The World According To Anne Arky

The Facebook Funnies

2010-01-12T18:38:00.000-08:00

Just about everybody but my mother is on Facebook nowadays, and if she were still alive, she probably would be, too. (She did have a computer and used the internet before she died.) I have to admit to having less-than-honorable motives for joining – I saw that Mike was on there, and I decided to join. As I’ve mentioned previously, I’ve been commenting on the same newspaper as he has, on random articles, and I’ve been submitting info and such to the same columnist he favors. MOST of this started out being my way of throwing myself in Mike’s path repeatedly, in attempt to elicit some kind of response from him. I knew I would never contact him first, no matter what might be at stake, and I wanted him to contact me, at which point I was hoping to get some answers that were some twenty-five years overdue. Sure enough, he finally took the bait and contacted me through Facebook last spring. I made all nicey-nice with him, giving him enough rope to find out what he was really after and, with any luck, enough left over with which to hang himself. For about two weeks, we wrote back and forth daily, and no matter what I told him about myself and my life, he never asked any further questions, like, “Really? YOU became a bartender?” Since I am notoriously a tea-totaler, for me to have gone to bartending school was a little like sending Helen Keller to proofreading school, and that alone should have elicited some shocked reaction. And then there’s, “Really? YOU published a book? Wow – you always wanted to be a professional writer.” Everything was all about him, from beginning to end. Then he told me why he had “retired early” – he had attempted suicide on his son’s 17th birthday over some convoluted idea that he (Mike, not the son) had been responsible for the aunt’s murder, so now he is retired on disability and says he will be in mental health treatment for the rest of his life. (My take on it is that he will be in SEARCH of mental health for the rest of his life – you can’t treat someone for what they don’t have!) He told me that it was at this point in his disclosures that people usually “walk away”, and that he has had old friends desert him because of this.

To say that I was a bit freaked out over this is an overwhelming understatement, and it took me a few weeks to figure out exactly how I would proceed. I hoped that my not having answered him right away would incite him to make some remark about he guessed I would be like the others and desert him, too, because as soon as he said that (assuming he did), I was going to slam dunk his ass into next summer. He didn’t bite, at least not right away. I did answer him back a few more times (rope to hang oneself with, remember?), albeit not as lengthy or quickly as I had previously done. In two of his replies, he made some remark about how I ought to come up there to his hometown and go to a drive-in movie with him. Yeah, RIGHT! In his last email to me before I slam-dunked his ass, he wanted to know if he had done something to upset me – this year. After all, this all is a bit hard to take, and long-time friends had deserted him over all this (“all this” being his current medicated post-suicide self). He also came right out and said he'd "really like to see you sometime". Again, yeah, RIGHT! That was just the opportunity that I had been waiting for to remind him that in the first place, I am NOT a long-time friend, I am his first ex-wife, and he taught me everything I ever needed to know about walking away. Also, if he thought a good old-fashioned suicide attempt and being officially diagnosed as crazy was the only reason ANYone could have for walking away from him, least of all ME, he was more seriously delusional than I had previously thought. My email to him went on for six pages like this, and I decided to send it to him on my birthday, as a cosmic birthday present to myself. Throughout the entire correspondence, I got some answers to some questions I didn’t even have, but when I asked him point blank for answers, he dodged the questions once again, which came as no surprise to me.

I didn’t expect him to have the balls to write back, but surprisingly, he did – only three hours later. Naturally, he side-stepped every question I had, direct or indirect, but I still came away with more closure than I ever hoped to get.

Now on with the Facebook Funnies.

I have actually enjoyed Facebook. I am not the kind of person who likes getting cyber hugs and cupcakes and stuff from friends – I find that so 12-year-oldish that it makes me ill when adult women do it, although I think it’s a great function to be available for the 12-year-olds. I am not likely ever to get into Farmville or Mafia Wars or Jewelapalooza or whatever other games they have on there. I am, however, a very keep-in-toucher, and I’ve been able to reconnect with people via Facebook that I hadn’t been able to locate via Classmates-dot-com or any other reunion-type service, so I’m enjoying the heck out of that.

I am, however, absolutely bumfuzzled and genuinely puzzled over some of the people who have tried to connect with me on Facebook – besides Mike, I mean. First, a girl I was in high school with “friended” me early on in my Facebook career, to my everlasting surprise. She was a “tough” girl who scorned my goody-two-shoesness (which is still intact, even though I can outswear three battalions of marines) and who ran with a rough crowd who liked to go around beating up other girls; she never had anything to say to me that wasn’t said with scorn, and I couldn’t figure out why in the name of yesterday’s lunch she wanted to “friend” me – ME, Goody-Two-Shoes 1972-1975. But I accepted, because I was afraid if I didn’t, she might beat me up.

I have had other people – some people at work, among others – “friend” me, and the only reason I can figure out that they would ever have for “friending” me is to beef up their numbers, because some of them haven’t spoken to me at work in two years or better. (That they haven’t spoken to me bothers me not at all; that they are not speaking to me but hypocritical enough to use me to beef up their numbers alternately pisses me off and amuses me.) I have no status that would make "friending" me a status symbol in any way whatsoever.

On the other hand, I have seen people I’ve wanted to “friend”, but who I haven’t because I feared their rejection. I can’t believe I have just skipped past them and kept going, especially since a couple of THEM later “friended” me. Go figure!

So today I got “friended” by someone who helped to make the end of my freshman year in high school horrible in stellar proportions, and I seriously don’t remember speaking to her for the rest of our entire high school career or ever again. I have verrrrrrrry mixed feelings about this, because I also know that she left her footprint in my Classmates-dot-com account as well, and I’m trying really hard to remember that I am fifty-plus years old, not fourteen, and I know I’ve changed; maybe she has, too. But maybe I don’t care. I dunno. What I really feel like doing (but won’t) is replying, “What the hell do you want, anyway?”

My niece “friended” me, right after I told her father (my brother) that because she hasn’t been able to give me time of day, up to and including coming to Atlanta (probably more than once) over the past few years and not being able to bother to call me, and climbing over me like I’m so much furniture to get to my sister (after I spent way more time with her during her childhood than my sister ever did, but never as much money), I have no intention of leaving her anything in my will – it all goes to my nephew. (This is not really going to make HIM happy, because he’s married to a minimalist, and when he shows up with all my stuff, she’ll divorce him! Or they’ll have the world’s biggest yard sale in the history of mankind.) I thought that was quite a coincidence, and I accepted it, but then went back a few weeks later and “unfriended” her. She probably hasn’t even noticed. I never did figure out her motive, because it isn’t like I am the eccentric millionaire aunt whose estate is heavily sought after. If I had enough money, I could be eccentric, but I’m just a working class girl who works two jobs to hold body and soul together, so being eccentric is not an option – I’m just peculiar (which is still just “weird” dressed up a little bit).

I guess the only other thing that perplexes me about Facebook (or maybe it’s just perplexing about me, and Facebook is the vehicle) is how it is that I seem to attract a huge number of people who want to Jesus at me or at the world at large. I have never been like that, even when I was at my religious most, and I don’t understand people who feel moved to do so. I do know that large numbers of people in this world (on AND off Facebook) seem to think I am Godless and tend to throw lots of Jesus at me, which I deeply resent. (I would have the same reaction if their proselytizing involved oatmeal, Elton John, Stephen King or anything else, whether I liked or disliked it in the first place.) Last year, I went back to my hometown for an event that reconnected me with some old friends who I haven’t seen in some 25 or 30 years, and I hadn’t been talking to one of them for five minutes – FIVE MINUTES, for the first time in 25-30 YEARS, mind you – before he looked at me with deep seriousness and asked me if I was right with the Lord. I have spent more time as a church-goer (but not as a religious, holy-rolling Bible-thumper EVER) than 99% of my family, especially my siblings, and I cannot for the life of me imagine anyone asking that question of either my brother or my sister! I really must try to remember to ask my sister if anyone ever asks her that or anything like it. Meanwhile, back to Facebook. I am just blown away by the frequency with which the people in my circle flaunt their religion before the world at large, and I can’t help but wonder what is behind such behavior. I know that one of the people in my circle has been uber religious in all the time I have known her, and she and her family don’t flush their shit before they bless it heavily first; up to a point I can understand that after having been under the influence of heavy laxatives to the point where giving a shit became a blessed event, but even so, there are a lot of people in my limited circle from whom I would never have expected this behavior. I am sure that I must be Godless, because I can’t imagine billboarding my religion (or occasional lack thereof) for the world to see. To me, that is a very private thing, and I can’t help but wonder what it is they are hiding behind theirs. With some of them I have some suspicions, especially some I’ve known since preadolescence, and while as I said, people do change, I do think some of these people are not going to have changed THAT much, if you know what I mean. If not wanting to advertise my religious fervor makes me Godless, then off I go, Godless, into the world, a target for people who are dying to have something or someone to Jesus at.

Facebook sure is fun, isn’t it?

Skeletons and Worms

2009-10-01T18:39:00.000-07:00

I have so much updating to do, it isn’t even funny. Hopefully sometime soon I’ll sit down and write the end to the Mike saga. Yes, there really has been an end to it, once and for all, with a surprise ending. (No, the butler didn’t do it.) Meanwhile, I have something else important to talk about. Meanwhile, this post was actually written about two months ago and I am just now posting it because...well, because.

I honestly can’t remember if I have ever mentioned it here, and if so, to what depth, but to put it bluntly, I was sexually abused as a child. In many cases, that in itself brings the huge trauma, as it brings to mind night-time forceful visits by someone who is bigger and stronger and a damned sight meaner than you are and rape and worse result, all of which are real and for damned sure qualify as sexual abuse. The things that happened to me were not like that – there was no violence, there was no force (just molestation and some heavy coercion), and there were no middle-of-the-night visits by anyone – but they far and away still qualify as sexual abuse. They began when I was eight years old, and my brother (the primary perp) was twelve years old. Yeah, he was just a kid, but he was damned sure old enough to know better and knew that this was wrong, by anybody’s definition of right and wrong. We were both in a domestic squalor known as our family, with a lot of bad things going on and not so many good ones. I had epilepsy and my childhood was playing out like a years-long episode of the movie “Carrie” (the original with Sissie Spacek, not the remake which I haven’t seen and likely won’t see). My parents were mismanaging all of us on an intergalactic magnitude (and it wasn’t until many years later that I realized that they were doing the best they could at the time); my sister was doing her best to distance herself from all of us while still living in the same house, and doing a lot of pretending that she didn’t even know us; I was having seizures and behavioral problems resulting from same, all the while trying to survive having a bulls-eye on my ass and being the primary target for every bully in school and a few hundred other kids at any given time; and my brother was falling through the cracks and trying to keep his head above water. (My mother went to her grave convinced that the only problems in our family were caused by my epilepsy, but the dysfunctionary roles were cast years before the seizures started.) For a long time, I felt like his sexual abuse of me resulted from all of these things coming together at the same time, fueled partly by his newly-emerging adolescent hormones. He wasn’t hurting me and he wasn’t forcing me, and he was offering me some positive attention at a time when I was getting more attention than I knew what to do with, not one iota of it positive, and I greedily accepted it, having no idea what kind of can of worms I was allowing to be thrown at me. But this was before I was aware that sexual abuse is often a hand-me-down issue, and in this case, I believe very strongly that it probably is here, at least in part. I will (probably) get to that later.

I was what is known as a child prodigy, with an IQ that went almost off the charts. You know – one of those super smart kids that can read college-level in second grade and knows things most average adults don’t even know, but can’t tie their shoes or tell time. I was that kid – I didn’t learn to tell time or tie my shoes until I was in third grade, because there were all kinds of people around me who could tie my shoes or tell me what time it was, and I had important things to do and worlds to explore and conquer. So I was used to existing in a whole different orbit from the rest of the world and not knowing the most mundane things that the mere mortals around me knew, all the while knowing things they couldn’t begin to comprehend. Yeah, I know – the ego has landed – but seriously, that was the way of my world at that time.

We “played” in my brother’s bedroom, upstairs away from our parents. Our sister’s room was right next to it, but she was busy escaping from the melee in any way she could and not paying much mind to what was going on around her if she could possibly help it. We lived in this house for about a year, and when we moved to the next house, the basement was the staging area for most of these incidents. I performed my first oral sex in that basement when I was nine years old, on my brother, in exchange for which I would receive ten of his comic books. (Dammit, I don’t think I ever did get any of those comic books, the lousy bastard!) I absolutely hated it, but I liked feeling like we were “buddies”, even if we had to keep it a secret and fight like cats and dogs in front of Mother and Daddy so they wouldn’t get wise. At the next house a year later (yes, we did move every year for about four years running, and it was a bitch!), his bedroom was once again the site, and this was when he began including some of his friends.

That year, I was ten, and I discovered that what we were doing was not just some game that my brother liked to play. It was something that GUYS like, and by the way, everybody is doing this, not just me. The whole process had a name – sex – and apparently everyone else had been doing it the whole time. It was as if I had discovered that while I was out exploring my distant worlds, everyone else had known about this all along and I was just now getting it, so I decided to go independently of my brother and try to catch up with everybody else. I could get positive attention from not just my brother, but from a whole bunch of people – yippee! It didn’t help things that, in addition to becoming friends and coming under the influence of an “older” (by two years) girl, Kathy, who had recently discovered her own sexuality and its many uses (which I suspect might have also been rooted in sexual abuse, but I will never know for sure), I suddenly developed breasts along the scale of Dolly Parton, which looked really strange on my skinny little body (those were the days!), and my chest entered the room a full five minutes before the rest of me did. Talk about attention getters! Between my attention-getters, my history and Kathy’s influence (she was beautiful and heavily-sought-after by the boys, and I wanted to be just like her), at quite a rapid little clip, over about four months’ time, I logged in about a half dozen close and brief encounters to my credit.

Most girls who have been sexually abused come away from it with this same notion and become promiscuous, at least for a time, and I was no different; some of them stop that and become completely disinterested in sex, and some of them remain promiscuous to some degree for the rest of their lives, equating sex with positive attention which they inevitably mistake for love and usually chasing after it to the detriment of the structure of their lives. As a prime example, the above-mentioned Kathy has been married about five times now. I was “promiscuous” for about an 18-month period starting at age ten and ending halfway through my eleventh year. Kind of hard to say “promiscuous” and “sexually abused” and still be able to state honestly that I still managed to remain a virgin until I was 16 – still too young to be offering up my virginity, but under the circumstances, it’s a wonder I kept it past the fifth grade. (This also explains my almost yelling out in shock and horror in 9th grade sex ed class when I finally “got” it, “You mean he sticks it IN you?!”)

