tactfullyblunt

"Now you stab mommy"

That's what a man told his son. After he himself finished stabbing his wife, the man gave the knife to his son and said that. His son? TWO-YEARS-OLD.

A man takes his daughter on a plane ride. Straight into her grandma's house, killing himself and the daughter. She? EIGHT-YEARS-OLD [Grandma's ok though].

A man has some heartburn with his wife for reasons still unknown, but suspicions are that it's because he thought she was traveling to her job in Puerto Rico too often. What does he do? Dismembers her with their two kids in the house. FOUR- and SIX-YEARS-OLD.

What. The. Fuck. People?

What kind of a world are we living in where stuff like this happens? To KIDS!

It's not like this is the first time things like this have happened, nor is it the first time where I've been left agog with wonder at the human condition. Somehow it just seems that much more shocking if kids are involved, because I've heard variations of these stories involving other adults more times than I care to consider, and while it's not ok, the "wrongness" is dialed down a little.

Does it make it worse that these people did these things to their own children? Is it any better that things much worse than this are happening half a world away between adults who are completely unrelated to the children they are murdering, mutilating and discarding? When I start considering all of the angles, it boggles my mind. I'm feeling a little nauseated, actually.

....

Unrelated, but this morning I was turning into my gym, thinking happy thoughts, looking forward to spring when it occurred to me that I had no idea when the last time I called my mother was. I wondered how she was doing, and made a happy mental note to pick up the phone to call her today. Only a small blip on the radar was the thought that she's probably annoyed with me for not calling sooner. Oh, well, I thought, maybe we can make plans to do something together--I could use some sewing pointers.

And then it hit me that she has been dead over two years now. And then it hit me again that this is the first time I thought about that and didn't feel like I'd been punched in the gut. Of course I wasn't happy about it, but my thinking was actually, "Oh, well then, that explains why I've not spoken to her in a while" and then a mental laugh (and not a malicious one either).

And then? Then I realized that this was a new way for me to think of her--that while she was alive I would never have been happy about calling her. Nor would I have looked forward to making plans to do something with her. For that matter, I don't know if I'd have taken up sewing had she still been alive. Maybe, I don't know. Regardless, the thought of her put a smile on my face, a smile that she isn't alive to take away from me (as she did numerous times in life; sharing in another's happiness? not her strong suit).

I don't cotton to revisionist history, but I'm wondering if this is a sign that I can have a better relationship with her now that she's dead than I'd ever have had while she was alive?

bouncing, baby

I was amused to find this morning that someone had asked Jeeves the following: Give me a sentence using the word diatribe. Apparently, even though I'm somewhere around number four on the list, I'm not so much feeling diatribe this morning as much as conflicted and mental.

I have been watching CNN coverage and am completely overwhelmed by what I've seen. I can't even imagine what it is like to be in the areas hit by the hurricane, but I do know what it's like to be here and feel totally overcome by the need to do something to help these people. Somehow donating to the Red Cross doesn't really feel like doing anything and neither does donating money to my local parish for a predominately/historically Catholic area's relief. I'm just totally overwhelmed...

Last night, on my comfortable, dry couch, after eating catfish and corn on the cob, my brain finally did what it always does and turned the situation into something much more embarrassingly personal for me. I'd like to think the thought didn't come because I'm so egotistical to think that everything that happens in the world has to relate directly to me, but I can't even push that thought away knowing how self-centered I really am. Still, there it was, slapping me in the face.

If I try to believe the best about myself, I can only say that perhaps it was all that water, all of those people displaced, all of the desolation and desperation I felt at seeing them and knowing that I was not in a place to help them because I was trying so hard not to figuratively drown myself. That I was totally empathisizing with their loss...but any further comparison between the tsunami and this situation pretty much pales and I'm not the person to do it any justice.

In truth, I realize I saw the comparison, the timeline and the devastation through a filter that made it not seem so random--in a very dark way. Exactly nine months prior to this, almost to the day, my mother passed away during the aftermath of the tsunami. She kept saying there were people there she didn't recognize, far too many people in the room, please tell them to come back later.

