Time

written in 2008

When I was in college I worked on the play "Steel Magnolias." It was a favorite movie of mine before I got the opportunity to work in the theatre production. There is a favorite line from the show that I've never forgotten:
Truvy: Time marches on and sooner or later you realize it is marchin' across your face.
Don't we all know this is true. Many of my good friends are well into their 30's. My husband will be 40 in less than eight months. I am closer to 40 now than I am to 30 or even remembering what 30 was like. But life is good. I need a little extra conditioner in my hair each day and I have to remember to fight a few wrinkles with as much moisturizer as I can slather. I head to bed for as much sleep as my children will allow. I don't feel like I am 35...or at least what I thought 35 might feel like.
Here's what is strange for me. Maybe good thoughts for the manuscript since that is about a journey home..hmmm.... I didn't get married until a month before I turned 30 years old. Many of my friends from high school got married in their early 20's and many to their high school sweet hearts. Today, almost 20 years since I left that small town, I've found several on Facebook (and a few here as well) or I have been found myself 1700 miles away from home. I find myself looking at faces that look familiar but a bit older and even a few faces that look almost as they did twenty years ago. But sadly I see many are single with children meaning divorced. Many have children ten years old and older; some have teenagers! Oh my gosh! My oldest is four years old! I've only been married for just over five years, so I certainly don't feel like I've managed a huge feat they weren't able to accomplish. There is a bit of nostalgia in chatting with old friends you haven't seen in years. The thing about journeys is that they require deep thought and understanding of who you are, who you were and who you've become. The journey I go through when looking into lives of old friends is one filled with compassion and questions. One tends to ask throughout life what would have happened had I taken this road instead of the one I took. I ask myself that all the time. I have a wonderful husband and a wonderful luck filled life here in Colorado and this is where I was born and where my heart is. Home is where my family is, so home for me is split between my love in Colorado and my family and history in Virginia. I often think about where I would be had I not left Virginia...or specifically Middlesex because I did live in Richmond and then Charlottesville for years before coming back to Colorado. Would I have married a high school sweet heart or a great love from college? Would I have waited years to be married with someone that didn't want to visit with down that road? Would I have longed for someone that would be wonderful to be with today but not back then? So many of these people I know or knew years ago are happy now and have been down roads I've yet to venture down. Did I miss a road somewhere or did I take the right one? At age thirty five, I am about to give birth to my third baby. Many friends are about to send their children to middle school or even high school. One just walked down the aisle. As we grew up together, we all talked about our dreams and our goals. I never thought I met mine. But yet I am happier and better off than I think I would if I did. I hope those wonderful people in my life so many years ago did well for themselves along the way, with great spouses or lovers replaced, wonderful loving children, successful careers and laughter every day. There are those that I think of often and that I miss greatly, but the difficulty is that I don't know that person today. I know that person from almost twenty years ago. Would the person today even like who I am today?
Time marches on and one day you realize you are a new person with pieces of these people you've loved in life. Time marches on and you realize you love ghosts and need to live today.

Is it really going to be 20 years soon.....?? WHOA!

Black Widows and more...eeekkk

I wrote this over three years ago...I still have the same paralyzing fear of black widows and there is one in my garage now. Read on and you can see why I have this fear and you'll know I will be dreaming about her coming to get me over night....because I know that's what her goal will be.

I am done hosting the bugs of Firestone. You are no longer welcome here. I understand when we moved in here, we were moving in on your territory. However, we did not build this comfortable warm house for you. It is our house and you've have several months to relocate. Now please leave.

According to Wiki, houseflies live from fifteen to thirty days. We've been here almost sixty days now and we are down to one super fly that refuses to go to fly eternity or wherever the little fly souls are that were once attached to the millions of fly bodies that litter my basement floor. Oh, yes…little dead flies everywhere…that's why you've never been in my basement. They will be gone soon…as soon as my husband decided to sweep them up for me.


