Purls O' Wisconsin

So, I got the stain out. I googled and I scraped and I sprayed and washed and it seems to have worked. And I can't find it, the sheets were ivory, so maybe that helped in this instance? I cannot fathom how to salvage the jammie bottoms, though, there are like huge patties of chocolate melted into the fabric. I can try breaking them off and seeing if hot water will melt it out the rest of the way, but ugh...they look disgusting. SO PISSED.

He has no idea any of this even happened today. He must have been a bit more asleep than I thought by the time I got up to bed. I made him go buy me a pink cami at Grand Avenue mall on his lunch hour, though. He was there anyway for the indoor farmer's market so it wasn't out of his way.

I am pretty sure chocolate is now banned from the living room unless one can be responsible with it. And I can!

Also, I spent most of the day in underpants and a tank top sorting clothes up in my room. Why so scantily clad? So I could do it right and try shit on as I went all day long. I tried on anything questionable, have tossed a ton of t-shirts with mystery stains on them that will not come out, have three white t-shirts that are going to get bleach penned as a last resort, two things to consider having altered and a big pile for Goodwill and a garbage bag full of stained crap.

And a whole load of stuff I still need to fold and put away.

Did that just pull you right in?

So, NaNoWriMo is over, and I did reach 50k words. And I finished early on Sunday. Yeah, yay. Woooo. Whatthefuckever.
Ok, my house is from hell. I mean for reals. The bathroom? Still gross. Kitchen? Mancleaned for 2 weeks. Which means the counters are foul, there is a green ring around the sink drain, the sink backs up when the dishwasher drains into it (portable) and anything in the fridge that has gone off since October is still in there. I kept at it for the first two weeks, but then it went to hell. Someone in my house thinks cleaning the kitchen just means washing dishes and putting away silverware so that every single slot in the sivlerwarehas 3 forks, a big spoon, a small spoon and a sharp knife (sometimes I just open the drawer and scream with rage). Something in there smells bad and I can't find it and I am really really hoping it was the lamb fat from last night's dinner. It has calmed down slightly since the dishes were done.

Yesterday I embarked on a whole house deep clean and decluttering mission, possibly obsession. Cleaning out closets and drawers and purging shit. It's so good. I have to do this before I bring any holiday shit into the house or it will not get done. So I have a trunk full of new stuff and a tree in a box and 2 new bookcases in the backseat of my car and I am a one woman cleaning team.

Today I moved my bed and cleaned under it, batting cat hair tumbleweeds,the neverending tide of feathers from when Elvis chewed a hole in my comforter 5 years ago at least. And all the various and assorted shit that hides under a bed. or just MY bed. I vacced about 8 times. I cleaned out my bedside table/bookshelf. Everything is being cleaned to the way back, I have been vacuuming out the drawers for chrissakes.

Then I put the bed back, stripped off the dirty sheets, let it air for several hours and then put on brand new sheets. 600 thread count and very nice and thick and crispy smooth. I made the bed perfectly, with all the pillows, there are six of them, all lined up at the headboard. The pale blue matelasse coverlet was folded down with the pretty embroidered side of the creamy sheet showing, the down comforter folded at the foot of the bed. Aside from the shit ass freaky tile ceiling situation (don't ask) and the mountain of clothing to be sorted tomorrow that is on my loveseat and the horrendous pile of The Man's shit on the other side of the bed (that I cannot see from the door way) it was like a boutique hotel bed: inviting and luxurious and pretty.

Then I came downstairs. I saw a chocolate bar on the edge of the sofa. I told The Man to get it OFF the arm of the sofa because WTF? I went to pee, it was gone when I came back.
I sat down, we watched tv. I knit. We cuddled. I curled up in my pale pink (brand new) heated throw. It is very fuzzy. He went to bed and hinted about me coming up soon. All systems were go.
I went to pee and thought "Do i smell chocolate?" I checked the seat of my pants. Nope. Checked my tee-shirt....nope.
Huh.
I went upstairs and put on fresh undies and a teeshirt and lit a pretty candle (vanilla hazlenut coffee) and crawled into bed. Oh, the sheets are amazingly lovely.
I swear I could smell chocolate...nah, it's the candle....
I went to roll over to say hello and looked down and
WHO THE FUCKING FUCK TOOK A SHIT IN MAH BED?!?!?!

My left leg was covered from the back of my knee to my ankle in chocolate. Melted, skin burning CHILI lime chocolate. The bottom of my right foot, also covered. Hige skid marks all over the sheet, all over one of the pillow cases...just everywhere.
My new pajama pants I now see are destroyed, pale blue plus dark chocolate. Heated throw? Covered in melted in choclolate, did I mention it was FUZZY?! The sofa looks like someone shit on it and ground it in and I don't even know how I will begin to get that stain out since it's on a cushion. I'm going to have to just flip it and hope the other side is less disgusting. My whole sofa is falling apart anyway, probably from getting SOAKED about 5 times from my goddamn leaking roof, "but hey, it's not the roof it's your siding!" situation because it seems to have broken at that exact spot.there are like black holes behind the cushions now and things get lost down there every evening. The cordless phone, and remote, an entire throw pillow all fit in these holes. So yeah, it's not the worst thing to happen to my damn sofa.
And when I freaked out all he could do was say I was overreacting and roll over.
SO PISSED.

So anyway, I am beyond furious, am scrubbed within an inch of my life, am still itchy from the burning chili chocolate and now need to go and see if spray and wash with resolve in it will salvage my pretty sheets or if I will be ordering new ones tomorrow as my christmas present.

You know what? Fuck it. I'm going to order new ones NOW.

Because there are things that are very much Not Right about me I am all the time thinking of things I could post as my Facebook Status and then realizing that they are innapropriate, offensive (to the Palin fans who think Glen Beck farts truth and sunshine), too much truth for certain inviduals, and generally too much information for my auntie and my dad's nephew (who is 2 years older than my dad would be at 62 years old).

But I already share TMI here and figured, eh, what the hell?

