It's either this or a water tower and a long gun.
There are some things I hate. Truly. I know that hate is a strong word, so I am careful not to throw it around very often. But, once in awhile I am just so overcome with negative feelings, there is only one word that will sufice.
Hate.
I hate Ben & Jerry's for creating Chunky Monkey and then being so cruel as to put "four servings" on the side of the tiny carton. Four servings? Who are they kidding? It takes me exactly one hour to devour that single serving carton of the best ice cream in the universe. I can't imagine that there are actually people in this world that can put it back in the freezer four times! That's unnatural. That's the mark of the beast is what that is.
I hate people that really do make four servings out of a carton of Chunky Monkey.
I hate rejection letters. I hate the letters, the people that write them and the postal carriers that deliver them. Nothing rips my self confidence to shreds like one of these.
Dear Ms. Crazy On Your Face,
While we appreciate your taking the time to submit your article to Monthly Cramps, we regret to inform you we cannot use it. It is no reflection on your work. We just feel you are a talentless, elementary school drop out that would be better suited to pumping gas.
Sincerely,
Mr. I Am Better Than You
Dear Ms. Crazy On Your Face,
Thank you for your article titled, "Top Ten Decorating Tips For Old Chewing Gum". While we think it is the worst thing we have ever read in our combined 200 years of reading, we appreciate your sending it. The trained albino monkeys we have hired to fold these rejection letters are paid in bananas and they were starting to get hungry.
Regards,
Mrs. Why Don't You Just Give Up
I hate women who don't have to wear make-up. They are the worst. Not only do they roll out of bed looking naturally beautiful, they make life for the rest of us make-up wearing chicks unbearable. I am a firm believer that a little paint never hurt any old barn.
I hate the cop I used to work with that told me I should consider myself lucky that my friend was willing to set me up with a guy ten years older than me and two inches shorter than me who wore a toupee made from pickled possum pelts. He said at my age (thirty-five at the time), I couldn't afford to be picky. I checked out a book from the library called "Gypsy Curses and You" and after stealing a lock of his hair and spitting between my index and middle fingers, cast a spell that will cause him to own a Geo Metro for the rest of his natural life.
I hate it when Mr. Man takes off his socks so that they are rolled up in an inside out ball. Even though I throw a little hissy from time to time, he knows that living with a woman with OCD works to his advantage. It would make me crazy to wash those socks in that little ball. Even if it means I have to wear long, black, rubber scientist gloves to do it, I will undo the ball before I wash them. Someday I'm going to take an extra St. John's Wort though and every sock in his drawer will be a rolled up ball of wet yuckiness. That'll learn him.
Who am I kidding? He's a man. He'd just wear them to work wet.
I hate it when I've written something and I get to the end and I have no idea how to end it. It's awful. Everything else flows out of my brain like water from a hose, but when it's time to close, I start shaking the computer screen like it's a Magic 8 Ball that refuses to give me an answer. It's awful. I'm really afraid that's how it'll be when I die. There will be a big, long, tearful good-bye speech and then I'll be forced to end it with, "Well, I'll see you around" just as the last breath leaves my body.
I'm feeling much better now. This is way cheaper than a psychiatrist.
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Copyright © 2004, Sherri Bailey
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Tuesday, June 29, 2004
Thank you.
Yesterday I was given the news that some men I know from the National Guard here in Kansas will soon depart for Iraq. They'll kiss their wives, their children and their careers here good-bye and for two years they will do what they have always known they might have to do, but always hoped they wouldn't.
Two years. That's a long time. A lot can happen in two years. Children crawling now will be walking and talking in two years. High school sophomores will graduate in two years. Promotions that could have been theirs in two years will belong to someone else.
In two years, cars will break down, loved ones may pass away, soccer games will be missed, and a lot of tears from the eyes of a lot of children will be cried. It's a long time to be apart from your life.
It's a huge sacrifice that I am thankful they are willing to make for freedom, and one I know I am not capable of making myself.
They'll pack their bags, pack the kid's pictures and pack their jeans and t-shirts away. They'll call their attorneys to make wills, their banks to make payment arrangements and their friends for one final see-you-in-two-years-party.
They'll hold their spouses tight and make them promise they'll still love them when it's all over. That no matter how long they are away, they will still have a home to return to.
They'll tell anyone that will listen that they are not afraid. That they have been trained for this task and that they are ready and willing to go. And every word will be true.
But, in the still of night, when everyone else is sleeping, the pictures of captured and tortured fellow soldiers will steal their rest and they'll ask themselves again and again what they will do if so horrible a circumstance should befall them.
But in my mind, what they won't do is even more important than what they will do.
They will not complain.
They will not hold up signs announcing to the world that this "war" is unjust. They won't hold press conferences to tell America that we have no business doing what we're doing. They won't write letters begging the President to change his policy. Not even in the privacy of their own homes will they even wonder aloud to their spouses whether the United States is doing the right thing.
That's because these men and women in our United States Armed Forces are simply not ordinary men and women.
They have a fire inside them, each and every one. A fire that cannot be artificially lit, but rather a fire that must be burning at the very moment you are born. A righteous, determined, proud fire that demands all men, women and children have the right to breathe freedom. No matter who they are, no matter where they are, no matter how hopeless the promise of freedom seems, these men and women are willing to sacrifice everything, including their very lives, to purchase that freedom.
When that day comes that my friends leave this tiny Midwestern chunk of America, I will cry. I'll cry because I am afraid for them. I'll cry because I will miss them while they are away. But more than these, I'll cry at the thought of this beautiful and amazingly unselfish gift they are happily giving the world.
And I will pray. I will pray for their safe return and that God, the giver of all freedom, will richly bless their efforts, their families and their lives. I will tie a yellow ribbon in their honor that will remain in place until all our loved ones are safely back in our arms and I will sleep, secure in the knowledge that those I love are keeping watch over my own freedom.
Thank you. All of you. God speed.
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Copyright © 2004, Sherri Bailey
This blog may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the author.
HSVentures@cableone.net
Yesterday I was given the news that some men I know from the National Guard here in Kansas will soon depart for Iraq. They'll kiss their wives, their children and their careers here good-bye and for two years they will do what they have always known they might have to do, but always hoped they wouldn't.
Two years. That's a long time. A lot can happen in two years. Children crawling now will be walking and talking in two years. High school sophomores will graduate in two years. Promotions that could have been theirs in two years will belong to someone else.
In two years, cars will break down, loved ones may pass away, soccer games will be missed, and a lot of tears from the eyes of a lot of children will be cried. It's a long time to be apart from your life.
It's a huge sacrifice that I am thankful they are willing to make for freedom, and one I know I am not capable of making myself.
They'll pack their bags, pack the kid's pictures and pack their jeans and t-shirts away. They'll call their attorneys to make wills, their banks to make payment arrangements and their friends for one final see-you-in-two-years-party.
They'll hold their spouses tight and make them promise they'll still love them when it's all over. That no matter how long they are away, they will still have a home to return to.
They'll tell anyone that will listen that they are not afraid. That they have been trained for this task and that they are ready and willing to go. And every word will be true.
But, in the still of night, when everyone else is sleeping, the pictures of captured and tortured fellow soldiers will steal their rest and they'll ask themselves again and again what they will do if so horrible a circumstance should befall them.
But in my mind, what they won't do is even more important than what they will do.
They will not complain.
They will not hold up signs announcing to the world that this "war" is unjust. They won't hold press conferences to tell America that we have no business doing what we're doing. They won't write letters begging the President to change his policy. Not even in the privacy of their own homes will they even wonder aloud to their spouses whether the United States is doing the right thing.
That's because these men and women in our United States Armed Forces are simply not ordinary men and women.
They have a fire inside them, each and every one. A fire that cannot be artificially lit, but rather a fire that must be burning at the very moment you are born. A righteous, determined, proud fire that demands all men, women and children have the right to breathe freedom. No matter who they are, no matter where they are, no matter how hopeless the promise of freedom seems, these men and women are willing to sacrifice everything, including their very lives, to purchase that freedom.
When that day comes that my friends leave this tiny Midwestern chunk of America, I will cry. I'll cry because I am afraid for them. I'll cry because I will miss them while they are away. But more than these, I'll cry at the thought of this beautiful and amazingly unselfish gift they are happily giving the world.
And I will pray. I will pray for their safe return and that God, the giver of all freedom, will richly bless their efforts, their families and their lives. I will tie a yellow ribbon in their honor that will remain in place until all our loved ones are safely back in our arms and I will sleep, secure in the knowledge that those I love are keeping watch over my own freedom.
Thank you. All of you. God speed.
Visit HumorLinks on the web!
Copyright © 2004, Sherri Bailey
This blog may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the author.
HSVentures@cableone.net
Monday, June 28, 2004
Where have all the Larry's gone?
I've always wanted to write a book titled, "Everything I Ever Needed To Know About Life I Learned At A Mental Hospital." I think when supposedly well adjusted, normal people are forced to compare themselves with the local mental institution population, they have no choice but to realize that crazy is relative.
Once I met a man we'll call "Larry". Larry was brilliant in the most literal sense of the word. He was well spoken, and an avid reader of the kinds of books most of us don't really think people read. Although I never knew what it was Larry did before he made a career out of being crazy, I'm sure it was something that required lots of letters after his name on all his dinner invitations.
But sadly, Larry was nuts. Nutty as a fruit cake. At least that's what the people who determine such things decided. When Larry wasn't reading Tolstoy or doing trigonometry in his head, his favorite way to pass time was to take things apart. Not small things like a remote or a telephone. Oh no. Larry liked to take apart big things, like furniture and hospital beds.
If you are at all familiar with the mental hospital setting, you would assume that taking things apart might be hard to do inside those walls. After all, you don't even get a real knife to cut your steak. And you have to sign twenty papers and agree to an audience just to get a razor as dull as my first boyfriend with which to shave your legs, or face, or back as the case may be.
None of that could deter Larry. He could disassemble every single thing in a room inside of thirty minutes... the time it took for the nurses to do their "have you hung yourself yet" checks. Not only was he fast, he could do it with absolutely no tools that anyone could ever find.
I thought about just asking him sometime how he did it. But, I was afraid he'd be nice to me and ask me to marry him and I'd say yes because it would be rude not to and then we'd wind up having little furniture disassembling, obsessive-compulsive children that would wash their hands 140 times after every refrigerator they took apart.
It just wasn't worth it to me.
Needless to say, the powers that be inside this lovely facility absolutely hated Larry. He drove them nuts, if you'll pardon the reference. They tried every single thing they could come up with to stop Larry from taking apart his entire room, screw by screw.
They tried bribing him.
"Larry, if you take apart your room today, we are going to take away all your books."
Didn't work.
"Larry, open wide and swallow this horse tranquilizer."
He'd just take apart his furniture a little slower while yawning frequently.
"Larry, we'd like you to wear this lovely white I-love-me jacket."
He'd wear it for awhile, walking up and down the corridors stopping only occasionally to scratch his head on the wall. And then he'd promise most sincerely that his days as a furniture taker-aparter were over. He'd seen the light. He was a changed man. Never again under any circumstance would he ever take apart anything in his room again.
But no sooner would they turn him loose than good old Larry would be sitting in the middle of one-thousand furniture pieces with the same satisfied look you might see on a sailor that had been at sea for a year and was finally on shore leave. He couldn't help himself.
Personally, I never got what all the fuss was about. It wasn't like he was eating kittens or anything.
And then one day, one of the white-coat wearing, I went to school for thirty years to be a psychiatrist, pill pushing, doctors came up with a brilliant idea.
They put Larry in a padded room with nothing but a bed and told him to knock himself out. "You go get 'er, Larry. You just take that thing apart all you want."
And he did.
Curiosity got the better of me and I managed to tip toe over by Larry's room to peer through the little window into his soft-sided cell. Sure enough, he was pacing back and forth among the debris that was once his bed. Apparently just one bed was not enough. I think he was jones-ing for a dresser or a cabinet or something. When I slipped back by his room about an hour later, Larry was doing something I'd never seen him do before.
He was putting everything back together!
It sort of made me wonder if Larry was in the habit of always putting together again what he had taken apart, but because he was usually jumped by nurses as quickly as he'd done his thing, he never got the time to do it.
I decided if I ever got rich and opened my own mental hospital for fun and profit, I'd always let Larrys take apart and put back together whatever they wanted.
Sort of makes you wonder exactly how to define crazy, doesn't it? I mean, what if every time you took apart the toaster to try and fix it someone made you drink a Xanex smoothie and locked you in your room?
That actually might not be such a bad thing, now that I think about it.
I also knew a lady named Linda that I met when I was on one of my little "vacations". She was about forty with long, dark hair and a constant cigarette in her mouth. She wouldn't light it unless she was in the smoking room, but she wouldn't be without one in her mouth for even a moment. She had the voice of an older Lucille Ball from the years of smoking and a great big smile that made her nose crinkle.
Rumor had it that Linda had shown up at the manufacturing plant where she worked and for no apparent reason, ran up and down the aisles turning on every machine in the joint while laughing wildly. Apparently her boss kept the hospital's number on speed dial for just such an occasion and she was admitted the same day. Personally, I wondered what her employers must have done that caused her to react that way.
Linda was one happy woman. She was always in a good mood. She would walk up to me at least twenty times a day and say, "You're purty". That was it. That's all she ever said to me. Naturally I assumed she couldn't possibly be crazy.
I never quite got what the doctors thought was wrong with Linda, other than she turned on machines that evidently should not have been turned on. If that's how you define crazy, my son needs to be locked up for trying to turn on my computer. She just seemed to me like a pretty decent lady who liked cigarettes and purty people.
One day, the nurses decided that Linda smoked way more than she should and they needed to put the smack down on her. They told her that they were taking her cigarettes away and that they would dispense one to her every hour.
Sweet, decent Linda immediately turned into violent, threatening Linda who quite loudly promised to do things to the nurses that would cause serial killers to tear up.
Obviously, I do not have a degree in psychology, but I'm thinking, "Shove a cigarette in her mouth NOW!". It also occured to me that possibly her little machine incident at work was the result of some new non-smoking policy. I'd say they were just lucky she didn't stuff people inside the machines.
I've known lots of smokers in my life and quite frankly, if I were to tell any of them that I would be taking their smokes and only giving them one an hour, I'm betting most of them would go all Linda on me. Maybe she wasn't so out of the ordinary after all.
The thing is, we all have a little crazy on our faces. We need to just come out of our closets and admit it. It only becomes a problem, in my opinion, when we are surrounded by people that have it smeared all over but won't admit it. They take it upon themselves to define what is a hospital-worthy brand of crazy and what is just ordinary, every day, run of the mill crazy.
I think I'll always keep a little crazy on my face, if for no other reason than to simply prevent the boredom brought on by taking yourself too seriously.
I'm with you, Linda and Larry. Let's get together sometime soon. You bring the cigarettes and I'll get my screwdriver and a sofa.
Visit HumorLinks on the web!
Copyright © 2004, Sherri Bailey
This blog may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the author.
HSVentures@cableone.net
Visit HumorLinks on the web!
Copyright © 2004, Sherri Bailey
This blog may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the author.
HSVentures@cableone.net
I've always wanted to write a book titled, "Everything I Ever Needed To Know About Life I Learned At A Mental Hospital." I think when supposedly well adjusted, normal people are forced to compare themselves with the local mental institution population, they have no choice but to realize that crazy is relative.