We went through this cycle of bugs. When we moved in, it was the month of the spiders. I was capturing…yes, capturing…and flushing, but not squishing, spiders all day long. Each time I would go into the garage for a box to unpack, I'd have to battle a black widow. Yes, I capture and flush and I battle black widows. It's all true. Spiders really bother me. I've mentioned the little eight year old girl that still lives somewhere inside me and hordes this memory of a giant black widow coming to get her while she sleeps. That's a memory I have from childhood. No, I can't remember too much from back then, but that huge black widow trying to get to my room is so vivid it's like it really happened. It was just a dream, and I was so lucky that she was so large she couldn't fit down the hall to get to my room, otherwise, that little eight year old girl may have become spider food instead of the mom and wife she is today. So battle…yes, that's what they are; battles. If you were to witness them, you may call them stare downs or anxiety attacks that force me to freeze and say out loud and over and over, 'what do I do, what do I do, what do I do?'

But to me, they are intense battles. I usually win because I have to and because somewhere inside I know I am the bigger and smarter species. It's that small child that is dwarfed by the red spot on the spider's belly that can't seem to remember this fact.

So the black widow invasion ensued. But they seemed contained to the garage. After a few days, I just didn't go out there any more. Jeff was instructed to check every box before bringing it into the house and I stayed away from any open box because I just knew I'd peer down inside only to find my shoes have been eaten by a new colony of red spotted spiders whose mission was to take over my belongings and my home. I know now that's not a rational thing to think, but to keep those thoughts at bay, I just stayed away from it all.

Then the big freeze hit. Days of freezing weather, snow and ice. Our house was cozy and warm. Our garage was still full of boxes and bitter cold. Jeff told me he was finding little frozen bodies out in the garage. The black widows had lost the battle and I didn't have to fight anymore. The weather got them. I win!! Right?

In the middle of the garage spider invasion, the flies begun taking over my house. I was thinking about pitching a tent on the back yard for a bug free haven in which to sleep. I learned quickly the flies liked hanging out in the kitchen. I think I threw more food away in that month than I had in the year prior. If it didn't get eaten or wrapped quickly, the flies would swarm then hover over it and I'd have to toss it. They slowly met the end of their fifteen to thirty day lifecycle and many succumbed to the suction of my vacuum cleaner.

Somehow at the start of what we would think of as winter, the mosquitoes took over our house. The flies were dying off, the spiders were about to freeze, and the mosquitoes were discovering the bright yellow house on the corner of two country roads. It was like a big mosquito trap. Only they were trapped in the house suddenly. The morning after Thanksgiving, I walked into the kitchen to see the few dishes we didn't bother cleaning the night before. On the counter was a water pitcher and inside the pitcher was a bit of water and about seven mosquitoes. A new bug invasion. In the weeks since, I have managed to captured and flush about one a day. Yesterday I saw one sitting on a wall. I can only hope that one can't reproduce alone like some oddities in the animal kingdom. I don't know the lifespan of a mosquito, but if I can catch him, I can only say it won't be much longer.

So we were swimming in flies that were literally dropping, dodging mosquitoes that are thinking this is their new home and quite certain the spiders are gone. Until Jeff goes into the basement to set up our exercise equipment. He came upstairs to tell me he killed two black widow spiders in the basement. I guess the dead flies were probably good food, but since they no longer fly, the red bellied spiders had to go find them. Now I'm freaking out again. My first time on the treadmill was exhausting, but not only because it was a great workout, but because I kept searching the walls and ceiling for black creatures with eight legs. That's way too many if you ask me. Maybe that's my problem. Four legs I can deal with, when you have six or eight, you need to stay away from me.

Later that week, I asked Jeff to show me where the spiders were in the basement. Turns out one was not in the basement, but nesting on the staircase. She was coming to get me. I just know it. Only she was small. It a matter of weeks, she could have made her way up the other staircase and down the hall into my bedroom. But my husband got her! My husband is a great man indeed. Spider killer and garage fairy. Well, I don't think he'll like being called a fairy. But during Christmas, I kept throwing wrapping paper and boxes and adult proof toy packaging out into garage and magically it was all cleaned up. I kept calling it the garage fairy, but like Santa Claus, I know it's really my husband that cleaned my huge mess. He also cleaned the rest of the garage. Enough so that we could put both my van and his truck in the garage…along with Arwen's jeep, Zoe's car, countless tools, strollers, yard tools and Jeff monster motorcycle. While he was doing that enormous job, Jeff told me he found and squished three black widows. He said one was a fat one.

I'm back to not wanting to spend any time out in the garage. It would seem the freeze didn't get them after all. They just got smart and stored food and hid from the warrior. No, I'm not really a warrior. Let's just call me box slammer. That's the only way I could deal with them. Drop a big box of books on them. Now what will I do since all the boxes are gone?

