Monthly Archives: January 2012

This past New Years holiday weekend, Troy, Gwen, Garrick, and I slept in a log cabin in the “mountains” of Western Maryland. (You have to put the words “Mountains” in parentheses when referring to anything in the mid-atlantic after visiting Montana.  It’s a western snob kind of thing).

I forgot to pack half of the necessary kitchen requirements because I had a teeny weensie insignificant little “melt-down” the morning we left (the kind where you are yelling in the shower at anyone who will hear about every perceived wrong that was unfairly done to you in the past week.  The kind that uses a half a dozen inappropriate words, many of which you know your kids will actually google later when you aren’t looking…)  This resulted in us using Grapefruit scented bath and body gel as dish soap, and Clorox Bleach Wipes as sponges in the tiny cabin kitchenette.  It worked fine, except that our coffee, soup, beans and rice, and yogurt had a rather antisceptic, citrusy tang to it.  Nobody complained…a positive side effect to the melt down mentioned above.

I also forgot to bring flip-flops for shower shoes for us, and THAT resulted in everyone (except Troy, who simply manned up and risked the germs) showered in mommy’s crocs.  I don’t believe my crocs were ever cleaner, even when they were brand spankin new.  I also forgot to pack socks to match my pink sweatpants, so I had my olive and black and purple argyle socks with my baby pink sweatpants and my ridiculously shiny clean black crocs.  I rocked it.  Troy never felt prouder to have such a gem on his arm.

Despite all the packing blunders, we plowed on, determined to make 2012 begin with a BANG! So, we braved a State Park “First Day” Hike in Swallow Falls that was breath-taking.  Breath-taking for Troy and the kids for the amazing beauty of the wilderness surrounding us.  Breath-taking for me because, well, flubber takes a lot of O2 to get moving. (If anyone reading this happens to hike the main trail at Swallow Falls and finds a 44 year old lung somewhere in the underbrush, it’s mine.  Please return it ASAP.)  It got to the point where my beautiful 10 year old daughter, the sweet little peanut I carried around lovingly and nurturingly for years and years, told me that she refused to wait for me anymore because she didn’t want the Ranger to forget about and/or lose us.  And true to her word, she left me in the woods to fend and hobble along for myself.   I got the last laugh though, because THIS fatty McGee knows her priorities, and I had THE SNACKS AND DRINKS in my bag!  Guess I’m not so expendable NOW, AM I?? (insert maniacal laugh)

Back at the cabin, we built a cozy fire in the wood stove, and then almost immediately had to open ALL of the windows because it was molten-lava hot within 20 minutes in our tiny little cabin.  Lemme tell you what a crazy fun idea it is to be shut up in a little tiny cabin with three people who know all of your little buttons (see eensy weensie melt down above) and then turn the ambient temperature stiflingly HOT.  We should have added a couple of hand to hand combat weapons in the mix, just to make it more interesting.  Oh, it was genius.  Brilliant.  We took ‘Togetherness’ to a new level.

We had a few not-so-friendly conversations.  A little more sass than I would have liked.  A few unkind Gripes.  Quite a bit of all-out bitching.  The weekend was quickly sprialling downwards.  The term “Butt-Head” was used way too many times, in all earnestness.  (But I apologized to Troy when I calmed down.)

Then it snowed.

And since the windows were all open, we had snow IN the crazy hot little cabin.  Look up ‘Sturm und Drang’.  You’ll see a picture of us in that moment.

At some point in all of this, I sent my son Garrick outside to play with his new metal detector.  I needed him out of the cabin to save his life, you see.  Classic Family De-Escalation move.  But, blissfully unaware of the fact that his life was in imminent danger, he came running back in, breathlessly excited, eyes dancing, yelling ‘Mom! Mom! You’ve got to see this!!!’, tracking snow and water and mud all over as he did.  49% of me wanted to hightail it to the shower to have another eesy weensy meltdown (see above).  But the other 51% of me over-ruled and I followed him out to the van, where, snow falling all around us, he insisted I look at A PARTICULAR SNOWFLAKE on the window of the van.

I was thinking “DOH!  I’m out here, freezing, getting wet, pissed off from being shut up in a tiny volcano of a cabin and you want to show me a freaking snowflake!!?” But what I DID was bend down and look at what he was so ferverently pointing to.

There, on the window of the rusty old Dodge Caravan was a picture perfect snowflake.  Absolutely perfect.  Circular, even, symetrical.  Beautiful.  And my son, who was in all of this same vacation stress bullcrud I was in, showed me what was important again.