Soon after we moved into this new house, I met Jerry. He was the most popular boy in class, and a bit of a “bad boy” even at the tender age of 12 (he had flunked a couple of years and was that much older than the rest of us). On a snow day when everyone was home from school, he was building a snowman and I happened by just as he was turning it into a snowwoman with snow implants. Hey, he knows about this! Cool! I could warm up to this guy and have a new friend. I didn’t have many old friends, so new ones were always welcome – read embraced in a stranglehold! – and I was pretty much willing to obtain them in any manner I had at my disposal. And boy did I have a new manner at my disposal! I had been in this new school for about five months by then, and Jerry, of course, by this time knew what my social standing was – three stories below rock bottom – so he suggested that we could be “secret friends” and have some “fun” together. As we were entering into this new friendship agreement, Jerry put forth the theory that for us to be able to maintain this little arrangement, we would have to continue to be “enemies” in public and I would have to let him continue to pick on me so no one would suspect what we really had going on on the side. Sound familiar? My brother had lured me in two years earlier with the same deal, and it had worked then, so why not? Desperate as I was for friends at the time, I readily agreed, willing to sell my soul, my body or whatever just to have such a really great friend as Jerry, even if I had to give up bragging rights for it. Pretty soon, he brought along his friend Gary, who was also in our class at school. Gary was a tall, quiet boy with a shy smile and kind of goofy-looking, and he had never gone out of his way to befriend me, but to the best of my recollection, he never joined in the teasing and bullying that were part and parcel of my daily life. So he joined us for these meetings, and meanwhile, he continued not to join in the teasing, while Jerry jacked up the whole thing and teased me more when other people were around – a lot more.

Most of our “secret friendship” meetings consisted of Jerry and Gary taking turns feeling me up and then climbing on top of me and, with all parties fully clothed, humping me until they ejaculated (thank God, in their pants!). Once, when some of our peers (I can’t say friends, since they sure as shit weren’t my friends) happened by as we were leaving that day’s meeting place, Jerry saw them and came running back and said, “Uh, oh! We’re caught! Quick – pretend that I hit you and we were beating you up.” Just to make sure there was a note of authenticity in the whole charade, he knocked me in the back of my head with a tree limb he found handy. The “friends” bought it and even offered a brief show of sympathy before moving on with the rest of their day, and I went home, secure in the knowledge that I still had my secret friends. I had no idea that what this was really about wasn’t fear of our “arrangement” being found out. Mister Cool didn’t want anyone to know that we were “friends” on any level – God forbid!

Halfway through the sixth grade, after this secret friendship had been going on for about a year, just after Jerry had had his turn at me, during Gary’s turn, he kissed me on the mouth (which Jerry had never done, and Gary had never done before) and said, “I just wanted to tell you that I’m not like Jerry -- I really am your friend, no matter what, and it isn’t pretend just for this.” I was quite puzzled and went home thinking about what he had done and said. I didn’t care much for the feeling up and humping part of what we were doing, so all I had gotten out of this up to now was two “secret friends”, but one of my favorite things in the world was (and remains) kissing, which I had acquired a predilection for in some of my other promiscuous encounters, so I was all silly and dreamy about Gary’s having kissed me, and thinking harder and harder about what he had said about really being my friend. Finally, after I was well on my way to having the worst reputation in town and had even bragged about some of what was going on (with Jerry, Gary, my brother and more) to some friends (and I use the term loosely), I figured it out and learned what it really means to be used. Used and abused, as it were. That was the last day. The very last day.

I began realizing that what I had been doing was shameful. Wrong. Bad. Trashy. Nice girls don’t, as they say, and I was a genuinely nice girl, so from that point on, I didn’t. Period. One “friend”, Tina, told me she had asked her mother if you could get pregnant if you “did it” with your clothes on. When her mother said, “No,” she said, “Whew!” Seeing the look on her mother’s face (I can only imagine!), she said, “Oh, I mean good – for Anne.” Lovely – I can well imagine what her mother must have thought of me forever after that.

Ironically, not to mention fortunately, a month or so later I had brain surgery, the epilepsy was cured, and so were many of the behavior problems. I didn’t turn into Nancy Cheerleader and Miss Popularity, but from then on, I had a few friends (earned the right way, by being a good friend), and I was no longer a walking target. Mostly I was just one of the kids. But I had learned the hard way that someone’s friendship was not worth having if you had to do something to earn it (something other than being a good friend and someone fun to be around). It was a damned hard lesson, but the good news is that it was a lesson I learned well and it stood me in good stead for many years. I was (and pretty much remain) the biggest goody-two-shoes in the universe – at least, not counting those who carry and thump bibles. When drugs came along and all my friends were trying them, I didn’t – not even so much as one puff off of one joint. “Everyone is doing it” ceased to have any influence on me whatsoever, and I never drank or did drugs just to be part of the crowd, or for any other reason. Never ever did drugs, and didn’t drink until I was in my mid-twenties, despite the fact that I was allowed to drink at the age of 14 if I had so chosen. From that point on, if people were going to like me, they were going to like me for me. If people were doing something and I wanted to do it, I would do it, but my motivation was never, not once, because So-and-So will like me if I go out and dye my hair green. So-and-So would have to like me blonde or otherwise. I was used to doing things by myself (after so many years without friends and doing my own thing), so anyone who wanted to join me in doing my thing was welcome to do so, but I was just as happy to do things alone.

The next school year, I had a boyfriend – a real live, go-steady, go-to-dances-and-public-places-together boyfriend – and I was head over heels in love with him. Some of my earlier exploits had been spread around town two years earlier in the upper level schools, and when one of my boyfriend’s older friends heard my name, he asked my boyfriend, “Is she the one who…?” I was absolutely mortified to have to admit that yes, I was the one who, and had to promise him faithfully that I don’t do that any more and never would again. It didn’t matter – the damage was done, and a few weeks later he broke my heart and broke up with me. (I had no idea at that age that I wasn’t a full-fledged jezebel and the villain in the piece, and therefore didn’t deserve his scorn and judgment, and that if he had heard the whole story some ten years later, he might have been more understanding and supported me and stayed with me a little longer, at least until we broke up for a better reason.)

That next summer, a year and a half after I had shut down the “friendship” business, just before we moved yet again (but this time to another town), I encountered Gary again, and we went out in his back yard and he kissed me. He didn’t try anything else, just kissed me. I’d like to think that if we had stayed in that town, he and I might actually have become friends – real friends, not secret ones – and maybe even dated for a little while, but it could be that there was too much sinister history between us. I never saw him again after that, and I never saw Jerry after that school year, either. As a matter of fact, I’m not sure I ever even exchanged another single word with Jerry after it was over, despite our having continued to go to the same schools for another year and a half. But I have always had a soft spot in my heart and memory for Gary, and a deep and abiding hatred for Jerry.

For many years, I railed at Mother and Daddy for uprooting me and making me move to another town, and I still have an unnatural attachment for this town that I haven’t lived in for almost forty years, but I did finally get that in the long run, it was a good thing that we did leave town when we did. My reputation in the high school grades had been trashed by an older boy and his cousin, and I never would have been able to live it down if we had stayed there. I had a chance to start over. Unfortunately, it was in a town I hated, so my fresh start was inauspicious at best, but at least it didn’t come with a reputation that would have clung to me like stale cigarette smoke.

Jerry died yesterday. It was in the paper today. Yesterday, I was writing to a friend back in that town, and the wife of another of our friends recently died; after I mentioned that, I came to within a hair of asking her if she knew whatever had happened to Jerry, but didn’t because I remembered that she doesn’t keep up with people, even the ones that are still living in that town (as she also does). Had I mentioned it, it would have been the first time I ever asked anyone about him – ever. This morning, I opened the online paper and checked the obituaries, and there he was. If I hadn’t been sitting in a chair that had arms on it, I would have fallen on the floor for sure. I felt like someone drove a mack truck through my solar plexis. From all accounts (including the fact that I had seen something on line about him in the “concerns” section of his church bulletin), he died a slow, painful death, diabetes related, with for sure dialysis and maybe some other fun stuff like amputation and blindness. Well, you know what? It couldn’t happen to a more deserving fellow!

Tina, the afore-mentioned “friend”, lived a few houses down from our house during the time I knew Jerry and Gary, and she and I were friends – when she didn’t have anyone else to play with, and when no one else would see her being friends with me. As far as I can remember, she never initiated any of the group torture to which I was subjected, but if someone else did, she joined right in there. For some reason, probably in effort to provide my own continuity to compensate for all the moving around I’ve done in my life, it’s my nature to keep in touch with people or go back and look them up. Sometimes this is a good thing, sometimes not. In any case, I had stayed in touch with Tina off and on over the years, and after she was married with children, I was visiting her at her home while her kids were downstairs watching television. She had three children, and while the younger two were cute, the oldest one was knock-your-eyes-out gorgeous. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her, she was so beautiful. She made Jon-Benet Ramsey look like a dog. Sadly, she had some physical handicaps.

As we were sitting at the kitchen table talking that day, Tina said something that just absolutely flummoxed me. She said, “Annie, the kids tease my little girl and make her life unbearable, and now I realize what we did to you. I have lied awake so many nights regretting the way I treated you and all the things I did to you back then, and wishing so much that I could take it back! I am so sorry!” Nobody had ever apologized to me before, at least not for their part in my being terrorized, and I was completely dumbstruck. I only hope that I was gracious and accepting of her apology. We are still friends – no, I mean really – so I must have said something right, but I have to admit that while my mind was still reeling over her apology, the first complete thought that went through my head was that I hoped Jerry had seven of them. Yes, I actually wished that Jerry had seven kids with handicaps or something that would cause them to be the target of every kind of personal torture children could invent.

Why did (and does) Jerry receive more of my wrath than Gary or any of the other encounters I had during those self-degrading times? Primarily, in his own way, Gary was a knight in shining armor, if not mine, by virtue of the fact that he ultimately saved me from myself. Jerry, on the other hand, was a snake oil salesman of the first order. He and I actually entered into an agreement that he would be my secret friend in exchange for some adolescent wet dream treatment, and he had no intention of being any kind of friend to me, secret or otherwise. Other boys who jumped on this particular bandwagon (as it were) offered no such agreement – our friendship was implicit, as Jerry had taught me well. Jerry had enough friends and didn’t need to bribe people to be his friend, yet despite that, he took full advantage of a lonely, desperate and yes, pathetic, young girl who was too young to know the price of “friendship”. He was the first in a fairly steady little stream of boys whose main job it was to provide enough fodder for me to endure years of guilt, humiliation, shame and self-recrimination, and he taught me everything he knew about using people; unfortunately, he only taught me how to be the usee, not the user (although the latter I wouldn’t have wanted to know anyway, but that’s beside the point). So yeah, I would have liked for him to have seven of them.

By the newspaper accounts, he had one daughter, three grandchildren and no spouse listed, although that little girl had to come from somewhere, and being as how he was a preacher’s kid (steadfastly upholding the PK stereotype for preacher’s kids everywhere), and continued living in our small town where his parents also live, I feel sure that the girl was born inside the sanctity of wedlock. Since he was what he was, I suspect there might have been a string of ex-wives along the way somewhere, but none were listed (they usually only list a current and sometimes the mother of one’s child, even if they are no longer wed) – just his current “special friend” was listed.

I briefly wondered if he sexually abused his own little darling and perhaps later on, her children. I almost rather doubt it, because what he was doing wasn’t pedophilia per se, since we were both kids at the time; just lascivious opportunism at the expense and total disregard of a young girl’s fragile feelings. I have no doubt that he continued merrily cutting a path of emotional and predatorial destruction in his wake, blithely unaware of the devastation left in his path, and unconcerned about it if he had known of it.

Yeah, I wish he’d had seven of them.

Old Home Week

2008-10-15T19:09:00.001-07:00

We had old home week a few weeks ago in what’s left of my family. In this case, though, it didn’t mean getting together with people you haven’t seen for a long time, which I actually do on a regular basis with people other than my family. In this case, it means we sold Mother and Daddy’s house. We didn’t even begin trying to sell it before July, and when everything came together so that we could begin trying to sell it, we didn’t even have to put it on the market. It is an old house, built during the Civil War, and although it has a lot of problems (the home inspection would have scared Stephen King, and he could probably write three novels based on it!), it is structurally sound and just a great old house. My sister (the oldest, upon whom all of the estate settlement fell as executrix) had gotten word of a couple of people in the town who buy, restore and flip old houses and who might be interested in the house. She got in touch with two people and was told yes and then no. Quite as a fluke, one of them knew someone else who knew someone else (it’s a small town, and I’m probably related to everyone in it some kind of way) who might be interested in the house. They and my sister somehow got connected and they were more excited about the possibility of getting that house than a spinster would be if Brad Pitt asked her for a date. They were ready to sign on the dotted line almost immediately, even after the home inspector found six bats in the attic. (My sister did manage to refrain from saying, “Only six?” We’ve known they were there and tried repeatedly to get rid of them, even though they are an endangered species. I frankly don’t get that they are an endangered species, which is what I thought was a term applied to some species that had only a few of their number left on the planet – like manatees, for example. Bats can be found in the thousands in various places on the planet, to include an underpass out west somewhere where they number in the tens of thousands.) We addressed the bat situation and they STILL wanted the house. We never even had to put it on the open market.

I had some real sadness when we were still in the talking stages. The three of us kids had never lived in that house – my grandfather left it to my dad in 1968 when he died, and my folks didn’t ever live in it until we were all grown and gone – but it was, to me, the last nail in the coffin, if you will pardon a really bad analogy. It was the final tie to Mother and Daddy, and all my mental games of halfway believing that part of them was still there in some way so long as we still had it were blown to bits in the face of selling it. It was the only place we ever had to call “back home” after moving around all over the place, even though, as I said, we kids never lived there. Mother and Daddy lived there longer than anywhere else they ever lived during their marriage, and it was the place where Mother lived the longest in her whole life, before or after she married Daddy. I spent several days psyching myself for the finality of it all, which I assumed would be in a matter of days.

So between the Marx Brothers attorneys and the Laurel and Hardy lawyers, it only took slightly over two months to do the closing. By then, I was so tired of it, I just wanted it over.

Every day I woke up sure in the knowledge that something was going to happen today to cause this sale not to go through. I imagined every possible obstacle known to the modern world, and every day the lawyers and bankers were coming up with new silly shit to throw in the way. Then the national economy got in on the act and Freddie Mae blew the mortgage business out of the water and then this bank caved and that bank collapsed and so on and so forth. Then we finally got ALL the nitnoy obstacles ironed out and solved and settled and finally set a date for the closing. My sister, a most capable individual (she wrote the book on capable individual), left her husband at home and went to Mother’s hometown for the closing. In advance of all of this, to hasten the process (a waste of effort, obviously), my brother and I had already signed and had notarized our power of attorney to our sister so she could do this without having to send this copy there and get that signature and send another copy somewhere else and say an incantation over it (an anti-bat one, no doubt) and send it somewhere else and so forth. Before she left, she asked the lawyers if there was anything she needed to bring with her from home, which was about 350 miles from Mother’s town. No, ma’am, everything is in order, just come on down.