Spring is on it's way. Let the battle begin!

Pregnant or PMS?

When I was pregnant with my first baby, I was in complete denial. Not that I was pregnant. That was so obvious my mother in law told complete strangers I was too large to fit into my car. I went quickly from a ninety nine pounds wet girl, as my husband’s boss used to say to a wife the size of a duplex. All because of a baby? No. Not so much. Maybe more because of the baby, the macaroni and cheese, the constant peanut butter and jelly sandwiches chased by a spoonful or two of just peanut butter followed by at least one bowl of cookies and cream ice cream and milk to wash it all down. And hormones convincing me those are all good choices. Times three. For each baby I had, I had an extra bowl of ice cream each evening. They are still very young and I am back to a size six, but my butt will never be the same. I really only say that because my butt is the one thing I don’t have time to look at. My kids like it well enough. It’s their view from the their height, and since my oldest is now six years old and I let her say the word butt, it’s quite the topic these days. So with my kids checking my butt daily for change, I’ll keep focus on things like the baby blanket they left in my belly and my thighs that have become so close to one another they seem to be sharing secrets; like the secret of how to keep them from touching one another.
What I can’t get a handle on these days is PMS. For years I denied I had PMS. It was a gentleman’s term created to give men a reason to blame women for their own faults their wives disliked. Then I got pregnant. Nine months of premenstrual syndrome. Growing bigger by the second and pissed off about it, I denied I was completely miserable during my entire first pregnancy. My husband tried to tell me how angry and mean I was, and I denied it all the way to the hospital. And really for the fifteen months of nursing after the baby was born. By baby number two my hormones hadn’t evened the slightest amount, so I was crazy still and knocked up again. Rinse and repeat; by baby number three I didn’t even know who I was anymore. Lost among hormones coming and going as they please, no sleep and making milk faster than the Keebler elves can dip cookies into a vat of chocolate, I spent most of my days chasing a preschooler and a toddler and nursing an infant. I only knew if it was day or night by whether the coffee pot was churning out the coffee – which was decaffeinated because I didn’t need a baby on speed after all – or whether or not I and my bed sheets were soaked in milk. After our first baby was born, I caught my husband putting a can of cat food into the coffee filter as he was preparing to make coffee, so who knows if I even had my coffee making skills on target for daytime hours anyway.
After being pregnant for twenty seven months and nursing for forty five months, I was surprised to find myself waking from a dreamlike state with three healthy, rather happy and well adjusted children. Two of them were in school and the other was walking and talking. My husband was still married to me by choice and it was time to find myself again. I was sleeping for the first time in six years. All night. Every night. Did I say all night? I even made a new best friend that helped me sleep. It was my little blue pill. I would ask my husband to get my little blue pill and he wouldn’t even become defensive thinking I was accusing him of needing that blue pill. He would get me Tylenol PM and within two hours I’d be fast asleep dreaming of all the things I might be able to do the next day after at least six hours of good slumber. Those things of course would never get done because…well because I have three kids. So every few weeks I’d get by with what I could do and the other week of the month my family would want to move away from me. Far far away. Once the house was cleaned and I had some time along I would come back from cloudy hell and be nice to my family. On about month six of this, my husband asked me if it’s possible I could be pregnant. Once I even took a test to find out what I knew. I wasn’t pregnant. I was facing PMS. It was getting worse by the month. So indeed I have come to realize there is not much difference in being pregnant or dealing with the hormones of just being a woman. I no longer need my uterus really. The ovaries have done great work for me. My hormones adjusting up and down, across and sideways, over, under and all around just plain sucks! But here I am with three beautiful children, a supportive husband and no monthly trip to the Bahamas to get away from it all for just about ten days. I am convinced the monthly trip to a beach somewhere all along would solve all my problems, but I can’t convince my husband to give me the plane ticket each month and stay home and clean the house for me. My next step is to find another solution starting with exercise and a healthy diet – which I have down at least three weeks of the month.

