I can't believe it's not butter.

I have deep thoughts on a pretty regular basis. Today is no exception. While I was on my hands and knees in the bathroom with a butter knife trying to install a new toilet seat, I had one.

A deep thought, that is.

Several even.

The first was, "I wonder if rich people change toilet seats or if they hire professional toilet seat installers?" After mulling it over I came to the conclusion that rich people don't go to the bathroom, so my spending time in deep thought over it was kind of a waste. (That was punny.)

Then I wondered if anywhere in all the world at the very same moment there was another person using a butter knife as a tool in, on, or near their toilet.

Then I starting thinking about why I'd used a butter knife to install a toilet seat in the first place when there are perfectly good tools in the garage.

Which is about the time I began to realize that I'd used an eating utensil to touch a thing that no eating utensil should ever go near while at the same time remembering that I have obsessive-compulsive disorder.

And then I decided to boil myself.

But I starting thinking about the time I burned my tongue after I got the bright idea to microwave my coffee that had gone cold and how I talked like a four-year-old who couldn't say anything with an "S" in it for like a week because it hurt so much. So I didn't.

Boil myself, that is.

Besides, at this point I figured I was too far into the game to quit. If I stopped now not only would the toilet be seat-less, but I would have lost a perfectly lovely butter knife for absolutely no good reason.

Which got me to thinking about waste again, only not the kind of waste you would guess I was thinking about as I hovered over a toilet with a butter knife.

The kind of waste we all have. Which I guess could also be the other kind of waste but I'm a Southern woman and we almost never talk about the kind of waste you keep trying to get me to talk about because we are far too genteel to even whisper such things.

I'm talking about the stuff in our houses. The stuff in our closets and garages and cars and cabinets and drawers and everywhere. The stuff we bought because we could or because we wanted it or because we were feeling sad and needed something to fill up the hole. The stuff we were given that we loved at the time or never loved but didn't know how to say we didn't love it so we kept it thinking someday we'd have some kind of use for it.

But we never did because it's an ugly piece of crap.

Now times are hard. Harder than most of us have ever known in our lifetimes. Doesn't matter much who you are or where you are, chances are you're feeling it to at least some degree. It's just the size of your thermometer that makes the difference. Some can't buy food. Some have to sell their big houses. Some are learning for the first time that want and need are very different. Some lose sleep, cry in the shower, and live in fear of what else may be around the corner.

Maybe most do. Most of the people I know do anyway - and that makes me sad.

So I asked myself, "Sher," because that's what I call myself, "if you have stuff that other people might need, what the hell is it doing in your house?"

I couldn't answer myself. I think it was because by this time I was straddling the toilet seat backwards trying to get that screw thingie in straight.

You know, quite frankly I'm sort of sick of the way the world's been working anyway. I'm hopeful that we're approaching a time of giving - and not the kind of giving that's all about writing a check once in awhile. The kind of giving that's about "I have something" - a skill, a thing, a whatever - "and now you can have it because I don't need it and oh yeah by the way, because no man is an island."

That's my deep thought for today. I have to go find a gas station that looks clean because trying to sit on my toilet seat is like trying to pee on a Disney ride. Apparently the butter knife was not the way to go.
















Copyright © Sherri Bailey
This blog may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the author.

Tell me you love me at: HumorWriter@gmail.com

Tell me you hate me at: Yeah. I'm so sure I'm going to make that easy for you.

The Lonely Lady's Guide to Staying in a Seedy No Tell Motel

Sometimes in life a girl finds herself through no fault of her own in a "hotel" where the doors open right into the parking lot and the ice machine is tucked away under the exterior stairs.

Having recently experienced such a delight, I felt I could do the women who read my column a great service by offering a guide if you will, about what to expect during your stay while also avoiding unwanted disease.

And pregnancy.

Identify the motel as "seedy.

The first clue that your hotel may indeed be minus 4 stars is the signage. I'm not talking about the name of the hotel as much as I am the marketing message either on a lighted sign out front or a big white banner strung across the building.

If you notice your hotel is almost too proud of the fact that they have color TV, mini fridges or air conditioning in MOST rooms, the hotel might be seedy. If you notice any of the letters are backwards or they have used a lower case "o" in place of a zero, your hotel is definitely seedy.

