Category Archive

Pile up debit and credit card receipts on the computer desk next to the monitor for two months. Don’t worry about this because it’s tax season and you’re busy. Besides, you got your refund in January and it can’t be all gone yet.

When tax season finally ends, put off the mess further because Gather has done an upgrade and it’s ruined your life. Besides you have to go out of town to take your mother to lunch for her birthday.

Remember to check the snail mail box on Friday. Find a bank notice in there that looks suspiciously like an overdraft notice. You don’t get paper statements any more, so any news from the bank is probably bad news. Uh oh. Hide the incriminating mail from your husband who counts on you to stay on top of these things.

On Saturday, get a call from AT&T who is turning off your cell phones if you don’t pay your bill. Now.

Decide that today might be a good day to get the checkbook balanced and the bills paid no matter that the weather is beautiful and you’d rather be planting your tomatoes.

Open Microshaft Money 2007. Enter receipts in the appropriate accounts for several hours. See lots of red numbers. Cuss. Wonder why you went out to eat so much when you’ve clearly bought enough groceries to feed a small 3rd world country. Cuss some more.

Log on at the bank. Cuss because your password has disappeared out of auto-complete and you don’t remember what it is. Begin checking little boxes to mark items cleared. Make a list of things that cleared that you have no receipt for. Send husband on receipt hunt in cars, on dressers, and in the dumpster. Cuss. Find direct deposits from Amazon, Google, and Linkshare. Think that at least one good thing has happened.

Finish balancing checking account. Take some pride in the fact that you have done this against overwhelming odds and without using the Adjust button in Money. Thank Charles for overdraft protection.

Fight with Gmail which hasn’t been working right for days. Finally get it open. Start digging through 2853 emails in your inbox looking for the utility bill which hasn’t come via snail mail for years. Find it. Open it. Cuss. Tell your husband that we’re all going to die and the world is ending. Cuss. Gripe at the kids for leaving stuff on all the time. Cuss.

Dig through 2852 emails looking for the cable bill. Find it. Cuss some more. Tell your husband that we really need to consider DSL.

Dig through 2851 emails looking for the phone bill. Give up. Tell husband to dial *PAY before they shut you off.

Open mail from the mortgage company. Find a bill for escrow shortage. Cuss. Discover house payment is going up. Cuss.

Still, it can’t be that bad since you set up all your credit cards on auto-pay through your bank. Right? I mean at least there won’t be any $39 late fees.

Wrong. You set Sam’s Club up to pay $100 per month. Meanwhile, you ran it over the limit and the minimum payment went up to over the $100 you had set up to go out automatically. It’s now too late to pay the extra amount on time. Repeat this basic scenario for two more cards.

Cuss. Change all your automatic payments to send more next time. Blame yourself for not opening any of those credit card statements for two months and for using the credit cards you had sworn to never use again. But, hey, you were depressed and it was cheaper to go buy new stuff than it was to go to the mental health care provider. Besides, your tax rebate is coming soon.

Go to your blog and whine about it.

There is an ugly computer taking up space on my kitchen counter.

We went to Joplin on Wednesday to take my mother to lunch for her birthday and spend some time with her. Her long-time boyfriend had an old computer in his van that had belonged to his daughter. He said it works but it’s slow. He thought I could fix it up for my mother since she’s been wanting a computer and internet for years now.

Of course, with it sitting there in a van, I’ve really no idea if I can fix it up or not. It may just need a defrag and maybe a Ram chip. Or it may be running Windows 3.1 and not be worth fixing. I’ll have to take it home and hook it up to find out.

My mother starts shouting, “John, I don’t want it! It’s ugly. I don’t want an ugly computer.”

He continues to load the ugly computer into the trunk of my car. She continues to protest.

“Andrea, don’t even bother. It’s ugly. I’m telling you I don’t want the ugly thing.”

This from the woman that insists that your baby wipes container match your bathroom decor. I’m not surprised. I just wonder how she will find a computer, new or old, that fits in with her decor. I don’t think Martha Stewart has a computer line.

So here it is. It is ugly. It belonged to a teenager and it’s covered with graffiti. I’m thinking about spray-painting it. Kris M. suggested last night that I put an attractive scarf around it. I haven’t hooked it up and plugged it in yet because I don’t want to waste my time fixing it up if she doesn’t want it.

I was going to Freecycle it today but I’m starting to feel bad for it. It’s homeless, ugly, and unwanted. I collect cats and dogs that fit that description. Why not computers?

There are already four computers in this house. With only four people in the house, I’m not sure what to do with a number five. I guess I could put it in the laundry room on top of the dryer for when I hide from the kids in there.