So I give you actual status...es (ae?) from the past few days:


....is deeply concerned that Elvis is having some special gentleman's alone time with my fuzzy new pink heated throw.

...wishes she could give just one good hard PINCH to the parents who have brought hackey coughing children into various coffee shops during the middle of the day over the past week. If they are too sick for school, they are too goddamn sick for Starbucks. Bitch.

...probably should have just been a drag queen.

....realizes she is the real loser in the battle of "i'm not going to clean the bathroom!" becuase she is the only one who disturbed by the mess. But it's the principle of the matter at this point.

....is looking forward to a bubble bath in a jacuzzi tub more than seeing her inlaws on Thursday. She may take a tiny bottle of clorox to bomb the tub before bathing in it though because....ew sex tub germs.

.... at taco bell for dinner and regretted it deeply an hour later.

....did not realize the window was open.


and one status update that I'm not ashamed of at all is that I am crawling back out of the depths with my shittay novel.
Oh yes, I am.
I cracked 30k tonight.
I' about 7k down, but IT IS DOABLE.

My NaNo continues apace, which is to say it's still shit and I'm still behind. but it's not hopeless yet. Well, the content is so hopeless. But I mean I can get 50k in. I feel it in my bones so i'm going to keep whacking away at it.
I intend to crack 20k before I hit the hay tonight.

I was delayed Monday and Tuesday with a nasty nasty headache, I think it was from a peppermint mocha from Starbucks on Sunday night becuase I had very, very vivid dreams on Sunday (and of course there was my mad desire to make marshmallows in the middle of the night). Not nightmares but they were just freaky and sooooo vivid. Like trippy. So that's a good indicator of when I ingested it. Then I felt puny and slightly ill all day and then by mid afternoon the headache was in full effect, simmered down for a bit after a seriously hot shower and came roaring back after I went to sleep and brought the nutmeg anxiety and dread with it. Like I'm not dealing with enough anxiety alredy, the nutmeg brings it's own! So what's worse than a migraine? A migraine with a sidecar of panic attack. At 4 am. Wheeeee! And when i say dread I mean just a feeling of dread and impending disaster, it's actually in the description of side effects for a nutmeg OD "intense feeling of dread" and that's pretty accurate! It blows.
I dragged my down comforter down to the sofa with me and huddled up and gutted it out with meditation and yoga breathing until I felt it start to ease off of the nausea and migraininess around 5 am. Then all that was left was the headache so I took an advil and slept for 5 hours and then just felt like poop for the rest of the day.
Today I felt normal again, but tired. I got up and enjoyed my irish oatmeal with craisins and a bit of cream and vanilla sugar, took a walk on the treadmill, did some writing and baked some pumpkin cranberry bread and putzed.

And today was a day The Man had in his calendar. One of the things my instructor talked about a lot in writer's workshop is taking yourself on little dates for creativity. Taking in little cultural events, getting coffee and things ike that. I had wante to go to a book signing for a long time. but new places, crowds, disasters both natural and unnatural occured and I never went.
Then a couple weeks ago I got an email. An email from Team Barrowman, the official John Barrowman Yahoo group thingy saying that his sister, who lives in these parts, would be speaking and signing books at Boswell Books in Milwaukee. I told the hubs I wanted to go.
because I have a massive crush on Jack Harkness, played by Mr. Barrowman. Like a silly crush, honestly, because umm..he's a fictional character. And of course, John Barrowman is easy on the eyes, but he's not fictional character and he is a whole guy with a whole life and is real and all that. So they look alike, but I think my lust love is for Captain Jack. but I still enjoy his delightfully cheesy cds and bought the first installment of his biography and thought I might as well buy the second one and see a local writer in action, right?

So he put this info in his pocket computer and tonight was the night.
I still felt slightly crap.
And tired.
And I was nervous, but I am always nervous.
I took a late afternoon nap with instructions for him to get me up at 5:30, pushing it for a 7 pm event on the other side of town.
I got up on my own at 5:15 and commenced to doing my hair.
Fail.
it was like something from Edward Scissorhands. Seriously. What the hell? There was some freaky ass bump situation and it's not yet long enough to pull back into a clippie and be mussy and cute. So I grabbed the twisted peppermint three in one shower gel and washed my hair and got a load of it in my right eye.
I do not advise putting really minty shower gel in your eye. Nope, I do not. it is the opposite of a good time. It buuuuuuuuurns.
But after an emergency hair wash, thngs were OK.
I put on some war paint, ate some chicken noodles for dinner and got dressed. Then the printer got constipated and we could not print a map.
The Man added more paper.
It was ignoring us.
We have a wifi rinter and it's fabulous. Until it ignores us. Then it blows.
"I'll just remember how to get there!" he says.
Famous last words!
And then I say "I smell shit!"
So I had to spend 10 minutes combing the house looking for shit, while he kept saying "we have to go, we have to go!"
"I SMELL SHIT!" Seriously, it's shit, it's in my living space and iI was not leaving my damn house until we found the shit.
I looked in Elvis's usual place and didn't see anything.
I should have looked closer.
The Man convinced me the shit smell was all in my head and I went to have one last go at the printer and came centineters from putting my bare foot down in a pile of doody.
"I KNEW I SMELLED SHIT!"
Serioulsy, that is 4 times in less than 7 days, I fucking hate this cat. HATE. HIM.
So while he dealt with that I selected and rejected 17 cardigan/top combinations and we finally hit the road sans map.
He got lost.
Not hugey lost, but he was well into "I am going to turn around!" phase when I knew we were on the right track. Happily my "FUCK! Do not try and turn around here, this is right in the middle of Columbia St. Mary's if we try to ake a quick u-turn in a medical complex we will be lost for EVER!" worked and he went one more block and suddenly it all looked familiar.
Ahhhhh.
We arrived and by some alignment of parking karma landed a spot literally feet from the front door of the bookshop. So we went in, a half hour late and enjoyed the end of her talk. And I got my book signed like the dorky fangirl that I am:


