grinch butt

I'm crabby and impatient and intolerant and all around lacking in compassion today

Not a way I like to feel

So this morning, I'm in a room seeing one of my regular families, and what Jack would call old white guy republican thoughts are going through my head.

I don't want to even notice that all six kids have different last names.

I don't want to think about the fact that this lady has 5 kids between the age of 8 month and almost 7. And they all have different last names.

She hasn't gotten the baby the antibiotics the ER prescribed cause she has no way of getting to the pharmacy.

The 12 year old is asleep with his head on the exam room desk, snoring away at 9:18 am.

He still wets the bed so mom asks if "They" will pay for adult diapers.

She wants him to have a sleep study cause he snores.

And she wants vitamin prescriptions for all 6 kids because "They" will pay for it.

I don't want to have judgements. I don't want to be judgemental.

But... As in grinch butt

Who the fuck is "They"?

I am "They".

Somewhere along the line, in the last 6 years, there have been at least 5 different men in this woman's life.

Why can't they buy some vitamins?

Or pitch in for the adult diapers? Or go fill the babys prescription goddammit?

And why does she keep having babies anyway?

I'm all for socialized medicine, but when I have grinch butt its not so easy to stay in a place of compassion. The damn wedgie is distracting me.

So I force myself to focus on how cute the baby is and how smart the two year old is and how much it must suck to be 13 and still wetting the bed.

And having grinch butt is not nearly as bad as being the mom of 6 and not having any front teeth.

But still. I have grinch butt.

I've bought 6 packages of different sizes and styles of underwear and not one goddam pair is comfortable too tight across my fat ass too low a rise too high a rise bikini brief boy brief what the fuckin fuck brief and my period which has been coming every 26 days is now at 30 and refusing to make its presence known thankyouverymuch. I bought pantyliners just in case along with another package of underwear and the underwear comes up over my bellybutton ugh and the pantiliners are more like oceanliners damn they could be inserts in Bruce's size 12 sneakers

Whew

So that's why I am
Completely
Lacking
Compassion
Today

On days like this I think of something I read a long time ago in The Temple of My Familiar.

The way I remember it, one of the characters says she became a massage therapist because she realized if she didn't physically put her hands on people and literally feel their pain, she'd fucking kill them out of aggravation.

That's me today.

Sunday Confessions from the Beacon Satellite Chapel of the Church of the Batshit Crazy

Saturday. 5:01 pm.

On line at walmart. I was supposed to be on a date with Ty to hear a cello soloist but he blew me off.

Wanted to play at the park with his friends instead.

I showered and put on a dress and eyeliner and everything but no bra

OK. I put the dress on so that after the cello concert Bruce and I could just take off for Date Night.

Dinner and a movie.

It's not a fancy dress. I wore it every day in Mexico.

Now I'm wearing it layered with a hoodie and scarf and leggings and my mom's old sweater.

It's a floor length dark brown knit maternity dress from Old Navy.

Very flattering and super comfy.

And no I am not pregnant

When Ty blew me off I felt stood up.

I thought about going to the cello concert by myself, but figured I should be productive instead.

If I stayed home, I'd feel compelled to clean but then I'd get my dress dirty.

There's no food in the house. We're even out of ketchup and the gerbils have been eating cat food for a week.

So. Off to Walmart. In my dress.

Walmart on a Saturday afternoon sucks. Walmart at any time sucks.

So here I am on line spewing into my phone and Fuck I forgot kitty litter.

Poor kitty is pooping in a half inch of litter...

OK. It's 5:08

I'm on the fastest line ever in the history of the tumultuous hell that is my relationship with walmart. The question is can I leave my cart on this line and get to the pet supply end of this airplane hangar and get back with kitty litter before it's my turn to get rung up. strung up. strung out.

5:09:34

Made it. Carrying a 34lb box and now my dress is covered with kitty litter dust. Fuck it.

*****

I'm waving the white flag of surrender. I'm giving up kind of on the fight.

I've realized it's a goddam waste of my energy to try and save the planet one local organic unprocessed unpasturized unpackaged meal at a time.