Cast:

The Pot:  Played by yours truly, aka Mom
The Kettle:  Played by my motormouth daughter, aka Lexie
Striped Hair Guy:  The stylist lucky enough to get assigned to the motormouth kettle, God rest his soul
Extras:  All the other people in a large salon on a busy Saturday afternoon including my stylist

It’s been winter. The dry heat has frazzled our hair and we look like the wicked witches of Bad Hair Day Land. We haven’t had a haircut since early November just before our family portrait. And we’ve got a serious case of the grey-day winter doldrums. It’s time for mommy/daughter day at the salon! That should fix us right up.

And it did. I’m now too mortified to be depressed.

On a positive note my daughter is an out-going, friendly, never met a stranger, perky little thing. When people like my stylist or the neighbors are trying to make me feel better they say, “Well, at least she’s happy.” Really. I’ve heard those exact words before and I heard them again today.

As I was being shampooed I heard her voice all the way across the salon. Her voice carries well. She needs to go into politics. I am certain there was no one in the salon that wasn’t hearing her. She began to talk and she did not stop.

I was hearing her voice as my hair was cut. I stopped hearing her for a bit while I was being blow-dryed. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not. I heard her while I was being styled. I heard her while my uni-brow was being ripped off with hot wax in the very back of the salon.

I heard her stylist suggest that maybe is she closed her mouth she wouldn’t get hairspray in it. I heard that more than once. I don’t think she heard it.

Now I’m waiting for DFS to come and take my kids away to foster care and cart me off to jail or something. I should probably be getting ready for that instead of sitting here writing this.

She told them about every time in her life that one of our cats has pooped outside the litter box. She told them about my bulimic cat that eats too much then barfs all over the place. She told them about the time her brother made the mess in the bathroom. She told how much she loves being homeschooled because she can stay up all night playing the Sims. She told about our naked pregnant snowlady and how we used strawberry marshmallows for nipples. She pretty much shared every single embarrassing thing about our family and our home.

By the time she was done it sounded like we live in filth and squalor. It sounded like we’re a bunch of backwoods idiots that don’t need no learnin. I was mortified.

Then she asked her stylist about his sexual orientation in regards to his multi-colored striped hair.

Even as this was happening I was planning my lecture series. The lecture about not sharing embarrassing things with strangers and the lecture about what happens at home stays at home. The if-you-don’t-have-anything-nice-to-say-don’t-say-anything-at-all lecture and the don’t ask people if they’re gay lecture. The “Oh, my God, don’t tell people how far behind we are with our schoolwork” lecture. The “No one needs to know how laid back your mother is about bedtimes and R-rated movies” lecture.

Even as I’m forming my lectures in my head I realize that I have told many of the same things to strangers on Gather. I have told even more embarrassing things on Gather that my daughter (thank the fates) isn’t even aware of. To read my articles you’d think all my cats ever do is poop and barf and never where they’re supposed to. You’d think we haven’t touched a schoolbook since before Christmas and you’d be right about that one. (Hey, we have all summer to catch up.) You’d think nothing ever happens around here that isn’t a total fiasco. You even know that I flirt with strange men in the condom aisle.

So the pot has to sit the kettle down and have a talk. I feel like such a hypocrite.

Tonight my husband has the guys over to game. I cooked a very nice dinner and thought I’d have my evening to catch up on Gather. I’m a couple of days behind reading and commenting on my people. First I posted a few recent photo collections and was going to spend the rest of my evening reading and commenting.

Not.

My son frantically called me into the bathroom. I walked in to find this:

My naked son standing in front of the toilet in a pool of toilet water about half an inch deep that covered the entire bathroom floor. A bath towel half in the toilet and half out, dripping everywhere. My son’s cast-off clothing laying in the pool of toilet water. My son yelling, “Mom! I can’t get the poop off!”

Remember, we have guests.

The towel in the toilet was not just any towel. It was one of those decorative towels that people hang on a towel rod in the bathroom and don’t ever actually use. Pale yellow with satin daisies sewn onto it, it now sports streaks of human feces. At least I guess it’s human feces. I never did determine where the shit came from or why it was now on the towel which was now in the toilet. Beats me. Not only is there an ample supply of Charmin in the bathroom, there is also a full container of shea butter baby wipes on the back of the toilet for cleaning one’s ass.

Every bit of laundry in the house was clean for a change so there were no dirty towels to mop up the toilet water with. No, we threw the clean, neatly folded and stacked towels on the shelf into the floor to soak up the toilet water.

Toilet water dripped down the hallway when we carried the soaking towels from the bathroom to the laundry room.

I ran a bath for my son since he was already naked and really, there was shit involved at some point in this debacle. Now he is running naked in front of my husband’s guests and I do not care. I will not care. I am going to sit here and Gather.