Once I met a man we'll call "Larry". Larry was brilliant in the most literal sense of the word. He was well spoken, and an avid reader of the kinds of books most of us don't really think people read. Although I never knew what it was Larry did before he made a career out of being crazy, I'm sure it was something that required lots of letters after his name on all his dinner invitations.
But sadly, Larry was nuts. Nutty as a fruit cake. At least that's what the people who determine such things decided. When Larry wasn't reading Tolstoy or doing trigonometry in his head, his favorite way to pass time was to take things apart. Not small things like a remote or a telephone. Oh no. Larry liked to take apart big things, like furniture and hospital beds.
If you are at all familiar with the mental hospital setting, you would assume that taking things apart might be hard to do inside those walls. After all, you don't even get a real knife to cut your steak. And you have to sign twenty papers and agree to an audience just to get a razor as dull as my first boyfriend with which to shave your legs, or face, or back as the case may be.
None of that could deter Larry. He could disassemble every single thing in a room inside of thirty minutes... the time it took for the nurses to do their "have you hung yourself yet" checks. Not only was he fast, he could do it with absolutely no tools that anyone could ever find.
I thought about just asking him sometime how he did it. But, I was afraid he'd be nice to me and ask me to marry him and I'd say yes because it would be rude not to and then we'd wind up having little furniture disassembling, obsessive-compulsive children that would wash their hands 140 times after every refrigerator they took apart.
It just wasn't worth it to me.
Needless to say, the powers that be inside this lovely facility absolutely hated Larry. He drove them nuts, if you'll pardon the reference. They tried every single thing they could come up with to stop Larry from taking apart his entire room, screw by screw.
They tried bribing him.
"Larry, if you take apart your room today, we are going to take away all your books."
Didn't work.
"Larry, open wide and swallow this horse tranquilizer."
He'd just take apart his furniture a little slower while yawning frequently.
"Larry, we'd like you to wear this lovely white I-love-me jacket."
He'd wear it for awhile, walking up and down the corridors stopping only occasionally to scratch his head on the wall. And then he'd promise most sincerely that his days as a furniture taker-aparter were over. He'd seen the light. He was a changed man. Never again under any circumstance would he ever take apart anything in his room again.
But no sooner would they turn him loose than good old Larry would be sitting in the middle of one-thousand furniture pieces with the same satisfied look you might see on a sailor that had been at sea for a year and was finally on shore leave. He couldn't help himself.
Personally, I never got what all the fuss was about. It wasn't like he was eating kittens or anything.
And then one day, one of the white-coat wearing, I went to school for thirty years to be a psychiatrist, pill pushing, doctors came up with a brilliant idea.
They put Larry in a padded room with nothing but a bed and told him to knock himself out. "You go get 'er, Larry. You just take that thing apart all you want."
And he did.
Curiosity got the better of me and I managed to tip toe over by Larry's room to peer through the little window into his soft-sided cell. Sure enough, he was pacing back and forth among the debris that was once his bed. Apparently just one bed was not enough. I think he was jones-ing for a dresser or a cabinet or something. When I slipped back by his room about an hour later, Larry was doing something I'd never seen him do before.
He was putting everything back together!
It sort of made me wonder if Larry was in the habit of always putting together again what he had taken apart, but because he was usually jumped by nurses as quickly as he'd done his thing, he never got the time to do it.
I decided if I ever got rich and opened my own mental hospital for fun and profit, I'd always let Larrys take apart and put back together whatever they wanted.
Sort of makes you wonder exactly how to define crazy, doesn't it? I mean, what if every time you took apart the toaster to try and fix it someone made you drink a Xanex smoothie and locked you in your room?
That actually might not be such a bad thing, now that I think about it.
I also knew a lady named Linda that I met when I was on one of my little "vacations". She was about forty with long, dark hair and a constant cigarette in her mouth. She wouldn't light it unless she was in the smoking room, but she wouldn't be without one in her mouth for even a moment. She had the voice of an older Lucille Ball from the years of smoking and a great big smile that made her nose crinkle.
Rumor had it that Linda had shown up at the manufacturing plant where she worked and for no apparent reason, ran up and down the aisles turning on every machine in the joint while laughing wildly. Apparently her boss kept the hospital's number on speed dial for just such an occasion and she was admitted the same day. Personally, I wondered what her employers must have done that caused her to react that way.
Linda was one happy woman. She was always in a good mood. She would walk up to me at least twenty times a day and say, "You're purty". That was it. That's all she ever said to me. Naturally I assumed she couldn't possibly be crazy.
I never quite got what the doctors thought was wrong with Linda, other than she turned on machines that evidently should not have been turned on. If that's how you define crazy, my son needs to be locked up for trying to turn on my computer. She just seemed to me like a pretty decent lady who liked cigarettes and purty people.
One day, the nurses decided that Linda smoked way more than she should and they needed to put the smack down on her. They told her that they were taking her cigarettes away and that they would dispense one to her every hour.
Sweet, decent Linda immediately turned into violent, threatening Linda who quite loudly promised to do things to the nurses that would cause serial killers to tear up.
Obviously, I do not have a degree in psychology, but I'm thinking, "Shove a cigarette in her mouth NOW!". It also occured to me that possibly her little machine incident at work was the result of some new non-smoking policy. I'd say they were just lucky she didn't stuff people inside the machines.
I've known lots of smokers in my life and quite frankly, if I were to tell any of them that I would be taking their smokes and only giving them one an hour, I'm betting most of them would go all Linda on me. Maybe she wasn't so out of the ordinary after all.
The thing is, we all have a little crazy on our faces. We need to just come out of our closets and admit it. It only becomes a problem, in my opinion, when we are surrounded by people that have it smeared all over but won't admit it. They take it upon themselves to define what is a hospital-worthy brand of crazy and what is just ordinary, every day, run of the mill crazy.
I think I'll always keep a little crazy on my face, if for no other reason than to simply prevent the boredom brought on by taking yourself too seriously.
I'm with you, Linda and Larry. Let's get together sometime soon. You bring the cigarettes and I'll get my screwdriver and a sofa.
Visit HumorLinks on the web!
Copyright © 2004, Sherri Bailey
This blog may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the author.
HSVentures@cableone.net
Visit HumorLinks on the web!
Copyright © 2004, Sherri Bailey
This blog may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the author.
HSVentures@cableone.net
Saturday, June 26, 2004
Please keep your arms and legs inside the space ship.
I feel like everyone should have a philosophy. I think it's important to throw your philosophy around whenever the opportunity presents itself and it's always a good thing to use the word philosophy at parties. It makes you sound intelligent.
I myself have a philosophy. Wanna hear it? Here it goes.
I believe if a little is good, a lot is way good... as long as you don't waste it.
I believe in those words so much that I'm thinking of cross stitching them in some sort of sampler thing to hang above my sofa. Just as soon as I learn to cross stitch.
I don't just say those words. I live by them. I practice them in all I do. And I always have. My parents made sure of it.
When I was a teenager, my step-mom foolishly left my Daddy and I home alone. By ourselves. With a gallon of paint. And no instructions.
Daddy woke me up early that Saturday morning. He had decided that we were going to paint the swing. Actually, he wanted me to paint the swing while he told me what a sloppy job I was doing. The truth is, I was being punished because I had gotten just the tiniest bit liquored up the night before on a Big Gulp of Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill and Pop figured he'd make me suffer. What better way to scare a teenage girl straight than to make her paint, I guess.
And paint I did. Daddy and I painted that swing the most lovely shade of prison cell gray and when we were done, we still had some paint left.
"That clothes line needs a fresh coat of paint," said Daddy.
So, we painted the clothes line. And when we were done, we still had some paint left.
"That shed looks a little dingy," said Daddy.
By the time we realized what we had done, our entire yard looked like the inside of cell block D without the charm.
"That dog could use a little freshening up," said Daddy.
Sadly though, we were out of paint.
My Mother was and is no different. She believes with her whole heart that if a little dab will do you, you are a messed up person. She's all about going overboard.
Mother loves stuff. Stuff is always a good thing. No matter how much stuff you have, room can always be found for more. The good news is, she never comes close to running out of stuff. Other people might run out of things like toilet paper or lotion or Ziploc baggies. Mother sees running out of something as a serious character flaw.
Walk in my Mother's bathroom on any given day and you will always, always find toilet paper. Now that in and of itself is not unusual. But, when you see the sheer quantity of it, you'll realize something's a little different here.
The fact is, Mother keeps so much toilet paper on hand she has run out of places to put it. She has had to resort to showcasing it. She carefully takes it all out of it's plastic wrapping and builds giant toilet paper towers not unlike the massive white columns outside of Graceland. You have seriously never seen so much toilet paper in your entire life.
And here's the kicker, if you happen to have to get a new roll off the tower, which requires a ladder, the monument never shrinks. That's because she can sense from whatever room she's in that a piece of her artwork is missing and she'll make a mad dash to replace the roll.
She's the same with just about everything else. If one box of Ziploc Baggies is a good thing, thirty-four is better. She's actually still using the same box of Ziploc baggies she bought in 1987, yet continues to buy boxes and boxes of the things. Mother treats Ziplocs like gold bullion and guards them with her life. God forbid my poor step-father would like to have a fresh Zippie to take his peanut butter crackers to work. Mother would sooner he wrap them in dollar bills.
Similarly, most people might think owning a television for the living room and maybe the bedroom would be a good thing. And most people would be satisfied with a normal size television. Normal meaning something that does not require a crane to set it.
Not Mother. There is not only a television in every room of the house, to include the kitchen, almost all of them are gigantic. I mean big, big televisions. Let's put it this way, if Mother were to open her living room window and I were to park a half mile away, I could easily watch the news without need of binoculars. I could even read the stock quotes at the bottom of the screen. Her living room t.v. is so big, my hair actually blows backwards when she turns up the volume. I'm just saying she has some big t.v.'s.
So you can see that I never had a chance really. I was predestined to follow the philosophy of generations before me. I can't help myself. A lot is always better.
Not everyone lives this way. Mr. Man for example. He is a good man, but a man that doesn't necessarily follow my philosophy.
For the most part, he doesn't place restraints on me. He rarely says a word about what I do, when I do it or how much I spend getting it done. I like that about him. But, there is one thing he does ask of me. One vow I have been solemnly sworn never to violate. One cardinal rule that he will accept no excuse for breaking.
I am never to paint anything. No way, no how, no matter what. I'm not even supposed to paint my nails without his supervision.
It's possible that I may get a little over excited when I get a paint brush in my hands. I can't help myself. For as long as I have paint, I will paint. If my jewelry box looks good in gilded gold paint, I'm absolutely positive my walls will, too.
He didn't just impose this restriction on me willy-nilly. I sort of gave him the impression that I couldn't be trusted with a paint brush.
He left me alone one day, much like my step-mother did years ago when my brain was still in it's impressionable stage. I was suddenly struck with the need to paint the dining room table. The same dining room table that had once belonged to his grandparents.
I should probably mention that I have no patience whatsoever. If I want to do something, I want to do it right this minute. I could not take the fifteen minutes it would have taken to go to Wal-Mart and buy paint, so I did what I'm sure Martha Stewart has done time and time again and I searched through the entire garage until I found something in a paint can.
Kilz.
For those of you that are unfamiliar with this stuff, it's pretty much a white, chalky primer that is supposed to be used underneath other paint. That's how creatively challenged people use it anyway. I chose to go another route.
I pulled the table and chairs out onto the cement driveway and I began slapping that stuff on like there was no tomorrow. I imagined I'd have a new career in furniture restoration as soon as word got out about my project.
Let's just say it didn't quite work out that way. Turns out Mr. Man was not extremely excited to come home from work to a Kilz colored heirloom. Who knew?
So, I understand that I am not allowed near paint. And I have tried really hard never to do it again. Truly I have.
But as I was garage saling this morning, I found the neatest shelf that I knew would be perfect for my kitchen. Trouble was, it was the wrong color.
What was I supposed to do?
I went straight to Wal-Mart to buy paint.
"Mom! You know you're not allowed to paint!" my silly son said.
"Don't worry, Chase. It's going to be different this time. This time I'm actually buying paint. I know what I'm doing. Really."
When I got home, I tried to find some plastic sheeting to lay in the grass to lie the shelf on before painting it. That was a very professional-painter type thing to do. There was none. What kind of man doesn't keep plastic sheeting on hand? I'm thinking a man that doesn't mind a little paint on the grass.
I threw the shelf on the grass and began spray painting my new shelf with a beautiful burgundy paint on this lovely, slightly windy Kansas day. I was flat tickled pink with the color. This was going to work. I could feel it.
Once the shelf was completely covered in spray paint, I thought to myself, "You know what would be stunning? If I also spray painted Mr. Man's antique possum-belly table to match the shelf."
You have to admit, that sounds good. Right?
I drug the table out in the yard and commenced to spraying it as well. Within a few minutes of heavy spraying, I ran out of paint! I was going to have to go back to Wal-mart and get more. I popped in the house to get my keys and purse and caught my reflection in the mirror. I looked like a burgundy speckled pup with burgundy blacked-out teeth.
My son felt the need to remind me again, "Mom, you're going to be in so much trouble."
We got in and out of Wal-Mart at light speed so as to lower the odds that someone I know would see me. Back at home and armed with another full can of paint, I let loose on the table. It was beautiful! And I only had to stop ten or twelve times to pull the grass and bugs out of it.
Clearly I have a natural ability.
After everything dried, I went to bring it in the house and to tell my son what a goober he was for ever doubting me. When I pulled the shelf apart from the grass it was stuck to, I noticed something interesting.
It seems that once the furniture was gone, all that was left were huge, geometrical burgundy colored shapes all over the yard. They are everywhere. I have no idea how I got so much paint in so many places, but I managed.
How in the world am I going to get out of this one? How am I going to convince Mr. Man that my painting is really a good thing and that I should have my painting privileges reinstated once he sees the huge mess I made in the yard?
Maybe I can blame it on a wild band of crazy teenagers armed with burgundy paint. It sort of looks like a random act of graffiti.
No. He's a cop. He'd just investigate closer and all the evidence would lead right back to me. He'd throw me in jail and there is nothing to paint in there.
Wait a minute. What about crop circles? That sounds reasonable! I'll just tell him that the weird geometric shapes are some sort of message from outer space. I'll tell him I read about this kind of thing two weeks ago in the National Enquirer. I'll tell him some farmer in Idaho found the same thing in his yard and was so upset they had to shoot him with a horse tranquilizer.
This will totally work. And maybe if I act distraught enough, he'll shoot me in the behind with a horse tranquilizer. I could use the rest.
I've got to shut the computer down now. I have some paint left and I have noticed lately how unattractive my computer is. As is my stove. And my toilet.
Visit my website!
Visit HumorLinks on the web!
Copyright © 2004, Sherri Bailey
This blog may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the author.
HSVentures@cableone.net
I feel like everyone should have a philosophy. I think it's important to throw your philosophy around whenever the opportunity presents itself and it's always a good thing to use the word philosophy at parties. It makes you sound intelligent.
I myself have a philosophy. Wanna hear it? Here it goes.
I believe if a little is good, a lot is way good... as long as you don't waste it.
I believe in those words so much that I'm thinking of cross stitching them in some sort of sampler thing to hang above my sofa. Just as soon as I learn to cross stitch.
I don't just say those words. I live by them. I practice them in all I do. And I always have. My parents made sure of it.
When I was a teenager, my step-mom foolishly left my Daddy and I home alone. By ourselves. With a gallon of paint. And no instructions.