VOILA!
And I was nervous, soooo nervous. And nerves plus a gut full of steel cut oats gave me more to be nervous about so instead of standing in line focusing on not getting to the table and blurting out something from Sir Mix-A-Lot to her face I basically stood there smiling and wondering to myself why I could not have eaten something like Rice Krispies for breakfast and hoping I didn't fart. because I really did not want to be a topic of conversation if my imaginary boyfriend asked her how the booksigning went and she said "pretty good, and then this fat girl in line farted......"
So then I just focused on not farting and not getting to the table and saying "hi I loved your talk, loved the last book OMG I am so nervous and full of fiber and do you have any idea what a pressure cooker that is making in my lower intestines? DO YOU?! HAHAHAHAHAHA!! MY ANACONDA DON'T WANT NONE UNLESS YOU GOT BUNS, HON!" and then letting one rip while everyone stood there in horror. With the prudey "farts are never funny and neither is Sir Mix-A-Lot" husband fainted dead away at my feet.
But I managed to keep it all together and try to not seem like too much fo a freak and just said thank-you. Sans farting.
And then I was overcome by all the beautiful books and could not resist buying the newest Audrey Niffenberg (burg?) and I don't even know why because I did not even realy enjoy her first book! I certainly did not full price hardcover enjoy it. I was all hopped up on book fumes and it clouded my judgement.

And then we left and I promptly stepped in the gutter and the icy cold water and gutter ick was deep enough that my right foot was submerged. On Downer Avenue. EW! So we came home and I scrubbed the hell out of it to try and wash off any scabies and shit and now I have one minty foot and one minty eyeball and still need to crank out some crappy crappy words before I can go to bed.

could be my middle name.

I am trying to catch up on the nano and while my brain is busy wonder if I will ever find the plot, literally, all of my fiters are on auto pilot.

Which means that every now and then I forget myself and sing aloud to the soundtrack in my head.
Which last night happened while my husband was sitting on the sofa next to me watching somethng on tv while I hunted and pecked away next to him.
And all of a sudden I belted out "My anaconda don't want none unless you got buns, hon!" and then kept writing like nothing happened.
Oh, it happened.

What the hell is wrong with me?

My novel that is. I'm so shit! I am so far behind. it's not hopeles yet. There is still hope. I don't WANT to quit. I would tell you how many words behind I am but I am too chickenshit to put it out there while I am still feeling hopeful about pulling my sorry ass up out of my wallow and getting some work done.

And I am starting to feel that percolating writery....thing...happening. Thinking of words, braining more, observing the people I see and thinking of them as I might write what I just saw. And it's been a long time since I felt like that. gee, what else could I possibly have been thinking about?

And my knitting has fallen woefully by the wayside. I have given up all hope of completing my bohus. Well, for today anyway, I can probably get it done when November is over. it has a body and it has sleeves and I need to finish up 3 inches and then I get to do the pretty colorwork, so really, it's not far from being done at all. I have a pair of socks going and I hate the color and am about to rip it and start something new. Well by about I mean maybe tomorrow or Tuesday or something. Not now. Becuase I should be writing.

But right now I have to go wrap up 24 little gifts and put them in a stocking and send them off to the North for a knitting swap. :D
And finish my homemade marshmallows. Oh yes, I finally made them! It is time to powder them and cut them!
And then I will write this afternoon. I promise.

week one of Nano madness is down and I am only slightly behind on the word count..well, about two days behind. But I intend to make some serious headway on that before hitting the hay tonight.  I am holding in at 10,125 words. WOOOO! It is terrible. there is just no plot. It is utter shit.
But it's 10k words of utter shit that I didn't have written last week and that is the point.

But you know what this means! Lazy half assed bullet point posts!!

• I have not broken my lady garden with the freaky vagina yoga. I have not tested the limits of holding anything past 8 seconds though, just in case. My husband was horrified by the whole topic and refused to discuss it with me, so anyone reading can thank him for the TMI.
• when my husband is tired he walks around with his head tilted back and I don't know why. is his big ass Oliver Platt head just too heavy to hold up? he is walking around like this right now and I have kindly brought this up by sayng "what the fuck is wrong with your head?!" and i swear he whined like an 8 year old girl. Clearly, it is way past his bedtime.
  
• in between writing like the wind tomorrow, I also need to knit like the wind to finish a stocking for a swap. I also need to individually wrap 24 small gifts and figure out how to get all of that shit on a customs form. Oy. Also, some of my 24 stocking stuffers are on order from The Container Store and I just went o see if they have shipped yet and the account area is just unavailable right now. Are you shitting me, Container Store? It is November for chrissakes. WORK! It better be working tomorrow.
  
• Even though i need to finish this stocking what did I do today? Cast on for a new sock. Of course I did. my first pair of Alpaca socks. The yarn is more than a little cracked out, so I'm not sure about it. it's very colorful so I can't decide if it is awesome or fugly. I think it is a good match for the Faceted Rib sock pattern, though.
  
• I went to write at Starbucks today and I swear 8 hours later I am still smelling of burnt ass coffee. Also, I was sitting next to freaking Typhoid Mary. Twp of them actually, one was just sniffly. I thought she was annoying. The she left and then Hacky Hackerson took her place. Fuck you. Just fuck you and your hacky ass cough. Seriously. What the hell is wrong with you?
  
• I was at Caribou (where I can have some stinkin' decaf coffee and not get a belly ache of monster proportions for 17 hours unlike starbucks where i can only have tea) last night and managed to walk through the entire store with my fly down. I had on brown underwear, too, so it might not have been completely obvious that it was underpants and not a seriously out of control 1970s situation down there. I am such a dumbass. I think I just totally forgot to zip up after tinkling before we left.
  
• I am 35 and very soon to be 36, when will I stop using the workd "tinkling"?
  
• I got carded at Supertarget on Thursday buying a bottle of wine. And when the young woman at the register apologized and said they had to card everyone I was like "stop right there! Do not ruin this for me!" But it was too late. Not that I think a lot of 20 year olds are out buying shower curtains, cute shoes, ground turkey,  a bottle of wine, seltzer, solar LCD xmas lights and a handbag big enough to contain a toddler. It was clearly a grown up order.
  