So I'm wondering: 9 months. Water. Overwhelming sadness. What kind of thing is being birthed here?

state of disunion

It is a commentary either on how ignorant we are as a nation or on how high of an esteem we have for our current presidente that the networks told him they would interrupt his speech if he went past 8pm. This all because the masses wouldn't know what to do if they weren't able to see The Donald or The Idiots on that Island.

I don't know whether to laugh or to cry, but since I've been doing so much crying lately I think I'll laugh.

lapsed

Those who know me well know that I've almost always been a religion shopper. I have picked up and put down all of the mainstream Western religions at least once, and most before I was 20. There was also a brief time I dabbled in Mormonism. That choice haunts me to this day in the form of missionaries who seem to mysteriously know exactly where I am at all times (in fact, in college, two of my friends planned a practical joke wherein two young men dressed up as missionaries were supposed to come to my dorm looking for me--it never gelled). Last weekend the Jehovahs, whom Bill lovingly calls "The Christers", came to our house, asking for me by name. I hid in the bathroom while he answered the door. I think the sight of his hair drove them away in fear. But I digress.

As I have mentioned before, I think I was looking for the organized religion that would bring me the same emotional communion with The Big Guy that other people appear to have. I don't know that I've ever found it, but that doesn't mean that I don't hear the siren song of my so-called Birth Church. In fact, last December I drove past the chapel where we were married several times thinking that I should stop in or go to Mass or even just talk to the priest. But I didn't go, telling myself that I was too busy and that God already knew what I was facing in the next few weeks so he didn't need a visit from me just to catch up.

This week it's been harder than usual to ignore the fact that I'm about to fall off the wagon of the fallen off the wagon. I know what today is. I know the Mass schedule (I have already missed the two this morning because my sleep schedule had me up from 2:30-4:30 am and then had me oversleep). I know when to be there to mark my transition into Lent. I also know that most of this drive has something to do with my mother's fanatical Catholicism paired with her death. Maybe it's my small way of memorializing something desperately important to her which she felt disappointed that I didn't share.

I don't really know, but if she and TBG think they're going to tag team me and make me a fanatic, well then, they've got Another Thing (or Think, each to their own preference) Coming.

unlucky at cards

Since I've been battling a cold for the last few days, it's a miracle that I was even outside yesterday working in the yard. I was digging away, planting the temporary perennial bed when I had an idea of epic proportions: since the birds are eating so much of the birdseed from the feeder that's right next to the bed, certainly they are thirsty after all that dry seed. What if I made a rustic bird bath for them?

So I staggered off in the direction of the greenhouse, naturally loopy with the sickie head feeling. And then...I hit the same durn spot I always twist my ankle in, only this time it was a doozie. First my right foot wiggled this way and then it wobbled that way and the next thing you know, I'm staring up at the canopy wondering if Bill would hear me if I yelled, whether the best thing would be to drag myself up the hill and then up the back stairs and through the house to wait for him on the couch, or whether I should just lie there, hoping that eventually he'd be driven to the garage/shed for a tool and see me sprawled in front of the greenhouse. Like a dope, I opted for option D, which involved getting myself in a standing position and walking to the front of the house, righteously believing that this was NOT broken.

This seemed like a good idea at the time, and truthfully there wasn't all that much pain, until I told Bill that he was going to have to drive me to work Tuesday morning. He told me to wrap the ankle in an Ace bandage which I could never find, regardless of going up and down the stairs about five times. This turned out to be the straw that broke the camel's back: stairs are not your legs' friend when you've hurt yourself in a monumental fashion. Finally I had to wimp out and ask Bill to come inside and help me position the stupid ice bag on my foot since it kept slipping on me.

In the midst of Bill's mad dash to get the ice bag, a friend called. I tried to avoid the conversation as best I could, knowing that I was in no place to concentrate on anything. Bill wisely put me on the phone, where my friend told me that another friend had been killed in a boating accident this weekend. I wasn't that close to this person, but they were there for me during a time in my life when I felt entirely alone. It was a complete shock to me that he was gone, and that, paired with the increasing pain, made it difficult to think straight. Sadly, I was forced to baby out of that conversation to get off the phone and discuss plans to go to the hospital with Bill.