Closing day…guess what? My sister’s husband’s signature was needed for the whole process. You remember him – she left him 350 miles away at home!!!! Whoops. So she went home the next day, with the papers in hand, met him at the bank, had his signature notarized and fed-exed it to Laurel and Hardy --- er, the lawyers. So Harpo opens the envelope, and lo and behold if the notary public didn’t have to add her two cents of fuck-up to this situation already fraught with fuck-ups beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. She failed to write her name and date of notary license and whatever other notary information is required beside the stamp, which she DID somehow manage to apply. So we have to get the damned thing fed-exed BACK to my sister and go BACK to the notary (and try not to wring her stupid neck) and get her to write in her information, etc., and then fed-ex it back to the Laurel and Hardy lawyers. Then they had to do a little more paper finagling and then they would get it ready and prepare it and think about getting ready to consider trying to start making plans to get it to the Marx Brothers bankers and then the Marx Brothers bankers would disperse the funds from the sale (minus Mother’s mortgage and other things) to the three of us by bank draft. I was absolutely convinced that they were going to deposit the money in the wrong accounts.

Meanwhile, later on that next day, I’m driving to work and my car, which has a full tank of gas (a luxury here at that time), starts refusing to go uphill faster than 5 miles an hour, if that. Oh, goody – on level ground it’s going okay, so it isn’t the transmission, right? Okay, let’s get the thing to work and see if we can get it to the mechanic. Nope, at the next major intersection, while waiting for the light to change, I got to listen to this car roar like a mad grizzly and lurch like a hippo with a severe case of hiccups. I decided that rather than nursing the thing to work and then to the mechanic’s, I’d just go back home and take care of it from there. While the desire was great, that didn’t include hiding under the bed, no matter how much I wanted to do so.

I had to go to work, because I had to do payroll, and I had to work that night at my second job, so I had to rent a car. The good news was, Triple A came and got my car; the bad news was that while I could get a rental car, they couldn’t find any place to get gas for it. I got it with half a tank of gas FINALLY and ended up working about an hour and a half that day. The worse news was that my fuel pump had to be replaced AND my timing belt had to be replaced. All things considered, it’s still better than a dead transmission (been there and done that already, but not with this car, thank goodness), and you might wonder what this had to do with closing on the house. Well, if the Marx Brothers bankers and Laurel and Hardy lawyers had gotten their shit together two months prior, I would have traded cars by then and it would have been someone else’s problem.

It took a whole nother week for the Marx Brothers bankers to screw things up a little bit further, just for good measure. I mean, who doesn’t like an extra verse of a really good song, just because you hate for it to end so soon? My brother and sister got their money on Wednesday. Nope, mine’s not there yet. Nope, still not there. Any guesses? Yeah, you got it – they deposited mine in…the wrong bank account!!!! Off by one number! Fortunately, they didn’t have to go to the owners of that bank account and explain to them that they really can’t have that money, it belongs to someone else. (I seriously doubt it would have still been there anyway – just watch how fast I can get the hell out of Dodge when someone inadvertently dumps a huge sum of money in MY bank account!) So okay, let’s try again. What? Still not there? Miss Arky, I just don’t understand it. Let’s read off the account number again. Oh, we accidentally omitted that six. I don’t know how that happened. Let me try again.

Okay, Harpo, here’s the deal. If it doesn’t work THIS time, I want you to take out the cash from your bank, go to the nearest branch of my bank, walk in and get one of their blank deposit slips and call me on the cell phone and I will read each number to you sloowwwwwwwwwwwly so you can put it in the right blank and go to the nice teller and make the deposit up close and IN PERSON.

I’m sorry, Miss Arky, it doesn’t work that way. Well, hell, Harpo, it sure as shit ain’t workin’ THIS way!

So finally, with no more drama and trauma, they showed me the money. THANK GOD!

The next day, when the “pending” cleared and I sat down to pay my bills as I always do on my “big” payday (the one from my main job), I paid off my credit cards in full, and I’m sure three different banks fell over in a state of shock. But when I wrote the first check that actually cut into the money, I cried like a baby. Yes, right there at my desk, in front of God and everybody.

Back in the Saddle?

2008-10-15T18:14:00.000-07:00

Mike is back in the newspaper again; apparently he took his ID down so he could modify it, and his profile (which was blank) now says something to the effect of "Proud dad of two and now retired…". I guess when one wants to change one’s profile, one has to disappear and ruminate for several weeks to be able to come up with a 10-word description of one’s life.

Retired, huh? So retired is what they call it when your employer won't let you take two weeks off without notice to go to Disneyworld, eh? In my neighborhood, they always called that “fired” or some synonym thereof.

When the subject of baby names came up in the newspaper, he posted, “I had a son in the late 1980s, soon after Hurricane Hugo struck the Carolinas. We had already decided to name him Mike Jr, but I got the bright idea to name him Hugo instead. However, because I had been married before, I cleared this with my wife before taking action. Mike Jr. is 19 now and is getting ready to go into the military. The punchline is, if it seems like a great belly-laugh-producing notion, but you have to approach your wife with, “Hey, why don’t we…” STOP!”

I had to laugh -- especially since I got honorable mention in that post, if not by name (I'm the "because I had been married before" one). I'm not sure what that had to do with anything, unless it was a veiled reference to the fact that he wanted to name our first son Superman and I told him he could name the dogs and I would name the children. I think I mentioned that once before. Hugo -- give me a break! I wish he had done it -- then she would have killed him!

The Mike Saga Continues

2008-09-17T19:47:00.001-07:00

I am continuing to read our hometown newspaper, along with my other hometown newspapers, and continuing to make comments where I feel so moved. On at least two occasions, Mike has replied directly to my comments, once even addressing me, “Ms. Arky, blah blah blah.” All very nice and cordial, once even telling me about his mother’s death in 1993 and his children’s ages (all of which I already knew through prior sleuthing).

Yesterday, when I went in to read replies to articles, I noticed an article to which I was sure Mike had replied, and yet I didn’t see his reply. I went to his profile, where you can click on “comments” and see all comments made by that person, just to see if I had dreamed his reply to this article (not an article to which I had replied or planned to do so). Surprise – when I went to his profile, it was no longer there – gone were his posts and his photos of his kids and himself that he had posted previously. However, I later went back and recalled having seen some posts that had no name or identity of any kind on them, only the posting date and time, and lo and behold, they were him – or he were they, or whatever. The one post I went looking for is actually gone, but others previously made are there, including the one that he addresses to Ms. Arky, but anonymously.

I haven’t decided whether he has gone stealth or been suspended for making some kind of no-no remark. Watch and wait, I guess. I just couldn’t believe he would leave without saying “goodbye”. I mean, what kind of piece of shit would do that? O, but wait – he already did that. Been there, done that and got the t-shirt – 25 years ago in November, to be exact. This adventure has been amazing and, frankly, amusing as hell. I just can’t wait to see what happens next!

And Now the Good News

2008-09-17T19:24:00.000-07:00

Saturday after O’Malley died, I found an ad for a really pretty boy cat who was three years old, neutered and needed a home. Sunday I went to meet him, and decided to take him. I was on my way to have dinner out with some friends, and I couldn’t very well leave him in the car while we ate (it IS Georgia, and it WAS August, and I wouldn’t do that even in December), so I arranged to come and pick him up later in the week. He was very friendly when I first got there, so I just poopooed the owners’ assertion that he was a bit skittish – that is, until I brought him home and didn’t see him for a week. I renamed him Godfrey (his previous name was less than dignified), and he pretty much became a UFO (unidentified feline object) who I barely saw except as he flashed from under one piece of furniture to under another one. I considered renaming him yet again to either Frady or Scaredy, and even considered taking him back to his owners, because he was ignoring the litter box I had put out and hiding all the time. I didn’t remember this kind of “get acquainted” experience when I got O’Malley, and after two and a half weeks of it, I was beginning to get a little fed up with it.
My friend fancies herself as something of a cat whisperer, and whether you believe in that kind of thing or not, she is amazing. She came up here a week ago by herself and did her laundry while I was at work. She lured Godfrey out and had a long “conversation” with me, wherein she later related that he had felt that his previous owners didn’t like him and sent him here as punishment for some unknown transgression. She assured him (presumably in catlish, which I do not speak, but which she obviously speaks fluently) that living here would be a piece of cake and that I would not abuse him and that he should come out and visit. Beginning the next day, he’s been hanging with me, sleeping with me and following me around like a big, fluffy puppy dog, and at the moment, we are living happily ever after. So again, whether you believe in cat whispering or not, you can’t argue with her results.

Bad News and Good News -- First the Bad News

2008-09-17T19:21:00.000-07:00

I have some bad news and some good news. The bad news is that my 20-year-old cat, O’Malley, had to be put to sleep on Saturday, August 9th. He had been sick with chronic kidney problems for over a year, and summer of 2007, I started having to give him subcutaneous fluids intravenously twice a week. In April 2008, after I got back from a trip to North Carolina, he got sick again and was given about two months max to live, and the IVs had to be stepped up to being a daily event. Throughout, I had always made sure with the doctors that even with this chronic illness, O’Malley would still have quality of life, and that we were nowhere near the stage of having to consider mercy.
He outlived the vet’s prediction by two months, but during the last month of his life, I could see he was slowing down, and his reaction and reflex time slowed down considerably, as well. During what turned out to be the last week of his life, he was so weak and so thin, it was criminal. That Saturday night, I hadn’t seen him all day and went downstairs looking for him. I found him lying under the bed, whimpering in pain, and I grabbed him up and hied off to the emergency vet clinic, knowing this was probably the last time he would be coming home alive. When I got there, they told me they could treat him aggressively and maybe keep him alive for a little while, but the treatment would only cause him more pain, and his quality of life would be minimal at best, horrible at worst. I knew I was going to miss him terribly – he had been my best friend and companion for eight of his last 20 years – but I knew that to keep him alive would be the most selfish thing I could do. Mercy was the only thing I had left to give him. I cried like a baby throughout the whole procedure, and then got in my car and went home alone, numb and in shock.
I went through the next few days as usual, albeit still in shock, and Thursday night, when the numbness wore off on my way home from work, I had a meltdown. If anyone had asked me before O’Malley died if I would get another cat when he was gone, I would have said absolutely not. During the week after he died, I backed off to a “well, maybe”. Thursday night, I started looking on Craig’s List to find another one. This house was awfully empty and lonely without O’Malley.

Roller Coaster Day

2008-09-06T21:17:00.000-07:00

You knew I would return to the scene of the crime eventually, right? It’s been a strange – but not altogether bad – day today. I’ve had two vastly different internet connections today. The first one left me feeling like I’d been kicked in the teeth. For a history on the subject of the fate of the men in my past, see “Killer Queen 3/24/06” in Anne Arky Ology (someday I’ll learn to hyperlink, but not today). I just found out I have another victim to my credit: a guy I dated when I lived in Washington, DC, named John. I know I have expressed my passion for red-haired men, but I can’t remember if I’ve noted that I am also a fool for very tall men. John was 6’7”, with red hair, and he was best friends with the guy who was the manager of the bookstore where I worked part-time in DC (as opposed to the one where I work now). He also was a manager of another store in that same chain. Now let’s see – red-haired, excessively tall, manages a bookstore – a PERFECT MATCH, wouldn’t you say? Well, I certainly thought so. I was quite smitten, even though some of the other people in my store warned me that he was hopelessly geeky. But I LIKE geeky! He was also a science fiction fan, and I have always been surrounded by sci-fi people, although not because I are one. As a matter of fact, I aren’t one. I have no interest in science fiction whatsoever, and never have had, but I have always attracted people who are – friends AND lovers – and the only thing I could figured was that either I’m a latent sci-fi freak and getting everything else out of the way first before I start reading that genre, or the science fiction people are the only ones freaky enough to appreciate someone who is as far outside the universe as I am, and I’m so far-out that only the science fiction people can even believe I exist!

Anyway, this morning I was talking to a friend of mine and telling her about John and how in 2001, at the bookstore where I now work, I found his name in the inventory data base of our bookstore as an author. I hunted him down then on the internet and found an email address, wrote and asked if it was him. He wrote back and said yes, it was him, and with a name like his (John is one of his names, but not the one he goes by or publishes under), it isn’t likely it would be anyone BUT him. I wrote back and told him about the day I found someone with my name in the obituary column locally – same first name, middle initial AND last name, and only three years younger than me, so a lot of people thought it WAS me. Anyway, we wrote back and forth a few times, and then it kind of dropped off. After I hung up this morning with my friend, I went in search of John’s email address and thought I’d drop him a “catch-up” email, which I did, and it immediately came back “invalid email address”. So I googled him. (See? I’m shameless – I go and track down everybody I’ve ever known at some point or another.) I found him in Wikipedia…dead! No, he didn’t die in Wikipedia – but he himself had written the first part of the Wikipedia entry about him, as evidenced by the fact that it is fraught with his crazy brand of humor. When I got to the part about his having died, I thought maybe that was just some of his macabre sense of humor coming right to the surface, but several other sites that came up under his name also showed death notices and eulogies. He was only 51 years old, and died of a massive heart attack in 2006.

Damn!

John and I didn’t date very much or for very long, for which I was really sorry, but I always felt a certain fondness for him. Our first date was a Joan Jett concert, and he really got into the music, rocking out. So much so that he tore the stadium seats from their welded-in concrete slab they were attached to! When we talked that night, he prefaced a dozen or more sentences with “Until three years ago, I had never…” fill in the blank with “gone to a concert”, “gone to a movie”, or whatever your imagination can compose. I forget whether he told me or someone else had told me, but until “three years ago”, John had apparently been a humongous force with which to be reckoned – fucking enormous, from all accounts – and had pretty much been that way all of his life and been devoid of any kind of social life, for the most part.

In writing about my mother’s death and subsequent funeral, I mentioned that I am a “weird” magnet, which is true. I am also a virgin magnet (men only, please), which is not only true, but VERY weird, especially at my advanced age of 51. I vowed when Mike and I split up that I was done dealing in virgins, as I had been a virgin magnet for my entire love life up to that point, and I was tired of being stuck with the dubious task of teaching males how to behave on dates – not to fart or pick their noses, etc. – and how to treat a girl right, and then either watching them go off and be model boyfriends to some other girl or getting stuck with them interminably for remedial training (see “Marriage – Mike”). God, I hate that! Nothing worse than a man on training wheels, for Christ’s sake! So while the virgins I have magnetized may not necessarily be virgins in the strictest sense of the word, they have almost never had a real relationship with a woman, or whatever, and I decided at the tender age of 27 that I was only going to date men who were no fewer than five years older than me, figuring that if he isn’t deflowered by the age of 32, he never would be, so he wouldn’t be bothering with me anyway. WRONG!