The check in.

Upon entering the hotel, you'll be greeted by a young woman who looks terribly surprised. Don't be confused. She's not really surprised. She's just taken care to shave off the eyebrows Jesus gave her and draw on brand new ones that arch almost up to her hair line. It's my belief that she probably changes their shape according to her mood, but I'd need to do further research to be sure.

After filling out the coffee stained card she hands you that asks for your home address and the pin number to your bank account, she'll give you a big smile while handing you the key card that LUCKY YOU is also a coupon for 10% off a pizza. It's important not to stare directly at her no matter how prominently that one giant tooth is pushed out in front of the others. Staring at a seedy hotel clerk is like teasing a chained Pit Bull. Next thing you know you'll be at the ER having a giant gold tooth extracted from your nose.

The room.

The good news is walking from your car to your room takes only 1.5 steps. The bad news is walking from your car to your room takes only 1.5 steps. That's why you shouldn't be surprised when upon opening the door you are greeted by the strong scent of exhaust and Aqua Velva. Take heart though. Once your eyes stop burning and they are able to focus again, the bed spreads on the 2 - that's two - more than one and less than three beds, will shock your system so much, you temporarily lose your sense of smell.

Picture a crazy combination of giant flowers colored in faded blue, mauve, green and cigarette smoke. Now take a moment to remember how you felt that one time you drank tequila all night and then went to Denny's for an omelet and then woke up on the bathroom floor with your arm around the base of the toilet with someone else's pants on wondering how it was possible to eat an entire Grand Slam without actually digesting any of it.

Given a choice of looking at these bedspreads and going back in time to puking green peppers through your nose, you would choose the latter without any hesitation.

But wait! There's more!

On the wall, no more than three feet away from the TV, you'll be happy to know you'll have your very own iron and ironing board. Well not yours really as the hotel will have taken great care to make sure you know it belongs to them. In black Sharpie, on the iron itself, they will have written "Days Inn!!!Room 117!!!" only "days" is not capitalized, but "Inn" is. You may ask yourself if that stain on the ironing board could be because someone tried to iron while also eating a peanut butter cup.

Don't.

The bathroom.

If you've ever wondered what it would be like to pee while fixing yourself a nice drink in a plastic cup AND putting your feet up on the bed, you're about to live the dream. That's because at the seedy hotel, they delight in making sure they cram all the necessities in life into as small a space as possible. The toilet is seperated from the bathtub by approximately 3 inches and is located "bed adjacent".

Don't worry if you forget any toilitries though. You'll be excited to know they've left a tiny paper wrapped bar of soap for your use that smells slightly better than your room but not as good as your dog's ass.

Oh! I almost forgot! If you see anything lying on the bathroom floor that you cannot readily identify from a distance, don't pick it up for closer examination. Just go ahead and tell yourself somewhere there is an amputee spider that met a terrible fate on the bathroom floor.

The remote.

This final advice is really important. Before you pick up the remote that is roughly the size of your microwave, please do whatever necessary to locate some Clorox Wipes and clean it up completely. In the absence of Clorox Wipes, just leave it where it is and watch Gilligan's Island in your head.

The Surgeon General has determined the remote in a seedy hotel is literally teeming with sperm. He found that men who sleep in seedy motels often are recently released inmates who are easily aroused by the sight of a prominent tooth and typically release their pent up, shall we say, urges. It's for this reason you also should not touch the in room fridge, the light switches or the smoke detector.

If you should accidentally touch any of these things, for God's sake wash your hands before scratching your nose or rubbing your eyes. That's where Nadya Suleman went wrong.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
A big thank you goes out to my following homies for helping me survive my adventure into seedy hotel land. To Ryland - for offering crafty things I could do with a marker and meth buying ettiquette; to Eric - for telling me funny stories that he thought would make me feel like it wasn't so bad where I was (but it was); to the Evil ER - for offering to sing me to sleep. May all your travels be happy and your hotels have interior doors.










Copyright © Sherri Bailey
This blog may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the author.

Tell me you love me at: HumorWriter@gmail.com

Tell me you hate me at: Yeah. I'm so sure I'm going to make that easy for you.