Daddy woke me up early that Saturday morning. He had decided that we were going to paint the swing. Actually, he wanted me to paint the swing while he told me what a sloppy job I was doing. The truth is, I was being punished because I had gotten just the tiniest bit liquored up the night before on a Big Gulp of Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill and Pop figured he'd make me suffer. What better way to scare a teenage girl straight than to make her paint, I guess.
And paint I did. Daddy and I painted that swing the most lovely shade of prison cell gray and when we were done, we still had some paint left.
"That clothes line needs a fresh coat of paint," said Daddy.
So, we painted the clothes line. And when we were done, we still had some paint left.
"That shed looks a little dingy," said Daddy.
By the time we realized what we had done, our entire yard looked like the inside of cell block D without the charm.
"That dog could use a little freshening up," said Daddy.
Sadly though, we were out of paint.
My Mother was and is no different. She believes with her whole heart that if a little dab will do you, you are a messed up person. She's all about going overboard.
Mother loves stuff. Stuff is always a good thing. No matter how much stuff you have, room can always be found for more. The good news is, she never comes close to running out of stuff. Other people might run out of things like toilet paper or lotion or Ziploc baggies. Mother sees running out of something as a serious character flaw.
Walk in my Mother's bathroom on any given day and you will always, always find toilet paper. Now that in and of itself is not unusual. But, when you see the sheer quantity of it, you'll realize something's a little different here.
The fact is, Mother keeps so much toilet paper on hand she has run out of places to put it. She has had to resort to showcasing it. She carefully takes it all out of it's plastic wrapping and builds giant toilet paper towers not unlike the massive white columns outside of Graceland. You have seriously never seen so much toilet paper in your entire life.
And here's the kicker, if you happen to have to get a new roll off the tower, which requires a ladder, the monument never shrinks. That's because she can sense from whatever room she's in that a piece of her artwork is missing and she'll make a mad dash to replace the roll.
She's the same with just about everything else. If one box of Ziploc Baggies is a good thing, thirty-four is better. She's actually still using the same box of Ziploc baggies she bought in 1987, yet continues to buy boxes and boxes of the things. Mother treats Ziplocs like gold bullion and guards them with her life. God forbid my poor step-father would like to have a fresh Zippie to take his peanut butter crackers to work. Mother would sooner he wrap them in dollar bills.
Similarly, most people might think owning a television for the living room and maybe the bedroom would be a good thing. And most people would be satisfied with a normal size television. Normal meaning something that does not require a crane to set it.
Not Mother. There is not only a television in every room of the house, to include the kitchen, almost all of them are gigantic. I mean big, big televisions. Let's put it this way, if Mother were to open her living room window and I were to park a half mile away, I could easily watch the news without need of binoculars. I could even read the stock quotes at the bottom of the screen. Her living room t.v. is so big, my hair actually blows backwards when she turns up the volume. I'm just saying she has some big t.v.'s.
So you can see that I never had a chance really. I was predestined to follow the philosophy of generations before me. I can't help myself. A lot is always better.
Not everyone lives this way. Mr. Man for example. He is a good man, but a man that doesn't necessarily follow my philosophy.
For the most part, he doesn't place restraints on me. He rarely says a word about what I do, when I do it or how much I spend getting it done. I like that about him. But, there is one thing he does ask of me. One vow I have been solemnly sworn never to violate. One cardinal rule that he will accept no excuse for breaking.
I am never to paint anything. No way, no how, no matter what. I'm not even supposed to paint my nails without his supervision.
It's possible that I may get a little over excited when I get a paint brush in my hands. I can't help myself. For as long as I have paint, I will paint. If my jewelry box looks good in gilded gold paint, I'm absolutely positive my walls will, too.
He didn't just impose this restriction on me willy-nilly. I sort of gave him the impression that I couldn't be trusted with a paint brush.
He left me alone one day, much like my step-mother did years ago when my brain was still in it's impressionable stage. I was suddenly struck with the need to paint the dining room table. The same dining room table that had once belonged to his grandparents.
I should probably mention that I have no patience whatsoever. If I want to do something, I want to do it right this minute. I could not take the fifteen minutes it would have taken to go to Wal-Mart and buy paint, so I did what I'm sure Martha Stewart has done time and time again and I searched through the entire garage until I found something in a paint can.
Kilz.
For those of you that are unfamiliar with this stuff, it's pretty much a white, chalky primer that is supposed to be used underneath other paint. That's how creatively challenged people use it anyway. I chose to go another route.
I pulled the table and chairs out onto the cement driveway and I began slapping that stuff on like there was no tomorrow. I imagined I'd have a new career in furniture restoration as soon as word got out about my project.
Let's just say it didn't quite work out that way. Turns out Mr. Man was not extremely excited to come home from work to a Kilz colored heirloom. Who knew?
So, I understand that I am not allowed near paint. And I have tried really hard never to do it again. Truly I have.
But as I was garage saling this morning, I found the neatest shelf that I knew would be perfect for my kitchen. Trouble was, it was the wrong color.
What was I supposed to do?
I went straight to Wal-Mart to buy paint.
"Mom! You know you're not allowed to paint!" my silly son said.
"Don't worry, Chase. It's going to be different this time. This time I'm actually buying paint. I know what I'm doing. Really."
When I got home, I tried to find some plastic sheeting to lay in the grass to lie the shelf on before painting it. That was a very professional-painter type thing to do. There was none. What kind of man doesn't keep plastic sheeting on hand? I'm thinking a man that doesn't mind a little paint on the grass.
I threw the shelf on the grass and began spray painting my new shelf with a beautiful burgundy paint on this lovely, slightly windy Kansas day. I was flat tickled pink with the color. This was going to work. I could feel it.
Once the shelf was completely covered in spray paint, I thought to myself, "You know what would be stunning? If I also spray painted Mr. Man's antique possum-belly table to match the shelf."
You have to admit, that sounds good. Right?
I drug the table out in the yard and commenced to spraying it as well. Within a few minutes of heavy spraying, I ran out of paint! I was going to have to go back to Wal-mart and get more. I popped in the house to get my keys and purse and caught my reflection in the mirror. I looked like a burgundy speckled pup with burgundy blacked-out teeth.
My son felt the need to remind me again, "Mom, you're going to be in so much trouble."
We got in and out of Wal-Mart at light speed so as to lower the odds that someone I know would see me. Back at home and armed with another full can of paint, I let loose on the table. It was beautiful! And I only had to stop ten or twelve times to pull the grass and bugs out of it.
Clearly I have a natural ability.
After everything dried, I went to bring it in the house and to tell my son what a goober he was for ever doubting me. When I pulled the shelf apart from the grass it was stuck to, I noticed something interesting.
It seems that once the furniture was gone, all that was left were huge, geometrical burgundy colored shapes all over the yard. They are everywhere. I have no idea how I got so much paint in so many places, but I managed.
How in the world am I going to get out of this one? How am I going to convince Mr. Man that my painting is really a good thing and that I should have my painting privileges reinstated once he sees the huge mess I made in the yard?
Maybe I can blame it on a wild band of crazy teenagers armed with burgundy paint. It sort of looks like a random act of graffiti.
No. He's a cop. He'd just investigate closer and all the evidence would lead right back to me. He'd throw me in jail and there is nothing to paint in there.
Wait a minute. What about crop circles? That sounds reasonable! I'll just tell him that the weird geometric shapes are some sort of message from outer space. I'll tell him I read about this kind of thing two weeks ago in the National Enquirer. I'll tell him some farmer in Idaho found the same thing in his yard and was so upset they had to shoot him with a horse tranquilizer.
This will totally work. And maybe if I act distraught enough, he'll shoot me in the behind with a horse tranquilizer. I could use the rest.
I've got to shut the computer down now. I have some paint left and I have noticed lately how unattractive my computer is. As is my stove. And my toilet.
Visit my website!
Visit HumorLinks on the web!
Copyright © 2004, Sherri Bailey
This blog may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the author.
HSVentures@cableone.net
Friday, June 25, 2004
You and the horse you rode in on.
This day started out to be a hum-dinger. (Excuse me while I giggle. I said hum-dinger.) I woke up very early and took the dog out just as the sun was starting to make her move on the sky. It was cool, autumn cool and so quiet that I could probably have heard a cricket move had one been inclined to do so. It was the kind of moment that makes you believe you are capable of thinking great and important thoughts. The kind of moment that reminds you how lucky you are to be breathing in and out. In the words of the great Lyle Lovett, it was the kind of moment "when great ideas just seem to fall down on you."
It was a spectacular morning.
And for hours after my greeting card beginning, it continued to be a near perfect day. My son and I ran errands, hit a few garage sales, drank milkshakes and laughed at everything we saw... including the garage sale that consisted only of two large blankets lying on the ground and a crusty, old fish tank. Truly the product of my raising, he felt guilty that we didn't buy anything.
And then... cue Jaws music in the background... my day went south.
Someone called me, and out of what I'm certain was nothing but love for me, took great pleasure in telling me that two people I consider very good friends had said some something pretty mean about me. Worse, they had made fun of my obsessive compulsive disorder because they saw me do something they thought was attributed to OCD.
I was completely devastated.
I am the first one to admit that from time to time I do exhibit some behaviors that "normal" people would find odd. Funny even. It's true.
For example, I have a germ phobia like no other which very often causes me to cover my hands in Germ-X and twitch a little because I had to touch a light switch someone else touched.
I can't go to bed without touching every door knob, lock, and oven burner in the house at least once, and more likely three or four times. I figure I'm doing pretty good with that, considering that years ago I would get stuck touching the burners and have to touch them forty or fifty times before I could stop.
I cannot drink coffee unless I put enough cream in it so that it's the color of faded khaki's. Wait a minute. That's not OCD. That's just because I make terrible coffee that's so strong it walks up to me every morning and introduces itself.
I'm a little weird. I get that. And I am always the first one to point out what a doofus I am. When someone else points it out however, that's not nearly as funny.
But I've figured out what to do to make myself feel better and at the same time make those women sorry they ever laughed at me.
When I was there wallering around in my great big pit of pity and having one heck of a woe is me good time, I came up with a plan. A plan so brilliant and so innovative, I can't believe I didn't think of it earlier.
I will become a Superhero.
Think about it. No one laughs at a Superhero. No way. When's the last time you heard anyone poke fun at the Green Hornet or The Incredible Hulk? It simply does not happen. On the contrary, it's their very greenness and their notable incredibleness that makes you respect them.
I figure it can't be that hard to make yourself a Super Hero. All you need is some sort of personality disorder to start with and then you simply fall into a puddle of nuclear waste, thereby making said personality disorder the very basis for your super powers.
I have the disorder. Lots of them. It is only a matter of picking one. And it just so happens that one of the two jobs Mr. Man holds is that of security guard at our friendly neighborhood nuclear power plant. I save all of our used margarine containers so I'll have him bring me home a butter tub full of nuclear waste. They have plenty of it just lying around not doing anybody any good. Surely they can spare a little for a would be Superhero.
All I really need to worry about is my Super name. That's the tough part. The name is the most important part of the thing. It needs to be descriptive so there is no mistaking what I'm all about when I arrive on the scene.
If you're an ordinary citizen walking home from Mr. Green's corner grocery when suddenly the sacks are snatched from your arms by a fleeing felon, you don't want the added burden of wondering who the heck "The Chartreuse Pony" is and how he can possibly help you get your groceries back. No way.
What you want to see is the guy with the big red cape and an "S" on his t-shirt. His name says it all. It says, "I'm not just a guy wearing tights. I'm a Super guy wearing tights who is fully capable of getting sacks full of Pringles and eggs back to their rightful owner".
That's what I need. A name that says who I am and immediately instills complete trust and confidence in what I can do.
A name like Obsessive Avenger. Or Captain Compulsive. Or Super Freak.
Oh my gosh! That's it! Super Freak.
It says, "I'm not just a freak. I'm a Super Freak. I'm Super
Freaky". And the best part is, I'll already have a theme song. Every time I show up to right some wrong or foil some bad guy plot, Rick James will be heard in the background warning the evil doers not to take me home to Mother.
OK. So I have my Super name and my Super theme song. Now I need my Super outfit. Wonder Woman snagged the good costume years ago. I would have loved to have had some of those "ching-ching" bracelets and that cool little tell me the truth rope. That rope would have come in handy over the years.
"Are you only telling me I'm beautiful and funny because you want to take a nap with me?" An honest answer to that question could have changed my life!
I am quite partial to red, even though red has been done to death in the Superhero wardrobe. It's a powerful color. But, I don't think any Superhero has dressed completely in red from head to toe yet. Maybe I'll do that.
How about red leather short shorts and a red leather bustier? A long red sequined cape. Thigh high red boots. And naturally I'll need a red tiara with an "S" on it and a long, red leather whip.
Uh-oh. I think I just went from Super Freak to Super Hooker. Better tone it down a little. I'll lose the whip.
I'll get dressed every morning after I take my son to school and fly around town fighting injustice and battling evil villains.
Wherever there are germs, I'll be there to remind people to wash their hands twenty-one times.
Wherever someone has left the house without unplugging the curling iron, I'll be there to unplug it and then check it and re-check it and check it again.
Wherever a woman is forced to use a public toilet, I'll show up with my Super powerful can of Lysol.
Men will love me. Women will want to be me. And those mean old ladies that said nasty things about me will see me on Oprah talking about my Super Self and be so envious of my Superness that they will swear by all that is holy that if ever I forgive them, they will never make fun of me again.
What a good plan. I have completely impressed myself with my ability to think outside the box when solving a problem. That's a very Super thing to do.
It's such a good idea that I should probably patent it. I mean, if I don't, every time someone gets their feelings hurt, they'll be rolling around in nuclear waste and buying leather. And let's face it. We don't want everybody to be Super.
I've got to quit writing now. I'm going to go to Oprah's website and submit a couple ideas for her show.
What do you think of these?
"Superheroes And The Mean Old Biddies That Used To Laugh At Them"
"I Used To Be A Geek, But Now I'm A Super Freak"
"Superhero Extreme Make Overs: How Nuclear Waste Can Take Ten Years Off Your Face"
Watch your local listings!
Visit my website!
Visit HumorLinks on the web!
Copyright © 2004, Sherri Bailey
This blog may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the author.
HSVentures@cableone.net
This day started out to be a hum-dinger. (Excuse me while I giggle. I said hum-dinger.) I woke up very early and took the dog out just as the sun was starting to make her move on the sky. It was cool, autumn cool and so quiet that I could probably have heard a cricket move had one been inclined to do so. It was the kind of moment that makes you believe you are capable of thinking great and important thoughts. The kind of moment that reminds you how lucky you are to be breathing in and out. In the words of the great Lyle Lovett, it was the kind of moment "when great ideas just seem to fall down on you."
It was a spectacular morning.
And for hours after my greeting card beginning, it continued to be a near perfect day. My son and I ran errands, hit a few garage sales, drank milkshakes and laughed at everything we saw... including the garage sale that consisted only of two large blankets lying on the ground and a crusty, old fish tank. Truly the product of my raising, he felt guilty that we didn't buy anything.
And then... cue Jaws music in the background... my day went south.
Someone called me, and out of what I'm certain was nothing but love for me, took great pleasure in telling me that two people I consider very good friends had said some something pretty mean about me. Worse, they had made fun of my obsessive compulsive disorder because they saw me do something they thought was attributed to OCD.
I was completely devastated.
I am the first one to admit that from time to time I do exhibit some behaviors that "normal" people would find odd. Funny even. It's true.
For example, I have a germ phobia like no other which very often causes me to cover my hands in Germ-X and twitch a little because I had to touch a light switch someone else touched.