It's a frootloopless endeavor.

I've fought long and hard, but my resolve has been beaten back too many times and my troops are diminished.

I'm not home 3 evenings a week.

For 3 years my most awesome babysitter has been tortured by my food issues.

It's her responsibility to feed my kids dinner, yet I'm so conflicted in my food purchases that frequently she only has spaghetti and goya black bean soup and organic butter and illegal amish meat to work with.

And she, by her own admission, can't cook.

My Tuesdays and Thursdays I spend half my day cooking a Real Family Meal ending in an Epic Fail and lots of leftovers for me to take to work.

My poor kids are tortured by my food issues and they torture me right back.

Mom can we get Pop Tarts? How bout Fruit Loops? Or Trix?. Or Trix Yogurt?

How bout Hot Pockets?

Do you know the first ingredient in Hot Pockets is ham water?

What the fuck is ham water?

gross

I can't bring myself to buy that kind of stuff. I've tried, but then I look at the ingredients label and it's so fucking long.

So I allow them to eat Rocky Road ice cream for breakfast instead. And Oreos.

I just turn off my brain when I think about the partially hydrogenated double stuff that they love so much.

I'm the poster mom for Arbitrary Rules.

Yup. I'm fucked up.

Orthorexia Nervosa. Unhealthy obsession with "right" eating.

In my quest to solidify partially hydrogenate a budget, I looked at our food spending.

And this is what I've decided.

I'm gonna give the Most Awesome Babysitter a hundred bucks a week in food allowance.

They can do with it what they wish. This way her life will be easier, the kids will be happier, and I won't have a goddam nervous breakdown every time I open the fridge or stand in the frozen food aisle.

I can stop buying a gazillion dollars worth of food that doesn't get eaten.

And Bruce makes delicious yummy healthy organic mostly unprocessed totally dinners on the weekends.

That the kids love. I can take comfort in that.

Hopefully they'll respect the limits of my sanity and not come home with anything that will put me over the edge.

Or at least eat it all and dispose of the evidence before I get home.

We shall see.

must be in the genes

So earlier this year, my 25 year old nephew took off alone to Asia.

He had a very sketchy itinerary if you could even call it that.

Starting Somewhere in China crashing on someone's couch.

Then maybe Japan and Hong Kong and India and Thailand. Or something.

For a year or so. Maybe. He was just gonna wing it.

It was less than a month into his journey that my mom, his Grums, started dying for real.

He got a gazillion dollar flight out of Somewhere in China within 72 hours.

He is her first grandchild.

I think he stayed here for 2 weeks after the funeral. Then took off again.

The kid has cojones. Just the thought scares the shit out of me.

His mom, my sister Melanie, says thank god for skype

Sister-Mom Melanie had introduced him to Just Eat It a while back.

I don't remember when.

I thought it would be great for him to start his own blog about his travels.

Apparently he's intimidated by MY writing silly boy but is keeping a journal instead.

He emails his journal entries to Sister-Mom Melanie in case his laptop gets lost or stolen.

On a Slow Boat to China.

“What's on your mind?” Facebook stares me in the face. What's on my mind? My aunt Michelle. She has a blog. Aside from the obvious, “who doesn't?” hers is quite amazing. And no, I don't say that because we are related... Prior to the death of my grandmother, I didn't know my family. Remember when you were a little kid and everyone was supposed to protect you and you don't know all the bad shit around you? Well, I still don't know enough of the shit about the family to say I know them. I see people for the holidays, but I couldn't tell you the first thing about them. Because of Michelle's blog, my mother has decided to share herself more with me, as a person, not a parent. I gotta say, I really like her. She's smart and funny, and has a wonderfully terrible sense of humor. I know where I get mine from. It's nice to know. It's nice to know where you come from and the people around you. Michelle is the only relative that has shared herself with me, and that is only through this anonymous forum. I'm not sure she knows I read it. Sometimes I feel like that side of the family that the rest never talks to... I think it's just that, no one in our family really communicates well with each other... or at least, not out loud. She got a good review from some system that reviews blogs and rips them apart. In reading her most recent post, including the review, I actually shed a tear. The last two times that happened? My stepmothers mother died, the first of 7 deaths in a row... One per month. Before that, a night consisting of two bottles of scotch and the overwhelming feeling to talk to SOMEONE regarding the constant need to kill myself . People with penises don't cry. I get it. Fuck you.