John was exactly 32 when we started dating, and I can only swear to two dates that we had. If we had a third one, I can’t remember it, which is really sad. Anyway, he was 32 and I was 30, and at no time did he ever hold my hand, put his arm around me or anything at all other than escort me and pay my way. It was a refreshing cry from the “I bought you dinner, now you owe me”, but a girl likes some skin now and again, don’cha know. (My prudish aunt featured in “Fine Lace and Dirty Linen” on 5/9/07 told me so herself.) Every time we went out, when he took me home, he slowed down to 35 MPH and tossed me out at the door, and I referred to our dating as “drive-by dating”. That’s pretty much what it felt like. I couldn’t decide whether he just really wasn’t interested, or he just didn’t know how to proceed beyond asking me out, escorting me and paying my way. I always had a feeling that his “Until three years ago I had never…” could very well have included “…gone on a date” or beyond. For that matter, I wasn’t sure if he EVER beyonded, three years ago or otherwise. I guess because I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt of being insecure and not just another asshole in a long list of many (as much because I was generous to him as to assuage my own ego), I always remained fond of him in spite of the fact that our relationship was on a slow (but brief) track to nowhere. The last time I can remember seeing him was in my bookstore, where his best friend was my boss, and the only thing I can remember him saying was something about how he guessed I wore a lot of jewelry EVERYWHERE. Guess he figured out that all my jewelry wasn’t just for show for him. (It’s all costume, mostly cloisonné.) For some reason, he deemed that significant. Maybe he thought I was some big city vamp (see “I Love Lucy” episode of Cousin Ernie’s visit) out to snare him with my baubles and bangles. Yeah, right. Anyway, at some later time, I will discuss the 42-year-old guy who crossed my path in the 1990s and became known as the Cincinnati Virgin. But that’s another story.

None of John’s obituaries or post-mortems listed a wife as a survivor, and no kids were listed, so I don’t know if he never had a wife or just no longer had one. He didn’t mention it in his emails to me, and I never could figure out how to broach the subject with him in our emails.

The second internet connection was the result of my emailing a guy who writes for my hometown paper, about an article he’d written. I complimented his article, and gave him a couple of additional facts and a correction (Miss Know-It-All here). He wrote me back today and asked if I was the person who had written such-and-such a book and if I still lived in Georgia. I wrote him back and said yes, I am, and yes, I do. (Yes, I did have a book published in 1997.) He wrote back and said he LOVES that book – his wife gave it to him for Christmas some years ago, and he even has it in the bibliography of HIS book, and gave me the title. WOW! That was a big ego boost! I’ve been bibliographied, and I never even knew it! I know that paper mentioned my book in an article they published on a local subject (the book itself is nonfiction and written about the local area), and that was an ego kick; my mother sent me the article; now I may have to go find it to see if HE wrote THAT article, too! My book, which is out of print now, was the second one of its type to be written about that area, and several more of the same type have been written and published about it (same publisher, too – thanks a heap!), so for anyone even to remember mine, much less with such enthusiasm, is quite flattering. We’ve exchanged several emails today, and my ego is so boosted, I may not come down for days! Yippee!

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished or How’s Your Mom’n’em?

2008-07-01T18:33:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, six months before my father died, my friend’s mother died. From the time I found out about her death, I was constantly on the phone with my friend (who lived and still lives several states away), trying to keep up her spirits and help her get used to life without her mother. She had lived with her mother, whereas my folks lived a couple of states away from me and I didn’t see them but a few times a year. Meanwhile, I went to my friend’s mother’s funeral (which was a few months later for the convenience of one of her family members), using the last of my tax refund to get there. A little over a month after her mother’s funeral, my father died. My friend sent me a card.
I continued for the next three years constantly on the phone with this friend, trying to make sure she didn’t feel alone and lonely (she moved to a new area where she didn’t know many people, and had not kept up with many friends back home for some years). I tried to help her deal with moving forward and situations involving other family members, among many other things. Some of our conversations were spent covering the same ground over and over and over for hours on end, and led me to so much frustration that I almost got a new ulcer for it, but I persisted. Because of my venting to another friend about feeling like I was talking to a brick wall, I was led to the book, “When Helping You Is Hurting Me”, and while I never actually got hold of the book, the very title of it got my attention enough so that I stopped letting her lead me down the same alleyways of conversation that caused me to gnash my teeth to little nublets.
If you have read any of my previous entries, you already know that my mother died two days before this past Christmas. I can only assume I have clearly conveyed what a devastating loss this has been to me, without dwelling on it too heavily except at the time of her death. Well, in case I failed to do so, trust me – I have lived through sexual abuse, a childhood that played itself out like the movie “Carrie” (minus the telekinesis), the marriage from hell followed by the divorce that seems ever on-going, and medical issues abounding, and I have never, ever had anything harder to deal with than the loss of my mother. My friend sent me another card. I miss my mother so much, sometimes I can hardly stand it. I’m past the point where the first thought in my head when I wake up is “Mom’s dead. Mom’s dead. Mom’s dead.” But the worst times are the weekends, when my phone seldom rings. It may ring off the hook during the week (sometimes yes, sometimes no), but just about the only time it rings on the weekend is when my friend Fran calls on a Sunday morning, and my friend David might call. I used to spend a lot of my weekends on the phone with Mother, and that is when it hits me the worst. (That’s also the time when I am least busy and have the most time to think about things I can usually run from when I’m busy.) By an hour after I’m out of bed on Saturday, I start getting depressed because I know I can’t call Mother, and by Sunday night, I’m so depressed, I haven’t been out of the house or out of my pajamas all weekend. Getting out of bed on Monday morning has always been hard, but it’s getting harder and harder after weekends spent like that. Mind you, once in a great while, this friend might call me, and she sent me a birthday card with a generous check as a gift, but besides the occasional pass-it-on email, we don’t seem to talk too much, and if we do, it’s usually at my initiation. (Lest anyone think my friend’s not calling or absence of action might be financially motivated, let me assure you that her mother left her in very sound financial condition – a hell of a lot better than my financial condition is, believe me – so that is not a driving force here.)
I don’t do things for my friends and keep score with the expectation of everything I do being met with an equal action in return, but when you reexamine something and things are so blatantly lopsided, sometimes it’s hard not to notice. I really wish this whole thought had not occurred to me, but it did last weekend, and now I’m really bummed that this friendship is obviously so one-sided. That doesn’t mean I intend to discontinue the friendship – it takes a lot more than this for that to happen – but it does mean that I won’t be putting nearly as much effort into it as I have in the past. I’m not really mad, just disappointed – and really, really hurt.

Mike Revisited or Me in Limbo

2008-06-04T17:24:00.000-07:00

When you tell someone you are in Limbo, it usually means you are riding a fence of some kind in a state of indecision, or you are in a state of flux due to someone else’s indecision. I am in another state of Limbo that is more in keeping with Chubby Checker’s song “Limbo Rock”, as in, how low can you go? I’m thinking, pretty low.

As I’ve mentioned previously, I read my hometown newspapers on line (yes, newspaperS – multiple hometowns, multiple newspapers), mainly to keep up with what’s going on there and with people I knew from when I lived there, and a strange by-product that resulted was that I inadvertently discovered a way to shadow Mike, so to speak. Also as I’ve mentioned previously, I have never had a desire (beyond the first weekend after he disappeared) to contact Mike in any way, and had I desired to do so, I’ve known where his parents lived and I could’ve contacted him via them if I’d really had any burning desire to do so. What I mainly wanted to do was just to keep tabs on him, and know where he was and more or less what he was doing. When I started seeing his presence in the local on-line newspaper, I decided to have a little fun with it and yank his chain from time to time. The company I now work for fired him before we were married, and the one place we always planned to live at some point in our future (limited though it turned out to be, and we never got there together) was Atlanta, so a few years ago (2005, I think), I had a chance to throw in his face via the online newspaper, “ha, ha, I work for these people, and you don’t” and “ha, ha, I live in Atlanta and you don’t”. Juvenile? You betcha. It was, however, never meant to be an exercise in “here I am”.

One of the features of this paper’s online version is a place where readers can make comments, and I’ve seen some of Mike’s comments go by and made a few of my own, as well. Some comment he made awhile ago made me think perhaps he was not in Georgia any more, but back in Tennessee.

Another feature offered is a place for readers to post their pictures – either pictures of themselves or pictures they’ve taken or all of the above. I see lots of “the first snow” or “boating on the lake” or “us at the barbecue” pictures go by, and I always look at them and look to see who submitted them, in case it’s someone I might know. Until now, it never has been. Last week, however, I almost fell out of my chair when I saw a prom picture of a young girl posted, with the name, say, Pahttryccia His Last Name, and it was posted by Mike His Last Name, with his name highlighted. I clicked on his name, and four more pictures had been posted in his profile – three pictures of his son Michael Patrick His Last Name (indicating that the boy goes by Pat), and one picture of Mike. The girl looks just like her father, but the boy doesn’t look like he’s even remotely related, and I wouldn’t have recognized Mike if I’d seen him on the street. He looks so different from how he looked when I knew him, and he doesn’t even look like the same person. Yeah, I know, it’s been almost 25 years, but even after 25 years, I still look like the same person, just older and fatter. Make no mistake about it, he looks quite a lot older and quite a lot fatter, but not like him at all. Funny enough, though, he looks like he is supposed to look, somehow. He always did look like his father spit him out and he was totally unrelated to his mother, but his dad was slender, and in all the time I knew him, Mike looked like the Pillsbury doughboy, to varying degrees. Now Mike looks like someone stuck an air hose in his father’s mouth and inflated him.

When Mother died, Mike signed the online guestbook from the funeral home, and that was the second time in recent years (or for the past twenty-five, for that matter) that he had tried to contact me, either directly or indirectly. It’s been suggested to me that those and the posting of the pictures where he knew I would see them (I don’t make my presence on that site a secret) were his way of “fishing”, and since he had posted pictures of Papa Bear and the Baby Bears but no Mama Bear, I began to think the same thing, and also that he and the Missus might be divorced, especially since he might be back in Tennessee. A friend suggested that I could try to find some legal records here in Georgia to find out, but I thought that was an awful lot of trouble to go to, no more than I really cared. Anything that I had to do more than click my mouse or surf the net for, I just didn’t give enough of a damn to make the effort. It’s not like I have a dog in that fight, anyway – or anything else more than idle curiosity.

The girl’s name is not really Pahttryccia, and the boy’s name is not really Patrick, but the spelling of the girl’s real name is just about as weird, and it struck me as very strange that they gave both kids the same name, feminine and masculine, the shortened version of which is pronounced the same, but they spelled his in the common way and made hers look like a cure for hay fever. I had gathered previously that the mother’s first and maiden names seemed to be of German origin, so I put the girl’s first name on the internet by itself to see what would come up, if perhaps it came up in an on-line baby name site that showed that spelling to be of German origin as well. From what I can gather, though, what it shows it to be is that it’s the only one in the world like it, because when I googled it, the only sites that came up – and there were bunches – were sites relating to her. I decided to play snoop and read through some of them to see what she was about and – let’s be honest here – to find out what I could glean about her father, his situation and his whereabouts.

In the 5/29/05 Anne Arky Ology blog called “Damn Him”, I asked some questions:
So what do you suppose his new life is like? I know he is married, and I know he has at least one kid and lives here in Georgia. Does she have to wait and wonder if he is coming home? Does she have to worry what kind of fix he is getting them into that she will have to bail them out of, or what kind of fix she will have to fix? I don’t know, but I’m glad it isn’t me. I wonder if she knows the REAL story of his first marriage. I wonder what kind of bullshit story he fed her instead of the real story. I wonder what Junior would say if he knew Daddy was a thief (convicted felon, even) and a first-rate conniving liar?

By snooping in his daughter’s blog, I found some answers. In a very recent blog, according to her, her parents have been divorced for five or six years and Mike has been living back in Tennessee during that time, while the rest of the family stayed in Georgia. The reason they divorced (according to her) is because he has a thyroid condition, and it causes him to spend any extra money he can get his hands on and take off on mini-vacations, usually to Florida, and for this, her mother divorced him. Sound familiar? So she was left behind not only to deal with the absence of her beloved father, but also to be first-hand witness to her mother’s and her mother’s family’s wrath and disdain of him, putting her right in the middle with severely divided loyalties. I have no doubt in my mind that she truly believes the chemical imbalance in his brain, as she says, is caused by a thyroid condition, and I have no doubt in my mind that he really and truly has a thyroid situation (one look at his picture, and the mystery is over). When I was her age (about 20), I didn’t know thyroid conditions from diddly damn, and if someone had told me that, I would have believed it, especially if it were my father who told me and I was a die-hard daddy’s girl, as she says she is. However, it sounds to me like he (or someone) is feeding her a major snow job and he is full-blown five-star bipolar. (Not, to quote Seinfeld, that there’s anything wrong with that.) My friend Not The Mama tells me that “They are miserable, crippled people without a clue who they are and they destroy everybody who loves them, desperately seeking relationships they're just too scared to have lest they be rejected. They are not mean people. They're scared, and they hide behind any lie they think will hide that fact.”, to which I replied, “You may be right about their not being mean people, but I do think a certain callousness must be built into their internal systems, because I don't think they have a clue or a concern about the carnage they leave in their wake or how their actions affect other people.”

Many of the questions posed above have been answered in one paragraph with startling clarity. Yes, she did have to wait and wonder if he is coming home. Yes, she did have to worry what kind of fix he was getting them into that she would have to bail them out of, or what kind of fix she would have to fix. By now, if she doesn’t have any specific details of the real story of his first marriage, I’d be willing to bet she has some strong suspicions. It looks like Junioretta (as it were) still has a lot of illusions about her daddy, though, which really breaks my heart. It also answers some unspoken (unwritten) questions I had – did I make a mistake by not being there when Mike got back from wherever it was he went the last time he took off? Did he outgrow that shit and become a better husband for someone else? I always seemed to break in guys so they were better dates, boyfriends and, I feared, husbands when I was finished with them than when I got them, so I figured the last question was not only valid, but likely to be answered with a positive. Based on the revelations of the daughter, it looks like the answer to both of those unspoken questions is a resounding NO! It also gives me major validation for the decision I made not to have children with this ding-a-ling, and tells me why he and the latest Missus stayed married as long as they did – the children.

Something else in another recent blog of hers brings to mind that old saying about the sins of the father being visited upon the sons (or daughters, in this case). She gave a detailed description about her broken engagement. She wrote about how a few years ago, a guy was supposed to come from up north to visit her and probably get engaged to her, and all the while he was talking on his cell phone to her and pretending to be driving south to see her, he was actually God knows where, and three hours after he was supposed to arrive at her house, she called his cell phone and got his brother “back home”, up north and twelve states away. When she was trying to call him and text him and email him, she got no response whatsoever, as if he had just vanished into thin air. I don’t know whether this guy ever met her daddy, and learned evaporation tricks from him, or if, like many women, she set her sights on a younger version of Dear Old Dad. (I’m guilty of this, also, but Mike was a combination of all the bad parts of both of my parents and none of their good ones. Daddy never left us or lied through his teeth – his biggest sin was being a poor provider and very self-absorbed.) She asked her friends in blogland if any of them had ever felt the same way she was feeling now, and I was tempted to drop a note under yet another assumed identity and tell her that I for one knew exactly how she felt. I would never do anything to disillusion her about her father – she’ll find out soon enough how clayful his feet are – and I would never use her in any malicious way to get at her father, because she has suffered/will suffer enough because of him.