I can't go to bed without touching every door knob, lock, and oven burner in the house at least once, and more likely three or four times. I figure I'm doing pretty good with that, considering that years ago I would get stuck touching the burners and have to touch them forty or fifty times before I could stop.
I cannot drink coffee unless I put enough cream in it so that it's the color of faded khaki's. Wait a minute. That's not OCD. That's just because I make terrible coffee that's so strong it walks up to me every morning and introduces itself.
I'm a little weird. I get that. And I am always the first one to point out what a doofus I am. When someone else points it out however, that's not nearly as funny.
But I've figured out what to do to make myself feel better and at the same time make those women sorry they ever laughed at me.
When I was there wallering around in my great big pit of pity and having one heck of a woe is me good time, I came up with a plan. A plan so brilliant and so innovative, I can't believe I didn't think of it earlier.
I will become a Superhero.
Think about it. No one laughs at a Superhero. No way. When's the last time you heard anyone poke fun at the Green Hornet or The Incredible Hulk? It simply does not happen. On the contrary, it's their very greenness and their notable incredibleness that makes you respect them.
I figure it can't be that hard to make yourself a Super Hero. All you need is some sort of personality disorder to start with and then you simply fall into a puddle of nuclear waste, thereby making said personality disorder the very basis for your super powers.
I have the disorder. Lots of them. It is only a matter of picking one. And it just so happens that one of the two jobs Mr. Man holds is that of security guard at our friendly neighborhood nuclear power plant. I save all of our used margarine containers so I'll have him bring me home a butter tub full of nuclear waste. They have plenty of it just lying around not doing anybody any good. Surely they can spare a little for a would be Superhero.
All I really need to worry about is my Super name. That's the tough part. The name is the most important part of the thing. It needs to be descriptive so there is no mistaking what I'm all about when I arrive on the scene.
If you're an ordinary citizen walking home from Mr. Green's corner grocery when suddenly the sacks are snatched from your arms by a fleeing felon, you don't want the added burden of wondering who the heck "The Chartreuse Pony" is and how he can possibly help you get your groceries back. No way.
What you want to see is the guy with the big red cape and an "S" on his t-shirt. His name says it all. It says, "I'm not just a guy wearing tights. I'm a Super guy wearing tights who is fully capable of getting sacks full of Pringles and eggs back to their rightful owner".
That's what I need. A name that says who I am and immediately instills complete trust and confidence in what I can do.
A name like Obsessive Avenger. Or Captain Compulsive. Or Super Freak.
Oh my gosh! That's it! Super Freak.
It says, "I'm not just a freak. I'm a Super Freak. I'm Super
Freaky". And the best part is, I'll already have a theme song. Every time I show up to right some wrong or foil some bad guy plot, Rick James will be heard in the background warning the evil doers not to take me home to Mother.
OK. So I have my Super name and my Super theme song. Now I need my Super outfit. Wonder Woman snagged the good costume years ago. I would have loved to have had some of those "ching-ching" bracelets and that cool little tell me the truth rope. That rope would have come in handy over the years.
"Are you only telling me I'm beautiful and funny because you want to take a nap with me?" An honest answer to that question could have changed my life!
I am quite partial to red, even though red has been done to death in the Superhero wardrobe. It's a powerful color. But, I don't think any Superhero has dressed completely in red from head to toe yet. Maybe I'll do that.
How about red leather short shorts and a red leather bustier? A long red sequined cape. Thigh high red boots. And naturally I'll need a red tiara with an "S" on it and a long, red leather whip.
Uh-oh. I think I just went from Super Freak to Super Hooker. Better tone it down a little. I'll lose the whip.
I'll get dressed every morning after I take my son to school and fly around town fighting injustice and battling evil villains.
Wherever there are germs, I'll be there to remind people to wash their hands twenty-one times.
Wherever someone has left the house without unplugging the curling iron, I'll be there to unplug it and then check it and re-check it and check it again.
Wherever a woman is forced to use a public toilet, I'll show up with my Super powerful can of Lysol.
Men will love me. Women will want to be me. And those mean old ladies that said nasty things about me will see me on Oprah talking about my Super Self and be so envious of my Superness that they will swear by all that is holy that if ever I forgive them, they will never make fun of me again.
What a good plan. I have completely impressed myself with my ability to think outside the box when solving a problem. That's a very Super thing to do.
It's such a good idea that I should probably patent it. I mean, if I don't, every time someone gets their feelings hurt, they'll be rolling around in nuclear waste and buying leather. And let's face it. We don't want everybody to be Super.
I've got to quit writing now. I'm going to go to Oprah's website and submit a couple ideas for her show.
What do you think of these?
"Superheroes And The Mean Old Biddies That Used To Laugh At Them"
"I Used To Be A Geek, But Now I'm A Super Freak"
"Superhero Extreme Make Overs: How Nuclear Waste Can Take Ten Years Off Your Face"
Watch your local listings!
Visit my website!
Visit HumorLinks on the web!
Copyright © 2004, Sherri Bailey
This blog may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the author.
HSVentures@cableone.net
Thursday, June 24, 2004
Pull me in the shallow water before I get too deep.
Today I am going to write purely for my own therapy. I'm not interested in being particularly funny because I don't feel particularly funny.
Oh, I'm not bummed out or anything. Just feeling somewhat like Jack Handy, filled with the deep thoughts and all.
I realized something about myself today. Something pretty important. Something I need to work out and work through... without paying a trained professional one go-zillion dollars to do it.
Ready? Here it goes...
I am guilty, therefore I am.
I love to feel guilty. Seriously. I feel guilty all the time and if I am not feeling guilty about something, I feel guilty because I am not feeling guilty.
I feel guilty because there are hungry children in Africa and yet I spent $18.00 on Science diet pet food for my cat and dog because I worry the stuff that doesn't come from the vet is not nutritious enough.
I feel guilty that I don't spend enough time with my son, even though I work at home so that I can be with him whenever he needs me. When I'm in the middle of something at my desk and he comes in and wants to play Frustration, I sometimes say no and that makes me feel like a rotten mom.
I feel guilty because the man I love got up at four in the morning today to go play cop and try to bust some mean old drug dealers. I certainly don't make him do that, but I feel bad for him that he gives up his much needed sleep to try to put the bad guys behind bars.
And I feel guilty that putting bad guys in jail isn't as important to me as maybe it should be.
I feel guilty that my daughter asked me to go see RENT this weekend in the city and even though I wanted to see it so badly I could taste it, I said no. The $100.00 the tickets would have cost has been allotted toward a promised pool for the back yard for my son. I'd much rather have spent the money to hear "Light My Candle" than a gigantic plastic pool, but it's not about what I want.
I feel guilty that I haven't been to church in nearly six weeks. I'm almost positive God has no plans to smite me for it, but I'm sleeping with one eye open just in case.
I feel guilty that Mr. Man yelled and stomped at the stray cat that I've been secretly feeding and watering. He thinks we need to get rid of him and I think we need to treat him like we would want someone to treat our cat if he ever escaped.
I feel guilty that I am feeding the stray cat because my house cat wants to be outside so badly. He must have some real issues with me because I hold him hostage in here while I feed some undesirable pan handling cat outdoors.
I also feel guilty about the money I will undoubtedly have to spend on kitty therapy to help my cat work through his pain.
I feel guilty that I am going to the city this weekend, even though I am not seeing RENT, but just because I need a break. I need a break from these four walls, from being Mom, from t-shirts and fat shorts. I need a break from grocery lists and dirty socks and dusty television screens and what's for supper and did you remember to pay the phone bill.
I feel guilty that sometimes I don't want to be a Mrs. or a mom. I want to be a woman. A woman in a nice outfit with 4" heels, manicured nails and the expensive perfume I used to wear before I spent my money on plastic pools and heart worm medicine.
I feel guilty because I want to be whistled at again. Fawned over. Drooled over even. I want beautiful men to fling themselves at my feet and beg me to run away with them to some exotic island where my hands will never again touch dirty dishes or Tide. Where no one is allowed to call me Dear or Ma'am in any situation and where women that have long since left their twenties behind them are worshipped as goddesses.
I just feel guilty. It's what I do.
And up until a few minutes ago, I was beginning to believe that it was something unique to me. That my constant and completely obsessive need to feel guilty was all about me.
And then the phone rang. It was a friend that I had asked to come along with me to the city on Sunday when I make my big break. Guess what? She was feeling guilty, too.
"I just feel so guilty," she said. She has to leave her son at the sitters and what if her Mr. Man didn't think it was a good idea and what if, what if, what if.
"I think women are trained to feel guilty," she said.
And maybe she's right. I guess it's a fact that while little boys are busy pretending to shoot things with their fingers and burning up ants with magnifying glasses, little girls are worrying about how the ant mommy is going to feel when she realizes her little ant son has been killed in some unexplainable, freak spontaneous combustion accident.
So what should we do then, we guilt-ridden women?
I'm sure I have no idea But believe me when I tell you, I feel guilty that I am unable to solve this problem for all womankind before I close.
I think I'll just do what I always do when I'm feeling guilty. I'm going to put on my fat pants, turn something shameful on television and eat a pie.
Now I feel guilty about all those pie-less children somewhere who are at this very moment, without pie.
Oh gosh. Better make that two pies.
Visit my site by clicking here.
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Copyright © 2004, Sherri Bailey
This blog may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the author.
HSVentures@cableone.net
Today I am going to write purely for my own therapy. I'm not interested in being particularly funny because I don't feel particularly funny.
Oh, I'm not bummed out or anything. Just feeling somewhat like Jack Handy, filled with the deep thoughts and all.
I realized something about myself today. Something pretty important. Something I need to work out and work through... without paying a trained professional one go-zillion dollars to do it.
Ready? Here it goes...
I am guilty, therefore I am.
I love to feel guilty. Seriously. I feel guilty all the time and if I am not feeling guilty about something, I feel guilty because I am not feeling guilty.
I feel guilty because there are hungry children in Africa and yet I spent $18.00 on Science diet pet food for my cat and dog because I worry the stuff that doesn't come from the vet is not nutritious enough.
I feel guilty that I don't spend enough time with my son, even though I work at home so that I can be with him whenever he needs me. When I'm in the middle of something at my desk and he comes in and wants to play Frustration, I sometimes say no and that makes me feel like a rotten mom.
I feel guilty because the man I love got up at four in the morning today to go play cop and try to bust some mean old drug dealers. I certainly don't make him do that, but I feel bad for him that he gives up his much needed sleep to try to put the bad guys behind bars.
And I feel guilty that putting bad guys in jail isn't as important to me as maybe it should be.
I feel guilty that my daughter asked me to go see RENT this weekend in the city and even though I wanted to see it so badly I could taste it, I said no. The $100.00 the tickets would have cost has been allotted toward a promised pool for the back yard for my son. I'd much rather have spent the money to hear "Light My Candle" than a gigantic plastic pool, but it's not about what I want.
I feel guilty that I haven't been to church in nearly six weeks. I'm almost positive God has no plans to smite me for it, but I'm sleeping with one eye open just in case.
I feel guilty that Mr. Man yelled and stomped at the stray cat that I've been secretly feeding and watering. He thinks we need to get rid of him and I think we need to treat him like we would want someone to treat our cat if he ever escaped.
I feel guilty that I am feeding the stray cat because my house cat wants to be outside so badly. He must have some real issues with me because I hold him hostage in here while I feed some undesirable pan handling cat outdoors.
I also feel guilty about the money I will undoubtedly have to spend on kitty therapy to help my cat work through his pain.
I feel guilty that I am going to the city this weekend, even though I am not seeing RENT, but just because I need a break. I need a break from these four walls, from being Mom, from t-shirts and fat shorts. I need a break from grocery lists and dirty socks and dusty television screens and what's for supper and did you remember to pay the phone bill.
I feel guilty that sometimes I don't want to be a Mrs. or a mom. I want to be a woman. A woman in a nice outfit with 4" heels, manicured nails and the expensive perfume I used to wear before I spent my money on plastic pools and heart worm medicine.
I feel guilty because I want to be whistled at again. Fawned over. Drooled over even. I want beautiful men to fling themselves at my feet and beg me to run away with them to some exotic island where my hands will never again touch dirty dishes or Tide. Where no one is allowed to call me Dear or Ma'am in any situation and where women that have long since left their twenties behind them are worshipped as goddesses.
I just feel guilty. It's what I do.
And up until a few minutes ago, I was beginning to believe that it was something unique to me. That my constant and completely obsessive need to feel guilty was all about me.
And then the phone rang. It was a friend that I had asked to come along with me to the city on Sunday when I make my big break. Guess what? She was feeling guilty, too.
"I just feel so guilty," she said. She has to leave her son at the sitters and what if her Mr. Man didn't think it was a good idea and what if, what if, what if.
"I think women are trained to feel guilty," she said.
And maybe she's right. I guess it's a fact that while little boys are busy pretending to shoot things with their fingers and burning up ants with magnifying glasses, little girls are worrying about how the ant mommy is going to feel when she realizes her little ant son has been killed in some unexplainable, freak spontaneous combustion accident.
So what should we do then, we guilt-ridden women?
I'm sure I have no idea But believe me when I tell you, I feel guilty that I am unable to solve this problem for all womankind before I close.
I think I'll just do what I always do when I'm feeling guilty. I'm going to put on my fat pants, turn something shameful on television and eat a pie.
Now I feel guilty about all those pie-less children somewhere who are at this very moment, without pie.
Oh gosh. Better make that two pies.
Visit my site by clicking here.
Visit HumorLinks on the web!
Copyright © 2004, Sherri Bailey
This blog may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the author.
HSVentures@cableone.net
Tuesday, June 22, 2004
If a tree falls in the forest, and their is no one there to hear it, did the light really go off in the refrigerator?
I didn't sleep very much last night. I hate it when that happens. There was no one particular reason sleep eluded me. There usually isn't. Most of the time it's an assortment of things.
Sometimes it just boils down to simply one very long night's worth of thoughts. Should-have's, could have's and wish I could's.
Other times, it's because I am battling some philosophical question. Like the fate of mankind and how I can single-handedly change it. Or whether I could pee standing up.
One thing is always a given though. I really should be suspicious of any thought, plan or scheme I cook up when I'm not sleeping. That's because I often give birth to what I think at the time are brilliant strokes of genius that I act on impulsively and then inevitably regret.
Like the time I decided I could cut my own hair. It seemed like a good idea around three in the morning. I mean, why pay someone to do what I was convinced by sleeplessness I could easily do myself?
It seemed perfectly logical. Those people that waste so much of their time going to classes and getting a state license just to cut hair obviously lacked the creative abilities and natural talent I had.
How hard could it be, anyway?
I grabbed the giant, all purpose kitchen shears that I also used to cut chicken and the occasional two by four and headed off to the dimly lit bathroom in our military quarters in Germany. I could hardly wait to unleash my inner hair-cutting brilliance.
As I stood in front of the mirror, yawning and rubbing my eyes, I imagined the sort of reaction I'd receive when I was finished. Naturally all the women I knew would want me to cut their hair just like mine.
"It's stunning!" they'd all say. "Please, for the love of God, cut our hair, too!"
And of course, I would.
They'd be lined up outside my little townhouse for as far as the eye could see, when suddenly the evil cosmetology state board villains, absolutely green with envy, would show up at my front door and demand I stop practicing beauty without a license.
I'd fight them though! Fight them 'til my last breath! I could not in good conscience deny the world of my idiot-savant hair cutting ability.