Reprinted with permission from Nephew Alek and Sister-Mom Melanie

I think he has a story to tell. What do you think?

Wordless Wednesday

I had to do it.

I feel better now.

Almost Happy Wednesday

Ty playing his favorite part of Bach's Cello Suite 1

Courante in G Major

Rambly Bad Mood Monday

And the hormonal slump hit like a ton of bricks and fucked me up goddammit

I felt like I was on a goddam emotional rollercoaster this weekend.

Poor Bruce.

Saturday I was fine. I was chatty.

Then the sun went down and I felt headachey and impatient and terse and cold to the bone.

It sucked.

I woke up @ 4am sunday morning and couldn't fall back to sleep til after 5.

That NEVER happens to me anymore. I couldn't even blame it on a hot flash

Same thing Sunday. I was ok all day then for no real reason just felt blue.

And headachey. And cold.

So at 6 I took a nap. Then I felt better. For a little while.

I have to chalk it up to hormones and the shorter, darker days cause life is so good right now.

There's a lot of the unbloggable going on, but its good unbloggable.

Cause you know the bad shit in my life is WAY bloggable.

But the good unbloggable stuff is piling more onto my already too full plate.

Maybe that explains my fat ass...

I usually go out of my way to keep life as simple as possible.

I deny my kids after school activities cause I can't stand driving around in circles.

Jack walks to tae kwon do.

Ty's cello lesson is 4 minutes away and the cello teacher has a really comfy couch so I regularly fall asleep listening to them play Bach and Tchaikovsky.

Mia did art camp because it occupied her for 8 hours a day and made my life easier

I'm a selfish bitch

I also am inherently lazy and undisciplined.

So now I'm dealing with a gazillion more things than usual which makes no sense cause I'm really a person who just wants to sit down and do nothing

Which is what I've been doing. Absolutely nothing.

On the weekends I sit in the backyard with Bruce and look at the bluesky for hours on end.

Then we stroll down Main st. We listen to music.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays I go to yoga.

And if Jordana or Anouk call I'll forget about all the things I have to do and we'll have lunch instead.

I'm thinking some of these blues may be due to the nagging voice telling me

there's a lot of work to be done get up off your lazy fat ass while you still have time before you're really in the weeds and behind the eight ball

Oh well. There are only a few more warm sunshiny days left.

I'll wait till the really crappy weather to get all this shit done.

*****

OK. I know it's Tuesday. And it's not even Tuesday morning. It's Tuesday night.

I wrote the above blah blah blah at work yesterday, and that's exactly how I was feeling.

So I decided to do something productive today. Something I could feel good about.

Like when you clean your entire kitchen from top to bottom.

BUDGET

We don't have one. We buy what we buy. We don't pay attention. It's pathetic. And wasteful.

Finances. Cash flow. Bills. Money in. Money out.

Epic fail.

I do not feel better.

Restore My Sanity, Jon Stewart

I got rid of cable at the beginning of the year.

The kids protested, but got the Because I Said So response.

It didn't take long for us to adjust.

I love not having television. The only show I regularly watched was LOST.

I could get it on Hulu and it was the last season anyway.

During the presidential election I, like many, got junked out on CNN.

I needed my daily Obama fix.

I think that's when I found The Daily Show.

I love Jon Stewart. Especially when he's trying to keep a straight face.

Election night, I was on the phone with Sister Adrienne, and it was Jon Stewart who told me Obama had won. We got all teary and goosebumpy together.

Sometimes I think I miss CNN. Until I'm in the pizza place waiting for my order and get a 5 minute dose. Where's the serious unbiased reporting? They always sound over dramatic and adolescent to me. CNN sucks. That's all I have to say.