In a Year

In a year, we have missed your presence, your touch, your smile and your laughter. We have missed your tears but shed our own. We have celebrated your life, your journey and have wondered when we will meet again. In a year we have asked people to learn from us, take lessons in pain, forgive and move forward. We mourned many losses next to the huge hole left in our hearts three hundred and sixty five days ago. We have held celebrations while seeing your little smile and thinking of all the things you would be doing now. We wake each morning grateful to see the sun all while thinking of the view you have from above. We cross our hearts, hope not to die, but instead cry deep inside. We know our purpose here has not met its needs, yet yours was fulfilled so quickly. We try not to think of the things we do each day that you cannot do. We practice our arrogance thinking you are missing so much when what we don’t know is what we are missing not being there with you. We know you’ll not climb a mountain one day as you may have dreamed, and we won’t witness your wings soaring over sights we don’t see. But we know you are there. We can feel you. We look up into the bright sun’s rays and see your smiling face looking down upon us; drying our tears and pulling our hearts back up into warmth. With your presence recognized again in a form we cannot begin to hold, we have hope. We know you are. We know we will be. We have faith, and the more you allow us to feel you, the more powerful we will feel. We can heal and understand there is no need for forgiveness to move forward. We are used to questioning, asking why, what did we do wrong, why, and why again? We are not used to giving ourselves away to blindness, but now that we can, you give us strength. With each breath we take, we can feel your warmth. With each step we take, we can feel your hand, so much stronger than it was just a year ago. We know you are gone from us, and we hurt still from the pain left behind, but you are here in ways we never knew before. We love you, cherish you, miss you, and can go on because you give us strength.

The Positive Spin on You

Rather than complain about you today, I’ve decided to take the positive spin on your actions and decisions. I feel you should be commended for not even grazing my small child as you drove on the sidewalk today. He’s really very little and the sidewalk is so narrow, what compared to the road, it must have been hard to actually miss him. And I’ve been thinking about those two different times you interrupted me to speak to the person I was talking with and I’ve decided that your rants about housing prices was obviously so much more important than whatever nonsense I was talking. And though I usually look down upon people that continuously park in the fire lane, I figure since you are there while I’m releasing one of my three children from school and have the baby with me at all times, really I only risk losing one child should the fire trucks not be able to put the fire out in time as you move your van out of the way. Saving two out of three ain’t bad, eh? And finally, after seeing a child lift her car seat with her when she stood in the car before getting out, I decided after all you should leave your smallest child in the car while you run in to get your middle child. It all goes back to saving two of three ain’t bad. I see now that parking in the fire lane makes your trip into the school so much easier while leaving a small child in an unattended car makes your trip all the quicker. Sure the walk home will suck the day your car and your child are stolen, but you managed to save about ninety seconds by not taking her with you. I get it. I understand. Maybe those firemen will save her when they break your windows to get the hose through your car to put out the fire that may come. Or maybe not. Maybe some random sicko will take your van with your small child left inside and drive away. But no worries…you will still have two more children, and I will be happy to drive you to a field and drop you off after I leave your remaining children at a safe home or the police department. I’ve decided it’s also a great thing that you advertise to everyone that you have left your small child in the car. I hate it when criminals actually have to work to get their jobs done. I constantly hear about how many car doors they had to try before finding the one that was unlocked or before they found the one with the cute little girl left inside. Molesting takes time you see and when they have to waste so much looking for small children, they lose a lot. So I’m sure they are so appreciative of your loud voice carrying all over touting you left your kid in the car. Me, I’m not happy it’s a choice you make, but I also wasn’t happy about almost losing my child to your wheels or your rudeness or even your need to control people you do not know. But since looking at the bright side of you, I’ve decided if I hear you talking about leaving your child in the car again, you just may find the police waiting for you when you return. That would bring a smile to my face and I’m sure the alternative of someone stealing your van and child would be so much worse. Yep, this positive spin is so much more fun when dealing with you.

One vat of cold coffee, please

Starbucks has introduced a new cold drink size to its menu only to compete with McDonald’s regular soda drinks and 7-11’s enormous Slurpee. The media seems to be making a big deal because evidently the drink is larger than an average adult size stomach. Hmmm….where were these people when McDonald’s offered the 42 ounce Super Size or more the fun loving 42 ounce Summer Size soft drink? And don’t we realize thanks to the likes of McDonald’s super drinks and the fact that Americans can’t make responsible choices, the size of the average adult American stomach is much larger than it used to be. Despite the media’s blame on the new Starbucks vat sized cup that was just released, it’s because of poor American sized choices and screw ups that we are larger than we should be. It’s actually a shame the new Starbucks Trenta cup was tested in Arizona where it’s about 116 degrees. I wonder if it had been tested in Minnesota if it would be for hot drinks instead of cold drinks. If that were the case, I’d surely ask for a vat of Americano with room for cream and several shakes of sugar.