I'd wind up testifying before congress in an effort to change the silly, antiquated law about going to school and taking tests in order to cut hair. Women would circulate petitions. Men of all ages would think I was the most beautiful woman on Earth and Jon Bon Jovi would ask me to marry him and his hair and we'd all live happily ever after in a giant castle in Hawaii.
Wait a minute. My fantasies are getting all jumbled up here. Scratch that last part.
As you can see, I tend to get a little carried away from time to time when my brain is deprived of sufficient REM sleep.
Long story short, I cut my own hair. How'd it look?
Have you ever seen that episode of COPS where this middle aged woman with no teeth, wearing nothing but a torn black tank top and great big Grandma panties is getting the snot beat out of her by her baby's Daddy while continually sucking on a cigarette so hard her cheeks look like they're touching on the inside of her mouth?
Yeah, well I should have let her cut my hair.
Sometimes though, when I'm alone and I can't sleep, it's just because I'm a big ole scaredey cat. Plain and simple. Even at my age and even after the countless nights I've spent alone, I still sometimes get a little nervous at night. (That whole "even after the countless nights I've spent alone" thing sounded a lot less pathetic in my head.)
Especially if I watch one of those A&E crime documentaries right before bed. You know the one. It's the story of how a perfectly lovely forty-year-old woman was found brutally murdered by the freckle-faced, love sick, check out boy from the grocery store.
I really can't sleep then.
I start thinking to myself, "Hey, I'm a perfectly lovely forty-year-old woman and maybe I was kind of rude to the kid that bagged my Chunky-Monkey the other day".
Next thing you know, I'm hearing noises outside in the bushes and burying all the kitchen knives in the cat's litter box so that murdering freak won't have such an easy time chopping me up into bitsy pieces.
However, through the years I have devised a clever two-part-plan that has proven to be effective at thwarting check out boys to whom I am rude. The evidence of how well it works is that I am still not dead. That's the first sign of a good plan.
I'll break it down for you right here so that you too can avoid murderous bagging boys.
Step one of my plan: Turn on every light in the house along with any flood lights you may have outside.
Murderers hate that. Think about it. You never hear a detective on one of those A&E shows mention that every single light in the house was on when they found the victim. That's proof enough for me.
Step two of my plan: Loudly talk to imaginary people.
It's also been scientifically proven (by me) that people looking to kill in cold blood don't like a crowd. If they think you're hanging out with your friends, they'll move on down the block and kill the weird old lady that eats dandelions... which is exactly what you want.
You can't have just any pretend conversation though. You have to have a very loud conversation and one that says to Bundy wannabes, "Move on, killer. This perfectly lovely forty-year-old woman is not home alone."
A few examples of things I have found to work particularly well are:
"Gee Brutus, I'm happy you broke out of prison tonight! I still can't believe how easily you killed that large group of Navy Seals using nothing but a tub of Betty Crocker Frosting and some string!"
Or...
"It's so nice to have a quiet evening at home, just sitting around with my friends the Hells Angels, cleaning our Uzi's and burning every light in the house."
Try it the next time you're afraid you're about to be burgled or murdered. Bet you wake up alive instead of dead.
Well, I'm actually starting to get a little sleepy now, so I should probably wind this up. I think if I don't sleep again tonight, maybe I'll finally be able to solve the age old question, "How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?".
Right off the top of my head, I'm gonna say three.
Click here to visit my website.
Visit HumorLinks on the web!
Copyright © 2004, Sherri Bailey
This blog may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the author.
HSVentures@cableone.net
I didn't sleep very much last night. I hate it when that happens. There was no one particular reason sleep eluded me. There usually isn't. Most of the time it's an assortment of things.
Sometimes it just boils down to simply one very long night's worth of thoughts. Should-have's, could have's and wish I could's.
Other times, it's because I am battling some philosophical question. Like the fate of mankind and how I can single-handedly change it. Or whether I could pee standing up.
One thing is always a given though. I really should be suspicious of any thought, plan or scheme I cook up when I'm not sleeping. That's because I often give birth to what I think at the time are brilliant strokes of genius that I act on impulsively and then inevitably regret.
Like the time I decided I could cut my own hair. It seemed like a good idea around three in the morning. I mean, why pay someone to do what I was convinced by sleeplessness I could easily do myself?
It seemed perfectly logical. Those people that waste so much of their time going to classes and getting a state license just to cut hair obviously lacked the creative abilities and natural talent I had.
How hard could it be, anyway?
I grabbed the giant, all purpose kitchen shears that I also used to cut chicken and the occasional two by four and headed off to the dimly lit bathroom in our military quarters in Germany. I could hardly wait to unleash my inner hair-cutting brilliance.
As I stood in front of the mirror, yawning and rubbing my eyes, I imagined the sort of reaction I'd receive when I was finished. Naturally all the women I knew would want me to cut their hair just like mine.
"It's stunning!" they'd all say. "Please, for the love of God, cut our hair, too!"
And of course, I would.
They'd be lined up outside my little townhouse for as far as the eye could see, when suddenly the evil cosmetology state board villains, absolutely green with envy, would show up at my front door and demand I stop practicing beauty without a license.
I'd fight them though! Fight them 'til my last breath! I could not in good conscience deny the world of my idiot-savant hair cutting ability.
I'd wind up testifying before congress in an effort to change the silly, antiquated law about going to school and taking tests in order to cut hair. Women would circulate petitions. Men of all ages would think I was the most beautiful woman on Earth and Jon Bon Jovi would ask me to marry him and his hair and we'd all live happily ever after in a giant castle in Hawaii.
Wait a minute. My fantasies are getting all jumbled up here. Scratch that last part.
As you can see, I tend to get a little carried away from time to time when my brain is deprived of sufficient REM sleep.
Long story short, I cut my own hair. How'd it look?
Have you ever seen that episode of COPS where this middle aged woman with no teeth, wearing nothing but a torn black tank top and great big Grandma panties is getting the snot beat out of her by her baby's Daddy while continually sucking on a cigarette so hard her cheeks look like they're touching on the inside of her mouth?
Yeah, well I should have let her cut my hair.
Sometimes though, when I'm alone and I can't sleep, it's just because I'm a big ole scaredey cat. Plain and simple. Even at my age and even after the countless nights I've spent alone, I still sometimes get a little nervous at night. (That whole "even after the countless nights I've spent alone" thing sounded a lot less pathetic in my head.)
Especially if I watch one of those A&E crime documentaries right before bed. You know the one. It's the story of how a perfectly lovely forty-year-old woman was found brutally murdered by the freckle-faced, love sick, check out boy from the grocery store.
I really can't sleep then.
I start thinking to myself, "Hey, I'm a perfectly lovely forty-year-old woman and maybe I was kind of rude to the kid that bagged my Chunky-Monkey the other day".
Next thing you know, I'm hearing noises outside in the bushes and burying all the kitchen knives in the cat's litter box so that murdering freak won't have such an easy time chopping me up into bitsy pieces.
However, through the years I have devised a clever two-part-plan that has proven to be effective at thwarting check out boys to whom I am rude. The evidence of how well it works is that I am still not dead. That's the first sign of a good plan.
I'll break it down for you right here so that you too can avoid murderous bagging boys.
Step one of my plan: Turn on every light in the house along with any flood lights you may have outside.
Murderers hate that. Think about it. You never hear a detective on one of those A&E shows mention that every single light in the house was on when they found the victim. That's proof enough for me.
Step two of my plan: Loudly talk to imaginary people.
It's also been scientifically proven (by me) that people looking to kill in cold blood don't like a crowd. If they think you're hanging out with your friends, they'll move on down the block and kill the weird old lady that eats dandelions... which is exactly what you want.
You can't have just any pretend conversation though. You have to have a very loud conversation and one that says to Bundy wannabes, "Move on, killer. This perfectly lovely forty-year-old woman is not home alone."
A few examples of things I have found to work particularly well are:
"Gee Brutus, I'm happy you broke out of prison tonight! I still can't believe how easily you killed that large group of Navy Seals using nothing but a tub of Betty Crocker Frosting and some string!"
Or...
"It's so nice to have a quiet evening at home, just sitting around with my friends the Hells Angels, cleaning our Uzi's and burning every light in the house."
Try it the next time you're afraid you're about to be burgled or murdered. Bet you wake up alive instead of dead.
Well, I'm actually starting to get a little sleepy now, so I should probably wind this up. I think if I don't sleep again tonight, maybe I'll finally be able to solve the age old question, "How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?".
Right off the top of my head, I'm gonna say three.
Click here to visit my website.
Visit HumorLinks on the web!
Copyright © 2004, Sherri Bailey
This blog may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the author.
HSVentures@cableone.net
Monday, June 21, 2004
I'm no cow licker.
I'm running away. In all fairness, I threaten to run away fairly often. I figure it keeps everybody on their toes. If they think I am apt to just disappear at any moment, maybe they'll be nicer to me while I'm around.
But, I'm really gonna do it this time. Truly I am. I'm packing my little bandana with my make-up, my White Strips and my extra hold hair spray, tying the whole she-bang to a long stick and taking off.
Where am I going?
That's some more of your business. All I will say is that I'm in search of a land where Atkins is known simply as the anti-Christ and women that are a size 6 and under are stuffed and displayed in plexiglas cases so that you can pay a quarter to look at them in carnival side shows.
And I mean that in the most Christian way, of course.
If I sound just the tiniest bit crabby, please let me explain.
I made the decision to run away about six days ago. Coincidentally, that was about the time I decided to go on Atkins.
You see, I've recently come back from vacationing in the beautiful state of North Carolina, where their license tags read, "First in Flight", but in the interest of truth in advertising should read, "We love biscuits and sugar".
It's true. I'm a good old, redneck North Carolina girl. What that means is I like me some carbs and I loves me some sugar. My parents were putting sweet tea in my bottle and dipping my pacifier in banana pudding before I could even form words. Sugar was and is it's own food group back home and all good southerners know you have to get your four servings a day or your growth will be stunted.
I've been a sugar shaking, pudding loving chick for a long, long time.
Way back when I was just a little sugar addict and I'd get to spend the night with my Maw-Maw and Paw-Paw, I'd wake up to the sweet smell of Lucky Strikes, Virginia Slims, strong coffee and home-made biscuits. I'd rub the sleep from my eyes and follow the trail of smoke to find my grandparents sitting around the table with the second most important staple of the southern diet piled high on a plate in the middle.
Biscuits.
They were the center of attention. What we put on them, in them or around them was of little consequence.
On Maw-Maw's table she also always kept a steady supply of the things that make life worth living. Black Strap molasses, Karo syrup, honey with the comb still in it and a sugar bowl that hadn't been empty since she got it free in a box of soap in 1942.
When I sat down for breakfast, I always popped open one of her amazingly fluffy biscuits, filled it with butter and closed it just long enough to let it melt. Once the butter achieved just the right degree of "meltedness", I'd drench it in some sort of syrup and wash the whole thing down with a big glass of sweet tea. I guess I should call it tea syrup really, because there was enough sugar in Maw-Maw's tea to throw a perfectly healthy person into a diabetic coma.
Man that was good stuff.
If you opened Maw-Maw's cupboards at any given time, you'd notice that there were bags and bags of flour and sugar lining the shelves. And if you looked behind those, you'd see she had hidden her ration cards from the war. I guess she figured if our boys had to go off to battle on some foreign shore again, she was going to be ahead of the game in the sugar line.
Maw-Maw could even take something as plain and unexciting as gravy for breakfast and turn it into a sinfully, sugary goodness known as chocolate gravy.
Chocolate gravy consists of a big pile of Hershey's cocoa, a butt load of sugar, a little dab of flour, a sprinkle of salt (I have not the slightest idea why you add salt) and milk. And don't be trying anything hinky by using that 2% stuff either. We like our milk like we like ourselves...with as much fat as possible.
You mix it all up, bring it just to a boil, stir it until it's thick and then you serve it over hot biscuits for breakfast. I remember my cousins telling me that they used to take chocolate gravy biscuits for lunch to school sometimes, too. I can only imagine what would happen if I sent my son to school with biscuits full of chocolate for lunch.
"Dear Ms. Crazy On Your Face,
We will be visiting with you at your home to discuss proper nutrition and what a bad parent you are for feeding your son melted candy on bread for lunch.
Sincerely,
The Department of We Know How To Raise Kids Better Than You"
Before you decide that it was just my family that loved bread and sugar almost as much as they loved Jesus, let me assure you it was not. It was everyone I knew. Everyone ate biscuits every single meal and Heaven forbid the tea was not sweet. If you couldn't count on anything else in life, you could always rest assured that no matter how tough things got, Praise God there was always going to be sugar in the tea.
Not only did we appreciate all things sweet, we felt there was nothing that couldn't be made better by frying it. We fried everything in oil and/or butter and/or lard. (Lard is the non-politically correct word for shortening.)
Eggs, pork, beef, and even fruit pies were all going to get fried. The idea of baking chicken was just plain silly. God obviously made chicken to be covered in flour and fried...anything less was just, well, Yankee-fied. I'm sure if there were a southern translation of the King James Bible, it would tell us that Jesus made Matthew fry all that fish they caught.
So, you might not be surprised to discover that I love to bake biscuits, eat sweets and fry everything that doesn't run from me. It's the only way to live.
Unfortunately, my forty-year-old body is beginning to show the signs of my chicken-fried life.
Now, back to my most recent need to run away.
You see, I was finally beginning to get control of some of my, shall we say less than perfect eating habits when it came time for our annual vacation back to the foothills of North Carolina.
Just like when I was a kid, my step-mom woke us up every morning with that same incredibly wonderful smell of homemade biscuits slathered in butter with some manner of fried meat buried inside. Sugar cured bacon, salty ham or my personal favorite: liver mush.
Liver mush. That doesn't even look good when you see it typed there on the page.
Liver.... mush.
I'd probably have a hard time convincing you to take even the tiniest bite, much less try to convince you that it is the single bestest breakfast meat ever created in a slaughter house.
Liver mush comes in a loaf that is tightly wrapped in plastic. It has sort of a dull gray color with little flecks of red throughout. Again, as I type that I'm finally figuring out why it is no one outside of North Carolina has ever eaten it. How in the world could anyone successfully market such a thing?
"So friends, rush right out today and grab yourself a big old slab of that brain-matter-colored meat called Liver Mush. It's just good eatin'!"
I really have no idea what is in liver mush, other than liver and corn meal and spices. I don't want to know. What I don't know can't make me throw up. But, once you cut a slice of that gray loaf and fry it crispy in oil, it's all about good. I love the stuff.
And that's the way I'd start every day of vacation. I'd eat biscuits and meat until I was beyond full and then drink so much coffee (with spoonfuls of sugar stirred in no doubt) that my hands would still be shaking when it was time to eat again.
Which wasn't long.
No sooner had we finished breakfast and taken the hour and a half necessary to paint our faces and make our hair North Carolina big, then it was time for a snack.
We'd rummage through the kitchen that still smelled like breakfast in search of something sweet. Maybe we'd have a chocolate muffin packed with chocolate chips. Or maybe it would be some leftover strawberry cake from the night before. Whatever it was, we'd suck it back like we hadn't eaten in days all the while discussing what we were going to eat for supper.
But my favorite, my absolute favorite of all the mass quantities I consumed on vacation, the king of all things wickedly good in the universe........
microwave melted Moon Pies!
Yee-haw, Baby!
My Daddy told me when I came home that he had bought me an entire case of chocolate Moon Pies to enjoy while I was home. "But Daddy," I said, "I've hated Moon Pies since I was a kid. I can't even stand to smell the things."