I'm completely unplugged now.

I had no idea about the miners.

I didn't know about the dumbasses opposing the building of a mosque near Ground Zero.

I heard about the kid who jumped off the George Washington Bridge at work.

I hate the New York Times.

And I definitely don't want to know why everyone's so aggravated with Obama.

That would just make me sad.

I mostly get my current events from Blogland.

If something really fucked up is going on, Ms. Moon, or Elizabeth, or Sarcastic Bastard are sure to give a head's up and then I hit Google.

Pathetic. But it keeps me sane and happy. I'm tired of being overwhelmed by the weight of all the fucked up shit we humans are doing. We suck. So I don't watch T.V.

But I saw a widget of my Jon on the sidebar over at Rage Against the Minivan.

It's kind of ironic cause I think Haiti is what finally put me over the edge and slammed my head into the sand.

The best part of it all is that I can visit my secret boyfriend online every night!

We don't need no stinkin tv here. Comedy Central on the Internet.

Jon Stewart at my beck and call whenever my heart desires.

Restore my sanity, Jon. We beseech thee, hear us.

Godspell

I remember my mom taking us to see Godspell when I was 10.

This was way before her Church Lady Era.

She probably heard or read some NYTimes review about how awesome the movie was.

1973. The hippie years.

I loved that movie. I remember being broken hearted at the end.

We went to Church. I knew the stories. Somehow my 10 year old self found the movie sexy.

Jesus was sexy. The disciples were sexy. I wanted to be one of them.

And the music? OMG.

My prepubescent self was impressionable and on the cusp of having the ability to be swept away.

That's what Godspell did. It swept me away. It broke my prepubescent heart.

We got the album. I was 10. Sister Halona was 4. The other 3 were in between. We listened to the album all the time. We would sing and prance through the living room and carry Sister Halona through the house just like they carried Jesus after they took him down from the chain-linked fence.

37 years later, I'm sure we still know all the words. I know I do.

A local theater group is performing Godspell next month. I noticed the marquis this morning on my way to work. I should take the kids. They've seen the movie. They love the music. It made an impression on them even though it's dated and they have no idea who Jesus is because I'm now a heathen and they don't go to church.

They don't know the stories.

They're not even baptized.

It was such a big part of our lives growing up. Church. Godspell.

I plugged in my iPod on the way home tonight and listened to the Godspell soundtrack.

Yes. I have Godspell on my iPod. I told you I'm a loser.

One of my favorite songs is Bless the Lord.

I think the last time I listened to it our Daddy was unconscious in the hospital and we were holding a vigil waiting for him to die.

9 days. He held on 9 days after having a massive stroke. No food. No fluids.

He never regained consciousness.

I remember listening to Godspell on the way back from one of many hospital visits during those 9 days. It was an insanely insane time in my life.

My Daddy was dying. My husband was on the verge.

I was trying to keep my kids safe and in one piece.

I thought I might loose my house. I thought I might loose my mind.

he will not always chide

he will with patience wait

his wrath is ever slow to rise

and ready to abate

he pardons all thy sins

prolongs thy feeble breath

he heal-eth thine infirmities

and ransoms thee from death

he clothes thee with his love

upholds thee with his truth

and like the eagle he renews

the vigor of thy youth

I remember singing the words and crying through the music. My Daddy was dying.

The Christian God makes no sense to me at all. I take what I like and leave the rest.

I substitute Love or some other non-gendered amorphous inclusive force for the He(s), and then I can accept the message.

Who the fuck knows. Not me, that's for sure.

But I do know there is something. And it's mighty strong. It makes miracles. It heals.

It kicks fukin butt.

About Me

My sidebar has no About Me thingy other than crazy is as crazy does.

Which, after all, is all there is to say.

I guess I figure if you read enough posts, you'll know all about me.

Ha. Not to hold anyone hostage or anything.

I blog to work my shit out. I blog for the reassuring Amen Sista comments.

I blog to hear you are not alone. I blog to hear thank god I am not alone.

I tell myself that followers and comments don't really matter. BULLSHIT.