Eventually, we went. Two crutches, an ace bandage, an air cast and a prescription Motrin later, we came home to ice the terribly sprained ankle. Thankful, very thankful, that it wasn't broken.

RIP Henry.

at long last: flibbertigibbet

All this responsibility at such an early age made her a bitchy flibbertigibbet.--Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five

To the people who know intimate details about my life, I have a shocking revelation: I'd have to say, overall, that I was born lucky. Yes, I know it sounds strange, but at the ripe old age of 33 and some months, I can say that I really believe that.

Looking back, while I often got in trouble in elementary school for "spending too much time talking to [my] neighbors", I was an extremely introspective child. My father said the first time he saw me, I was lying in my hospital crib counting my fingers and toes while the other babies slept. "It was the strangest thing--I've never seen a baby so wide awake and aware of their surroundings. It was like you were taking inventory, making sure that everything you needed made it through ok." In over thirty years he has always ended the story by saying with a far-off look in his eye, "You were one baby who came into this world with their eyes wide open".

Arriving on the big blue marble wired for sound that way proved to be a mixed blessing: I learned before kindergarten that things at home weren't exactly the most nurturing and supportive, and sometimes you just have to make your own puppet shows to survive. I had some earnest discussions with myself as a child, the point of which I distinctly remember: "It's going to be ok. When you get big, you will be a better person than this. People will love you." Which, looking back, was pretty responsible parenting on my part.

With all that inate introspection, it's no big surprise that I had an angst-filled childhood and adolescence, most of which I successfully kept to myself. I spent the majority of my teens and early 20s not really liking myself and blaming my parents for all the messed up crap they fed me with my similac. One of my favorite fantasies from that time centered around the glorious day they would admit to the (many) mistakes they made raising me, tell me that they lucked out by having such a well-adjusted child in the first place, and confess that they were powerless to stop the spiral into insanity which they insisted upon calling "parenting". (PS I'm still waiting for this fantasy to come true!)

I don't know when it started to happen, but somewhere along the way I began shriving myself of the anger towards my parents and actually started forgiving them. My mother was only 24 when she had me, and very immature for her age. My father was 32, and not much better. No, they weren't the best parents in the world. Yes, they were incredibly lucky to have me as their first child. But through an adult's eyes, I can now see how horribly mismatched a couple they were and how completely unprepared for the rigors of child-rearing they remain. Like they say in baseball, if you can't come together to form a cohesive team, you're sure as hell not going to the show.

I feel sorry for them, knowing how much their energies must have been sapped when it came to caring for one child, let alone the next four. Sure, they had me there, helping raise, protect and defend all of us, but there was only so much I could take on, being a child myself. And while I don't dislike my siblings (it's always nice to have someone in the trenches with you), it is because of one of these additional spawn that I am writing this longwinded diatribe.

This sibling {X} is in her early 20s right now, and much more of a bleater than I was, even at my worst. In fact, I'd go so far as to say she is a bigger bleater than all four of her siblings combined. Were you to ask her, she'd tell you that she's this way because none of the rest of us had the balls to tell Mom and Dad "THE TRUTH" (having had my share of knock-down, drag out, hair-pulling, skin-scratching, biting, bone-snapping fights with Mom, I'd beg to differ, but that's a story for another day). "THE TRUTH" includes vicious verbal attacks, continual emotional manipulation, and far-fetched dramatic free-for-alls showcasing how completely incapable of behaving like an adult she is.

Sure, I have been angry with my parents for not setting better boundaries for her as she was growing up. I have been angry with them for getting even lazier in their parenting as they have aged. I have even been angry with them for encouraging this behavior in her AD NAUSEUM. Honestly, there have been several times I have been so p.o.ed at my parents that I couldn't talk to them for a few weeks, but most of my anger has shifted itself toward X, and other likeminded children of her generation (whom I find disturbingly numerous). My patience for her is short because I cannot abide people who hold themselves completely blameless for their own misfortune and who use their "pain" as a platform upon which to destroy the happiness of others.

