, and went home with all the windows down. My friend pretty much just dumped me on my doorstep mumbling something about hosing out her car and I went inside with my children and cried again!

When she sold that car about a year later it still smelled like the day from hell… and yet someone paid her $500 for the car – she was delighted to be rid of it.

who is g.u.t.s.?

Not a single person wondered what that meant in the post below...

Strange, this lack of curiosity among people who are reading one another's diaries.

When I was in high school / college this stud of a guy moved in up the street from my parents - oh my dear lord did he have a body to make you stop in your tracks and rubberneck as he passed by - which he did frequently on his bike, running, and in his classic 1964 corvette. Yeah, hot, fit, and had a great car - what's not to stare at. I started calling him guts (g.u.t.s. - Guy Up The Street).

Then one day... I have a mud mask on - yes the green kind - I am all sweaty from cleaning my aunt's garage and laying in the sun with the mud mask on - and I'm wearing some retarded lay in the sun get a great tan - do not ever ever EVER be seen in public outfit and the doorbell rings. Well, having grown up where everyone who knew us just walked in - this mean it was NOBODY - like the paper boy or the UPS guy - so silly me... I answered the door.

There stood g.u.t.s. - and he asked me out (in spite of my stellar appearance). We dated for a total of two weeks before he bought me a shirt that said 'no g.u.t.s no glory' and plastered and I <3 Amy bumper sticker on his truck.

You can probably imagine how long the bumper sticker stayed on the truck. Incidentally - after another couple of weeks of his constant devotion to his mommy - her apron strings were made out of titanium, let me tell ya - and the fact that he drove like a moron - and well ... um... a kind of personal intimate issue that wasn't working out... I dumped him in spite of his amazing devotion (read stupid bumper sticker) to me (giggle)

ps. I know the contest is over but I have so many good dirty stories that I am working on those, but it's taking FOREVER -- check back soon for some laughing (at me) and gagging (some of them are stinky and dirty)

g.u.t.s. has nothing on this

WOW! I just drove my daughter over to a neighborhood pool to practice for ‘lifeguard games’ – the best I can figure is that it is sort of a contest for lifeguards where they compete at skills they should possess as lifeguards – and the best I can calculate, it is intended to be fun – thus the word ‘games’ – all that aside, on my way home I saw…



THE STUPIDEST BUMPER STICKER

Okay – so some of you are going to disagree and say, ah that’s sweet. BULLSHIT! It is not sweet – if you need to convince people that you love your wife instead of them just looking at you and saying, wow, they are in love – or wow, he loves his wife – then you need to change a lot more than just sticking some shitty little piece of plastic on your car. If you actually have one of these I pity you and your spouse, if you are contemplating it, I say… for crying out loud get some freakin therapy – you are one sick puppy! If your spouse is making you put it on there because they want the world to know that you are married – you might seek therapy, you might seek an attorney, the divorce type. NO ONE who is in love and married and loves their spouse needs to prove it to ANYONE, it should be apparent to EVERYONE who spends any time around you – if it isn’t there are problems that a bumper sticker won’t fix.

Are there times when my overwhelming affection for my husband isn’t very apparent, oh hell yes. Are there times when his adoration of me isn’t exactly showing for the rest of the world – well yeah. Do all of our friends, family, neighbors, enemies, business associates, co-workers, parents of kids’ friends and the grocery store clerk know that we love one another – ABSOLUTELY! Is this because we make out in the produce aisle or make googily eyes at each other at the school carnival – oh fuck no – and do we have insincere candy-assed sentiments pasted all over our bodies and vehicles – um, I think you can guess that answer.

So alas, I conclude, it is the stupidest bumper sticker (at least for this week – we all know how I feel about absolutes).