Did I mention she is in college at the same place Mike and I went, and living near him? Sheesh! She didn’t mention anything about her relationship with her mother, apart from having to deal with the mother’s venomous wrath over the father’s actions, or her relationship with her brother at all. I would not have known from her blog that she even has a brother – she’s never mentioned him in the least. She sounds like a very responsible young lady, with an understanding of having to pay her own way and not dependent upon her parents, which is awesome. I like her mother already, because I promise you, she did not get that from her father. My heart goes out to her for the pain she is obviously having, but trust me, however tempting it might be to do otherwise, I will keep a hands-off approach, albeit a voyeuristic one.

How low can I go? I suppose this is going pretty low, snooping around in his daughter's blog to find out about him, but I'm glad I did it. This has just been so weird, but I really do feel like a parking ticket – like I have been majorly validated.

Wild Child Update

2008-06-04T17:21:00.000-07:00

Well, so far I have gotten some decent response to my letters. I had one congressman’s office call and the staffer told me that they cannot help me because this is a matter for law enforcement, and I told her that while I do not expect the good congressman or his staff to go and arrest the bimbo, I was hoping that he would do what he was elected to do, which was to represent me, by putting a little political pressure on the local police to do SOMETHING. She said he couldn’t, so his office is high on my shit list. If he is up for reelection this year, I plan to vocalize my opposition. However, the local police offices have been very responsive to this, and the county sheriff’s office and the city police where I live are “working together” to get something done, although they are telling me they don’t think anything really CAN be done because (once again, and I’m getting so damned tired of hearing about this) she hasn’t DONE anything YET. They have all assured me that any “tips” regarding nefarious activity at my house will be looked at with a jaundiced eye and likely not acted upon, because the narcotics officers “realized within 5 minutes of their arrival that this was bogus and there was nothing to it”. Trust me – my house LOOKS like the house of the poster child for goody two shoes. I finally got someone to listen to the extended dance version of Kristy’s greatest hits (all nine of them), and they and others in the groups of people I’ve heard from have generally decided – drum roll, please – she’s a nut. Well, thank you, but I already had made a diagnosis! They think they may be able to get her committed, but that will be a revolving door process by which they get her in there, get her meds straight, let her out, and in a few months’ time, she goes off the meds, and (as I’ve said before), puts a quarter in her mental juke box and starts playing my song again, and we will have to repeat this process over and over. However, I’m game for that if that’s what it takes.

The GBI sent me a letter telling me that they are not authorized to act on the complaint of a citizen, that they have to be referred by district attorneys or law enforcement, but they were concerned about my allegations, so they sent my package and a copy of said letter to the county district attorney, who I somehow missed in my outsendings for some reason. I got a call last week from that office, and they are pursuing the case, also. Bless his heart, the DA who called me sounds for all the world like Buddy Hackett, and while he seems quite nice and quite willing to pursue this matter on my behalf, it was all I could do to keep from laughing at him! Anyway, his line of thinking is the same as the above, the revolving-door-committal thing, but like I said, I’m all for it. I haven’t told any of these people that they are one among many recipients of my help message, so by all rights, they should start running into each other in their pursuit of a solution – IF they are doing their jobs right, anyway. Keep your fingers crossed!

Wild Child You Won't Believe This

2008-04-15T17:53:00.000-07:00

4/8/08 – 9:05 PM – Two agents from the local Narcotics Unit and one agent from my local Police Department came to my house and rang the doorbell, and after they showed me the proper IDs, I let them in the house. One Agent told me that they were there in answer to an anonymous tipline citizen complaint against Trina My Last Name, a white female 5’5”, 115-120 pounds, brown hair, brown eyes, who was dealing unknown drugs out of my address and running an escort service from Chattanooga to Atlanta, with some mention of an ex-boyfriend Robert L (whose ex-boyfriend he is or was is unclear). They were told that Trina My Last Name was my daughter and they asked permission to search my house. After I literally laughed out loud in their faces, I told them they were welcome to search my house. I told them as I have told countless other people that I do not have and have never had any daughter (or any other children) named anything, and I do not have anything or know anyone named Trina My Last Name, that no one else besides me has lived in this house since I took possession in November 2004. I also told them of my history with Kristy Her Last Name and my suspicions (dead certainty) that she was the “anonymous tipster” because she made up Trina My Last Name and her drug trafficking, and that I believed this to be just another form of her harassment. One of the agents (I don’t know which) murmured something to the effect that he did recall reading something about that when researching me prior to their arrival. I also told them that I had been told within the past two weeks by Lisa (a former neighbor) that Ms. Kristy has moved back into this neighborhood from the Chattanooga area. They were not interested in reading my written accounts of her previous actions or listening to the extended dance version of the tape I have of her messages. They asked me to sign a waiver and consent to search, and I agreed to do so on the condition that I am allowed a copy of it. They agreed to let me scan it, and I scanned and rescanned it until I got it the way I wanted it and printed out my copy. They left, apparently satisfied, without having done any real thorough searching, as no drawers were opened, no cabinets emptied, and none of the 3,000+ collectible tins I own were searched.

After they left, I phoned the local Police Department for someone to come over and capture this in their files. At 9:45 PM, an Officer arrived. I told her what had transpired and reiterated my belief that this was just another form of harassment from Ms. Kristy, who apparently has found a new weapon to use in her harassment of me. I told the Officer that I do not intend to tolerate a steady stream of local gendarmerie parading through my house on the “anonymous tips” of this crazy woman. I told her it’s their job to do something about her and stop her, because I can’t, and they need to get on the ball and do something to stop her now. I told her that I have a security clearance for my job, and this kind of activity could endanger my clearance, and therefore my livelihood, and all in the world I have done to deserve this is to have bought this particular house in this particular place. I pointed out that I am extremely busy in all facets of my life and have never had any time or inclination to have any involvement with this woman and her traumas and dramas and don’t have time to deal with them now and should not have to do so and should not be subjected to her harassment in any form. She said that there is nothing they can do. The only courses of action that she could suggest (charging the woman with harassing phone calls, getting a restraining order, etc.) were things I had already tried at least once, if not twice, and the legal system had failed to support me. I told her about the incident that took place in December with the person named Robert. She left and nothing was resolved.

4/9/08 – 8:00 AM – I phoned the local Police Department and requested a call from Officer A., who has been quite helpful in the past; he is on the second shift, so I will not hear from him until after 3:00 PM. I am hoping he will have some suggestions, as he has always been most responsive to the situation in the previous times he’s been dispatched for it. (NOTE: As of 4/15/08, Officer A has not been heard from.)

Tomorrow I am sending out a two-page letter to the following people:
The Governor of Georgia
The Lieutenant Governor of Georgia
The head of the GBI
The state attorney general
The two Senators from Georgia
Two Georgia state Senators
The County Manager of this county
The Chairman of the Board of Commissioners of this county (I'm not even sure what that means, but why should he be excluded just because I'm clueless as to who he is and what he does?)
The Chief of Police of my city

I will give it about two weeks to see if any of these fine folks steps forward to help, and if they don't, next stop is the local news and consumer advocates and then CNN and 60 Minutes.

What I have taken care to point out to all these people, and what everyone who has known me for more than two days is fully aware of, is that not only do I not have any children, daughters or otherwise, but I am the poster child for Goody Two Shoes, and I lead the most sedate life of anyone you have ever known in your whole life, so as to be considered crashingly boring to some people. This bothers me not at all. I don't smoke and never have; I don't drink, and when I did what little drinking I ever did do, I maxed out at one mixed drink every three to four months, whether I needed it or not -- I have never even been drunk; I do not now and never did do recreational drugs or even smoke pot just to try it -- not even once! You won't find that in most people my age unless they were raised in an overly-religious household, which I was not. I just chose to walk the straight and narrow because I wasn't interested in that whole scene. I liked the music and the lifestyle and wardrobe of the "hippie" movement, but otherwise the whole thing bored me shitless. Drugs? Who needs them? Not me! Experiencing vicariously my brother's drug use in the late '60s/early '70s was plenty close enough for me.

The Voices in My Head

2008-03-08T17:08:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned, I spent weeks agonizing over what I was going to do with all this furniture and stuff explosion that was coming my way, and Melanie and I worked diligently to arrange and rearrange things to make it happen. Fortunately I had measured everything that I knew was coming to my house before I left Virginia, so we didn’t have to estimate, we could actually make specific plans, although at times Melanie swore my measurements were bound to be off and this was never going to work. It did – everything fit just where I planned for it to be. There were two items that I hadn’t figured out what I would do with, and as we speak, they are in my garage waiting for placement. Neither of them is anything I care to part with, as one is a child’s homework desk that was given to me by a neighbor when I was about six years old, and I’m as sentimental as a homemade Valentine. If someone gives me something, I’m apt to still have it some thirty to fifty years later, just based on the fact that so-and-so gave it to me. (This, of course, all depends on just exactly who gave it to me – I’ve cheerfully tossed almost every piece of anything Mike ever gave me unless I was attached to it in spite of him – but never because of him – and likewise a few other people’s stuff goes the same way, but you get the idea.) The other item awaiting placement is a bookcase my father and mother built, which sure as heck isn’t going anywhere outside of my possession.

Among the things that arrived at my house in this exercise was the rest of my dish collection. I have four sets of antique dishes that I actively collect, and one of them is the same set that Mother bought in the 1960s. My collection started out as my buying replacement items for her, and ultimately she told me to stop buying her any more, but not before I had stumbled across a couple of huge piles of it, so I just started collecting it myself. Mind you, I have a china cabinet that I bought soon after buying my house, but it’s filled to the brim and beyond with the main set that I collect, so a couple of years ago I bought a barrister’s bookcase for some other dishes, which sits beside the china cabinet. I figured when the rest of my dishes arrived, I needed to have a place to put them, so lo and behold, I found not one, but two barrister bookcases for sale on Craig’s List for the same price I had paid for my original one, so I arranged to buy both of them, figuring that while I really only need one right now, having a “spare” would not be a bad idea because sure as shit, in a year or so I’ll need another one and wish I had gotten it. So I did. The beauty of using barrister bookcases is that just like a glass-fronted china cabinet, the stuff you put in them doesn’t have to be dusted, and believe me, I have a lot of stuff that I want not to have to dust.

During this move, when we needed padding for furniture, I managed to accumulate – and was then forced to wash – enough sheets to outfit a KKK rally, so long as it was sponsored by Martha Stewart, because they were all sheets with prints and not solid white. Unfortunately, except for the ones I took off my own bed to wash with the rest of them, I really didn’t have any that I cared to put on the new bed downstairs, so this meant that I had to go buy some new sheets for the “new” (but quite an antique, actually) bed at my house.

Last weekend, I was going out with Tami to visit our friends for dinner, and I was telling her that these friends were taking me the next day to get the barrister bookcases (they often get drafted for my wild furniture chases, owing to their having a truck and a great disposition about it). I also mentioned that even though I’m oversheeted to within an inch of my life, I planned to go this week to get a set for the new bed. Later, her car radio jolted to life to remind her that she had merely turned it down and not off, and when I asked her if she’d heard that faint noise, she said, “What noise?” I blinked and said, “You know – the voices I’m hearing that say, ‘Buy more furniture! Buy more sheets!’”

P.S. Got the sheets, got the bookcases. What next?

UnReal Estate

2008-03-08T17:04:00.002-08:00

My sister, the executrix of Mother and Daddy’s estate, was pretty well determined to divide up Mother’s stuff during the weekend of the funeral and get the house emptied out as soon as possible so we could sell it. I didn’t have the money to get a truck and make my part of that process happen right then, and I figured we were all going to be one big walking nerve ending and not likely to have much interest in being diplomatic or considerate of each other’s feelings. (Even on a good day, we usually aren’t that, and I didn’t reckon on that weekend being filled with good days.) She was hell-bent to do it, though, so I steeled myself to be ready to walk out of the house empty-handed, without looking back. I still remember vividly the 1974 estate brawl between my parents and Uncle Asshole and his wife (I was the only one of the three of us kids that witnessed it, and I was on the front lines), and it almost came down to a blood letting. Since then, I had been dreading the property split we would someday have, knowing that despite the fact that she has more money than the rest of the whole family combined and could go out and buy anything she wants, my sister had a way of getting anything and everything she wanted and wanting everything I wanted just because I wanted it, and my brother wasn’t much better (minus the money factor). Thirty-three years is a long time to have something hanging over your head, you know? I had a lot of things in the house that I’d put in storage years ago, and I was pretty well ready to walk off and leave it and everything, because I just wasn’t ready to get into any knock-down drag-out fights over things. Also, some of the things I really wanted were heirloom-type things, like a cabinet my dad’s dad had commissioned to be built in the 1930s, which he left to my mother, because while he was the designer and owner, it was her uncle who had built it, so it was a double family heirloom, with history from both sides of the family. (Sort of like the furniture equivalent of double first cousins.) There was a time when I would have gone to the mat for things like that, but a few years ago I realized that having family heirlooms in my possession wasn’t nearly as important as it could have been, since I don’t have anybody to pass it on to – kids of my own, anyway. Somewhere along the way, the whole thing just ceased to be of much importance at all. If it came to it, I was just going to get in the car and leave and never look back, because frankly, it’s just stuff, and they could just stuff it. If there’s one thing I do NOT have a shortage of, it’s stuff.

But you know what? Amazingly, it went very well, and everybody seemed exceedingly polite about what they wanted, making sure that nobody else minded or wanted a particular item before laying claim to it. I had envisioned that it would be a “gimme-I-want fest” and quickly be reduced to the bloodshed level, but as far as I know, everyone got everything they wanted, and I only gave up one of the four things that I absolutely wanted. I didn’t feel like I had to give that one up, but it was number four on my list, and it turned out that I was getting a lot of other things I had not counted on (some of which I longed for years ago but figured I’d never get after I found out that my sister wanted them as well), so I could afford to be generous. Besides, with all the other stuff I was going to be getting, I wouldn’t have had room for it anyway, so it was easy. Like I said, everyone prefaced every desire with, “If you don’t mind…” or “If nobody wants this, I’d like it.” I kept wondering who these people were and what aliens had possessed my family, all the while wondering if they would keep them, because I liked these people! Very strange! My brother, of course, did have to show his ass at least once while we were there. He did so while we were in Florida, also, and probably did irreparable damage to his relationship with his daughter. I’ll spare you the details, but I will tell you that when she was deciding what to take from Mother’s house, she elected to leave behind the toy box my brother had bought her for Christmas in 1977, probably the only thing he ever bought her. This was not an accident, as it was quite visible in the mix, and her husband told my sister that they were leaving it and that it was a hard decision for her. To me, that she left it spoke volumes for the future of their relationship.

The funniest part about the property split was that the only argument anyone ever had over anything was after everything in the house had been divided up and most of us were already gone, at which point my sister and brother almost came to blows after everyone else left – over my Squeegy that I’d inadvertently left in the driveway! The only reason I even heard about it was that I knew my sister was having someone come over and haul off the junk from Mother’s carport and such, and I just wanted to alert her to the fact that there was a perfectly good Squeegy that I’d left there, and someone should take and keep it rather than letting it go to the dump. She told me they had already discovered it and fought over it, with each of them yelling, “But I wanted that!” and she ended up with it. How weird! Even funnier is that she brought it back to me when I saw her last month (more on that later). I didn’t want it back – I just didn’t want it to get tossed as trash.