Not the way he fixed them, he said. He popped one into the microwave until the marshmallow center sort of exploded and the chocolate covering was all runny and then handed it to me with a fork. I put the first bite in my mouth and I think I must have blacked out for a minute because the next thing I knew I was down on all fours licking the plate clean.
I was also completely addicted. I could think of nothing but melted Moon Pies. I ate breakfast just so I could hurry and eat a Moon Pie.
I watched everyone that went into the kitchen to get one and mentally counted down how many were left in the box.
I announced to my entire family that I had found my one true calling in life and when I got back to Kansas I was going to open a Moon Pie stand in my front yard and make a fortune.
I had a little monkey on my back.
So, between eating fried meat and biscuits non-stop and stuffing myself with a Moon Pie whenever I could reasonably do so, it didn't take long for my belly to begin to resemble the second trimester I was pregnant with my son. I went to put on the shorts I'd bought for the trip and saw a stuffed southern sausage with blonde hair staring back at me from the mirror.
It was nothing nice.
Which brings me to my Atkins decision and my overwhelming need to flee. When it became clear that I was either going to have to lose the weight or visit with the guy at the local fireworks stand to find out where he got his tent, I figured Atkins was the only answer.
What a dummy.
For those of you still somehow unfamiliar with the diet craze that's sweeping the nation, I'll give you the long and short of it.
You can eat an entire cow, the grass it grazes on, the tree it stands under, and everything it produces with the exception of the poop and the milk, and NOTHING ELSE! (And quite frankly, I'm not so sure you can't eat the poop.)
It's a deal with the devil himself as far as I'm concerned. You remove all the bread, sugar, carbs and joy right out of your life and in return you lose weight.
I'm doing okay on it actually. I've already lost a lot of the Moon Pie tummy and I don't think the guy at the Baskin-Robbins minded too much during the three minutes I was kissing him after he ate a chocolate and peanut butter ice cream cone.
But, as I sit here eating a celery stalk with hamburger and cheese on it, and praying that the end of time will come so I don't have to diet any more, I'm convinced that running away is my only option.
I'll run away to a land where women with tummies are prized as goddesses. Where everything as far as the eye can see is covered in sugar. Where the best people serve liver mush and biscuits at dinner parties. And most important of all, a land where Moon Pies are considered health food.
I'm running away all right. Right back to North Carolina.
Click here to visit my website.
Visit HumorLinks on the web!
Copyright © 2004, Sherri Bailey
This blog may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the author.
HSVentures@cableone.net
I'm running away. In all fairness, I threaten to run away fairly often. I figure it keeps everybody on their toes. If they think I am apt to just disappear at any moment, maybe they'll be nicer to me while I'm around.
But, I'm really gonna do it this time. Truly I am. I'm packing my little bandana with my make-up, my White Strips and my extra hold hair spray, tying the whole she-bang to a long stick and taking off.
Where am I going?
That's some more of your business. All I will say is that I'm in search of a land where Atkins is known simply as the anti-Christ and women that are a size 6 and under are stuffed and displayed in plexiglas cases so that you can pay a quarter to look at them in carnival side shows.
And I mean that in the most Christian way, of course.
If I sound just the tiniest bit crabby, please let me explain.
I made the decision to run away about six days ago. Coincidentally, that was about the time I decided to go on Atkins.
You see, I've recently come back from vacationing in the beautiful state of North Carolina, where their license tags read, "First in Flight", but in the interest of truth in advertising should read, "We love biscuits and sugar".
It's true. I'm a good old, redneck North Carolina girl. What that means is I like me some carbs and I loves me some sugar. My parents were putting sweet tea in my bottle and dipping my pacifier in banana pudding before I could even form words. Sugar was and is it's own food group back home and all good southerners know you have to get your four servings a day or your growth will be stunted.
I've been a sugar shaking, pudding loving chick for a long, long time.
Way back when I was just a little sugar addict and I'd get to spend the night with my Maw-Maw and Paw-Paw, I'd wake up to the sweet smell of Lucky Strikes, Virginia Slims, strong coffee and home-made biscuits. I'd rub the sleep from my eyes and follow the trail of smoke to find my grandparents sitting around the table with the second most important staple of the southern diet piled high on a plate in the middle.
Biscuits.
They were the center of attention. What we put on them, in them or around them was of little consequence.
On Maw-Maw's table she also always kept a steady supply of the things that make life worth living. Black Strap molasses, Karo syrup, honey with the comb still in it and a sugar bowl that hadn't been empty since she got it free in a box of soap in 1942.
When I sat down for breakfast, I always popped open one of her amazingly fluffy biscuits, filled it with butter and closed it just long enough to let it melt. Once the butter achieved just the right degree of "meltedness", I'd drench it in some sort of syrup and wash the whole thing down with a big glass of sweet tea. I guess I should call it tea syrup really, because there was enough sugar in Maw-Maw's tea to throw a perfectly healthy person into a diabetic coma.
Man that was good stuff.
If you opened Maw-Maw's cupboards at any given time, you'd notice that there were bags and bags of flour and sugar lining the shelves. And if you looked behind those, you'd see she had hidden her ration cards from the war. I guess she figured if our boys had to go off to battle on some foreign shore again, she was going to be ahead of the game in the sugar line.
Maw-Maw could even take something as plain and unexciting as gravy for breakfast and turn it into a sinfully, sugary goodness known as chocolate gravy.
Chocolate gravy consists of a big pile of Hershey's cocoa, a butt load of sugar, a little dab of flour, a sprinkle of salt (I have not the slightest idea why you add salt) and milk. And don't be trying anything hinky by using that 2% stuff either. We like our milk like we like ourselves...with as much fat as possible.
You mix it all up, bring it just to a boil, stir it until it's thick and then you serve it over hot biscuits for breakfast. I remember my cousins telling me that they used to take chocolate gravy biscuits for lunch to school sometimes, too. I can only imagine what would happen if I sent my son to school with biscuits full of chocolate for lunch.
"Dear Ms. Crazy On Your Face,
We will be visiting with you at your home to discuss proper nutrition and what a bad parent you are for feeding your son melted candy on bread for lunch.
Sincerely,
The Department of We Know How To Raise Kids Better Than You"
Before you decide that it was just my family that loved bread and sugar almost as much as they loved Jesus, let me assure you it was not. It was everyone I knew. Everyone ate biscuits every single meal and Heaven forbid the tea was not sweet. If you couldn't count on anything else in life, you could always rest assured that no matter how tough things got, Praise God there was always going to be sugar in the tea.
Not only did we appreciate all things sweet, we felt there was nothing that couldn't be made better by frying it. We fried everything in oil and/or butter and/or lard. (Lard is the non-politically correct word for shortening.)
Eggs, pork, beef, and even fruit pies were all going to get fried. The idea of baking chicken was just plain silly. God obviously made chicken to be covered in flour and fried...anything less was just, well, Yankee-fied. I'm sure if there were a southern translation of the King James Bible, it would tell us that Jesus made Matthew fry all that fish they caught.
So, you might not be surprised to discover that I love to bake biscuits, eat sweets and fry everything that doesn't run from me. It's the only way to live.
Unfortunately, my forty-year-old body is beginning to show the signs of my chicken-fried life.
Now, back to my most recent need to run away.
You see, I was finally beginning to get control of some of my, shall we say less than perfect eating habits when it came time for our annual vacation back to the foothills of North Carolina.
Just like when I was a kid, my step-mom woke us up every morning with that same incredibly wonderful smell of homemade biscuits slathered in butter with some manner of fried meat buried inside. Sugar cured bacon, salty ham or my personal favorite: liver mush.
Liver mush. That doesn't even look good when you see it typed there on the page.
Liver.... mush.
I'd probably have a hard time convincing you to take even the tiniest bite, much less try to convince you that it is the single bestest breakfast meat ever created in a slaughter house.
Liver mush comes in a loaf that is tightly wrapped in plastic. It has sort of a dull gray color with little flecks of red throughout. Again, as I type that I'm finally figuring out why it is no one outside of North Carolina has ever eaten it. How in the world could anyone successfully market such a thing?
"So friends, rush right out today and grab yourself a big old slab of that brain-matter-colored meat called Liver Mush. It's just good eatin'!"
I really have no idea what is in liver mush, other than liver and corn meal and spices. I don't want to know. What I don't know can't make me throw up. But, once you cut a slice of that gray loaf and fry it crispy in oil, it's all about good. I love the stuff.
And that's the way I'd start every day of vacation. I'd eat biscuits and meat until I was beyond full and then drink so much coffee (with spoonfuls of sugar stirred in no doubt) that my hands would still be shaking when it was time to eat again.
Which wasn't long.
No sooner had we finished breakfast and taken the hour and a half necessary to paint our faces and make our hair North Carolina big, then it was time for a snack.
We'd rummage through the kitchen that still smelled like breakfast in search of something sweet. Maybe we'd have a chocolate muffin packed with chocolate chips. Or maybe it would be some leftover strawberry cake from the night before. Whatever it was, we'd suck it back like we hadn't eaten in days all the while discussing what we were going to eat for supper.
But my favorite, my absolute favorite of all the mass quantities I consumed on vacation, the king of all things wickedly good in the universe........
microwave melted Moon Pies!
Yee-haw, Baby!
My Daddy told me when I came home that he had bought me an entire case of chocolate Moon Pies to enjoy while I was home. "But Daddy," I said, "I've hated Moon Pies since I was a kid. I can't even stand to smell the things."
Not the way he fixed them, he said. He popped one into the microwave until the marshmallow center sort of exploded and the chocolate covering was all runny and then handed it to me with a fork. I put the first bite in my mouth and I think I must have blacked out for a minute because the next thing I knew I was down on all fours licking the plate clean.
I was also completely addicted. I could think of nothing but melted Moon Pies. I ate breakfast just so I could hurry and eat a Moon Pie.
I watched everyone that went into the kitchen to get one and mentally counted down how many were left in the box.
I announced to my entire family that I had found my one true calling in life and when I got back to Kansas I was going to open a Moon Pie stand in my front yard and make a fortune.
I had a little monkey on my back.
So, between eating fried meat and biscuits non-stop and stuffing myself with a Moon Pie whenever I could reasonably do so, it didn't take long for my belly to begin to resemble the second trimester I was pregnant with my son. I went to put on the shorts I'd bought for the trip and saw a stuffed southern sausage with blonde hair staring back at me from the mirror.
It was nothing nice.
Which brings me to my Atkins decision and my overwhelming need to flee. When it became clear that I was either going to have to lose the weight or visit with the guy at the local fireworks stand to find out where he got his tent, I figured Atkins was the only answer.
What a dummy.
For those of you still somehow unfamiliar with the diet craze that's sweeping the nation, I'll give you the long and short of it.
You can eat an entire cow, the grass it grazes on, the tree it stands under, and everything it produces with the exception of the poop and the milk, and NOTHING ELSE! (And quite frankly, I'm not so sure you can't eat the poop.)
It's a deal with the devil himself as far as I'm concerned. You remove all the bread, sugar, carbs and joy right out of your life and in return you lose weight.
I'm doing okay on it actually. I've already lost a lot of the Moon Pie tummy and I don't think the guy at the Baskin-Robbins minded too much during the three minutes I was kissing him after he ate a chocolate and peanut butter ice cream cone.
But, as I sit here eating a celery stalk with hamburger and cheese on it, and praying that the end of time will come so I don't have to diet any more, I'm convinced that running away is my only option.
I'll run away to a land where women with tummies are prized as goddesses. Where everything as far as the eye can see is covered in sugar. Where the best people serve liver mush and biscuits at dinner parties. And most important of all, a land where Moon Pies are considered health food.
I'm running away all right. Right back to North Carolina.
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Copyright © 2004, Sherri Bailey
This blog may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the author.
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Sunday, June 20, 2004
And now, the end is near...
There I was, minding my own business, surfing around the internet, not thinking about dying or anything... which for an obsessive compulsive is quite a big deal, when I stumbled upon a site called Life Gem.
For those of you not familiar with Life Gem, I'll explain. In a nutshell, it's a business that heads over to the crematory after you die, scoops up a bucket full of your left-overs and then with some sort of Superman like strength manages to squeeze a diamond out of you for your loved ones.
Sort of gives new meaning to the phrase, "She's a diamond in the rough", huh?
Right now you're asking, "Hey Sher, I happen to have a dead pet gold fish named Fluffy that I'd really rather wear than flush. Can Life Gem help me?".
It's your lucky day, you weird person you, because the answer is yes. They can even turn your favorite pet into a lovely jewel...assuming that when you torch Fluffy with your Bic you have enough left to make a diamond. Although I wasn't able to figure out just how much dead dust it takes to make a gem, their site does say an average person will make about one-hundred diamonds.
I figure if I keep eating Moon Pies before bed I should be worth about 150 diamonds easy.
This whole dead people diamond stuff got me to thinking. Personally, my biggest fear when it comes to dying is that I'll look awful when I go and as a result, I'll look awful for all eternity. I simply cannot have that. I haven't spent my entire life putting on make-up and dying my hair just so some old man funeral director can make me look like a dumpy house frau.
No way, mister. I want control. Total control over my entire funeral from start to finish.
To start with, I think the funerals we have today are completely outdated. For Heaven's sake, we've been doing this thing pretty much the same way for centuries. We dress them up, paint their faces white, plop them in a big, overpriced box and plant them in a dead people garden like they're going to sprout or something.
I say it's high time we put the fun back in funeral and I plan on starting the ball rolling with my own.
First of all, when I die I want the same people that do the makeovers on all those day time television shows to do my hair and make up. I want my roots touched up, long fake eyelashes applied and bright red hooker lips that'll never smudge.
And as long as they're in there, rooting around removing things and adding things in preparation for my new, stiff life, I want bigger boobs and a flatter tummy. Now is not the time to be bashful. I'm dead. It's not like I have to worry about what people think at this point. I can finally have the body of my dreams.
I guess above all, I do not want to be pushing up daisies in some cemetery next to a bunch of boring dead people with whom I have nothing in common. Just because I'd dead does not mean I have to stop living.
I want to be stuffed and preserved like the raccoon my brothers shot when they were kids. Daddy had it done as a Christmas present for them. (Yes, nothing says southern like getting something you shot three months earlier as your gift on Christmas morning.) We used to keep it on the front porch by the rocking chairs until my step-mom finally had to move it inside because the dogs kept everyone up all night barking at it.
The little bandit animal still sits today in my brother's storage shed all bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and ready for a night out in the forest
I want no less for myself.
If the right people stuff me, they can add some features that I think would make me a lot more fun to be around through the years.
For instance, I'd like to be fully poseable, like a 5'5" dead Barbie doll. That way, whenever we're having company, Mr. Man could pose me in the living room on the sofa with my head tilted and my legs crossed so that I always look as if I'm listening intently to every conversation.
And just because I can't actually talk back doesn't mean future generations should be deprived of my wit and wisdom. I want to contribute in some meaningful way. That's why I'll have my stuffers insert a "Magic Eight Ball" element so that when someone has a question, they'd simply ask it, shake my hand and wait for the reply on the tiny screen embedded in my wrist watch.
"Grandma, will I be rich and famous when I grow up?" (shake, shake, shake)
"It is not likely."
"Honey, can I get married again to the twenty-year-old housekeeper I hired after you passed?" (shake, shake, shake)
"You do and I'll haunt this house so hard Steven King would wet his pants."