• In other grown up news, I got my snow blower fixed and it hasn't even snowed yet! It was just bad gas and some shit needed cleaning. We called Mowers and Blowers and they come to your house and it is made of win. It's a repair shop  on wheels. Ten minutes and $70 and it's all fixed. YES! I would rather have spent my $70 on some pretty yarn or something, but as I was driving in the parking lot near the new Pick N' Save today I was like "what are all these green sticks poking up on the edges of the flowerbeds" and then i realized they are probably to delineate the edges for the snow plows so they don't get so chewed up. Those green sticks stuck up liek three feet. :( SO yeah, That is going to be $70 very well spent in a few WEEKS when we won't be out there shoveling it all by hand again this year. Or since I was a grown up and got it fixed in time, we will have a totally DRY winter! :D You can thank me later. ;)
  
• Oh someone asked in the comment sof my mother ever acknowledged her birthday card. Nope. She never said a word about it to me. And she has not felt the need to contact me in any way since she has been home. Yeah, I shake my head, too. It's the best our relationship has been in a decade!

That's all I got for now. I need to go do a word sprint and then get some brainy sleep!!

So my mother is home. I ended up not calling her back in hospital, mainly because I am just so very....done.  And also, the crying..it serves no purpose but to froth her up. But she called me this afternoon and was all business, sounding in good health again. They got home after midnight last night. She will be needing home oxygen for some time and she  avoided my questions about that  aside from saying she would be getting it. 

In typical fashion, the woman who had desperately sobbed down my phone line on Monday could not be arsed to devote her attention to me for 10 damn minutes on the phone when other people were there. She kept speaking to someone else in her house while on the phone with me. That's charming. Really. While still trying to make small talk with me. She aske me what I was up to and I told her my car was being repaired and it was $500 I han't planned on spending today  (i thought it was universally acceptable to bitch about the cost of car repairs?)and she was just like "oh, um, yeah" I could hear her talking to someone else while I answered her. So rude.

And now onto some random bits and pieces:

• I have been to Bayshore Mall three, count 'em, THREE times since Sunday. Dayum. The Man has been 4 times, he had to take his ipod touch in to the apple shop last night to try and suss out some software glitch with alarm and headphone volume and then i tuned out and whatever. It's logged. For those of youwho have not been subjected to Bayshore, it's a huge, pretty outdoor mall that is set up so it's like driving through a small town. Quaint. Except it is a CLUSTERFUCK because it's like a tiny small town with 1 street that is busy as hell 100% of the time.  Tonight when we were there they were doing hayrack rides!!! Because it's not shitty enough to try and drive through there without involving a horde of children and livestock?! Good Hell!!!
• I was doing new yoga audiobook last night before bedtime, some pranayamas (breathing exercises) and imagine my surprise when all of a sudden the lady on the ipod was telling me to lift my pelvic floor. WTF? Why does breathing need to involve my vajayjay?! Is this normal or did I download some sort of freaky vagina yoga? I was pretty sure I knew what pelvic floor lifting was but I googled it today to make sure (I was right) and the site said to be sure to not hold it for more than 8 seconds. What happens after 8 seconds? Can you break your vagina? Holy crap. It scared me a little.
• My car started making a noise last week or so. It sounded awful and got worse when I made a left turn, and stopped when I made a right turn. I checked Car Talk and asked google and they told me it was a wheel bearing. Which isn't something you can let go. So into the shop she went for 2 days. Not a wheel bearing. It was a piece of the brake heat shield rubbing on the left, but it was possibly caused by the ball joint boots which were going bad, typical wear for a car with 135k miles on it. So, about $200 more than I wanted/planned to spend, but equally as important. And while getting that information, I may have uttered the most amazingly grown up words of my life. "Since you have it there and have the wheels off, would you please look at the brakes, they haven't been a problem but winter is coming." The back brakes needed an adjustment and a cleaning for $30, but they are all in fine shape. SWEET. They also did a general safety inspection and it's all good.
• Except...lol....on my drive home I could not make the radio work beucase it is the original Honda part with an anti-theft device. Here is how that works: if you lose power, the radio will not start until you enter a code. How you get that code is to call your dealer with the serial number on the back of the radio. Or, conveniently, take it to Honda to pay $100 for them to take it out and look up the code. Are you kidding me? So, me, the OWNER of the car cannot get the code without paying, but the cocksucker who is stupid (and desperate) enough to steal a standard honda stereo has all the information he needs to make it work. Screw that. If I have to pay $100, I'm just getting a new ipod compatible stereo. An no, there is no sticker in my glove box, on inside the main fuse box in the engine compartment, or in my trunk, on on the outside edges of the glove box, or in the coin tray and I do not have an ashtray in my car so it's not on the back of that. I had the information with all of my car information. IN MY BASEMENT in a filing cabinet 2.5 feet off the ground. So um..yeah. I called the dealer that sold the car to my inlaws and explained, and the service guy looked it up in the computer but said the code wasn't there. It was a long shot, it was 10 years ago. My last try is to call Honda directly and see if they can help me without a serial number for the part. And I will be calling the mechanic to ask if they have any avice, but if they did put the power saver thingie in the power outlet not even called a lighter in this car) when they disconnected the battery, I think it is faulty so I can't honestly ask them to pay for a repair like that since it's not actually their problem. It seems frivolous, but a car radio is really one of those things I think I must have.
•  Oh yes, it's on. Sunday.
• I am forcing The Man to dress up as Billy Mays tomorrow. Dead Billy Mays if I get my way.
• I am going to bed now! Happy Halloween!!!!

i was all set for a fun and frothy post with crafty goodness. but you're nt getting that. You're getting angst today.

My mom went on a cruise.
She got sick her last day.
Since Sunday morning she has been in a hospital in Ft. Lauderale with pneumonia. Those playing the home game know she hae 4 heart attacks last year (but lied to me and said it was one, and very very minor and then threw it in my face a couple of months ago that it was 4 and they were NOT minor), so you know, this isn't good. It's not viral or bacterial, though, it's from mold in her ship cabin. The cabin she thought smelled like raw sewage..and yet...she slept in it for a week.