I spent the next month and a half trying to figure out what I was going to do with all this furniture that was coming my way (not to mention the boxes and boxes of things both mine and Mother’s). I sold the white wicker bedroom set I’d bought soon after I bought my house, and I gave away a couch and chair. Then Melanie and I spent the next few weeks moving mountains – mountains of furniture, mountains of boxes, etc. Presidents’ Day weekend, I drove up to Virginia and my sister met me there; we spent Saturday and Sunday getting things ready to be moved (she had already spent a couple of weekends before helping my niece and her husband get the rest of the things they couldn’t get in early January – my brother got all his the weekend of Mother’s funeral), and Monday we drove back to Georgia, with her driving the truck and me driving my car. The next day, she flew back to DC. I had wanted her and her husband to stop by my house en route to Mother’s when they left Florida, but she said he was (in essence) acting like an ass and would likely not make it a pleasant overnight stay, so she would come to Georgia with me when I got my stuff from Mother’s later. It worked out very well, and we had a nice visit. The trip was supposed to consist of both of us getting our stuff, with her son and his fiancé riding down with her, renting a truck and one of them driving back the truck and one driving back the car to DC with her stuff and the things her son is taking, but the fiancé’s grandfather is ill, so they didn’t make the trip, so she drove down in Mother’s car, which she left at Mother’s to be retrieved later.

Blame Validation

2008-03-08T17:04:00.001-08:00

After my sister and her husband finally got back to Mother’s house (remember they were stuck in Florida for days after Mother died), they found Mother’s walker, BOTH her canes and her nebulizer. I’m not exactly sure what a nebulizer is, but it’s some kind of lung treatment that is like an inhaler to the tenth power or something – something she used when she was REALLY out of breath – and it was a machine with medicine that had to be loaded into it and something she could only use at home. Because they were short on room in the car and because they were in such an all-fired hurry, they left all that behind. Like I said, they took her down to Florida and killed her.

Please know that I didn’t begrudge my mother a trip to Florida. On the contrary, I wanted her to go, and I pretty much wanted and expected her to spend the winter down there. She was so excited about the trip, and according to people in her town I spoke to at her funeral, it was all she talked about for weeks prior. But I wanted her to use some common sense about it and see to her health in the process. Common sense was something else that probably wouldn’t have fit in the car, so I guess they left that back at her house.

My sister has it in her head that Mother’s death was a deliberate thing on her (Mother’s) behalf because she had been in quite a lot of pain with her shoulder (she had fallen into the corner of her stove last summer and hurt it) and she had galloping osteoporosis that was causing lots of little breaks in her backbone causing her more pain. Also, even though she was bound and determined not to follow the example of my aunt and my grandmother when their respective spouses died and just sit down and wait to die to be with them, and she was determined to build as much of a life as was possible without Daddy, plainly and simply, she just missed him. A hell of a lot. After 57 years, how could she not? So my sister thinks that Mother had a plan to just thumb her nose at the world and the fates and go to Florida to die. I personally think that’s so much bullshit and that Mother never would have done that to us, but whatever it takes to get you through the night, I guess…. I’m still quite convinced that they just took her down to Florida and killed her. (Third verse, same as the first.)

When Worlds Collide

2008-03-08T17:00:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, just when you think you are at your wits’ end and you really can’t take anything else piled on top of whatever it is you feel trapped under, some dimwit comes along and dumps a little more, just for good measure.

The day was Sunday, and the date was 23 December, two days before Christmas; at 0800 that day, Mother had died. I was a total zombie, and about as grubby as I could be, but I had about 141 things to do that day, including get in the shower and then get dressed and ready to go out – I had a dinner date, and while I was quite sure I wasn’t going to be the life of the party, I still felt I needed to get out and do something. Around 1230 that day, someone rang my doorbell. My first thought was that it must be one of my friends I’d notified about Mother, throwing courtesy to the wind and coming because they thought I needed them. I didn’t want to answer the door because I was seven shades of grubby and grungy, hadn’t even brushed my hair or teeth and was still in my pajamas. Not exactly ready to play "Welcome Wagon" and greet company at the door.

To my utter and everlasting shock and dismay, this moron who said his name was Robert Something-or-other showed up on my doorstep wanting to know some information about my “bad blood” with “the woman who used to be your neighbor”, a/k/a Krazy Kristy. It seems they (it was never clear to me who “they” were) had her on medication and it hadn’t worked, so they were trying to have her put away and they needed some information, but every time I started to tell him anything, he kept talking over me and saying “I know this and I know that”, and finally, after trying twice to get his attention to beg off, I yelled, “Shut the hell up and LISTEN to me! My mother died five hours ago, and I don’t need this! Goodbye!” I slammed the door on him and haven’t heard from him since. My sister suggested later that he might actually have been sent by Kristy just to see what I’d say about her, and I probably should have called the cops. Considering my state of dishabille, and not wanting to entertain the local gendarmerie either in my grubby pajamas and general state or after I had cleaned up and get a lecture on why I should have called them sooner, I didn’t, but I wish I had. If I ever hear from him again, I will. Anyway, whatever this bozo might have expected me to say, I bet that wasn’t it.

Later that evening, my friend and I went out to dinner and then stopped by Walgreens for something (I forget what). I was still quite the walking zombie, and when I encountered a teen-aged girl who kept zigging and zagging and making it nigh onto impossible for me to get around her, her mother said, “Get out of that woman’s way!” The girl did, and then her mother said to her, “Not everybody has the Christmas spirit!” and glared at me. I came to within a hair of yelling at her, “Well, not everybody’s mother died this morning, so go fuck yourself and your Christmas spirit!” Just a friendly reminder that we never know what someone we don’t know (or even someone we do know) is going through when their actions seem thoughtless, inconsiderate or inconsiderate. I tend to be very impatient at times, so I’m making it a point to remember that incident as a reminder of that thought, painful though it may be.

Magnets -- 18 January 2008

2008-01-21T19:18:00.000-08:00

I’ve been told that I’m a “weird” magnet, because in and around the normal people in my circle of friends, I have some very strange people who wander through my life routinely and I attract very unusual people somehow. Since Mother’s funeral, I’ve decided that if I’m a “weird” magnet, she is a “scuzz” magnet. Every sleazy, scuzzy relative we have came out for the occasion, some of whom didn’t even show up for Daddy’s in 2004. Cousin Scuzzy, his crazy daughter Donna and his first in a series of five ex-wives (be the first in your neighborhood to collect all five) all graced us with their presence. Uncle Asshole, my dad’s younger (and only) brother, showed up – he didn’t even show up for DADDY’s funeral – with all of his five kids. I have to admit that even though I wouldn’t give two cents for any of his five kids, I was very pleased to see them all there. They all five came to pay their final respects for Uncle Bob (Daddy) when he died, and I had attributed that largely to the fact that they all came to town for the graduation of one of the grandkids, and as long as it was convenient, they might as well come by, but this time, there was no graduation, and several of them had to come in from across the state to bid adieu to Mother, and that pleased me greatly – especially in light of the fact that when Uncle Asshole dies, the only reason any of us would go (and we have unanimously elected my brother for the job) would be to make sure he was really and truly dead. (Their mother died in May 1992 -- see May 2007 "Fine Lace and Dirty Linen".)

Now I realize what a true scuzz magnet Mother really was. On 15 January, a conversation I was having with my sister went something like this: "How long has it been since you've heard from Mike HisLastName?" Quite taken by surprise, I said, "Oh, about 25 years, give or take a year or two, why?" "He signed the funeral home's on-line guest book." Here's what he wrote:

Anne; I was so sorry to read that your mother has passed away. She was a real lady, a class act, and she will be missed by all that knew her. I also saw on this site that your father passed in 2004. My condolences for his loss as well. Although I didn't appreciate them at the time, I now know that they both had good hearts and they have my utmost, although belated, respect. I wish I had told them this in person before it was too late. May GOD bless and keep you and your family in HIS loving arms. Michael

Michael HisLastName

3 January 2008

HisTown TN

Well, eeeeewwwwwwwww! Yes, the "GOD" and "HIS" were both capitalized. I don't know if he's gone and gotten religion or what. He must have seen the obituary in our hometown paper. I must admit, when I first heard this, once I got past the "ick" factor, I had a serious thought about stirring this bucket of worms just to see what would happen, by replying to his email with nothing more than a "thanks", which, of course, would give him my email address, and I just wanted to see what kind of response THAT would bring, just to see what his creepy little mind has in it. But alas, his email address was nowhere to be found on it, so that little playhouse collapsed pretty quickly, but it was still fun to ruminate about it. Also, as far as I know, he lives in Georgia now, so why he signed as if he's in HisTown, I don't know, unless it's because the person who signed before him did also, and he was afraid maybe I'd get him confused with some other person named Michael HisLastName. Yeah, right.

The only other person who signed the guestbook was the "heroine" from my More Jewelry Box Memories or “The Pre-Engagement Ring Caper” blog from Anne Arky Ology in Nov 2005 -- Teresa. She also emailed me via Classmates-dot-com, and I have emailed her back a couple of times, but I seriously doubt we will stay in touch. I don't really like who she grew up to be, so she has come and gone a couple of times in my adult life, with me always being the one to cut us loose. But it was nice of her to write, even if she does qualify as a quasi-scuzz. (Long story -- trust me on this one.)

Saying Goodbye -- 23-28 December

2008-01-21T19:16:00.000-08:00

Mother died at 8 AM on Sunday, December 23rd. My brother and sister and Charlotte and Uncle Joe were there, and I was there on cell phone, such as it was.

After days of grappling with the authorities in the state of Florida and the hospital staff and the crematorium/funeral home, the state of Florida finally released Mother to be cremated. The funeral home blamed the hospital, the hospital blamed the state laws and the funeral home, and I suspect the truth lies somewhere in between. Don’t die in Florida if you intend to be buried or interred somewhere else – it’s very inconvenient.

With three-way consultations between my sister (either in Florida, en route to Mother’s in Virginia, or at Mother’s in Virginia), my brother (in Florida) and me (here in Atlanta), we managed to get Mother’s funeral planned for the 4th of January. After all the plans were set in motion, we all took a list of people to call or contact and set about to do that. I chased down Mother’s step-brother in Kentucky and a few assorted cousins, and when I contacted my cousin Jack about the arrangements, he said he would be there, and then as an aside mentioned that the 4th of January is his birthday. I almost went through the floor, because in 2004, my dad died 3 days before my birthday and Mother took great pains to schedule everything AROUND my birthday rather than ON it, when my birthday was a Saturday and the perfect day for out-of-towners to attend a funeral; she knew that I had been horrified to learn years earlier that when her sister Gladys died on New Year’s Day 1950, she was buried on her son Jack’s 16th birthday. I was so incensed over his family’s insensitivity that no way was Mother going to have any of Daddy’s services ON my birthday. Somehow, I was sure Jack’s birthday was January 6th, and it’s most unlike me to screw up on dates and birthdays because I have eaten calendars and almanacs for breakfast since I was 5 years old, and I’m the family archivist, so I don’t know how I missed that one. Not only was Mother’s funeral scheduled for Jack’s birthday, it was scheduled for the 57th anniversary of her sister’s funeral. Of course, by the time Jack pointed it out, it was too late to change it, and he wouldn’t hear of it anyway, but still…he adored Mother, and Mother adored him, so it just broke my heart in a new kind of way – what was left of it, anyway.

Walking Away -- 18 December 2007

2008-01-21T19:14:00.000-08:00

Mother had several days of delusional moments while they tried to get her heart rhythm back where it belonged, and many of those moments were tinged with paranoia. After four days, she went into respiratory failure, and I was told on the 12th that if I wanted to see her alive, I needed to get my ass to Florida ASAP. I made arrangements to be away from both jobs for the next few days, although when I called my boss at the bookstore, her response was something I considered to be somewhat less than charitable when I told her I would have to miss working Thursday night and Friday night because I had to go see my mother, who was very likely dying. “Well, this IS my busiest time of year, you know.” “Well, gee, honey, I’m sure my mother didn’t realize she’d chosen YOUR busiest time of year to die on us; maybe she can schedule a little better next time. By the way, you DO realize that I would rather be working at the store during YOUR busiest time of year than going to Florida to possibly bury my mother, don’t you?” She never apologized for that remark. BITCH! But that’s okay, because I doubt if I would have accepted her apology with any serious spirit of forgiveness, anyway.

My fun meter for this trip got pegged pretty early on when I was rolling happily down I-75 on the south side of Atlanta before the real rush hour got underway, still driving in the dark of O-Dark Thirty, and my left front tire began to shred at about 75 miles per hour. I somehow managed to get to the shoulder and called Triple A for a rescue. They took forever to find me for some reason. Granted, I didn’t know the area well, since I live north of the city and, as stated before, stay pretty much in my own little orbit up there, so I was only able to give them a general idea of where on I-75 I was, but even based on that, mine was the only little red car pulled off to the right with lights ablaze and flashing in the dark, so that should have been a lot easier than it was. Finally, he got the doughnut tire put on and I was able, with the help of a coworker, to find a WalMart in the neighborhood where I could buy a replacement tire and went on my way, sans $80 and one hubcap. I later found out that somewhere along the way, my right headlight went the way of the errant hubcap and I had to get a replacement for that in Florida. Yeehaw!

That day (Thursday the 13th), about 45 minutes before I got to the hospital, my sister got to the hospital from Fort Lauderdale, where she and her husband had gotten off the ship as planned, with the original intent of flying back home to DC. Instead, after putting her husband onto a plane for DC, she rented a car and drove to the Tampa area where Mother was in the hospital and got there just before me. After we visited with Mother for a little while and got caught up on things, we went back to our uncle’s house. There, we found out that on Friday before Mother went into the hospital with heart problems (she had congestive heart failure anyway, which should always be taken into consideration), she had gone shopping with Charlotte, and while they hooked up her portable oxygen tank for running around, she ran around with it all day long with the damned thing TURNED OFF! God damned son of a bitch, what the FUCK were those people thinking?! No wonder she tanked!

One night over the next few days (I can’t remember which), they raised the sedation they had Mother under (because of the respirator) and I showed her the scrapbook of her 80th birthday party that I’d been working on for six months. (I wish to God I had taken it with me to the Marietta Diner and showed it to her then, but I didn’t think there would be time, and I was afraid a restaurant environment was not the best place for keeping a scrapbook in presentable condition.) Otherwise, the only time she hadn’t been sedated was when they were trying to wean her off of the respirator. The first time they tried, she lasted about five hours before they had to put it back, and she said when they try again, if it doesn’t work, she didn’t want to go back on it a third time – she’d rather go and be with Bob (my dad, who died in 2004). I had to leave on the 17th to go home to my house, my cat and my two jobs, and when I went by the hospital to tell her goodbye, she was semi-sedated and couldn’t talk because of the respirator, but there was a tear rolling down her right cheek. That was the last time I saw her alive, and walking out of there was the hardest thing I ever had to do in my whole life, until the next week.