I'd also need a new wardrobe after I died. Sort of like those ceramic geese that sit on people's front porches here in the Midwest. They have different outfits for different weather conditions and their owners rush out to change them whenever the season changes. They have little rain coats and rain bonnets. They have little sweaters and snow boots. And I think I even saw one once wearing a little bikini and a belly ring.
I'd want my loved ones to be able to choose an appropriate outfit for me so that I could attend every family occasion in style. I should probably look into hiring someone as my official dresser before I go though. Otherwise Mr. Man is likely to take me everywhere in a leather halter top and Harley boots. I have no intention of attending my great-granddaughter's wedding looking like I'm on my way to Sturgis.
Come to think of it, that could be a problem all the way around. I mean, Mr. Man is not responsible enough to remember to shave his own face unless I remind him. How in the world can I trust him to keep me dressed, touch up my make-up and pose me in positions other than those that would be suitable for publication in Play Boy?
And what would happen to me after he goes? Since I don't have a lot of money to leave the kids, they'd probably try to make a buck by selling me on eBay. I could wind up being a dead old lady lawn jockey for the Alpha Beta Drunky fraternity.
I guess I've got a lot more thinking to do about my life after I'm dead. Maybe I should at least consider this whole Life Gem thing. That way I'd always be shiny and pretty and I wouldn't have to worry about Mr. Man sticking me in the closet with the Halloween decorations and forgetting I was there.
Wait a minute. Then he'd probably just use me to propose to that twenty-year-old housekeeper he's so intent on marrying.
Just wait 'til I get my hands on him.
Visit me on the web at Wiping The Crazy Off My Face.
Visit HumorLinks on the web!
Copyright © 2004, Sherri Bailey
This blog may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the author.
HSVentures@cableone.net
There I was, minding my own business, surfing around the internet, not thinking about dying or anything... which for an obsessive compulsive is quite a big deal, when I stumbled upon a site called Life Gem.
For those of you not familiar with Life Gem, I'll explain. In a nutshell, it's a business that heads over to the crematory after you die, scoops up a bucket full of your left-overs and then with some sort of Superman like strength manages to squeeze a diamond out of you for your loved ones.
Sort of gives new meaning to the phrase, "She's a diamond in the rough", huh?
Right now you're asking, "Hey Sher, I happen to have a dead pet gold fish named Fluffy that I'd really rather wear than flush. Can Life Gem help me?".
It's your lucky day, you weird person you, because the answer is yes. They can even turn your favorite pet into a lovely jewel...assuming that when you torch Fluffy with your Bic you have enough left to make a diamond. Although I wasn't able to figure out just how much dead dust it takes to make a gem, their site does say an average person will make about one-hundred diamonds.
I figure if I keep eating Moon Pies before bed I should be worth about 150 diamonds easy.
This whole dead people diamond stuff got me to thinking. Personally, my biggest fear when it comes to dying is that I'll look awful when I go and as a result, I'll look awful for all eternity. I simply cannot have that. I haven't spent my entire life putting on make-up and dying my hair just so some old man funeral director can make me look like a dumpy house frau.
No way, mister. I want control. Total control over my entire funeral from start to finish.
To start with, I think the funerals we have today are completely outdated. For Heaven's sake, we've been doing this thing pretty much the same way for centuries. We dress them up, paint their faces white, plop them in a big, overpriced box and plant them in a dead people garden like they're going to sprout or something.
I say it's high time we put the fun back in funeral and I plan on starting the ball rolling with my own.
First of all, when I die I want the same people that do the makeovers on all those day time television shows to do my hair and make up. I want my roots touched up, long fake eyelashes applied and bright red hooker lips that'll never smudge.
And as long as they're in there, rooting around removing things and adding things in preparation for my new, stiff life, I want bigger boobs and a flatter tummy. Now is not the time to be bashful. I'm dead. It's not like I have to worry about what people think at this point. I can finally have the body of my dreams.
I guess above all, I do not want to be pushing up daisies in some cemetery next to a bunch of boring dead people with whom I have nothing in common. Just because I'd dead does not mean I have to stop living.
I want to be stuffed and preserved like the raccoon my brothers shot when they were kids. Daddy had it done as a Christmas present for them. (Yes, nothing says southern like getting something you shot three months earlier as your gift on Christmas morning.) We used to keep it on the front porch by the rocking chairs until my step-mom finally had to move it inside because the dogs kept everyone up all night barking at it.
The little bandit animal still sits today in my brother's storage shed all bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and ready for a night out in the forest
I want no less for myself.
If the right people stuff me, they can add some features that I think would make me a lot more fun to be around through the years.
For instance, I'd like to be fully poseable, like a 5'5" dead Barbie doll. That way, whenever we're having company, Mr. Man could pose me in the living room on the sofa with my head tilted and my legs crossed so that I always look as if I'm listening intently to every conversation.
And just because I can't actually talk back doesn't mean future generations should be deprived of my wit and wisdom. I want to contribute in some meaningful way. That's why I'll have my stuffers insert a "Magic Eight Ball" element so that when someone has a question, they'd simply ask it, shake my hand and wait for the reply on the tiny screen embedded in my wrist watch.
"Grandma, will I be rich and famous when I grow up?" (shake, shake, shake)
"It is not likely."
"Honey, can I get married again to the twenty-year-old housekeeper I hired after you passed?" (shake, shake, shake)
"You do and I'll haunt this house so hard Steven King would wet his pants."
I'd also need a new wardrobe after I died. Sort of like those ceramic geese that sit on people's front porches here in the Midwest. They have different outfits for different weather conditions and their owners rush out to change them whenever the season changes. They have little rain coats and rain bonnets. They have little sweaters and snow boots. And I think I even saw one once wearing a little bikini and a belly ring.
I'd want my loved ones to be able to choose an appropriate outfit for me so that I could attend every family occasion in style. I should probably look into hiring someone as my official dresser before I go though. Otherwise Mr. Man is likely to take me everywhere in a leather halter top and Harley boots. I have no intention of attending my great-granddaughter's wedding looking like I'm on my way to Sturgis.
Come to think of it, that could be a problem all the way around. I mean, Mr. Man is not responsible enough to remember to shave his own face unless I remind him. How in the world can I trust him to keep me dressed, touch up my make-up and pose me in positions other than those that would be suitable for publication in Play Boy?
And what would happen to me after he goes? Since I don't have a lot of money to leave the kids, they'd probably try to make a buck by selling me on eBay. I could wind up being a dead old lady lawn jockey for the Alpha Beta Drunky fraternity.
I guess I've got a lot more thinking to do about my life after I'm dead. Maybe I should at least consider this whole Life Gem thing. That way I'd always be shiny and pretty and I wouldn't have to worry about Mr. Man sticking me in the closet with the Halloween decorations and forgetting I was there.
Wait a minute. Then he'd probably just use me to propose to that twenty-year-old housekeeper he's so intent on marrying.
Just wait 'til I get my hands on him.
Visit me on the web at Wiping The Crazy Off My Face.
Visit HumorLinks on the web!
Copyright © 2004, Sherri Bailey
This blog may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the author.
HSVentures@cableone.net
Saturday, June 19, 2004
Where have all the Larry's gone?
I've always wanted to write a book titled, "Everything I Ever Needed To Know About Life I Learned At A Mental Hospital." I think when supposedly well adjusted, normal people are forced to compare themselves with the local mental institution population, they have no choice but to realize that crazy is relative.
Once I met a man we'll call "Larry". Larry was brilliant in the most literal sense of the word. He was well spoken, and an avid reader of the kinds of books most of us don't really think people read. Although I never knew what it was Larry did before he made a career out of being crazy, I'm sure it was something that required lots of letters after his name on all his dinner invitations.
But sadly, Larry was nuts. Nutty as a fruit cake. When Larry wasn't reading Tolstoy or doing trigonometry in his head, his favorite way to pass time was to take things apart. Not small things like a remote or a telephone. Oh no. Larry liked to take apart big things, like furniture and hospital beds.
If you are at all familiar with the mental hospital setting, you would assume that taking things apart might be hard to do inside those walls. After all, you don't even get a real knife to cut your steak. And you have to sign twenty papers and agree to an audience just to get a razor as dull as my first boyfriend with which to shave your legs, or face, or back as the case may be.
None of that could deter Larry. He could disassemble every single thing in a room inside of thirty minutes... the time it took for the nurses to do their "have you hung yourself yet" checks. Not only was he fast, he could do it with absolutely no tools that anyone could ever find.
I thought about just asking him sometime how he did it. But, I was afraid he'd be nice to me and ask me to marry him and I'd say yes because it would be rude not to and then we'd wind up having little furniture disassembling, obsessive-compulsive children that would wash their hands 140 times after every refrigerator they took apart.
It just wasn't worth it to me.
Needless to say, the powers that be inside this lovely facility absolutely hated Larry. He drove them nuts, if you'll pardon the reference. They tried every single thing they could come up with to stop Larry from taking apart his entire room, screw by screw.
They tried bribing him.
"Larry, if you take apart your room today, we are going to take away all your books."
Didn't work.
"Larry, open wide and swallow this horse tranquilizer."
He'd just take apart his furniture a little slower while yawning frequently.
"Larry, we'd like you to wear this lovely white I-love-me jacket."
He'd wear it for awhile, walking up and down the corridors stopping only occasionally to scratch his head on the wall. And then he'd promise most sincerely that his days as a furniture taker-aparter were over. He'd seen the light. He was a changed man. Never again under any circumstance would he ever take apart anything in his room again.
But no sooner would they turn him loose than good old Larry would be sitting in the middle of one-thousand furniture pieces with the same satisfied look you might see on a sailor that had been at sea for a year and was finally on shore leave. He couldn't help himself.
Personally, I never got what all the fuss was about. It wasn't like he was eating kittens or anything.
And then one day, one of the white-coat wearing, I went to school for thirty years to be a psychiatrist, pill pushing, doctors came up with a brilliant idea.
They put Larry in a padded room with nothing but a bed and told him to knock himself out. "You go get 'er, Larry. You just take that thing apart all you want."
And he did.
Curiosity got the better of me and I managed to tip toe over by Larry's room to peer through the little window into his soft-sided cell. Sure enough, he was pacing back and forth among the debris that was once his bed. Apparently just one bed was not enough. I think he was jones-ing for a dresser or a cabinet or something. When I slipped back by his room about an hour later, Larry was doing something I'd never seen him do before.
He was putting everything back together!
It sort of made me wonder if Larry was in the habit of always putting together again what he had taken apart, but because he was usually jumped by nurses as quickly as he'd done his thing, he never got the time to do it.
I decided if I ever got rich and opened my own mental hospital for fun and profit, I'd always let Larrys take apart and put back together whatever they wanted.
Sort of makes you wonder exactly how to define crazy, doesn't it? I mean, what if every time you took apart the toaster to try and fix it someone made you drink a Xanex smoothie and locked you in your room?
That actually might not be such a bad thing, now that I think about it.
I also knew a lady named Linda that I met when I was on one of my little "vacations". She was about forty with long, dark hair and a constant cigarette in her mouth. She wouldn't light it unless she was in the smoking room, but she wouldn't be without one in her mouth for even a moment. She had the voice of an older Lucille Ball from the years of smoking and a great big smile that made her nose crinkle.
Linda had apparently shown up at her job one day at a manufacturing plant and ran up and down the aisles turning on every machine in the joint laughing wildly. Apparently her boss kept the hospital's number on speed dial for just such an occasion and she was admitted the same day. Personally, I wondered what her employers must have done that caused her to react that way.
Linda was one happy woman. She was always in a good mood. She would walk up to me at least twenty times a day and say, "You're purty". That was it. That's all she ever said to me. Naturally I assumed she couldn't possibly be crazy.
I never quite got what the doctors thought was wrong with Linda, other than she turned on machines that evidently should not have been turned on. If that's how you define crazy, my son needs to be locked up for trying to turn on my computer. She just seemed to me like a pretty decent lady who liked cigarettes and purty people.
One day, the nurses decided that Linda smoked way more than she should and they needed to put the smack down on her. They told her that they were taking her cigarettes away and that they would dispense one to her every hour.
Sweet, decent Linda immediately turned into violent, threatening Linda and promised to do things to the nurses that would cause serial killers to get out of her way.
Obviously, I do not have a degree in psychology, but I'm thinking, "Hey, why not let the woman smoke?".
I've known lots of smokers in my life and quite frankly, if I were to tell any of them that I would be taking their smokes and only giving them one an hour, I'm betting most of them would go all Linda on me. Maybe she wasn't so out of the ordinary after all.
The thing is, we all have a little crazy on our faces. We need to just come out of our closets and admit it. It only becomes a problem, in my opinion, when we are surrounded by people that have it smeared all over but won't admit it. They take it upon themselves to define what is a hospital-worthy brand of crazy and what is just ordinary, every day, run of the mill crazy.
I think I'll always keep a little crazy on my face, if for no other reason than to simply prevent the boredom brought on by taking yourself too seriously.
I'm with you, Linda and Larry. Let's get together sometime soon. You bring the cigarettes and I'll get my screwdriver and a sofa.
Visit HumorLinks on the web!
Copyright © 2004, Sherri Bailey
This blog may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the author.
HSVentures@cableone.net
I've always wanted to write a book titled, "Everything I Ever Needed To Know About Life I Learned At A Mental Hospital." I think when supposedly well adjusted, normal people are forced to compare themselves with the local mental institution population, they have no choice but to realize that crazy is relative.
Once I met a man we'll call "Larry". Larry was brilliant in the most literal sense of the word. He was well spoken, and an avid reader of the kinds of books most of us don't really think people read. Although I never knew what it was Larry did before he made a career out of being crazy, I'm sure it was something that required lots of letters after his name on all his dinner invitations.
But sadly, Larry was nuts. Nutty as a fruit cake. When Larry wasn't reading Tolstoy or doing trigonometry in his head, his favorite way to pass time was to take things apart. Not small things like a remote or a telephone. Oh no. Larry liked to take apart big things, like furniture and hospital beds.
If you are at all familiar with the mental hospital setting, you would assume that taking things apart might be hard to do inside those walls. After all, you don't even get a real knife to cut your steak. And you have to sign twenty papers and agree to an audience just to get a razor as dull as my first boyfriend with which to shave your legs, or face, or back as the case may be.
None of that could deter Larry. He could disassemble every single thing in a room inside of thirty minutes... the time it took for the nurses to do their "have you hung yourself yet" checks. Not only was he fast, he could do it with absolutely no tools that anyone could ever find.
I thought about just asking him sometime how he did it. But, I was afraid he'd be nice to me and ask me to marry him and I'd say yes because it would be rude not to and then we'd wind up having little furniture disassembling, obsessive-compulsive children that would wash their hands 140 times after every refrigerator they took apart.
It just wasn't worth it to me.
Needless to say, the powers that be inside this lovely facility absolutely hated Larry. He drove them nuts, if you'll pardon the reference. They tried every single thing they could come up with to stop Larry from taking apart his entire room, screw by screw.
They tried bribing him.
"Larry, if you take apart your room today, we are going to take away all your books."
Didn't work.
"Larry, open wide and swallow this horse tranquilizer."
He'd just take apart his furniture a little slower while yawning frequently.
"Larry, we'd like you to wear this lovely white I-love-me jacket."
He'd wear it for awhile, walking up and down the corridors stopping only occasionally to scratch his head on the wall. And then he'd promise most sincerely that his days as a furniture taker-aparter were over. He'd seen the light. He was a changed man. Never again under any circumstance would he ever take apart anything in his room again.