But I have 2 of those counter things on my sidebar.

I tell myself it's cool to see the hits from other parts of the world or neat to track who's reading.

whatever

It's a damn popularity contest.

No matter how you cut it, blogging is a look at me endeavor.

Even if you don't like being looked at.

I don't particularly like being looked at. At least not in the physical world.

But I'll confess. I love comments and I love followers. big secret

A friend asked me a while back if I was on Facebook. I said are you kidding me? No way! Facebook makes me feel like I'm walking around without my clothes on.

He thought that was pretty funny given how...ummm...nekkid I am here on my blog.

I don't know. Facebook and Twitter are just not the same as blogland.

Another friend said if you go on Facebook, your blog will take off.

Memes I still don't know what that word means are a great way to spread the blog love in a multiple partner kind of way. I tried it for a while, but I just felt cheap. I prefer protection. Cybercondoms. I've never been a not unless I'm in love kinda girl, but when it comes down to it I'd rather keep my intimate bloggy fluids to myself.

I mean if I like you and you like me, I'm all for the overshare.

But there's nothing casual about Just Eat It.

I also know that if I go for the numbers, I'll edit my words.

And then this blog will cease serving it's purpose.

It's not a popularity contest. I mean not REALLY.

And I've never been a let's go shopping kind of girl. I don't think I could get a hundred followers even if I tried.

I tell myself I'm above seeking out approval and validation.

I left that shit behind 2 husbands ago.

I don't want to censor myself here. I do enough of that in the flesh.

I can't call the flesh-life real-life cause my posts are the real me.

It's where I put out my strength and weakness and fear and hope for almost anyone to see.

Which is why it's kinda funny that I did this.

I did it mostly out of curiosity. bullshit.

I have the best followers in the blogosphere. They give great comment.

They are wonderful, lovely, interesting people who leave wonderful, lovely, interesting comments.

And I follow them too. I worry about them. I cheer for them. I actually love them.

They're really smart and batshit crazy just like me.

There are also handful of face to face people who read my blog.

Most of them are family members.

Or having sex with family members. Or want to have sex with family members.

So when they say you should write a book I tell myself they have an agenda.

I wanted a more objective opinion.

So I justified my quest for approval with the URL iwillfuckingtearyouapart.

Can't get more objective than that.

And if I got torn apart it would serve me right for begging.

I'm not a writer. Maybe I'm a storyteller. Maybe. I'm mostly just a chick who found a really good way to work her shit out. And it turns out that sometimes I can make people laugh or cry or feel outrage or get goose bumps with my story-telling written words.

And that makes us all feel less alone.

I cannot tell stories with my mouth.

I'm the one who screws up the punchline and generally spazzes out if confronted by the spoken word.

I don't even LIKE talking.

Still, I submitted.

And received this.

And to be perfectly honest, I was tickled fucking pink.

I called my New York Times reviewed husband right away.

I feel so stupid being so excited I feel like such an idiot but I'm really happy I'm such an idiot but it's a really good review and they don't like ANYONE.

It was my Sally Fields moment. I tortured my kids with it for the entire evening.

I didn't tell anyone else. Cause I don't like talking about myself. It's taken a week to figure out how to put it out there in a comfy way.

A widget on my sidebar? Not without an explanation.

But the explanation would be so much more look at me than I'm comfortable with.

I've never been good at taking compliments. I just get embarrassed.

Ask Bruce. It drives him crazy.
But you know what? I get all tingly when I read Madame's review.

And being her IFLY devirginizer? Wow.

I love that this blog was powerful enough make that black-leather clad lady throw down her whip and beg for more.

I love that I could satisfy her so. It makes me feel a little dirty.

But I'll keep my crazy colors and morphing fonts thankyouverymuch.

I can't imagine my blog in black and white anymore than I can imagine my house in black and white.

My ego said Bruce, maybe someone will read the review and offer me a book deal every blogger's dream. Then maybe I'll get a movie deal. Meryl Streep can play me and Stanley Tucci can play you.

We had a good chuckle over that one.

This blog is my About Me