I think just for shit’s and giggle’s I will tag a few of you – what is your ‘stupidest bumper sticker’ (or equivalent public statement media) – and let’s avoid actual political statement, satire on the other hand is free game – this tag goes out to… baseball mom, wiping up snot (I just started reading her and I don’t think she reads me, but oh well) and never a dull moment

Thursday Thirteen - stuff on my mind today

1. Oldest getting driver's license
2. Middle child - the boy - getting driver's permit
3. Youngest child dancing on broken bone - giving me heart attack re: chronic foot problems
4. Husband sending me business like emails about being out of town
5. Co-worker showing up two hours late to work while boss is out of town
6. Forgot to buy breakfast on way to work, didn't bring lunch - HUNGRY
7. Need full version of Adobe on Laptop for work purposes, really must move this up the list some
8. Need to re-design budget, can't stay focused on project
9. Wishing husband would wash my car ALL the time, not make it MY JOB just cuz it's my car
10. Wishing my nephew were his old self, wishing my mom were her old self - these events weigh heavily on my heart daily
11. Wishing I hadn't agreed to HUGE volunteer commitment at kids' school - not liking the prospect of devoting that time to the school instead of my own crap that needs taking care of
12. Hate my house, hate my housekeeping, hate trying to get motivated to get out from under that
13. Tasks that need doing - and soon!

Pursuing Happiness

I entered my church on Sunday (I know reading this you are thinking ‘this heathen potty mouth woman attends church?’ – in fact I do) and it was decorated with bunting and a huge American flag – and the organist – who is freaking amazing by the way – was playing a medley of patriotic songs – you know the fare – Yankee Doodle Dandy, Grand Ole Flag, etc. – and doing a phenomenal job of it – I don’t know if most people even realized how amazing it was that he was playing these orchestrated arrangements on a pipe organ (a fast dying art from what I am able to witness in churches lately) – so immediately I was pumped up – I love great pipe organ music, my grandmother having been a virtuoso and I’m as a big a patriot as you will find anywhere. Then the service began, and it was a lovely tribute to certain aspects of being an American that most of us take for granted daily but given a reminder appreciate deeply – ‘Freedom’, ‘Diversity’, ‘Unity’, etc. – well being this insane patriot that I am – and because of personal experiences (that I plan to share in this blog) – I cried like a baby – my kids were stunned, the people seated behind us were quite taken aback as well – since the song that was being sung was celebrating freedom and was upbeat and nearly everyone was just joyous and happy and celebratory.

You see I have always been intensely patriotic, much more so than any of those people around me. Add to that, I spent a Fourth of July overseas. Now on the surface that doesn’t sound like much, and for many people probably wouldn’t be much – but my two favorite holidays are Thanksgiving and Independence Day. I was in Portugal, not long after their revolution. (actually it was in 1974, but by recovery terms, it was still recent) which was largely orchestrated to end oppression and poverty – which in Portugal – at least during that time was enormously evident. I tell you spending a day when you ordinarily celebrate the glorious freedoms that we have here in a place where people are still afraid of the government, where poverty is so hideous that it makes strong people physically ill to witness the living conditions, where mothers will maim their children purposefully in order that their child will have better opportunities to beg more effectively later in life, because that is the best economic opportunity they can imagine, and where fascism had such a strong hold for such a long time that socialism seems like freedom – and then spend more of your summer witnessing the effects of Franco’s regime on Spain (ended 1975-1982) and the residual Franco-esque government that at that time still existed in the countryside. These men Salazar (Portugal) and Franco (Spain) took other people’s lives and imposed an absolute lack of freedom upon them – they used power and influence to oppress in some of the ugliest ways known to modern “civilizations” – not in the same huge numbers as others, or with ethnic ‘cleansing’, or with what would be deemed genocide – but they stole lives just the same – something that just does not happen here – not at the hands of our government – not during my lifetime.

So when those people stood up in my church and sang about freedom and about diversity and about unity – I cried, I couldn’t stop crying – and in fact I’m teary eyed now. I feel so tremendously lucky to live somewhere that I can attend ANY church I please, and listen to that church say ANY thing they please about the government, and I have work, and I can give my money to ANY cause or person I please, and I can say what I want about causes, or churches, or government, or business, and I can engage in business, or causes, or government – these doors are open to me and my children, and will be open to their children. Our government isn’t perfect, none are – but, ours is a far cry better than any other the world has to offer – and I wouldn’t live under any other flag willingly, EVER.

Happy Fourth of July everyone – don’t take any bit of your freedom for granted, at least not on that day – even if you aren’t a United States Citizen – gloriously celebrate any little freedom that you have – because…

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Pursue happiness, and appreciate your freedom to do so.