Meanwhile the Ro-Tel dip I was making got scorched on the stovetop.

Lucky for you I forgot to grab the camera.

I originally sent this email to our local homeschool group on 12/14/06.

Go ahead and laugh at me now because you will be as soon as you read this. Add to your list of famous last words, “I wonder what that tastes like?”

Several few months ago we were given a very large cactus. Our neighbor was moving to Florida and couldn’t move it. It spent the summer and fall outside. When it got too cold out I brought it inside. Well, the dog was chasing the cat and knocked the thing over. It shot out this milky fluid all over the place when it hit the floor. And I say, “I wonder what that tastes like?”

Turns out it tasted bad, very bad. It was downright painful, burning like fire, swelling up my mouth and throat. Nothing helped. Not water, not milk, not mouthwash. Then I got dizzy and developed a migraine-like headache. I was sick for 24 hours.

Upon googling I discovered that it is not a cactus at all but a succulent of the Euphorbia family. It is highly toxic. Some euphorbias are used to make poison arrows. I have to get rid of it. We have six cats, one dog, and two small children. This thing is only suitable for a home without pets or small children.

It is a lovely plant and I really think it’s too beautiful to simply put out in the garbage. It is in the laundry room under a fluorescent light until I can find a home it. I had to rescue it after my husband evicted it into the bitter cold and I hid it in there. He’s bound to find it and evict it again. So if you have no pets and your kids are older please take it.

What does this have to do with homeschooling? Not much. Sorry about that. But homeschoolers do have a natural curiosity that could cause a story like this to be told.

I’d write a long post and tell you why but I’ve already wasted far too much of my day trying to make the stupid Debt Reduction Planner function even somewhat better than just giving my 4 year old a crayon and piece of paper and asking him to draw up a plan.

The damn thing doesn’t work. Maybe I’ll come back later and tell you what kind of fucked up shit it’s doing.

I was going to call Microshaft and bitch since I paid good money for their piece of shit product but they charge you $35.00 to call support about their product that doesn’t work.

I’m damn good on computers and I’m also damned good at accounting. It’s not me. It’s them.

I guess I’ll go make a plan in Excel now like I should have in the first place. Thanks for letting me vent.

My daughter’s ninth birthday is the day after tomorrow. We were looking at cookbooks together tonight choosing a cake to bake for her birthday when I remembered the year of the Broiled Birthday Cake.

I said, “There’s a Gather article.” Then I said, “There needs to be a group for these kitchen disasters.” And now here we are.

My daughter was turning three years old that year. We had invited friends and family over for a birthday party. Because of this, we cleaned the house. Thoroughly. Part of cleaning the house thoroughly involved removing all the knobs from the stove for cleaning.

Then we made the chocolate cake. It went into the oven less than an hour before the guests were supposed to start arriving. We set the oven dial to “bake” and the temperature to 350 and put the cake in the oven.

Shortly after putting the cake in the oven to bake we began to smell smoke. We opened the oven to find the cake being broiled. The house was full of smoke, the cake was ruined and the guests would start arriving any minute. How did this happen?

Whoever put the knobs back on the stove put the oven dial on wrong so that when we turned it to “bake” it was actually on “broil.” That’s how.

It’s been six years so I don’t remember enough details to make this story as good as it should be but I wanted to share it anyway. I am now leaving for the store to buy ingredients for the chocolate cake she chose out of the cookbook. Wish me luck.

Originally published at Gather on 1/19/08. 

I used to work in a grey cubicle as a payroll clerk. Two cubes away from me sat the Tampon Lady.

I don’t remember the Tampon Lady’s name. I only remember how much I hated sharing work space with her. She was nice enough. She did her job and had no annoying habits that I recall. There was, however, one issue, and I never figured out how to address it. They just don’t cover stuff like this in business college.

She kept a super-size box of Playtex Deodorant Tampons in her desk drawer. It had to have come from Sam’s Club to be the size that it must have been. I never saw the tampons but I know they were there and I imagine every person that worked on that floor knew the tampons were there.

Playtex Deodorant Tampons have a distinctive odor. If you have ever smelled one, you will always be able to recognize the sickening, flowery scent that they are saturated with. I can smell them in a strange woman’s closed purse when she walks by me at the grocery store. And I could smell them in my co-workers desk.

Monday through Friday, I smelled them, week after week. She kept them there all the time, not just at her time of the month. I was assaulted be the tampons as soon as I arrived at work each morning and I left work in the evening with the scent apparently stuck to the hairs inside my nose. I was not free of it until I had been out of the office for several hours in the evening.