I know she is sick, really really sick. They didn't contact me until Sunday evening, because my mom left her cell phone at home in Naperville, IL and apparently told no one about my new  unlisted phone number. Surprise! Of course, this was my fault somehow. How inconsiderate of me to change my phone number 6 weeks before they went on vacation, make sure they knew about it and not make sure they ALL put it in their cell phones. yeah, i'm a total bitch like that. So she called me on Sunday night and we spoke briefly. And we spoke on Monday when I called her , because I knew she was very sick and i figure I could giver her that, you know. I could make a phone call and maintain a distance.

She was suposed to come hom yesterday, on Monday I asked her if she would be traveling with oxygen. She said there was no need for that at all, she was fine. Well, there is a need. She wasn't allowed to come home yesteray because...they want her to travel with oxygen now. And you cannot just get a portable tank willy nilly and take it on an airplane. There is a lot of paperwork involved. So as of now, they hope to get her home Thursday, which makes her desperately sad.

But, she is my mother, so there is more to this. She has enough energy to be doing some game playing while in hospital. But my aunt emailed me about it last night an clued me in on something I had no idea about. My mother has COPD.
I had no idea. Oh, I suspected something was wrong with her lungs, because she can never seem to breathe. But every time she speaks to me she gets so damn mad at me I thought that was why she was wheezing and puffing. I did know she was having edema issues, but when i had asked about that she told me it was her kidneys and was from her heart attack. She lied.
It's from the emphysema. And since I googled it last night, it appears that she has pretty severe COPD from the symptoms I know about  and that's just well...it is what it is. I know you don't live very long with severe COPD, it's how my granny died and frankly my granny was a far stronger woman than my mother will ever be even in her late 70s. My mom turned 60 three weeks ago and has no interest in fighting this since she has continued to smoke after being diagnosed, even thought she has a nebulizer at home full time and you know...her heart attack fest last year.

And again, she did not tell me about this at all. And in fact, lied to me about some of her symptoms. I can't wrap my head around her motivation fully right now. There is a tiny part of me that thinks "Oh, she was protecting me" but that's not true. She was using it as currency, her serious illness was her Hail Mary Pass and I think she has been biding her time to throw it in my face. Waiting for the perfect moment for me to lose control and yell at her and then "hello, how can you be so mean to a dying woman?!" Surprise! She is willing to go that far to manipulate me to get what she wants. And I am slightly astounded because, even for her, that's fucking crazy.
And I don't know quite how she ended up so broken and why she is so willing to try and break me. But I o see that the stronger I have gotten, the more desperate she has gotten. And she gets much more willing to hurt me deeply. For what? To be closer to me?
I pity her, but today I don't feel sad for her anymore. I feel angry that she is so willing to do this. She has broken things so badly and really led me to think it was all my fault and that I was selfish and I was the problem. I don't know why she needs to push me away, but it has worked, the only problem is that it worked better than she planned and now her efforts to pull me back in don't work anymore.

On Monday she cried and cried on the phone when I called her. I was asking her to stop crying because it's just not good for her right now and she carried on saying she was so scared and thought she was going to die and how she needed me in her life and understood things better now. And it's all manipulation.
I think I am expected to call her today and I really don't want to. I'm not feeling too anxious about it, I just really don't want to hear her voice. I don't want anything to do with her.

And sometime i will tell you about my sister, because she has dug rock bottom even deeper than I thought possible.

"i do not care about birthdays, i never remember birthdays or any of that suff, they are just another day, they mean nothng to me! You know this is how I am. I have never in my life forgotten your birthday!"

Allow me to translate this for those of you who do not speak crazymother:

"If it is my birthday, I care. A lot."

Instead of posting a facebook message, I bought a card. I like cards. I'm a card person, I like the personal touch of sending a borthday card. I didn't send it on time, I was debating sending it at all. My husband kept urging me to ignore it. I really thought about that. I thought about it too long and the card did not get mailed on Saturday. Then Sunday evening I started to feel sickly, Monday I was downright miserable with the nutmeg migraine, tuesday the pain was gone but the dizziness and icky feeling lingered. I could have called on the phone, but I won't lie: I didn't want to talk to her. I felt too siclkly to deal with drama and since my whole plan is to not engage her, I knew it would be pointless. She would find a crack in my wall and I would fight back and 1. I will never ever win and 2. it was her birthday.  

So I still had this card. I ran errands yesterday: post office to drop off a larger Etsy order that was insured, so I wanted a receipt for the time of mailing from the AWESOME Fred Johns Station post office where it is clean and smells nice and the people are NICE and HELPFUL and the patrons never smell like beer, or ass, or worse. Perhaps you thought these qualities were inherent in a postal outlet. Go hang out at the Hampton Post Office and then you,too, will sing the praises of the glory of the Fred Johns Station on Silver Spring and 91st. Mmmkay? I forgot to throw the card in my handbag. Then I ran to the market. I grocery shop all the time these days. Like at the real grocery store. I know. Just the small Sentry on Lisbon and 92nd, but it's still kind of a big goddamn deal for me and every time I go it's another bit of victory, it's another checkmark in the positive experience column. But don't let me get sidetracked....

I got home with my groceries, put them away and checked my email to see if Paypal has decided if a payment I got on Monday is legit or not so I can ship her stitchmarkers. They have not (which is a whole other pile of WTF) Then because it is to me like crack to, well..my sister...I hopped on facebook.
And after about 2 seconds of weeding through mafia wars and farmtown notices ( I don't play, but i get everyone's notices...) I realized my mom's crap was gone from the highlights sidebar.
Yep, she unfriended me. I guess it is because I did not make a big public to-do about her birthday? She did not give me a reason, and I'm not asking for one. And I noticed it hours after she did it rather than taking 7 days. I guess she thought she would fix my wagon and make me grovel for her attention and approval.