It's true that my experiences as a child exposed me to some things I'd rather not have had to deal with and hardened some areas that should've remained soft. But the fact of the matter is--and I say this with no vitriol--despite some sketchy odds, the powers that be sent me into this world with enough sense to parent myself into a fairly well-adjusted adult who takes responsibility for the part I play in my own life. I feel very lucky that "everything I needed made it through ok", and that I've had the experiences I have. Without all of the crap, I wouldn't have grown into the woman I am, bad attitude and all.

From what she's shown so far, I don't know that X has it in her to do the same.

ich habe schwein gehabt

I am under construction.

I have been reorganizing my house for the last few, well, millenium. Sometimes this house organization is literal, but there have also been figurative house cleanings going on as well.

I've thought often of writing and have had a single-word title rattling around in my brain for about two weeks: flibbertigibbet. How amused was I when I started reading a book for a book club meeting this coming weekend and discovered a sentence using the word that I found fit me perfectly. I have read this book twice already in my life, and wondered if this phrase was perhaps fermenting to cause such a funny word to be front and center, repeated over and over by my inner Rainman. I'm saving the sentence for the next time I write.

Today I am a tease.

Mostly I've kept from writing for the same reason I started doing this in the first place: I've been, well, disgusted with my own whiny depression. The cease and desist order came from my brain when I realized I was in a position to start considering changing the title of my blog to annoyingwhiner with every word I wrote. The world has enough people who do that in the streets (note to bims in the starbucks: do I care that you can't belong to your club if your husband divorces you? hock that seven carat ring and start your own friggin' club for wayward money grubbers for god's sake and get your collagen-enhanced bone-skinny ass from between me and my caffeine) that it doesn't need me to join in as well. I've had long mental conversations and arguments about what to write in the mean time and I have several drafts saved that I haven't posted because I lost steam in the middle. I've just not committed to a post.

So I'm still not really committing to a post.

But I have a lucky pig.

Forgive me, I have some God in my eye

For some people, the fact that I cry easily nowadays seems to be coming as a shock. Most of those people are in my family, and really haven't bothered to get to know me beyond the same square peg role they have zealously pigeon-holed me into since the age of 17, so I'm not really all that surprised.

What I am surprised by is the fact that Church makes me cry. Now, I'm not talking bored crying, hysterical laughter crying, or even moved by the spirit crying. I'm talking the kind of crying that I have to fight off the e-n-t-i-r-e time I'm in there. I mentally flip through the catalog of reasons I could be crying, discarding most of them, but pretty much coming back to the same two every time: I'm getting married soon and (as if there needs to be more) I have so many religious issues I still have to work out in my Catholicism recovery program. Either way, each time I get all teary and snuffly, Bill looks at me with that lovely short-suffering look on his face that practically yells, "Oh, CRAP. Here she goes again. If this were a tent revival, she'd run off with the snake oil minister, never to be heard from again."

The fact of the matter is that for most of my life I have not been able to understand what it is that people get out of going to church. Often behind my mother's fanatically Catholic back, I would "try on" religions like they were ball gowns, just to see what they felt like. I was convinced that if I could find the one religion that made me feel something, I'd finally have arrived. Obviously I never found one, because here I sit, still a reluctant "member" of the one true church, still trying to figure out what the hell it is that I'm just not getting.

In the meantime, I have taken stock of the people who go to church, observing how cruel people can be to their neighbors, their friends, and even their own families in the shadow of the church. Given most of that actually happened in my mother's van as we were driving to and from Mass, I was convinced for a long time that Catholics were the worst of the lot. The truth of the matter is, it happens everywhere, the malicious whispering, the taunts and the insane belief that My God is better than your God. And I've not found one religion yet that doesn't hold that tenet higher than any others, even the ones that are supposed to be all about being good to your fellow humans.

Usually when I get overwhelmed, I'm able to choke back all but two or three pesky tears and move on, albeit a little embarrassed by myself.

Today was different.

As I was leaving the bank, I had an exchange with a lady in a khimar trying to pull into the space next to my car. We both did the very polite smile, wave and the "no, you come on" until I got into my car and she pulled in. Once we were settled, I made sure to get her attention, wave, nod and say thank you to her. You can't imagine the smile I got back from her.