I will admit that I have a more sensitive sense of smell than the average person. That’s surprising since I have been a smoker for many years. Still, the tampons were a menace and made for a hostile work environment if there ever was one.

I am allergic to flowery perfumes. I can’t walk through the perfume department at a department store without becoming ill. I can not read magazines that have perfume samples in them. I used to take the stairs instead of the elevator even when I worked on the 16th floor of an office building so that I wouldn’t be in a crowded elevator with someone who had marinated themselves in perfume and spend the rest of the day with a migraine.

So this was a problem for me and I didn’t know how to address it. Luckily, I got pregnant and had to quit my job. I wonder if the Tampon Lady still works there.

This article was inspired a blog entry I read earlier today.

Were you ever the last kid picked for kickball? Do they even still do that in schools? If they don’t, then maybe I’m homeschooling my kids for no good reason. Oh, yeah. I do have a few other reasons but kickball is pretty high on the list.

A post I made earlier today got me to reminiscing about always being the last kid picked for kickball. I do not look back on this time of my life with angst.

No, I remember the pathetic child that was me, always chosen last for kickball, and I have to laugh. The kid that was me was a “looser” with a capital L. It was not yet fashionable to protect a child’s self-esteem at any cost so no one tried to convince me that being a klutz was a gift. Kids weren’t raised to be praise junkies like they are today in this age of self-esteem run amok so I learned to see myself the way I really was and it wasn’t always a pretty sight.

I sucked at kickball, so of course no one wanted me on their team. At the time that seemed important. There I stood with the dregs of my class waiting to be picked. I stood with the dirty, smelly boy that no one would sit next to at lunch and the fat girl that we all threw rocks at and called names on the playground. I usually at least got picked before they did.

I always missed the ball completely when I went running up to kick it. Think of Charlie Brown, Lucy, and that football. Except no one was making me miss. I was just that clumsy.

One day I ran up and kicked and my foot actually made contact with the ball. I couldn’t believe it. Neither could anyone else. My humiliation was not ended for good like I thought for a nanosecond that it might be.

I ran the wrong way. I took off for third base instead of first. After that I was always picked dead last, not even beating out the smelly boy or the fat girl.

They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. I’d like to amend that to whatever doesn’t drive you to suicide makes you funnier.

I now look at most anything that I screw up as a source of amusement and something to write about. I wonder if I would still be able to do that if some nice adult had rescued me from ridicule back then.

I wish I hadn’t opened it. Now I’m a mess. It is more than double what it could reasonably be expected to be. I don’t have a prayer of paying it this month even if I were the praying sort.

Fear — What if this is just one curve in the downward spiral to hell that I find our finances in? What if we end up homeless in the street raiding dumpsters behind restaurants to feed the kids? What if this gets worse instead of better?

Rage — I told them to turn those damned electric mattress pads off when they get up in the morning. I told them to turn the damn lights off when they leave a room. What is the matter with them? Why doesn’t anyone listen to me?

Reason — This can not be due to electric mattress pads, mostly because it is the natural gas portion of the bill that is from hell. It must be something else. Get to the bottom of it. Fix it. All is not lost.

Bewilderment — We just replaced the heating and air system. This is a brand spanking new furnace that should be using half the gas the old one used. Instead it is using double. Or is it the water heater? I’ve been thinking I smelled gas every time I’ve been in the utility room lately. Did I really bake that much the week of Christmas? Is my oven screwed up? How can this be when we weren’t even home for a week during the holidays? WTF?

Fear again — Maybe we got screwed when we bought the new furnace.

Reason again — Nah. The electric bill really was cut in half when we ran the air conditioner after getting the new system so they weren’t lying about that. It must be something else.

Irrational Worries — There really is a God and He hates me.

Plan — Figure this out. Write numerous articles about it. First find out how much power two electric mattress pads and one electric blanket use. Figure out if it would be cost-effective to buy timers to put them on so they aren’t running 24/7 and causing me to rage at my kids and spouse every afternoon when I discover them still on. Call the furnace guys to come look at their installation and make sure it’s been hooked up properly. Write an article on furnace maintenance. Call utility company to come read the meter again and check for a gas leak. Look into replacing the water heater and write an article about water heaters. Figure out how to bake Christmas cookies on the grill outside and write an article about that.

Conclusion — Go back to bed and try again tomorrow.

I plan to become rich writing funny shit in 2008 and one of the things I did was join Helium.com. After joining I went and checked out the writing contests. Most were on topics that I have no interest in but one was to write an article titled, “Worst gift ideas for your girlfriend.” This sounded right up my alley since it could easily be written with humor.