They Won't Let Me Talk to Her -- 8 Dec 2007

2008-01-21T19:07:00.000-08:00

A few weeks before Mother left Virginia for Florida, I awoke in the middle of the night from a disturbing dream -- I dreamed that they wouldn't let me talk to Mother. I don't know who they were, but I was so upset at not being able to talk to her that I came very close to calling her at 4 AM to reassure myself that I could talk to her if I wanted to. Fortunately, I had presence of mind not to follow through with this very real desire. All I could think of was that this is what it would be like when she was dead, because then I wouldn't be able to talk to her. I was quite fearful and claustrophobic at this idea and knew that I was nowhere near ready to find out how that would really feel. I managed to get back to sleep for awhile, but fitfully. Later that morning, at a more reasonable hour, I called Mother and I told her how relieved I was to hear her voice, and I told her about my dream. She reassured me that she would make sure that they (whoever "they" may be) let me talk to her.

I called Mother this morning at Joe’s because she told me day before yesterday not to call her on her cell phone any more because the roaming charges were too high. I tried to call at Joe’s yesterday, but Joe has no answering machine, so they never even knew I called. I had some errands to run today, so I did them, and when I came home, I called Joe’s again this evening. “Oh, your mother’s not here – she’s in the hospital.” Well, thank you very kindly for notifying me, dammit! “Oh, we thought you’d be at work.” Well, hell’s bells, unlike some people, I have a @#$3ing answering machine, so you could have left me a @#$% message!”

What we knew then (or I found out when I called Mother at the hospital) was that Mother felt maybe they’d been doing too much gadding about, and she wasn’t up to it. My nephew, who held power of attorney in my sister’s place while my sister was on the high seas, took a flight the next morning to Florida to find out what was going on and what needed to be done. My brother, who is more than anything a most self-serving individual, was all bent six ways from Tuesday to find out that the nephew and not HE had power of attorney. My nephew proved why he was entrusted with this weighty responsibility at the age of 30 over his self-serving uncle, age 54, when he replied, “This isn’t about YOU.” (Why my brother backed down at this response I’ll never understand, because it’s ALWAYS about him.)

The Adventures of the Golden Geezers -- 27 Nov

2008-01-21T19:04:00.000-08:00

My mother's brother Joe, who was recently widowed, lives in Florida. He came up to Tennessee to see his son and the son's family, who live some 50+ miles from Mother, then on up to Virginia to visit Mother and other family. That town was his home also for quite awhile when he was younger, and when he and his recently late wife (he's been widowed twice) left the DC area, he would have happily gone back there to live, but she wanted Florida, and what she wanted, she generally got. Mother and Charlotte (Mother's paid live-in caregiver) had some tentative plans to go back to Florida when Joe goes, and spend at least Christmas there, if not maybe even the whole winter. Mother asked me when would be a good time for them to come and stop in to spend a night with me, and I told her it would just have to be a Saturday night/Sunday morning arrangement, because no way could I manage these three in my house on either a night when I've just worked or a morning when I have to go to work. My biggest fear was that they would come this weekend coming up, and bump up against my tree trimming party on Sunday. The last time Mother was here for that party, she insisted on making about 374 1/2-sandwiches, and they all got dried out and had to be thrown away. Hardly anyone ate any of them, so it was such a waste. Charlotte (who is in her 70s) is very pushy, and the last time the two of them got in my kitchen, I almost came to blows with them. Best-case scenario would have been next weekend, the 15th and 16th, but Joe (who is 84, by the way) decided he absolutely HAD to go home next Tuesday or Wednesday (meaning 27 or 28 November). Now mind you, Mother has a huge oxygen tank for inside of her house, and it gets plugged into a wall outlet to provide a steady oxygen supply. She also has a really big one for long trips, and lots of little ones for going out shopping, eating out, etc. That, plus two women packing for probably the entire winter, plus Joe's stuff, plus three adult people, makes for a VERY crowded car. Those of us on the periphery of this trip (my sister and I, et al) assumed that Charlotte and Mother would go down in Mother's car, but Joe insisted he wanted them to ride down with him, which means not only a very crowded car, but everywhere they want to go from now until they go home, they will have to be dependent upon him to take them, which could get to be a real drag real fast, in my opinion, and no amount of reasoning and cajoling could convince them of the error of such a decision.

If you look on a map of Georgia and focus on the Atlanta area, you'll see we have an interstate highway circling the town, called the Perimeter, a/k/a I-285; think of that as a big clock. To the top right of that, at around 2 o'clock, I-85 feeds in from the Carolinas. To the top left of the clock, at around 10:30, I-75 feeds in from Chattanooga. I live just off I-75, about 25 miles north of the Perimeter. The Perimeter is a 5-to-7-lane freeway that is always busy, where the unofficial speed limit is 90 MPH, and a pain in the butt. I almost never use it to go anywhere, mainly because I never go anywhere outside of my own little orbit over here in I-75-land. I go once a month (if that often) to the postcard club and have to take the Perimter to get there, and that's about it. At rush hour, it's especially busy and especially treacherous. A few years ago, Mother and Charlotte were going to Florida and wanted to stop in and have lunch with me; Charlotte insisted on taking I-85 down from Virginia instead of going through Tennessee and coming out on I-75, about 2 blocks from my house, and I knew they'd never be able to manage the Perimeter, so rather than directing them across the top end of the perimeter to I-75 and then north 25 miles, I just crossed it myself and went up I-85 to meet them. By the time I got there, they'd been there for awhile, and Charlotte was itching to get back on the road again, so I spent more time getting to them than I did WITH them, and I was furious. So you can imagine my reaction when Mother said they were coming down I-85 this time with my uncle, who insisted on it. I told her no way in hell was I going to play THAT game again, and she said, "Oh, I wouldn't ask you to. We'll come to you. We'll come to your house." She knew they wouldn't be spending the night, but that's okay, they'll get a motel room (after a 6-hour drive, they'd need it).

The city is doing construction on our water main right now, tearing up the streets all around my neighborhood, and for some weeks now they have had big earth-moving vehicles parked on my side street, which is how I drive up into the back yard to unload groceries on the main floor, or unload people who can't climb my stairs, such as my mother or my friend Yvonne (Yvonne has mobility issues). The vehicles have blocked that "driveway" (it's not a real, legitimate driveway), and I hadn't been able to catch anybody to ask them not to do that, so I told Mother she couldn't get into my house right now if she had to, because the way in was blocked. She said they'd still come up and Uncle Joe could at least see the outside of my house. (How exciting is THAT?!) I told her that there is no point in driving THAT far out of their way just to see the outside of my house (trust me -- it isn't all that!), so if she would just tell me where they wanted to eat, I would find such a restaurant down near the Perimeter, which is not far from where I work (both jobs), and I just wouldn't go home straight from work -- I'd go to meet them at said restaurant, then they could get a motel and I would go home from there, later. Oh, no, she says by this time -- we're going to come down I-75 after all, so it won't be hard to get to your house.

Now who in hell wants to go that far just to see the outside of someone's house? Tuesday night I busted my ass getting my house straightened out (not an easy task, because I had boxes and boxes of Christmas stuff scattered all over hell and half of Georgia, very little of which had been put into its proper place), and by the time I was finished, I decided Mother was coming in that house, if I had to drag her by the heals. I got everything just the way I wanted it (within the realm of possibility) and had the unpacked Christmas boxes put together in an orderly fashion, and I went to bed thinking I had things under control. YEAH, RIGHT! My only wish was that I'd had the time and energy to make some tea, because even though we were going to go out for dinner, I at least needed to be able to offer them something to drink; well, maybe I'd leave work an hour early tomorrow and come home and make some. Changed my mind and just stopped and picked up a couple of 2-liter Cokes (1 diet, 1 regular). Mother told me they'd probably be waiting for me in my driveway when I got home.

When I got home, what I found waiting for me in my driveway was three construction workers, up to their ass in a ravine that had been dug in front of my driveway. Not only was Mother not going to be able to get into my house -- I couldn't even get into my house! I freaked! I told the guy I had not only myself, but three elderly people and one very handicapped elderly person coming to my house post haste. He said if I could give them 15 minutes, they would get some plates put across the ditch and we'd be able to cross it into the driveway. I went around the corner to a strip mall parking lot and called Uncle Joe's cell phone (Mother's hadn't been working earlier) and asked where they were, expecting them to be coming up on the I-75 exit to my place momentarily. He says, "We just passed the exit to Winder off I-85." "What are you doing on I-85?" I shrieked. "I thought you were coming down I-75!" "Oh, I always come down I-85 when I'm going south." "So you couldn't have done it differently just this once, huh?" "Here's your mother." In other words, he didn't want to discuss it. I told Mother about the construction, and she said, "Well, we'll just meet you for dinner. How about Marietta Diner?" I had taken them there before when Mother and Charlotte were here before. (That's also where Melanie and I go a lot after working at the store, when we go out and play our word game.) Okay, fine, Mother. Gee, if I'd known you weren't coming to my house, I wouldn't have gone the 20 miles home and have to come back now; I could have stayed down in the area where I work and not wasted all that gas and time!!!!! I asked her if she wanted directions on how to get to the Diner -- oh, no, we'll call you for directions when we get closer in, says Mother.

I calleld Melanie and asked her if she knew how far it was from Winder to the Perimeter, and if she wanted to come and join me at the Diner to play a game of “Upwords” while we waited for the Golden Geezers. I took a route back to the Diner that I don't normally take, so I could tell them which exit to take (all the exit numbers across Georgia have recently changed, but since I already know mostly where I'm going, I don't usually have a need to know the new numbers, so I don't), how many traffic lights to go through, etc., and met Melanie there, where we played for about 90 minutes before my sister called me on my cell phone.

"Call your mother on her cell phone," says my sister. "She is near tears and she couldn't find your cell phone number and I gave it to her three times and she couldn't get it right, so I told her I'd just have you call her." So I did, and she was near to tears; when I said, "Where ARE you all?" she quickly wailed, "Don't yell at me! You have no idea what a rough time we've had! It's been awful! It's been a long ride, and you wouldn't believe the traffic we've had to deal with!" "TRAFFIC!" I yelled. "Who knew you would have TRAFFIC?" This is the point when the "I told you so"s started stacking up, faster and higher than I could imagine! So okay, Mother, I repeat, WHERE ARE YOU? "We're at a Shell station in Marietta." Well, that certainly narrows it down! This isn't Mayberry, where there might only BE one Shell station! Would you care to elaborate a little more and help me out here, so I can tell you how to get here? "Well, there's a Dairy Queen." How about a street name, Mother? "Well, we're near Kennesaw Springs." There's no such PLACE as Kennesaw Springs, Mother. Finally she was able to give me the name of a cross street, and it turns out they were about 20 feet from Melanie's apartment! I couldn't figure out any way to direct them to the Diner without just having to go and get them, and they were still driving. I told them to turn around, go the other direction and look for the Walgreen's drug store on the right a little bit down the road. Finally, after 10 more minutes of drama and trauma, they somehow managed to find the Walgreen's, and I told them to go in there, park and turn the engine off before they hurt themselves. I got over there, told them to follow me -- we are going to turn right and get in the right lane and only make right turns to get to the diner -- no brainer, right? Well, Uncle Joe was going 35 MPH in a 45 MPH zone in rush hour traffic, it was dark by then, and he kept leaving enough space between us to build a house -- a sure way to get people to get in between us, whereupon I'd lose them and never see them again. Hey, now THERE's a thought. Nah, I couldn't do it. I called and told Mother to tell him to get closer to me, and we managed to get to the diner without further incident, unless you count the fact that I had gnashed my teeth down to nubs at that point, and my blood pressure was off the chart. But I behaved all through dinner and never verbalized all the "I told you so"s that were stacking up in my mind. Melanie stayed and had dinner with us, and she said I behaved admirably under the circumstances, especially when they said they were NOT going to get a motel room after all, but after having driven for about 8 stressful hours already, they were going to go ahead on to Joe's in Florida, driving another 8 hours to get there. WHAT???! Why in the world...? Oh, because June's oxygen supply is getting low. But wait -- she has an electrical one in the car that only needs to be plugged into a wall socket, and we can get you a wall socket, no problem. Oh, but it's too much trouble to get in and out of the car.

HERE IS WHERE I ALMOST LOST IT (but miraculously somehow didn't). So you all are telling me that because Mother's oxygen tank is too much hassle, you are putting her life and limb in danger at the mercy of your old and tired selves who are too damned old and tired to be driving another 8 hours, at the risk of falling asleep, getting lost, getting hijacked or no telling what else?????? Okay, I didn't say a word then (other than to convey my thoughts on the idiocy of such a plan, but only once), but my feeling is that if her oxygen tank is too much of a hassle, they ought to have left her and the damned oxygen tank AT HOME, and in the future, that will be exactly what happens if I have anything to say about it, and you had better believe I have A HELL OF A LOT to say about it. I have given them about a week's respite, and I may wait a little while longer, but I made sure that my sister (who is in charge of Mother, etc.) knew about it and plans to say something as well. She and my BIL are on a cruise right now and will be back the 13th, but I told her this can not happen again. Her response was that between the three of them (Charlotte, Joe and Mother), they couldn’t orchestrate a one-person trip to the bathroom! That is the damned truth! If they don't want to mess with the damned tank, leave her the hell home. If they had taken two cars, they wouldn't have had to pack the one car so tightly and made it so difficult to get at the oxygen tank. Like I said, the "I told you so"s just piled up like a brick shithouse. I told Melanie as they were getting in the car to leave that this would probably be the last time I saw my mother alive, because those idiots were going to take her to Florida and kill her.

Mother called me at 5 AM on Thursday to tell me they had gotten there, “and you wouldn't believe all the traffic we had!” Shut up, Mother -- I don't even want to hear it! I've talked to her a couple of times, but she won't express any displeasure in front of Joe or Charlotte, for fear they will dump her (and they might). So I don't know if she’s having a good time or not. And that, my friend, is the Adventures of the Golden Geezers in a nutshell -- where they belong!

Arrested Development

2007-11-18T18:26:00.000-08:00

Over two years after I predicted Joe would resurface (see August 2005, Anne Arky Ology), he did, although not necessarily in my life, just in my view. The last word I’d had on him was in October 2005, when I read of the death of his grandmother, and I haven’t heard from him directly since Labor Day weekend 2005.

Earlier this month, when I was reading one of my hometown newspapers online, I came across an article which stated that the week before Halloween, Joe had been charged with aggravated assault after a man called police advising that Joe had threatened him with a knife after opening the door and yelling at him, causing him to fear for his life. Alrighty then. The article also stated that Joe and the “victim” were found to be intoxicated and belligerent when the police arrived. Joe pleaded self-defense, and he is appearing in court this week after having been arrested and then released on bond.