Guest Blogger: Ruth J. Hartman - Author of "My Life in Mental Chains"

There is Hope

By Ruth J. Hartman

Sometimes life’s a struggle. Sometimes it’s a train wreck. But what do you do when it’s even worse than that? I wish I’d known the answer to that in February of 1990. That’s when I was first diagnosed with severe Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Looking back, I now realize there were precursors to my illness, but on that cold, snowy Thursday, it hit me like a lightening bolt.

As a dental hygienist, working in spit and blood on a regular basis really didn’t faze me. Until that day. That awful moment. Suddenly, a thought latched onto my brain. “What if,” the awful thought prodded me, “you don’t get your equipment clean enough? What if there’s still some blood and germs left on the surfaces? And, what if your next patient gets some awful disease from the previous patient because of it? Worst of all, what if you get some disease from it?” I hated that mean, obnoxious thought!

I became obsessed with cleaning everything in that room. I couldn’t top disinfecting, wiping, scrubbing. And the thought zipped around in my mind as a terrifying loop. I’d never experienced anything like that before. Where had it come from? And why did it pick ME to latch onto?

Before I even made my first appointment with a psychiatrist, I pretty much knew what was happening to me. I’d had enough psychology classes in college to figure it out. That still didn’t prepare me for his diagnosis. After much discussion, and a long, drawn out written evaluation, he determined I had severe OCD. One of the worst cases he ever seen, in fact. Lucky me.

I ran into even more trouble at work. My militant employer hated to be even one minute behind schedule. Unfortunately, my cleaning and re-cleaning caused me to fall farther behind after every patient. That didn’t go over well with the dentist.

The OCD soon spilled over into my home life. I became afraid of most things in my house. I couldn’t seem to get my hands clean enough. They bled from the repeated scrubbings. I became so terrified of going places and being near people, it was a struggle just to leave my house. I quit my job. I just couldn’t cope with it anymore. It got worse. I began seeing things that weren’t there. My mind continually told me lies. And I fell for each and every one.

Sound awful? It was. Not only didn’t I know how I’d make it through each day; I had trouble coping from one minute to the next.

Fast forward to today. After years of visits to my psychiatrist, three times a week, I now only see him once a year. But even with his treatment, I would never have made it without medication. Prozac became my new best friend. It still is. I will never stop taking it. Believe me; no one wants me to, either!

If you suffer from severe OCD, and are resisting treatment, please re-consider. When I think back to all I’ve gone through, and how much better I am now, I can’t believe I ever resisted taking medication. I am now happier and healthier than I ever believed possible. Take heart! Help is available for you!

Buy Ruth's book, My Life in Mental Chains.

Tell me you love me at: HumorWriter@gmail.com

Tell me you hate me at: Yeah. I'm so sure I'm going to make that easy for you.

Psycho Vampire Toad Sucking Stalker. Good times - good times.

Dear Sher,

In order to entice you to attend this years Toad Suck Daze Festival ( this is the third or fourth year I've invited you). I've been considering ordering this outfit to wear to the fest. It is called the "Psycho Vampire Stalker" outfit. I should think the words psycho or vampire would be enough to bring you out, but the promise of both together might be impossible for you to resist. I'm not sure how I will explain it, and the PHL, to PJ but you'll help me think of something, right? How about I throw in your very own Monkey? You've had some pretty-good excuses, but I'm beginning to suspect that you really might not want to attend.

TSG....Your favorite stalker

Dear Toad Suck Guy aka TSG aka Stalker,

I have to admit that in all the years you've been asking me to come to Toad Suck Daze, this is the first year I am truly compelled to want to do so. The notion that a psycho vampire stalker awaits me on arrival is hard to resist indeed.

And a monkey to boot? I'm all a twitter. (Speaking of twitter, make sure you follow me.)

Whether or not I show up, you'll have to wait and see. I suggest you wait for me by the toad shaped cotton candy between the hours of 5AM and midnight. However, the idea that you would take your stalking to a new level and dress as a psycho vampire in an attempt to woo me has convinced me to bump you up the PHL (potential husband list) to number three. Congratulations.

Sher



Copyright © Sherri Bailey
This blog may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the author.

Tell me you love me at: HumorWriter@gmail.com

Tell me you hate me at: Yeah. I'm so sure I'm going to make that easy for you.