Kiss it! ....or make out with it

A few months ago I took a Team Fitness class. I learned a lot, remembered a lot I had forgotten, toned up, lost a few pounds and was down two pant sizes putting my waist back to that little waist that walked down the aisle to greet my husband over eight years and three babies ago. Then pneumonia hit our house along with bronchitis, meningitis, chocolate, the common cold, Thanksgiving, green snot, guests, errands for Santa, peppermint cookies, Christmas, beer, queso and another round of coughs and colds. It’s been two months since I last walked into the gym. Luckily for me, only the queso was bad to me.
So I’m back at the gym and it feels like home again. I love those people, those machines and the child center that entertains my children. My oldest loves the climbing wall. Getting back on track after two months can be tough. I can’t imagine years going by without taking care of myself. What is hard is finding that zone again. After months of daily cardio and kicking my ass all the way to the cookie jar, I knew my numbers like the back of my hand. I knew just months ago at what heart rate I would get the best results and which one would make me go further or faster and which would make me pant like a large hairy dog in the middle of July in front of a hose that no one will turn on. I was told in my class to kiss my anaerobic threshold heart rate, and twice I was asked to run for thirty minutes at that rate. The first time was to see how fast I ran and how far I could go. The second was to see if I could go further at the same speed and the same AT rate, and also to see how quickly the paramedics would arrive since I was recovering from bronchitis at the time. My trainer started her shift at 4 o’clock in the morning, so I was certain her teeth hadn’t been brushed for hours, and I was sure I didn’t want to play around with the idea that she might have to bring me back to life. This past week I’ve felt like I have to make out with that AT rate. Instead of a simple kiss, I come up for air and pant until my ass is kicked and my legs are weak. Weak legs usually mean a great make out session, not just a kiss. And I’m down two pound again. So to my trainers I say my AT rate has changed in two months of not visiting you, but I do like making out, and you can kiss it!

The sanctity of marriage…or not…whatever, right?

I am amazed to see each day on my iGoolge home page the amount of relationship failures I see, the amount of extramarital affairs I read about, and the hope that is lost in the sacred vows we take with the one person we love. Then I remember I am on iGoogle and most of what I read is about celebrities and their small lives blown up on an internet page. Was anyone really surprised to find out Tiger wasn’t faithful to his beautiful wife when he could have any whore in the bar he wanted? Were we really appalled at Jesse James when he broke Sandra’s heart with some other tattooed tramp? Do you believe The Don has been faithful all these very few years since marrying his last wife? So now I read about marriages lost to sex with others and I think, that’s too bad, but really, it’s also Hollywood or professional sports, or it’s the price of celebrity. Brad Pitt has yet to fall at my feet and beg me to my knees, so I’ve yet to be tempted. Amy Ray either, by the way. But I’d hope to be a better person and a better wife if either of them did come knocking at my door.
But what I am surprised about however is the lack of respect for marriages that are out of the public eye. In the past few years, I’ve seen three people I know go through divorce. I’ve watched their worlds turn upside down, lives ripped apart only to be rebuilt one tiny Lego at a time after years of hope and dreams. Only one of those three I know was a result of infidelity. Only person of those six was a cheating man. Sad, but almost expected, huh? On the flip side, I am shocked at how many marriages have stayed together while the wives cheat. In just two years, I learned of seven women I know that cheated on their husbands. Some husbands know and have chosen to move forward rebuilding trust within their marriage. Some husbands do not even know. I’ll never understand what causes such disrespect in a woman. I’ll never quite get what she is missing and why she feels the need to risk it all for a romance that could be waiting for her at home.
One thing I can say is I love my husband very much, and sometimes that is hard to do. Marriage is hard. Life is frustrating, and it’s easy to forget the one person you need most – yourself – in a relationship. I don’t know what’s happened in marriages of which I am not a part, but I do know when I feel lost in mine, I have to look at myself and see what I can do to improve myself. It’s those occasions that I am successful that my marriage improves as well. I can’t pretend to understand what it is like in someone else’s shoes, but I can be shocked that so many women are putting their families at risk.
Ladies, ask yourself what he would do if you told him today. Would he leave you? Would you be thrown out on the streets without your cushy stay at home mom job? Hey, I’m a stay at home mom and I know it’s hard. It’s the toughest job I’ve ever had. But there is no commute, there is no boss except your own expectations of yourself, and there are no reviews or pay raises. But compared to what your husband does each day to provide for your family, to keep you at home, to send you to school, to give you Starbucks every day, or simply just to feed you and give you blankets for your bed, I feel the least you can do is respect him enough to tell him you are screwing around while he’s at work and the kids are at the neighbors or that you did screw around on him when you thought he wasn’t good enough for you or fun enough for you or worked too hard and didn’t have enough time for you.
My husband works hard for his family each day. Each week we miss him more and more, but we know that each evening when he’s done working, our day as hard as it may have been was easier than his. I know that our mortgage payment is not contingent on whether or not I did enough laundry that day, but it is dependent on his daily work. I’m a wife, a mother, a friend, a daughter, a sister and a volunteer….I get angry and I have hard days, and believe me, I complain enough for the two of us being a stay at home mother, feeling responsible for shaping little complicated lives, but I couldn’t imagine disrespecting my husband quite so much as I have heard from some of the women I know. I am in shock with each take I hear. Again, I can’t pretend to know the circumstance. But if you are being abused, neglected or otherwise mistreated, leave him. But don’t teach your daughters that it’s okay to not communicate with your spouse and give your body and mind to someone else because you can’t say the right words to the right person. Please don’t teach your sons to expect the women in their lives to treat them this way. Your children will go looking for these traits in the people in their lives whether they know it or not. It’s ugly and I’m sure it’s not what you want for your family. In turn, we should be treating others as we’d like to be treated and we should be teaching our children to expect the same. It saddens me that so many women I know have chosen this road and it saddens me more to think I am one of few who is shocked.