So I kissed him on the top of his head.  Agreed that it was all that was wonderful.  And went back in to clean soupbowls with bath and body gel.

Life is so freaking weird.

So, I’ve been asked to explain the moose.

WHY do I have a 9 foot moose in my front yard?

It’s simple really.

I don’t like to wear klunky jewelry.

Clears it right up, don’t it? … I didn’t want an engagement ring.  So, Troy bought me an engagement Moose.  I like mooses. They are Big, bulky, klutzy, goofy, and have comically shaped behinds.  They are also fiercely protective of their loved ones.  When angered or scared: LOOK THE HELL OUT!  When they are looking for a mate: LOOK THE HELL OUT! And they can accessorize like nobody’s business.  Have you ever really noticed those antlers?  Good lord!  It’s like a throwback to ’80’s hair.

Everyone snickers and laughs at a moose’s ridiculous form…. up and until they are actually within a stone’s throw of a moose and then they are in utter respect and awe of the big bodaciousness of that moose. Few people mess with a Moose and live to tell about it.  And yet, left to themselves, they really are gentle giants.

So you see, I totally get a moose.  I GET them.  I relate.  If I were an animal, I would SO be a moose.  And not just any moose.  I’d be a momma moose.  Cause they are as bad-ass as honeybadgers, only hundreds and hundreds of “mo” pounds bigger.

And as to the moose in my front yard….it was given to me with love by my Husband.  (All women reading this please sigh a collective “AWww!” here.) Plus, it made it safer for him if we got in a tiff…its not like I could whip off my engagement ring and throw it at him if he pissed me off royally.  What could I do?  That moose is secured in over a THOUSAND pounds of concrete, in addition to being several hundred pounds of hardwood himself.  So if I got pissed to the point that I wanted to throw something at him, it couldn’t be the moose!  I had to find other ways to show my discontent if he did something stupid and manly like fail to tell me how wonderful and perfect for him I was (am) every 10 minutes.  Which meant I had to perfect my Stink Eye.  Oh, and it’s a doozy.  My stink eye could flatten a Navy Seal.  It’s kind of a cross between the face you make when you are trying to vacuate your bowels after a night of binge eating cheese fondue (and DON’T try and deny you’ve been there…who hasn’t?) and the face you make when you suck on a lemon.

So, that, you see, is the simple and logical reason for my pre-occupation with Mooses, and the fact that I have a 9 foot moose in my front yard.  Elementary, really.  So simple you all are probably insulted that I felt the need to explain it. But, some of you DID ask.

So we have these two Cats, Gracie and Moosie.  We saved them as feral kittens about a year and a half ago.  It took no small amount of cajoling, debating, and, heck, lets call a spade a spade, PLEADING with my husband, Troy, to get him on board with rescuing these kittens.  Oh, he had good, sound, logical arguments as to why we shouldn’t adopt them, but those landed on the deaf, bleeding hearts of a 7 year old, a 9 year old, and a 42 year old.  I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: God Bless Poor Troy.

There were several more kittens who needed to be rescued, but we agreed to only take the two the kids picked.  And, being my bleeding hearted kids, they chose what appeared to be the most retarded one, complete with Marty Feldman Wonky Eyes, and the biggest, most energetic, psychotic one.

At that point, even I had misgivings.

So, we adopt these critters, and they immediately require like, $400.00 worth of Vet bills to get them cleaned up, de-wormed, de-fleaed, de-ticked, de-intestinal parasited that causes bloody diarrhea. (that’s the medical term.)  Oh, Troy LOVED that. Then there was more money to be spent on the Cat Play Tree, the Cat toys, the organic cat nip (dried), the cat nip perennial plants for the garden (not dried, until we forgot to water them in the middle of the summer….THEN they were pretty gosh darned dried.), the kitty beds (which they ignored in favor of OUR beds…usually right in between Troy’s exceptionally long legs.  NOT the most comfortable for Troy, but even less Comfortable for the unfortunate cat who is sleeping there when Troy rolls over.)

Oh, and lets not forget the CANNED Cat food.  No ordinary dried is good enough for OUR feral,-never-touched-real-food,-but-would-eat-rodent-poop-in-a-heartbeat kitties.  It got pricey.  It got pricey, Fast.