I went ahead and ran and dropped the card in the mail though, I jotted a note on the envelope about it being late since I was sick with a migraine since it was the truth. I see that's a mixed message since I feel much more relieved than hurt by her petty behavior. But I also know that it will come up at some point that I went out of my way to hurt her by ignoring her birthday (oh, i know! the crazy..it burrrrrns) and the truth was that I was just unwell.
But since this time it was her choice, I'm letting it lie and won't be adding her back in even on the off chance that she feels silly when she gets a card today or tomorrow and adds me back. I find it slightly amusing, in a weird way. I think it's just rich, really. She hasn't been able to get a rise out of me thus far  through either sending me private messages saying I should stop being mad at her "for my own sake" (holy WTF, batman?!) or posting things on my wall that have hidden meanings so I guess this was how she felt she could get her big dose of "Vitamin Victim" this week. I think it is more likely she will send the card back as return to sender if she is feeling this petty, but if she does, it's her choice. I only have to feel OK about my actions, and I feel ok about wishing her well even though it was late. Too late, I gues.

Oh and guess what made me sick? Probably a slice of cake my husband picked up for our anniversary on Sunday two days before her birthday. Did she acknowledge my anniversary in any way whatsoever? Of course not. See, she cracks me up.  I started reading this book last night called Will I Ever Be Good Enough?: Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers and um, yeah.... I'll be good enough. I only have to be good enough for me.  Also, I got a brand new chocolate brown hoodie from the UPS guy about 15 minutes ago. I love it. So I put it on right away, working on that not saving thing....:

So in internet terms I gues I am now dispwn3d.

 

I'm a saver. I save the best bite for last, save my favorite part of a project, save my favorite tv shows on the dvr until I can watch them all by myself with no one interrupting me. I am not so good at saving money, and the virginity ship sailed in 1990, but other than those two instances, I like to save things.

On the one hand, it sounds nice, because I have a treasure that is special. In reality, it usually blows.
Like the perfect white button down shirt I bought in college. From The Gap. I didn't really fit into anything at The Gap since they didn't do plus sizes, but I did find the shirt there and it fit and I splurged a whole $34 on it. I think I wore it twice. Once for a class and once on a date with some dork from MSOE who did his damndest to get me out of it the rest of the night. But I was just not going to take off My Good Shirt. Oh, I allowed some unbuttoning to occur, but I was not going to sully the white shirt with anything else and it was most certainly not going to get untucked from my acid washed jeans. Shut up, it was 1993.
It was our only date as he was happy to tell my friend he didn't normally date girls "as big as" me, I'm properly fat now, but then I was a size 16 and gravity was still my friend. From the way he kissed, more spelunking than seduction, and freaked out with the giddyness of seeing a boob in real life I am sure he could have ended that sentence after "I don't normally date." and it would have been accurate. And seriously, did you think I was going to put out for a $7 pasta dinner? Really? And some iced tea? Really really?
The shirt never seemed quite as crisp and perfect again after that date, I think he rubbed the magic out of it.

And then there was Dilys, my most favoritest perfume ever. It just smelled like me. I got it in college when I had next to no money an my mom was trying to decide if she would pay for books or not as she was surprised that I needed to buy them each and every semester. I said "WTF?!" about that, too.  So I was working on campus, off campus and babysitting on the side that semester to buy books and I spent my Christmas money on a bottle of this stuff. And I wore it all the time and loved it. It was that perfume where people actually stopped me to ask what it was, not in a creepy way, it was usually other women who wanted to get it.
And then it was discontinued.
So I stopped using it.
And perfume does not keep forever, but I didn't know that. And instead of having half a bottle to savor for years to come I ended up with half a bottle that smelled sour and unbalanced and wasted.

I bought an apple green cashmere cardigan with pretty sparkly buttons. My cat dragged it off the shelf and used it as a pillow and turns out, Marge likes to chew on cashmere. Full of little spitty holes. I wear it with nighties in the spring and fall, though, because, goddammit, it is CASHMERE.

The perfect white cotton summer nightie met the perfect storm of sudden epic menstruation while sleeping and remaining horizontal for hours. EW.

The apple green suede shoes that I lusted after for months and finally scored for something like 80% off. I wore them one time and Marge, who does seem to love the things I love (especially my shoes), fell asleep on them. And then woke up and threw up in them. I had to wash them out with soap and water and they are still OK, but I still know what went on in those shoes, so the wearing of them is slightly tainted. 
 
Long lusted after fantastic yarn finally acquired, and then admired. Knits up looking like clown puke and is heavily pooling  in a color I never even thought was there from the pictures of it.....

Best down comforter ever both in quality and the crazy ridiculous price of less than $50? Pissed on by Elvis 3 days after the basement flooded last summer...so no way to immediately wash it and the only way to combat cat piss is immediate washing.

The list goes on and on, I have gotten better but not totally. This morning in the shower I decided to pull out my big ass jar of philosophy hot salt scrub in the Amazing Grace scent. I bought it last winter and used it twice and it cost a somehwat reasonable $25 for a big ass tub of it, but last year things were pretty tight so it was a fluffy indulgence. But once again, the "saving it for good" silliness got me and the scent has gone off and it no longer heats up when it gets wet, which is kind of the fun part of a hot salt scrub.
But it got me thinking, as I carried on with my slightly odd smelling exfoliation that now is the time for "good". Every day is the time to use the good stuff, why should I save it for some better day. Maybe the day is better when I have little things that I Iove to perk it up.


But I admit that I just bid on an ancient and tiny bottle of Dilys from ebay in case it still smells decent....

I'm back! i'm alive! My sister never got me! Apparently she was after my...car? That's right, my car. See, we offered it to her a few years ago when we had three cars. She would not lower herself to a used older car.
OK, crackie!
She has reconsidered.
But too bad, so sad the car is no longer available, and besides, it didn't get any younger!
But she did not show up at my house, that I know of, maybe she drove by. Whatever. Maybe now she gets that I'm done.