School drop off

Is it really that hard to be respectful to other people? Are you in such a rush to get to a line that you must put the small lives that entrust us adults to see them through to their own adulthood safely in complete risk and danger? I’ve seen you squeal your wheels and drive on sidewalks so you can be the first to get to the stop sign…to stop and wait. I’ve watched you drive on sidewalks, even had to move my child out of the way of your tires one morning. Why are you in such a rush and why do you not consider the children that are only trying to get to their school safely? Tell me why you open your doors in the middle of the street and push your children out like a helicopter dropping soldiers in the middle of a war zone. Please explain to me why small children have to dodge land mines with Chrysler emblems making their way to the sidewalk while you try to push your way back into traffic fighting for the first car at the stop sign award. And how about those of you that almost pull over to the curb but don’t actually quite make it sitting there with the nose of the car at a small portion of the curb that is open with your ass hanging out in the street for the rest of us to drive around while dodging children that were left in the middle of the road, and your left blinker flashing to let the rest of us know you plan to take your place back in traffic. Are we supposed to go around your back side while you do your war zone drop off forcing the oncoming traffic into the side mirrors of the parked cars along the other side of the street? I just want to know the rules here because obviously my way of driving slowly down the road, stopping to let children cross the street, stopping at the stop sign, and letting my child out with a teacher at the front door is not the correct way. Should I be running over your children to get to the stop sign quicker? Should I be driving though the stop sign as I’ve seen you do? Or maybe while there are basically four lanes of traffic on a small neighborhood street, I should decide to U-turn while my kid’s backpack is stuck in the closing door and while she’s trying dodge the car sized land mines to make her way to the safety of a sidewalk upon which you are driving. Is that the correct way? Will someone for the love of children tell me what the hell is wrong with people, and is this happening at every school? My young children can’t walk safely on a sidewalk without fear they will be pushed along by a Michelin. My oldest daughter feels so uncool because she’s not dropped off in the street like so many other young children. And you all feel you should be honking your horn at a driver who actually stops at a stop sign or pause after stopping to let a child cross the street. I will say this though… Some of your children actually seem to know just how dangerous it is to cross at a stop sign where it should be safest. If there is a child standing there waiting to cross, please include them in the amount of small numbers that run through your mind as you are counting turns until it is time for you to go. If there is a child there…in the cold, wind, rain, sleet, snow or heat…waiting to cross the street to get to school….LET THEM GO! If you were standing there carrying a forty pound backpack and whatever project you had to finish before morning that is larger that you are tall, I am sure you’d appreciate it if the drivers inside the nice cozy warm cars with no more baggage than the cell phone on which they are currently texting would follow the laws, be respectful and let you cross the damn street. Do you think you could show that same respect for the students? It’s just school, folks. It isn’t rocket science or brain surgery. It’s driving on straight streets with sidewalks on either side, two stop signs and a drive way. Not much different than the neighborhoods where you live. It can’t be that hard. And your trip to get to the stop sign to sit and wait or get to the back of the line to sit and wait can’t possibly be that important to you that it’s worth putting children in danger – or making me angry!