Troy was a good egg about it despite the cost at this point.  He was the patient, put upon husband who was still enamored enough with me to put up with this kind of crap.  And to be fair, the kittens were entertaining as all get-out.  They did silly things, they did endearing things, they were cuddly and sweet, and pathetic and the rescuer in Troy enjoyed saving them.

But there was one defining moment when they really honestly truly won him over.

When they fell asleep in the Bidet. Yes, friends, we own a bidet.  No, we didn’t put it in.  No, we didn’t buy the house because of it, and yes, we use it regularly and have come to depend on it in a non-natural fashion.  But that is for another discussion altogether.

We came in one day to find the little retards curled up around the fountain sprayer on the cool porcelain of our bidet.  And Troy’s heart has been their’s ever since. I wonder how his heart would melt if he came in one day to find ME curled up in the bidet?  Sure, it would take a vat of Vaseline, a crowbar, and maybe some Rib-Spreaders to get me in there, but I wonder just the same.

There is an old saying that I’ll mangle as I share it with you:  If you want to know how good a friend someone might be, don’t look to their current friends, look to their enemies.    I had to eat a few rumballs to fully understand it, but now that I do, I feel very esoteric and superior to my pre-rumball, mangled-saying self.

Anyway, I got to thinking that there IS something to be said about the company one keeps.  It is a direct reflection of ourselves.  A mirror, if you will, of who we are, or who we would like to be.  We are drawn to those kinds of people, and repelled by those who either remind us of parts of ourselves we don’t like, or are just plain Dicks.  (I’m pretty sure that is in Carl Jung or maybe Friedrich Nietzsche.)

I think of my husband, Troy’s, friends…all of them heros, like him.  Well-meaning men, some of them rather hard around the edges, who would give their lives for the benefit of others.

I think of my mother’s friends…most of them who have lived full, adventurous lives, who love to laugh and who have intellect and wisdom.

I think of my Dad, who died 6 years ago, who never met a stranger.  He led the path on so many things.  Had a variety of equally leader like/ power hungry people by his side.

And then I think of myself…..MMmmmm…let’s see:
The Cashier at the drive thru at McDonald’s knows me by name and has for over 10 years.

Likewise the cashier at the Dollar store.

The Cashier at the county liquor store doesn’t know my name, but we recognize eachother when we run into eachother out and about.

The UPS guy and the USPS Gal know me because I give always give them lollipops or Hershey Kisses when they bring me packages.  (Its my small reward to them for hefting it up the hill from my driveway to my door since I am ruled by inertia, and therefore cannot move.)

Oh, the lady at the bakery counter….knows me not only by name, but also by my kid’s various crazy birthday cakes.  And we share recipes.

The guy at the Chevy Dealership Service Department knows me because of the time a mouse crept into my vent system and died, I instructed him and his men to go in with Navy Seal Team Six precision and eliminate it.  They liked that.

That’s about it.  What does it say about me?  Hmmm.  Fast food.  Cheap shopping. Booze.  Smarty Pants remarks.  Good lord!  Its no wonder Troy fell in love with me.  I have to hug myself right now!

Who are YOUR friends?

Here’s the thing, I really don’t want much in life. I’ve finally learned that having THINGS is not the key to happiness.  Oh, sure, conveniences are wonderful, but they aren’t necessary.  Simplify! Simplify!  Simplify!  Wants and Needs are NOT the same thing!

And here is where I become inconsistent.

I can’t live without my car seat heater.  Its not a want, its a NEED.  I love that puppy.  I’ve got this nifty little gadget in my Equinox that not only allows me to start my car from ANYWHERE on this earth that is satellite accessible, but it also starts that beauteous Chevy in its previous setting.  And since my butt-heaters are always set to warm, or “stun”, as I like to call it, they crank up the moment my car does.  The result: I slide right into a warmed up car with a spanking hot seat.

LOVE IT!!!

I’ve been known to sit in a McDonald’s parking lot, scarfing down a sausage burrito with the car running just to feel that warmth.  But that is a different story, (and you probably already read it.) Oh it’s a form of heaven, only slightly below eating a hot stale sausage burrito.  To just sit there, letting all of your poor unloved, unappreciated, undervalued, taken-for-granted butt muscles just bask in the loving warmth of those bucket heater seats. I wait anxiously for the day when they add a butt-massager to the seat.  Oh, THAT will be high on Maslow’s Hierarchy, I assure you.

So if you happen to see me sitting in my little red Equinox in a parking lot in town, with the car running and a contented smile on my otherwise blank face, you have an idea why.  Just keep on about your business.  I won’t want to be disturbed.