I spent about ten minutes typing up my entry, checked my spelling, and published it. I am now ranked number 34 out of 40. Perhaps they weren’t looking for a humorous angle.

Here’s an excerpt from my entry:

If you are short on funds you could put together a basket of insults for a very low price. Go to your local Goodwill or similar thrift store and pick up a used Easter basket for a quarter. Then go to a discount store and buy some feminine deodorant spray, a package of facial hair remover, a tube of hemorrhoid cream, and a bottle of wart remover. Arrange these items neatly on a bed of crumpled pages from a men’s magazine. Tie a bow on the handle and present it in front of her family.

What’s wrong with that? How come I’m very nearly dead last? Is Helium not a good fit for me? Does my writing actually suck? Or is this just a fluke and I’ll win a million dollars next time I enter a writing contest?

Oh, and I’m on the way to the becoming rich part. I’ve earned $0.01 at Helium already. That’s right. A whole penny.

The Tale of the Quarter:

I had a bad day with my four year old son a few weeks ago. We had dropped my daughter off at her reading tutor and were on the way home. Since we were driving by Aldi I decided to stop and get a spiral ham.

If you aren’t familiar with Aldi there are two things to know. First, a person can’t spend much time shopping there. There is only one brand of anything so you don’t spend any time comparing prices or deciding what brand to buy. I can get a cart full of food in twenty minutes. My son was not going to have to suffer long. We’re not talking Wal-Mart the week before Christmas.

Second, you have to have a quarter to get a shopping cart. You get your quarter back when you return your cart. This way they aren’t paying anyone to round up carts. Because you have to have a quarter to shop at Aldi and because I frequently stop at Aldi, I keep a special Aldi quarter in a special section of my wallet. The Aldi quarter does not get spent. It is always there when I need it. My Aldi quarter had been with me longer than my son has. Key word is had.

Once inside Aldi we found a wooden train set on display. They often have special buys on toys during the holidays and this was one of them. My son decided he wanted to play with the train display only to discover that they had glued all the trains and things down. I don’t blame them. However, this discovery triggered the worst public temper tantrum I have ever seen in my life, from my child or anyone else’s. I had no choice. I had to abandon my cart and haul a kicking, screaming, cursing child out of Aldi.

My Aldi quarter was gone. Left behind in my abandoned cart. I grieved for my lost Aldi quarter. I thought about going back to see if I could recover it. I haven’t been back to Aldi since. Not because I’m embarrassed, but because my quarter is gone. My husband doesn’t get it. He thinks any quarter will do.

The Tale of the Nickel:

Today my daughter and I went to the library. They have a little gift shop in the library. She purchased four pieces of nickel candy. I gave her a quarter to pay for it. She asked if she could keep the nickel she got back in change.

Our next stop was K-Mart so that she could pick up a Christmas gift for her brother. There was a bell ringer at the door. She said, “Oh, no! I forgot my money!” and turned around and ran all the way back to the car to get that nickel for the bell ringer. Let me just say we weren’t parked near the door. It is Christmas time.

I know a nickel isn’t much but it was all the money she possessed and she ran all the way to the car and back to get it for that bell ringer. I was proud of her.

Is there a moral to this? I doubt it. I was just thinking of my shame and anger with the quarter and my pride with the nickel and all the ups and downs of motherhood.

originally published on Gather on 12-20-07

Dog:

Dogbert – Easy to identify; should be the only dog here. If this is not the case, please call. Food is stored in the feeder itself. Just lift the top part off. Will jump the fence if left outside unsupervised for too long.

Cats, Male:

Yellow Cat – Large, elderly orange tabby with a cauliflower ear and a crooked head. Needs to take his Clindamycin twice per day. It is on the kitchen counter in a bag with Pill Pockets. Is not fooled by Pill Pockets but it’s worth a try. Recovering from abscess on face that needs to be watched. Can go outside and will probably crap in the floor if he doesn’t get to. Conveniently, the pile of crap will be right in front of the back door so that you can’t open it to let the dog out without either smashing the crap or cleaning it up first. Yellow Cat can probably be found on the bed in either the master bedroom or Eric’s room depending on who forgot to turn off their electric mattress pad. Read the rest of this entry »

Here it is barely past lunch and we’ve already had an eventful day.

It is a beautiful day in Southwest Missouri. the sun is shining and it feels warmer than it really is. Since my family has spent four out of the last five weeks sick with one virus after another, I decided it was time to enjoy the weather and get outside.

Our back deck and yard needed cleaning up so I started by rounding up all the empty Fresh Step buckets that accumulate out there so I could stack them neatly and list them on FreeShare. You’d be amazed how many people want those buckets.