I should run away before I find myself tied to the roof of my car!

I keep telling myself this was my choice. Marrying into this family…all my choice. So I shouldn’t be quite so offended, should I? I should be grateful this man asked for me hand in marriage, gave me a home, then knocked me up and made me larger than our car. We need a new car. If we don’t get one, they will strap me to the roof of the one we have – just like the dead grandmother in Vacation. I know they will. She’s already told complete strangers of the plan. She is my mother in law. If she and I had met before my husband and I met, I would have made sure she wasn’t in my life any longer. Sadly, if it had happened that way, I never would have met Jeff, but since I was lucky enough to meet Jeff first, I unfortunately said I do to his entire family as well.
It took a while to get to know them since Jeff and I started dating in September, got serious by November and his parents stopped talking to him I December. October was pretty uneventful though, except for that one time Jeff and I argued over the phone. I felt bad, so I put on a cute little purple negligee buttoned up my long wool coat over the goods and drove from my apartment in Denver to his townhouse in Lafayette eager for him to open the door and see the present I wrapped for him under a long wool coat. Come on, every woman has done that, right? You don’t think about the thirty minute drive where you could get pulled over or flip your car and end up in the hospital with some doctor cutting your coat off talking about how people shouldn’t wear coats while in the car because it lessens the safety of the seatbelt, or the conversation you’d have to have with your family or friends when they come to bail you and your purple nightie out of jail because even though you’ve never done a single thing to go to jail, you’ll surely make a visit that night simply because wearing a little purple almost nothing under a long wool coat is just a bad omen. I didn’t think about any of that on that particular night. I also didn’t think about the fact that his parents who may or may not have been out while Jeff and I were arguing over the phone, would be sitting in his living room farting over and over again making the place smell like rotten cauliflower sure to set the mood I was not looking for in the purple nightie. I also didn’t think about extra clothing.
Luckily for me, I was never pulled over, didn’t have to visit an emergency room, or see my family while sporting all the preparations of sex ahead. Wow, looking at that I’m pretty sure I’ve admitted to having sex with Jeff not too long after we started dating – 6 weeks….8 weeks…?? Well, we are married now, so shut it! And don’t tell our children! But I did have to walk into that townhouse smelling like cauliflower ass wearing a shiny purple negligee, greet my boyfriend, and walk straight upstairs and pretend to be sick. Sure every girlfriend drives for half an hour to get to a different bed to rest in while feeling ill. I’m sure it was a believable story. I’m creative like that. ‘Hi, honey, can I take your coat?’ ‘No, thanks, I drove here in my coat and I don’t want to take it off because I’m so cold. I just may have a fever. Can I just sleep here tonight? G’night, all.’
Shit! Maybe I looked the idiot that night, but all I did was try to be sexy and show how sorry I was for arguing and how fun it can be to make up. Instead I was almost ill. I still smell the cauliflower ass and feel that same ill feeling, so maybe I could have salvaged the evening. Though I’m not sure how I’ll ever salvage the in-law relationship. They plan to put me on the roof of the car. I’d better get this baby out soon. Today would have been good, but we had plans to have breakfast with Jeff’s parents and while they were waiting for us to arrive, my mother in law made sure to let everyone in the lobby know of her plans to tie me to the roof of the car. Actually, while we were walking into the restaurant, I heard her telling a woman none of us know, ‘If she gets any bigger we will have to tie her to the roof of the car like they did the dead grandmother in the movie, Vacation.’ I’m not sure what she said before that, and I’m not even sure I remember what was said after that because I could only focus on not beating her. I know the future is scary! But I don’t know what it will hold. All I know is I can’t take the baby and run! I love my husband too much!