But no sooner would they turn him loose than good old Larry would be sitting in the middle of one-thousand furniture pieces with the same satisfied look you might see on a sailor that had been at sea for a year and was finally on shore leave. He couldn't help himself.
Personally, I never got what all the fuss was about. It wasn't like he was eating kittens or anything.
And then one day, one of the white-coat wearing, I went to school for thirty years to be a psychiatrist, pill pushing, doctors came up with a brilliant idea.
They put Larry in a padded room with nothing but a bed and told him to knock himself out. "You go get 'er, Larry. You just take that thing apart all you want."
And he did.
Curiosity got the better of me and I managed to tip toe over by Larry's room to peer through the little window into his soft-sided cell. Sure enough, he was pacing back and forth among the debris that was once his bed. Apparently just one bed was not enough. I think he was jones-ing for a dresser or a cabinet or something. When I slipped back by his room about an hour later, Larry was doing something I'd never seen him do before.
He was putting everything back together!
It sort of made me wonder if Larry was in the habit of always putting together again what he had taken apart, but because he was usually jumped by nurses as quickly as he'd done his thing, he never got the time to do it.
I decided if I ever got rich and opened my own mental hospital for fun and profit, I'd always let Larrys take apart and put back together whatever they wanted.
Sort of makes you wonder exactly how to define crazy, doesn't it? I mean, what if every time you took apart the toaster to try and fix it someone made you drink a Xanex smoothie and locked you in your room?
That actually might not be such a bad thing, now that I think about it.
I also knew a lady named Linda that I met when I was on one of my little "vacations". She was about forty with long, dark hair and a constant cigarette in her mouth. She wouldn't light it unless she was in the smoking room, but she wouldn't be without one in her mouth for even a moment. She had the voice of an older Lucille Ball from the years of smoking and a great big smile that made her nose crinkle.
Linda had apparently shown up at her job one day at a manufacturing plant and ran up and down the aisles turning on every machine in the joint laughing wildly. Apparently her boss kept the hospital's number on speed dial for just such an occasion and she was admitted the same day. Personally, I wondered what her employers must have done that caused her to react that way.
Linda was one happy woman. She was always in a good mood. She would walk up to me at least twenty times a day and say, "You're purty". That was it. That's all she ever said to me. Naturally I assumed she couldn't possibly be crazy.
I never quite got what the doctors thought was wrong with Linda, other than she turned on machines that evidently should not have been turned on. If that's how you define crazy, my son needs to be locked up for trying to turn on my computer. She just seemed to me like a pretty decent lady who liked cigarettes and purty people.
One day, the nurses decided that Linda smoked way more than she should and they needed to put the smack down on her. They told her that they were taking her cigarettes away and that they would dispense one to her every hour.
Sweet, decent Linda immediately turned into violent, threatening Linda and promised to do things to the nurses that would cause serial killers to get out of her way.
Obviously, I do not have a degree in psychology, but I'm thinking, "Hey, why not let the woman smoke?".
I've known lots of smokers in my life and quite frankly, if I were to tell any of them that I would be taking their smokes and only giving them one an hour, I'm betting most of them would go all Linda on me. Maybe she wasn't so out of the ordinary after all.
The thing is, we all have a little crazy on our faces. We need to just come out of our closets and admit it. It only becomes a problem, in my opinion, when we are surrounded by people that have it smeared all over but won't admit it. They take it upon themselves to define what is a hospital-worthy brand of crazy and what is just ordinary, every day, run of the mill crazy.
I think I'll always keep a little crazy on my face, if for no other reason than to simply prevent the boredom brought on by taking yourself too seriously.
I'm with you, Linda and Larry. Let's get together sometime soon. You bring the cigarettes and I'll get my screwdriver and a sofa.
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Copyright © 2004, Sherri Bailey
This blog may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the author.
HSVentures@cableone.net
Wednesday, June 16, 2004
Wiping The Crazy Off My Face will be available on Thursday, June 17 at it's new address: Wiping-The-Crazy-Off-My-Face.com. Please visit me there!
Visit HumorLinks on the web!
Copyright © 2004, Sherri Bailey
This blog may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the author.
HSVentures@cableone.net
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Copyright © 2004, Sherri Bailey
This blog may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the author.
HSVentures@cableone.net
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
Go ahead. Lick the icicle.
I love my parents. All of them. Because I am the product of a divorce, I have a bundle of them. Two regular parents, and two parent-lites. Each of them is extremely funny in their own way and each is happy to laugh at themselves and the way they raised their kids.
Maya Angelou once said that you do what you know and when you know better, you do better. That's a natural fact and the truth with every parent in the history of the world. You do the best you can with the information you have and you just pray you won't someday be watching the news and see a reporter interviewing your kid's neighbors and hearing how she always kept to herself before the "incident".
When I start thinking about my own kids, I'm amazed they are even alive. I remember bringing home my brand new daughter when I was scarcely twenty and crying right along with her every time she cried. If the hospital would have called the first week after she was born and politely asked for her back, I'd have run the whole way. I'd have even thrown in all the breast milk I could pump.
But God is in control and He makes sure you soon become attached to the little screamers. I loved her terrible and thought that she was the most beautiful little girl angel ever born. I still do.
I loved her so much, that as she got a little older and could eat solid foods, I monitored very closely everything that went in her mouth. Like some kind of giant mother bird, I'd chew up chunks of ice and plop tiny slivers in her mouth. I'd bite the popcorn I was eating in two and then take out the hard part so she could have some. I'd get out a steak knife and a fork and cut grapes into microscopic pieces so thin, you could see through them.
And then I'd hand her two entire hotdogs... one for each hand... and let her toddle around the house.
It's a miracle she is still around.
My parent's were no different. Clueless.
When I was a baby, I had something wrong inside my giant noggin which caused me to throw up pretty much constantly. I hate to be indelicate, but I was a puker like no other. Mother and Daddy tell me that I spent a lot of time at doctor's and hospitals.
My Grandma Rosie has always had problems with ulcers, and as a result she was the resident expert on nausea. She always knew just how to fix me right up.
"You hang on a minute Honey and Grandma will put a little ammonia in some Coke and we'll get you fixed right up."
The thing is, not one human being anywhere then or now has ever been able to explain to me what in the heck she was adding to my soda. It had quite the aroma, to put it mildly. I probably wouldn't be too far off base in my assumption that it was something they soaked dead people in to make them smell even worse. It never stopped me from being sick, but it encouraged me to keep my mouth shut about it so I wouldn't have to drink any more.
She also loved to give me Paragoric with my Coke as well. If you don't know what that is, you're not alone. A quick internet search says it's something for diarhea. So why was I getting it for nausea??? I always thought Maw-Maw adored me, but looking back, it seems clear she was trying to kill me.
My family was all about doctoring ourselves. In fact, I come from a long line of work at home, degree challenged, physicians. My great-grandmother on my Mother's side was the lady you called if you were sick, having a baby or your Grandma put ammonia in your drink and you died. I'm told she took care of everything from magically stopping bleeding to preparing bodies for funerals.
My Paw-Paw told me that she had a special verse she'd recite whenever someone was bleeding which would cause it to instantly stop. When he was just a child, she told it to him. Armed with his new powers, he said he went out to the hog they had just slaughtered and laid hands on it. Sure enough, the hog stopped bleeding and the meat was to throw out. That didn't make his Momma very happy and she told him to lay off healing potential suppers.
If my Daddy was around and heard you coughing or sounding congested, he'd show up at your bed with a cup full of whiskey, rock candy and some other stuff he felt would sweat the sick out of you. Strangely enough, my sister Connie and I found that the winter of 1980 was an especially tough one on us as we seemed to have been struck down with undiagnosed and especially whiskey-resillient cases of the whooping cough.
My mother, bless her heart, was not terribly good at mixing up potions or laying on hands. But, she did know exactly how to take care of a sick daughter.
"You need to take a shower and put on some make-up", she'd say.
"But mom! I've been throwing up all night and my fever is 104!"
"Trust me. You'll feel better when you look better. Now get going."
No matter what the illness, no matter how severe the problem, there was nothing a hot shower and enough make-up couldn't cure.
"Mother, I'm in labor."
"Well, when I had my kids the nurses told me I looked just like a soap opera star because when it was all over my hair and make-up were still perfect. Trust me. Go put on some make-up."
"Mother, I think my husband is cheating on me."
"She probably wears make-up. Men like that. Trust me. You need to wear more make-up."
"Mother, my arm was chewed off by a giant shark."
"Well then jump in the shower and I'll help you put your make-up on until you learn to do it with one hand."
Mother was very good at preventative medicine, however. She made sure we kids didn't get into anything that would hurt us. We had a clear cut set of rules that we knew would keep us from harm.
For example, we knew that if we licked the long, clear icicles that formed on the sides of the house in winter, we'd die. Plain and simple. No maybes. No chance of survival. Only immediate and certain death.
Same if we touched African Violets. I don't know how people grew the deadly things in the first place. It must have involved some sort of full body gear and Darth Vader breathing apparatus so as to avoid death.
Mother also made sure we knew, as her mother did for her when she was little, that cats would steal your breath when you were sleeping. That put an end to wanting a kitty under the Christmas tree.
It's tough being a parent. We're really all just a bunch of kids ourselves when it gets right down to it. We don't have a clue, so in order to get through it, we just make it up as we go. If that means rubbing whiskey on a teething baby's gums or telling our kids that if they stick their hands out car windows, they'll blow off, so be it. They'll do it to their kids, too. It's the law of child-rearing.
And when we are grandparents, we can tell our kids how much better we were at raising children than them. They won't figure out what idiots we really were until they are about forty and by then, we'll be busy kissing up to them so we get the "good" nursing home and they'll be kissing up to us so we don't spend their entire inheritance taking bus tours of the best kitchen towel factories in America.
It all evens out. Just the way God intended.
Visit HumorLinks on the web!
Copyright © 2004, Sherri Bailey
This blog may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the author.
HSVentures@cableone.net
I love my parents. All of them. Because I am the product of a divorce, I have a bundle of them. Two regular parents, and two parent-lites. Each of them is extremely funny in their own way and each is happy to laugh at themselves and the way they raised their kids.
Maya Angelou once said that you do what you know and when you know better, you do better. That's a natural fact and the truth with every parent in the history of the world. You do the best you can with the information you have and you just pray you won't someday be watching the news and see a reporter interviewing your kid's neighbors and hearing how she always kept to herself before the "incident".
When I start thinking about my own kids, I'm amazed they are even alive. I remember bringing home my brand new daughter when I was scarcely twenty and crying right along with her every time she cried. If the hospital would have called the first week after she was born and politely asked for her back, I'd have run the whole way. I'd have even thrown in all the breast milk I could pump.
But God is in control and He makes sure you soon become attached to the little screamers. I loved her terrible and thought that she was the most beautiful little girl angel ever born. I still do.
I loved her so much, that as she got a little older and could eat solid foods, I monitored very closely everything that went in her mouth. Like some kind of giant mother bird, I'd chew up chunks of ice and plop tiny slivers in her mouth. I'd bite the popcorn I was eating in two and then take out the hard part so she could have some. I'd get out a steak knife and a fork and cut grapes into microscopic pieces so thin, you could see through them.
And then I'd hand her two entire hotdogs... one for each hand... and let her toddle around the house.
It's a miracle she is still around.
My parent's were no different. Clueless.
When I was a baby, I had something wrong inside my giant noggin which caused me to throw up pretty much constantly. I hate to be indelicate, but I was a puker like no other. Mother and Daddy tell me that I spent a lot of time at doctor's and hospitals.
My Grandma Rosie has always had problems with ulcers, and as a result she was the resident expert on nausea. She always knew just how to fix me right up.
"You hang on a minute Honey and Grandma will put a little ammonia in some Coke and we'll get you fixed right up."
The thing is, not one human being anywhere then or now has ever been able to explain to me what in the heck she was adding to my soda. It had quite the aroma, to put it mildly. I probably wouldn't be too far off base in my assumption that it was something they soaked dead people in to make them smell even worse. It never stopped me from being sick, but it encouraged me to keep my mouth shut about it so I wouldn't have to drink any more.
She also loved to give me Paragoric with my Coke as well. If you don't know what that is, you're not alone. A quick internet search says it's something for diarhea. So why was I getting it for nausea??? I always thought Maw-Maw adored me, but looking back, it seems clear she was trying to kill me.
My family was all about doctoring ourselves. In fact, I come from a long line of work at home, degree challenged, physicians. My great-grandmother on my Mother's side was the lady you called if you were sick, having a baby or your Grandma put ammonia in your drink and you died. I'm told she took care of everything from magically stopping bleeding to preparing bodies for funerals.
My Paw-Paw told me that she had a special verse she'd recite whenever someone was bleeding which would cause it to instantly stop. When he was just a child, she told it to him. Armed with his new powers, he said he went out to the hog they had just slaughtered and laid hands on it. Sure enough, the hog stopped bleeding and the meat was to throw out. That didn't make his Momma very happy and she told him to lay off healing potential suppers.
If my Daddy was around and heard you coughing or sounding congested, he'd show up at your bed with a cup full of whiskey, rock candy and some other stuff he felt would sweat the sick out of you. Strangely enough, my sister Connie and I found that the winter of 1980 was an especially tough one on us as we seemed to have been struck down with undiagnosed and especially whiskey-resillient cases of the whooping cough.
My mother, bless her heart, was not terribly good at mixing up potions or laying on hands. But, she did know exactly how to take care of a sick daughter.
"You need to take a shower and put on some make-up", she'd say.
"But mom! I've been throwing up all night and my fever is 104!"
"Trust me. You'll feel better when you look better. Now get going."
No matter what the illness, no matter how severe the problem, there was nothing a hot shower and enough make-up couldn't cure.
"Mother, I'm in labor."
"Well, when I had my kids the nurses told me I looked just like a soap opera star because when it was all over my hair and make-up were still perfect. Trust me. Go put on some make-up."
"Mother, I think my husband is cheating on me."
"She probably wears make-up. Men like that. Trust me. You need to wear more make-up."
"Mother, my arm was chewed off by a giant shark."
"Well then jump in the shower and I'll help you put your make-up on until you learn to do it with one hand."
Mother was very good at preventative medicine, however. She made sure we kids didn't get into anything that would hurt us. We had a clear cut set of rules that we knew would keep us from harm.
For example, we knew that if we licked the long, clear icicles that formed on the sides of the house in winter, we'd die. Plain and simple. No maybes. No chance of survival. Only immediate and certain death.
Same if we touched African Violets. I don't know how people grew the deadly things in the first place. It must have involved some sort of full body gear and Darth Vader breathing apparatus so as to avoid death.
Mother also made sure we knew, as her mother did for her when she was little, that cats would steal your breath when you were sleeping. That put an end to wanting a kitty under the Christmas tree.
It's tough being a parent. We're really all just a bunch of kids ourselves when it gets right down to it. We don't have a clue, so in order to get through it, we just make it up as we go. If that means rubbing whiskey on a teething baby's gums or telling our kids that if they stick their hands out car windows, they'll blow off, so be it. They'll do it to their kids, too. It's the law of child-rearing.
And when we are grandparents, we can tell our kids how much better we were at raising children than them. They won't figure out what idiots we really were until they are about forty and by then, we'll be busy kissing up to them so we get the "good" nursing home and they'll be kissing up to us so we don't spend their entire inheritance taking bus tours of the best kitchen towel factories in America.
It all evens out. Just the way God intended.
Visit HumorLinks on the web!
Copyright © 2004, Sherri Bailey
This blog may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the author.
HSVentures@cableone.net
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