( Keep reading, only a little more wangst and then PHOTOS! No, not of my wang.... )

Yeah, it's been a busy week in crazytown.
I added my mother back as a friend. That situation is what it is. And as it turns out, being in some contact with her is a good thing. Which does not at all mean things are happy families, it means we are speaking.
Because my sister has now unleashed crazy like she has never unleashed it before. Which is really saying a hell of a lot.
She has a friend from high school who has gotten back in touch with her over the summer, that friend lives near my city.
 Apparently the grounds for the sister getting kicked out last week were pretty serious. Obviously she is shooting smack again and probably never stopped.  But she has also made some mighty serious allegations of abuse, which is what she does every time she is threatened. It's always bullshit. And somehow my mother always takes her back, which is also bullshit.

But this time and all that...

Anyway, my phone rings last night with a local hospital on the id. No one I know is in hospital so I let voicemail catch it figuring if whoever called didn't realize it was a wrong number I would ring back and let them know. it was my sister. I said LOCAL, right?
Yeah. She was very chatty and upbeat saying how we needed to talk, how under no circumstances to let my mother know where she was or that she called because they had gone crazy, and she made sue I knew she knows where I live. Riiiiiiight. I left it on voicemail and ignored it.
On a hunch I checked where her friend lives...yup..same community as the hospital. Well, that makes sense. The one person in the world who really doens't know how destructive she can be who might actually think she can be helped.

My phone rang again at 8:30 am this morning. She's not as happy this time. her voice is brittle and I can feel her outrage at being ignored simmering away as she tries to sound like we have spoken to eachother in the past 3 years and that I should give a shit about her.  Again, no one can know where she is (then she should have blocked the caller ID) and she WILL be talking to me. If I do not answer her call her words were "I will stalk you. I will call you every hour of every day until you call me back"
I had a new phone numbe from AT&T by 9 am. Because FUCK THAT SHIT.
And the new one is unlisted.
And I did contact my mother mainly to let her know that this friend clearly is hosting my sister and she needs to end contact with her, and to find out if the police want her at all, because I would be happy to tell them where she is.

So if the crazy bitch shows up at my house, I get to call the cops. Again.

Oh yeah, because two idiots drag raced down my street on Monday night and lost control and drove across my yard by the street, kssed my tree and then smashed into the tree in my neighbor's yard. NICE.
It's been a busy week around here!
I was wide awake and spinning yarn when it happened and at first I thought my spinning wheel was making an odd sound and until KABOOM. I have no idea what hapened to the kid who crashed but he had a head injury and was running around at first until a neighbor made him sit down, then he laid down and then he didn't get back up. The ambulance took him away.

I can haz boring nao?

Wait wait...I also got a spinning wheel! I will have a happy crazy-free spinning and knitting post soon. Cross my heart.

I knew it was too easy.
My mom discovered the unfriending tonight and had a nervous breakdown.
She also finally kicked my sister out of her life permamanently today. Um, again.
Did I know this? Of course not. Why did I not know this? Because the woman has not spoken to me since March 20th when she said she would have to call me for a while as she could not speak freely in her own home. And then she never called me.  And I do not read minds so I had no idea any of this was going on. So bad timing on my part. Oh and FYI, when someone tells you they cannot talk and will have to call you and then never do, what they mean is " i am going to be very dramatic, but please call me next week like none of this ever happened."

Did she call me tonight? Of course not. Her friend, the daughter she never had called me to ask what my problem was and to let me know my mother was gasping for breath and sobbing because her heart was broken. So I told her what my problem was. That I had enough. That I don't know what to do with a woman who refuses to talk to me but wails that no one loves her. That I will never measure up to what she wants in a daughter, that I will never feel good enough, that I had reached out again and again and again and come back with nothing in my hand and I gave up.
And then I got a bit better and finally when I got strong enough to take a stand I damn near killed her. I was told that she sobbed so hard she could not breathe and had to take nitroglycerin.

She hasn't called me because she is angry at me for not coming to see her last year after her heart attack. No wait, she had 4 heart attacks. But she lied to me and told me it was one, though. So I had no idea how serious it really was all along, yet she is angry at me for not taking it as seriously as she would have liked. It makes my brain hurt, too.
 So she is mad at me, and I accept that. She has a right to be angry at me, she wants something from me that I am unable to give, I disappoint her. But I cannot give her what I don't have to give. And seeing her last year and even at this time, is more than I can do.  She has a right to be angry, I have a right to do what is within my capacity for my well being. And during that time I called her every day, I arranged for healthy meals to be prepared and frozen by a local dinner by design place so all my stepdad had to do was pick them up and put them in their freezer, I made her a quilt, I kept in contact with her caregivers. Well, I tried to keep in contact with her caregivers, but they did not return the favor as she was hospitalied twice and no one bothered to even call me. They were punishing me for not being there I suppose. That's nice. I did everything I could do for her within my power. And it was not enough for her and for over a year she has been nursing this grudge and being angry at me. Yes she had a horrible thng happen to her, but my response and what I was going through at that time, was not all about her.

I know that my actions are a natural consequence to her actions. I know that I did not cause her heart to race because I do not have that power to control another person's body (and if i did Glenn Beck would pretty much be shitting his pants every time i wanted. Which is always).  I know that if she was not so messed up that things would not have reached this point. I know that as crappy a daughter as I may be, I have earned my crazy by having two freaky parents every bit as much as she has earned her crazy and that I have the right to control my exposure to hurtful things. I know that she is using her heart issue to manipulate me into getting something that she wants and I think it speak volumes about her that she will play that card but won't call me for months on end. She has no other tactic to try and control me. I do not accept "you know your mother will not discuss her feelings" as an acceptable reason for this bullshit to continue. If she is going to have somone call me and basically tell me I am such a bitch that I about gave her a heart attack, she can discuss some goddamned feelings.

I added her back as a facebook friend because if it makes her happy to see pictures of my cats and read my lame status updates about what I am making for dinner then I can give her that. I regret that it came at a time when things were so bad for her, but I don't regret the choice I made to cut that tie. I do not foresee us mending fences, because she will not accept blame whatsoever, she will not tell me anything and she does not want to listen to anything I have to say about how life events that we have both lived through may have affected me. She does have to accept my add now, and who knows if she will even do that. You just rolled your eyes, didn't you?
I did too.