I had four buckets neatly stacked when I saw a fifth one turned on its side right by the dryer vent so that the warm air from the vent was blowing into the bucket. I picked it up and immediately screamed and threw it back down. Something was alive in there. Read the rest of this entry »

Maybe this happened to me, or maybe it happened to a friend of a friend. I’m not saying. Regardless, this tale shall be told in the first person.

You will either find this pretty funny or you will be offended that I would write about such personal matters. Don’t say you weren’t warned. Your back button should be in the upper left corner of your browser window.

A week ago I had to shave so that I wouldn’t be embarrassed by hair hanging out of my  bathing suit at a pool party. I almost wrote an article about that horrific experience but decided it was too personal to share. There’s just something about standing in the shower with a razor and your husband’s shaving cream wishing you had a mirror to straddle and hoping you don’t cut your clitoris off that makes a person feel foolish. Thanks to these handy little bikini razors I found at the store the annual shaving event went better than expected.

Then yesterday my period started. I usually wear pads even though they are gross and I hate them. I wear pads because tampons feel like fiberglass to me. They hurt going in; they hurt coming out. I do keep them on hand though for when I have an allergic reaction to the adhesive on the pads. I’m allergic to some adhesives. It’s on my medical charts after an especially bad reaction to surgical tape when my daughter was born. A brand of pads that did not cause me any grief last month did this month. They must have changed their adhesive. The fact that I also had razor burn and might have been allergic to my husband’s shaving cream couldn’t have helped either. Or maybe they changed the formula in my laundry detergent or fabric softener and I was now allergic to it. Regardless, something was wrong.

I was on fire. I could barely sit down. I was walking around bow-legged all day.  I needed to go to the store and get a different brand of pads and some there’s-something-wrong-with-my-twat cream.

I was going to go as soon as my husband got home from work but that didn’t work out and it was 8:30 that evening before I finally got to go. My husband offered to go for me. I said that he couldn’t because I didn’t just need pads. I needed some my-pussy’s-on-fire cream and I preferred to pick it out myself.

So my poor husband asks me to pick up some lubricant while I’m there. No, not WD-40. He wanted to take care of his own needs while I was indisposed. I was not previously aware that men needed lubricant to do that.

I only needed three items. Each of those three items are embarrassing alone but the three together was just too much. I remembered Vicky’s article about looking at what’s in other shopper’s carts to see what you can tell about them. I wondered what a cart with only maxi pads, twat cream, and KY would bring to mind.

So I called my friend Ellynn to go to the store with me. Ellynn can almost always be counted on to run a fool’s errand with you. If you don’t believe that, remind me to write an article about the church yard sale. I figured she could buy the lubricant for me. Unfortunately she was not home so I had to go alone.

I decided to get a few things to hide my embarrassing items under in the cart. I picked up a huge package of toilet paper and put it in the cart. I needed something to prop the toilet paper on to make a little cave to hide my personal stuff in so I went to electronics and got a wireless USB adapter.

I head off to get my pads. Then I head over to the twat cream. It’s a tough choice. There are products for chafing, for itching, and for burning itch. I finally decide on the cream for burning itch. I put the cream in my little cave under the toilet paper. I note that a couple is perusing the condom selection so I wait a discreet distance away until they finish. Then I head over to get my husband’s lubricant.

What happened to KY jelly in tubes? There are at least twenty different lubricants to choose from. Tingling, warming, mist, liquid, etc. I begin to read labels to see if there is anything especially for male masturbation. A steady train of young men begin to come through picking up supplies for the weekend. I make a game out of guessing which ones will actually get to use the supplies they are purchasing. Then I called my husband and explain my dilemma. I begin to describe the many varieties of lubricant on the shelves. He tells me to get the cheapest one. I also tell him that they have vibrating cock rings and inquire if that might help. He asks how much they cost. There is no price on them. I’m not about to be at the check-out and have it yelled out, “I need a price check on vibrating cock rings on Aisle 8!” so I tell my husband thanks for sending me on this fool’s errand and hang up.

Meanwhile, an older man has arrived in the condom aisle. He had overheard part of my conversation and asked what I was looking for. It turns out his wife sent him to get a box of condoms and he has the same problem. There used to be two kinds of condoms, lubricated or not. Now there are over twenty. His wife just had her six week check-up and they need something to use until she gets her shot on Monday. I tell him how lucky he is to only wait six weeks. My husband had to wait ten months. He tells me how it just seems wrong to buy Equate personal lubricant and recommends the KY warming liquid. And so on…

By the time we parted ways I was sorry that my husband was going to be taking care of himself. Something about discussing these deeply personal things with another embarrassed old married person had somehow turned me on. Is that cheating?