Happiness, and then immediately I was overwhelmed by shame. All I could see in my head were the pictures of the soldiers. Yes, I know it's potentially prejudiced of me to connect those two things together in my head. After all, I never made any connections between McVeigh and other burred Christian men on the street. But I couldn't help myself.

It was all I could do to make it home before I burst into tears.

Took the chong from the tong

The above is part of the Dugan lexicon. I have no idea what the heck it means, but the way it's been used in my presence it's pretty clear that it's not a good thing.

Still, it was a humorous surprise that it came to mind today as I lie on one of the benches in the gym locker room after working out, trying not to projectile. It was cold comfort at the time, that such a colorful thing could possibly be my last thought on earth before I died.

I hope it comforts me when I return to the gym tomorrow, to continue punishing my body until I feel the intense need to vomit. Good times.

Miss Bonny's Elvis Shrine

This is dedicated to Miss Bonny Rose Matejowsky, who reached the ripe old age of one-year-old today. May you always have humor in your life, and may you always have some Elvis in your soul.

A frigid night in December 1992 found me riding through the streets of an unfamiliar (at the time) neighborhood in Baltimore. The resident expert, Victor, assured me as Brian's Dad's 1984 Ford Mustang (can I just say eww?) chugged up the hill that we were going someplace magical, where only True Believers went. As we passed the Canton rowhome with the two-story mural of Elvis on the side, I knew we had reached Mecca. We lept from the vehicle, me with a delighted squeal, and raced toward the warmth awaiting us inside Miss Bonny's Elvis Shrine.

When we got there, the place was empty and we skittled quickly up to the bar, taking in all the Elvis memorabilia like true scholars of American kitsch. Heather blondely asked for a Mud Slide and the 70-something proprietress hacked through the smokey haze, "We got whiskey and beer, hon", despite the rack of liquers on the shelf behind her. A second time Heather asked for a Mud Slide. This time Miss Bonny replied "Eh-heh" as she slammed four shot glasses on the counter and sloshed Bushmill's in each one. Victor laughed and said that Miss Bonny still hadn't lost her touch; Miss Bonny asked after his father and brother.

The door opened and in walked a man in need of a bath with a plastic bag. He slammed three pennies on the counter and mumbled something to Miss Bonny. She looked at the change obliquely and gave him a Bud, never touching the money. Then he turned to Brian and asked him was I his girl, to which he said yes.

"Don't you want to give her some red roabses?" the man asked.

"What?" Brian replied.

"A woman like her needs red roabses."

Being that in Baltimore you get hit up by gypsies all the time for roses, Brian said no and we all continued to drink and chat, catching up after a long semester at school. But the man was not to be dismissed.

"Hey! Man!" the guy called, finishing off his beer. "Hey, you want some red roabses or what? I can see your lady's interested. What kind of cheap man are you that you don't want to give a lady like that a dozen red roabses?"

Miss Bonny told the man (Harold) that he was going to have to leave for harrassing her customers like this. She'd done told him before not to bother people like that, and she didn't care how sick his mother was, she'd call her in the hospital and tell her what Harold was doing, by God.

By this point more people had come into the bar, and all of them were looking at Brian. So he did what every man in his position would do--he asked him how much.

"Two dollars for a dozen red roabses." We'd never heard of such a thing, and Brian was feeling magnanimous after the whiskey shot and agreed to give him $5 instead. The man really looked like he needed some food, and being college students, $5 was a lot of money to us.

"Thanks, man, I hope your lady likes them." With that he handed Brian a white plastic bag, squeezed my arm leeringly, took his three pennies back off the bar, and stumbled out of the bar and into the night.

We exchanged a puzzled look over the bag. A dozen red roses don't generally come in a tied up, heavy white plastic bag. With some trepidation, Brian undid the bag and we all peered inside. I realized first what was in there and burst out laughing. The other three looked up at me in confusion until I announced with an evil cackle:

HE SOLD YOU A DOZEN RED ROBES!!

There were twelve people in the bar. In the spirit of the season, we figured any lice the robes might contain were probably less likely to infest us, so we gave a red robe to each person there.

It was probably the most festive night that bar had seen in a good while, and I'm certain Elvis cried.