 

You can probably guess this might be about my mom. It is.
I just unfriended her on Facebook. Why is this even a thing, you might wonder? Because Facebook was our last  connection. We've not spoken on the phone since March, when she said she would call me back. She just occasionaly cracks a joke about my status, like when we flooded in April she cracked a joke about my laundry. Because 8 inches of water is fucking hilarious, yo. thanks for taking 10 seconds to stop and think how upsetting that might have been for me because I don't have another fucking ten grand for a new furnace and all new appliances 10 months after my last round.
She didn't call then to see if we were OK, either.
I've not seen her in person since the debacle that was Christmas 2007, though she begged me to come see her last winter I could not do it.  I was simply not well enough to do it and her response to my telling her about the agoraphobia was to say she had to go pay her cleaning lady. She never spoke of it again with me.

She gave me terrible grief about not seeing her at Christmas, even when as luck would have it on Christmas eve day we had a leak from the roof (yes the new roof, it has been fixed) that was filling 2 gallon buckets every couple of hours and causing a HUGE section of my kitchen ceiling to begin to sag until I figured out where the water was pooling up there and jammed some screwdrivers through the plaster to get it out before it all caved in. But she still gave me grief about not being there with her on Christmas.

Then in July there was a family reunion in Indiana. My mom went, several cousins I haven't seen in over 20 years went.
Pictures were posted.
No one told me about it.
My mom seems to have been the organizer, so I guess she doesn't consider me to be family. When the penny dropped and I left a comment she did not respond. Nice.

We had our busted car towed last week and she was shocked that we still own it. And yeah, we do still have a 16 year old car, because you know what? When you give me an incredibly generous gift like a 2 year old car back in 1995, I take care of it. I take care of it so good that the mechanics are amazed at what good shape the innards are in and it has no problems. Sure, it's not the cutest thing on the road and the upholstery is disintegrating from the sun, but it's a good car. As long as it runs on routine maintenance and repairs, we see no reason to take on the debt of a car note for something for Jeff to commute to work in and sit in a parking lot all day long.
Also, see the part about how last summer my house cost me over 25k, so yeah, no new car for me in the near future.

But today was the day I finally decided to put down the shit sandwhich and look for something else for lunch.
She posted something about the daughter she never had.

She has two daughters.
What the fuck?
I am thrilled for her to have found a good friend in A, truly. A stepped in last year and took care of my mother in every possible way when she was literally unable to care for herself and I have no ill will towards her at all.
But my other didn't say she was "like a daughter to me" or  even just plain daughter. No, the daughter she never had.
She has two daughters and while one of them is a crack/smack/xanax whore, the other is me. Im not perfect by any stretch, I'm difficult and I annoy the shit out of myself. But I have hung in with this as long as I could, somehow expecting things to change. They never change.  I shore my weak spots up, I harden myself and retract into my cocoon to try and protect myself and nothing works. She always finds a way to get to me.

And now, I'm done.
And the relief I felt after clicking that little blue square tells me this is probably the right decision for me.

I just drove past a fancy brand new church and the side of the building had huge letters on it that said "the bush is still burning"
and all I can think is how much I wish I was a spray painting thug so that I could go back tonight and tag it with "so get some ointment" or something else really mature.

A pile of bags and zippies and a needle case and box bag all to be listed today.

I've been busy sewing! FYI, the feed dog is the crunchy metal bit that comes up out of the sewing machine to feed your fabric through. Putting your nose to it would actually be quite horrifyng as it would be getting pierced by the needle...bleargh. Then I was busy cropping photos and today I will be busy updating Etsy and then I will be going upstairs to start it all over again!

I have been knitting as well, I have one sleeve done on mky Bohus sweater, I am now in a sea of stockinette for the body. Hopefully this evening I can take some tine to chill out and just knit knit knit on the deck for a while. Ahhhhhh.

Oh, we dd not get basement water after all. Knock on wood. The heaviest rains skirted around my corner of Milwaukee, so we were good.

Speaking of Milwaukee, our mayor kicks ASS.

Oh and I ordered a spinning wheel......
 

Ok, maybe not becuae we really. need. some. rain. but could it maybe not be....4 inches in an afternoon?
Please?
Just a normal soaking rain?

We are under a t-storm warning now and I read on WISN that this ystem dumped 2-3 inches in 20 minutes in the western part of the state and my breakfast was ready to reappear. I have prepared as much as I possibly can, I have both pumps at the ready with their new wider sump pum style hoses, the basement window has been prised open while I was still calm enough to work it ever so delicately with a screwdriver instead of freaking out and hitting the glass with a hammer to get the hoses out once the water is comoing up from the floor.
I unplugged everything and did a check to make sure no clothing was on the baseent floor under the laundry chute. and i once again tested the water alarm.

and now I wait and hope the storm will go around us or at least not flood my basement again.
And iIhope John Malan shits his pants royally for showing weather footage from 20 years ago when County Stadium flooded  so badly. I thought I might be safe in late summer, but no, he had to dig that scary old shit up even when the forecast was nothing but sun and some showers ahead. Thanks for that. Really, asshole.  

I am back to the point where I was last week when I had to rip out my sweater. Nice! Now I need to begin on a sleeve to avoid getting the dreaded sleeve burnout syndrome. I figure i will whip through one sleeve pretty fast, knit on the body a bunch and then do the other sleeve. I would like to have this sweater done by early September, but given my best laid plans always go to shit, we'll see how that works! I want to be wearing this sweater this winter, though!
It was a fantastic morning to do a bit of knitting out on the deck, warm but not too warm (yet!) and very breezy and not too sunny. I listened to  podcast and enjoyed a strong mug of PG Tips tea. Ahhhh.

With these shoes:

and some sweet handknit socks!
I scored these in a sale last week for $13.19. They are selling at Zappos right now for $51! And I love them. the price of Payless, but actually good for feet, not bad at all! I have knit several pair of socks this year and plan to crank out many more before the end of 2009, so I will hve plenty of choices to wear with these!