I decided to go through self-check so that I wouldn’t have to show my burning itch cream and my warming KY liquid to a cashier. The combination just seemed too odd.

I checked out and headed out the door. The alarms went off. Remember the wireless USB adapter? You can imagine how it went from there because I’m tired of typing this.

On another note:  Why was I embarrassed to buy these items but I’m not embarrassed to blog about it?

If you happened to read this post, then you know how much I look forward to Mondays. My dog apparently read it, unknown to me at the time, and decided to take matters into his own hands today, or more accurately, into his teeth.

It all started before I had dressed, put my contact lenses in, had my morning coffee, or even checked in at Gather. I made a mistake. I answered the phone. It then spiraled so rapidly out of control that it can only mean there is a God and He hates me. Every time I thought it might finally be over and breathed a sigh of relief something else, or more accurately, someone else happened.

Before I begin to tell the tale I must state that beginning next Monday the kids and I will be evacuating the house as if Katrina, the tsunami, and Mount St. Helens were all occurring simultaneously in our back yard. We are not early birds so we will no doubt get car sick as we drive off away from the sunrise in the car with no air conditioning, but no matter how many times we have to stop and puke by the side of I-44, it will beat the alternative of staying home and allowing Monday to happen to us again. Not that my kids had an especially bad day today; they seemed oblivious to the utter chaos around them. The kid that went home missing part of his face may have a different opinion.

There is no force powerful enough to make me endure another Monday in my home. In fact, I am calling my realtor tomorrow to begin the process of selling our house in the city, conveniently located less than ten minutes away from the library, my bank, the grocery store, and the Wal-Mart Stupid Center. I am telling him to find me a house in the middle of nowhere, at the end of a one lane dirt road, with no neighbors closer than two miles, and impossible to find. I don’t know what else to do. My very life depends on it. It is sad that one must flee civilisation in order to get away from uncivilised people. It is even sadder that we will likely have to forgo indoor plumbing to make up the difference in what we will be spending on gasoline for my husband to continue to go to work.

Until the happy day that we unload this house of horrors we will evacuate at dawn every Monday and leave our phones behind.

I feel that this tale will become long and unwieldy so I may have to break it into parts. They will be as follows:

1. A crazy woman, her three kids, her dog, and her shit covered car arrive on scene. Things go to hell and stay there, culminating in my dog biting a child that wasn’t my child.
2. A downpour occurs and my car windows won’t roll up.
3. A neighborhood heathen spawn-of-Satan child shows up and things rapidly get worse just when I thought it was finally over.  Strangely, my dog did not bite this child.
4. My husband arrives home from work, runs off the spawn-of-Satan child and cooks dinner. Things are looking up, right? Wrong. We don’t even get to eat the dinner because…
5. My daughter’s loser uncle shows up with some loser woman right when my husband is putting dinner on the table. He has very bad news that he seems to think is good news. He’s rented a house two blocks away. Just kill me.
6. The neighborhood brat returns like Jason or Freddie Kruger or something unspeakably worse.
7. I yell. I cry. I vow to send my kids to public school and get a job working 120 hours a week. The dog looks confused.

A funny thing happened this morning, or right after I got out of bed which may have actually been afternoon. You should know that I have very bad vision and can’t see a foot in front of my face without my contact lenses.

I stumbled to the coffee pot blind and got myself a cup of creamer with some hot coffee in it as is my habit.

I then stepped outside onto the back deck so I could smoke and drink my coffee. I was not dressed yet but the neighbors are used to that and it isn’t a very important part of this story except that there was bare skin involved.

As I lifted the cup of hot, steaming caffeinated beverage to my lips the funny thing happened. My cup fell, emptying its contents all down my bare skin and landing on the toes of my right foot before bouncing off and shattering all over the deck. This seemed weird to me since I still had the handle of the cup in my hand.

I’m standing there still holding the handle of my coffee cup and wondering if I am in fact out of bed after all. This seemed a bit surreal.

The cup fell off its handle. That’s weird. My life is weird. If anything can go wrong, it will.

There was once an eight year old girl who wasn’t pretty. She wore thick glasses so heavy they rubbed sores on her nose where they sat. The other kids called her four eyes. She had long, stringy red hair. Everyone had long, stringy hair — it was the seventies. Still, the other kids chanted, “red head, red head, fire in the woodshed” every day at recess. She wore hand-me-down clothes that the other kids called high water pants and chanted “bird legs” every day at recess. She had two huge, crooked front teeth that made her look like a beaver so she never smiled in a picture or any other time that she could help it. Her nose was too big for her face. So were her lips.

She was a dismal child and mostly kept to herself. She read books all the time. She loved to read books from the Anne of Green Gables series because Anne was also a red head who wasn’t pretty. Except Anne grew up to be beautiful and loved. She dreamed that the same thing would happen to her one day. She loved A Little Princess because Sara was saved from the mean people in the end. She loved Laura Ingalls and hated Nellie Olsen. She loved lots of books but she hated herself.

Her mother was disappointed with her because she was so ugly and didn’t seem to have any friends. She never noticed that the little girl loved to read and brought home straight A report cards every time. She only saw that the child was ugly.

A few years later the little girl began to write stories but she didn’t believe the teachers who told her she was good at it. She wasn’t good at anything and she knew it because the first thing you have to be good at is being pretty and making friends. Nothing else counted if you couldn’t do that.

A couple of more years pass and you find the little girl an awkward adolescent. One of her teachers has entered her in the state spelling bee. She studies long lists of words alone in her bedroom night after night. No one ever quizzes her or helps her study. The day of the spelling bee arrives and she is dropped off outside a big building and left there alone. She doesn’t know where she’s supposed to go but she finally figures it out. All the other kids have parents with them. All the other kids have people in the audience. Too bad she’s so ugly or she might have parents there too. They must be ashamed of her. She takes 24th place and gets her name in the paper. Second from the bottom, there she is. No one cut it out and saved it.

Fast forward thirty years and you see that the little girl is now a woman with a daughter of her own. Her daughter is very pretty but she doesn’t like to read and she doesn’t care about straight A’s. She watches Anne of Green Gables on DVD instead of reading the books. She won’t be entering any spelling bees.

The little girl that is now a woman is disappointed with her daughter.

I hate Monday. You wouldn’t think that I would since I don’t work outside the home. It should just be another day but somehow it never, ever is.

I don’t especially like kids. I love my own kids. Sometimes I even like my own kids. But if I’m smiling at your smelly, bawling baby you can bet it’s a fake smile. If you are showing me your hundreds of crappy photos of your kids you can bet I’m planning my escape. If you’re bragging about your “gifted” child who knows their ABC’s for the 127th time this year I’m probably choking back bile in an effort to not puke on you.

I’m not answering my phone today. When the phone rings on Monday it’s because someone that has me on their speed dial list for free, short-to-no notice babysitting is calling. It’s always because they are having a bad day or because they have so much to do that they can’t get done with their kids underfoot or because they’re in the middle of the 42nd emergency requiring child care this month.  Why, oh why, did these people give birth if they can’t stand the thought of actually spending an entire day with their own kids?

I am having a bad day. Not answering the phone was ineffective since we still have a door and people know where we live. I somehow have a child here that is not my own even after I thought I had made my stance pretty clear. At least it’s only one this time. I figure they knew that a) I was not going to answer the phone, and b) once they were at the door my kids would make my life a living hell for the rest of the day if I sent their unexpected “play date” away.

I’m not stupid. When you call it a play date, telling me what a great opportunity it is for my poor lonely little homeschooled kids to socialize, but then flee my house leaving your brat behind on your way to go enjoy something I probably haven’t got to do in years, that is not a play date. It’s babysitting.

I have lots to do. eBay auctions that I do for a third party who pays me money are over a week late. My house is filthy. My daughter’s schoolwork is behind. I need to balance the checkbook and pay bills before we incur late fees. All but one of these things would be easier if I could pawn my children off on someone else for the day. They would at least be possible if I only had my own two children under foot. I haven’t been to the doctor or dentist in years. I can’t go and take two small children with me. I haven’t been out with my husband, just the two of us, in several years.

I’d rather be having a root canal than babysitting someone’s kids today and probably any other day.

My husband has forbidden me to ask anyone to babysit for me under any circumstances since I would then be expected to return the favor tenfold. He’s tired of coming home from work and finding a houseful of other people’s kids instead of getting to relax with his own family. He’s tired of having kids still here, not picked up on time, well after midnight on nights when he has to get up early to go to work the next day. He’s tired of having our life disrupted.

I’m thinking of starting some horrible rumor about myself in hopes that I can avoid being coerced into babysitting in the future. It needs to be bad enough that no one will want me watching their kids but not so bad that I end up getting my own taken away pending an investigation. Any ideas?

I tried forwarding my phone to the Child Care Referral hotline last week but my husband got freaked out when he called and left work to see what was wrong at home. I’d hate for my mother to drive seventy miles to check on us if she were to get the same results when calling my phone. Besides that won’t help with the “play dates” at the door that don’t call ahead.

It felt good typing this rant. Perhaps I will make Monday Rant a regular feature. I’ll probably lose all my connections when they find out what a disagreeable curmudgeon I actually am.

Coming soon: Customer Disservice Hotlines