I have two very strong feelings come out of this news – the first is resigned disappointment. It was very apparent when we reconnected two years ago that in his mid-to-late 50s, Joe is an over-aged delinquent who will never change and has no desire to change; he has no more ambition than a college freshman, to stay as drunk and stoned as is humanly possible, which makes me very sad. The second is a bittersweet relief to have found out that the raging, passionate “what-if”s of my life have been answered, and while I don’t like the answers particularly, at least I know. While such a reality check is a hard thing to take, I came out of it knowing that no matter what might have happened in the way-back, the outcome was probably best all the way around, at least for me, and I know that I couldn’t have saved him from himself. Sad to think that you couldn’t love someone enough to make a positive difference in his life, but I just don’t think I could have been of any real benefit to him in his life. I’m not sure he could have for me, either, and in fact we might have been totally toxic for each other, even worse than Mike and I were. (Hard to imagine, isn’t it?) I hate having the rose-colored glasses pulled away, and I don’t like what I see, so I’ll use the knowledge of it, but I still want to hang onto a few illusions as comfort food for my soul. I guess so long as I don’t allow myself to be deceived by them, keeping them like a favorite old teddy bear is allowed, eh?

I’m channeling Joni Mitchell now.

Loving eyes for only me,
He made me feel so wild and free,
That he could give the stars to me;
I’ve looked at Joe that way.
But even though I’m still enthralled,
Through his shades of drugs and alcohol
I see the writing on the wall.
Old visions fade away.

I’ve looked at Joe from both sides now,
From young and old, and still somehow
It’s Joe’s illusions I recall. I really don’t know Joe at all.

Non-Regionalisms (Some things are just wrong, no matter where y'all are frum)

2007-07-28T20:33:00.000-07:00

A local friend of mine who is very intelligent and possessed of a wide vocabulary happens to be from the north and spends more time than I care to hear putting down the south, southerners and so forth. I have asked her to refrain from doing this, as I am quite southern and nobody’s fool, and once I told her that if she has such disdain for this place and its people, Delta’s ready when she is. If you are southern and you make fun of southerners, you are perceived by us as clever and self-effacing (it’s always good to be able to laugh at oneself, whether oneself is an individual or a group); if you are not southern and you make fun of southerners, you are perceived by us as hostile. (This is usually where the term “Damn Yankee” rears its ugly head.)

This same friend was pontificating on her vast vocabulary and usage thereof, which is usually quite extensive, when she started bragging about her careful and masterful proNOUNciation of words. That turned me on my ear, and while I do not make a habit of correcting people’s grammar or the way they pronounce something, I just couldn’t ignore this in the face of her braggadocio on the subject, and I told her, “Excuse me, but I think you mean proNUNciation.” She, of course, would not be dissuaded and blew it off as, “Oh, that’s probably just a southern thing.” I hastened to correct her and said, “No, it’s a dictionary thing.” Because one of our favorite pastimes is playing “Upwords” (in which we are quite equally matched), we usually have a dictionary along when we play, and I shoved it at her and said, “Read it and weep.” She also disputes my claim that “ladle” (as in gravy) should be pronounced to rhyme with “cradle” instead of rhyming with “paddle”, as she says it. I suspect she will go to her grave convinced that that, too, is a southern thang, and I told her not to blame me if she was up Shit Creek without a laddle.

Call of the Wild Child

2007-07-28T20:28:00.000-07:00

I'm happy to report that I have heard nothing more from Kristie in almost two months now. Perhaps Officer A's call did the trick. Hooray! Now I only have to worry about the next time her meds don't last until the end of the month.

Call of the Wild Child Update Part 2

2007-06-10T17:56:00.000-07:00

6/2/07 – 7:09 PM – I was on the phone when call waiting kicked in; I chose to let voice mail take it and it turned out to be Kristy again. She mumbled a lot about my daughter (oh, goody -- not just off her meds now, but drunk, too!), and she knew I had tried to forward her calls to the local police. She said something to the effect that my daughter is trying to forward her phone calls like I tried to do to the police department so they could get a warrant for her. She is getting inside information somehow, and I suspect she must be getting it from the police department some kind of way. Yes, I did try to do that, but since it didn’t work, how else could she know that I had even tried to forward her calls? (This is exactly why I won’t just change my phone number and be done with it. She has too many resources, and it would probably only be an hour and a half after I changed my number that she would be back on me like ugly on an Osborne.) Once again I called the local police, and once again, Officer A. arrived soon thereafter. As soon as I answered the door and saw that it was him, I told him, “We really have to quit meeting like this – people are starting to talk.” He asked another officer to meet him here to listen to her call and get some background on the case, in hopes that he might have an idea we hadn’t tried. Officer D. joined us, and so far, he is the only person I have spoken to in law enforcement who hasn’t suggested I change my phone number. I offered him a chance to hear the full, extended dance version of the Kristy tapes, and he declined, asking instead for the condensed version. They discussed it and decided they can get all this case information over to the new CID guy (Sgt H), and have him send it up to the police in the Chattanooga area, have them go around to make a call on her and tell her to stop; if she doesn’t, they can arrest her. (It seems that Sgt B has been transferred to the traffic department, which several of us agree doesn’t exactly sound like a lateral move. Hmmmmmm….)

Once again (third time now) Officer A. tried to call Kristy via the police department (he calls them, they patch him through to her number), and this time, she answered! He got her address (which may or may not be valid), and she said she had two or three TPOs (restraining orders) on me. He asked if she had those, why is SHE calling ME?? He told her to stop calling me, and her phone beeped and they were cut off. (My first thought when he told me this was, yeah, right – she hung up on him.) He came in the house to report this conversation to Officer D. and me. He asked me if anybody in my family lived in this house before I did, and I told him no, that I bought the house in October 2004, moved in in November of 2004, and was visited by my mother for a week two different times – April 2005 and December 2005. Other than that, no one in my family has been within ten miles of the place. Right after this, Kristy called back to the police department and they patched her back through to Officer A. This time, he got her date of birth (I suspect they aren’t planning on sending her a birthday card, but she probably thinks they are) and her mother’s phone number (the mother lives in a little town in north Georgia). No telling how much of this information is valid, but it’s a start. He said to her, “Now you aren’t going to call her (me) any more, right? I’m putting in my report that you aren’t going to call her again.” She expressed some fear that I (or somebody – “they”) would make recordings and run them through a voice box to make them sound like her. He told her no one was going to do that, and she’s “not going to call here any more, right? The game is over now, right?” She said, “This is not a game! I’ll see you in court!” and hung up on him.

Run recordings through a voice box to make them sound like her??? Yeah, right! Either she is more paranoid than the law allows (which is extremely likely) or she is trying to come up with some defense for my having ten recordings of her calling and leaving me crazy voice mails. It could be a combination of both. Either way, it’s just way too out there for me to even deal with!

In between the last two go-rounds of calls, my friend Shirley came up with a bit of trivia that I hadn’t even considered – because this is INTERSTATE calling, which is a FEDERAL crime, I can conceivably (and may be forced to) get the FBI involved in it. Wouldn’t that be a kicker?! Granted, she supposedly lives in north Georgia, but her phone number has a Tennessee area code, so that counts, from what I could find out. Wonder what J. Edgar is doing this weekend? (Does anybody out there even remember who that is?) If this latest visit from the local gendarmerie doesn’t generate some inaction on her part, I may well pursue this action. Imagine – me calling the Eff-Bee-Eye! Mama will be so proud! (Mama would bust a gut if she knew about any of this, but she doesn’t, and I plan to keep it that way!)

On a side note, a couple of other issues surfaced in an odd way when the officers were at my place. After both of the officers first came in, I was almost moved to apologize for the clutter, because my two couches, which are configured in an “L” shape, were both covered up with papers and catalogues that I hadn’t gotten around to picking up yet and there was no place for them to sit, but before I could say anything, Officer D., the “newbie”, said, “This is the cleanest one of these places I’ve ever been in.” I was blown away and very pleased at the compliment, because I do take pride in my house and keep a reasonably clean place, but you can only eat out of the toilet if someone gets me really mad and I take my anger out in housekeeping, and that hasn’t happened in a long time, so right now it’s just what I consider passably clean, although the place always needs to be dusted. But my pleasure at his compliment waned later when I began to think, “Oh, my God, what kind of housekeepers are my neighbors?” and immediately began to envision slovenly trash mongers keeping their houses laden with empty pizza boxes, dirty dishes, beer or booze bottles and fast-food containers and bugs and roaches everywhere.

As the officers were leaving, Officer D. remarked that Kristy obviously has a few screws loose (actually, I think her whole hardware department has been raided and depleted), and he noted that oddly enough, this subdivision and another one nearby seem to be overly populated with schizophrenics and people suffering from (or enjoying) myriad other mental ailments. So now I had a new worry – they’re not only slobs, but they’re all nuts! Geez – don’t neighborhoods come with warning labels?

My friend Terrie advised that his assessment is probably unreliable, because perhaps he usually only has reason to go into houses of people who are “not of our ilk” (shades of Aunt Anne!) and who might be fraught with mental illness or other troubling mind alterations. My mind definitely warmed to this idea, so that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

Call of the Wild Child -- Updated

2007-06-10T17:50:00.000-07:00

5/15/07 – I got two calls from Kristy today – one at 2:08 PM and one at 2:11 PM. She called to tell me more of the same, that I need to get my daughter Tonya or Trina (before, she said Trina, now she said either/or) away from her family, and that she has finally contacted John Latham from Gainesville, and he can help me with my daughter’s drug problem, since I am her mother or family member. She called back three minutes later with, again, more of the same. I have no earthly idea who John Latham from Gainesville is, if he’s really someone or just another one of her imaginary friends like my daughter Tonya/Trina and her friend Tammy Gowan/Gruen. (John Latham of Gainesville, if you are reading this, help! Save me!) [Shades of Olive Oyl!]

Meanwhile, later on that same day – 9:00 PM – I welcomed Officer A. from the local police department back as he made a return visit to my house (he is the one who came in answer to my call in February), and this entry is almost a duplicate of the February visit. He asked me if I had filed a TPO on her yet, and I updated him on the case. He took a report, listened to the most recent phone calls, tried her phone number to tell her to leave me alone, and he got voice mail, but could not leave a message, said he will file this report. He listened as I expressed my frustrations, but basically did nothing. I told him the same thing I had told Sergeant B. – that she is obviously a danger to the community because she is so far out of touch with reality and something should be done about her, and that I don’t want to be under her when she falls through the cracks because the system isn’t doing anything. I told him I don’t want to live in an armed encampment, and I don’t want to be lying on my living room floor with my head in a pool of blood and a bullet shot through it, looking up to greet the police with “I told you so.” After he left, I called Sergeant B.’s number (I knew he was not on duty those hours) to leave him a message, and his voice mail told me that he is out of the office until 30 May. I didn’t bother leaving a message.

5/16/07 – 8:45 AM – I called the local Police Department and asked to speak to someone in the Detectives Division and got Detective S.’s voice mail, then called back and was transferred to Detective J. I started telling him what was going on, and he said he could transfer me to Sergeant B., and I told him there was no need, since he is gone until 30 May; he then told me he (Detective J) is going on extended leave starting tomorrow, because his wife is going to have a baby. Goody! After I gave him the whole story, he said, “I’m sorry, ma’am, there’s nothing we can do. I know it sucks, but our hands are tied.” (Yes, he really said that – that is not my colorful paraphrasing.) I told him to repeat that phrase – he will need to say it a lot. Then he told me that unless I had called the police every time she called me, all of my RECORDINGS of her are just “hearsay”. Well, hell, yes, they’re hearsay, but I can’t get anybody to listen to them to hearsay them! No, he means they can’t be used. Yet everyone I have talked to previously said hang on to them for dear life and keep recording them. What a load of hogwash. I hung up after thanking him for being so helpful – NOT.

Fine Lace and Dirty Linen

2007-05-09T18:25:00.000-07:00

When I was on Solaris’ blog and mentioned my father’s brother (commonly known throughout the family as Uncle Asshole, as dubbed by yours truly) on the occasion of his divorcing his first wife (herein known as Aunt Anne, because that’s how we knew her), I came to the realization that today is the 15th anniversary of her death, so I have decided to blog about her, but before I started this, I first went and found the CD that Nozmoking made up for me that contained (among many other wonderful things) Mary Hopkin’s “Those Were the Days”. I don’t know that it was necessarily her favorite song, but I do know that she was quite fond of it when it was a top 40 hit in 1968/1969, and I always associate that song with her. From the minute I started playing it, of course, I started weeping like a bathtub overflowing (so long as I’m going to quote Henry Higgins, I might as well do it up right, since Eliza Doolittle Day is coming up soon).

So, folks, sit back and let me tell you about this woman of fine distinction and breeding who had the misfortune of falling in love with one of the biggest bastards ever to grace the entire universe and marrying into a family where grace and culture were quite wasted. We were just plain, unpretentious folks, despite my grandmother’s (Aunt Anne’s mother-in-law) aspirations to high society, and for the most part, none of us gave a damn about culture and the finer things. We weren’t and aren’t quite The Darlings and Ernest T. Bass from the Andy Griffith Show, mind you, but neither were we the Carringtons of Falcon Crest, a life and family to which Aunt Anne would have been greatly better suited. She struggled to fit in, but no way was her well-modulated, sing-songy finishing-school delivery of such edicts as “Now, dear, sit sweet” (on the occasion of finding me sprawled across the couch at Granny’s with my feet on the coffee table) going to fall anywhere but on deaf ears, although I must confess to having gotten great gales of laughter out of it for many years since. She carried on that way for years when she was married to Uncle Asshole, and even then, in my childhood, I thought of them jointly as Superbastard and the Queen Bitch. She couldn’t even cuss right – my mother still talks about almost falling out of her chair when Aunt Anne came out once with, “Well, hell dammit!” She got some of the words right, just not in the usual order. I don’t know if she ever did learn to cuss right. If we couldn’t teach her, nobody could. (Remedial Swearing students line up to the left, single file. Advanced Invectives and College Prep Cussing students fall in to the right.)

Despite the title of this blog, I will gloss over most of the family in-fighting that went on, but suffice it to say that as she and Uncle Asshole moved closer and closer to further and further, she was taken down a peg or six and became painfully more human with every peg down she went. Because Granny was dying at this time, we had more contact with Aunt Anne than we might otherwise have had – I for one had been avoiding her for years, as had most of us – and because of having more up-close-and-personal dealings with each other, she began get to know us and to see that we weren’t the black-sheep miscreants she had long been led to believe (jointly by Granny and Uncle Asshole, who were operating under their own agenda that is part of what I’m glossing over), but rather some decent people who just had some things happen to us (you know, like life) and a family PR agent worse than Hitler and Manson rolled into one. So after they got divorced, we got custody of Aunt Anne – nobody wanted custody of Uncle Asshole. Ya gotta love it!

Uncle Asshole and Aunt Anne had five kids, and because Granny introduced me to the joys of calendar at an early age, I knew Aunt Anne’s kids' birthdays better than she did herself, not to mention those of the rest of the family. The first time she should have picked up on this was when I was 16 and Aunt Anne called Granny’s house one day while working on a genealogy query and told me to ask Granny when Uncle Asshole’s birthday was. I told her the date and month, and she said, “No, I mean the year, too.” Without any hesitation, I told her he was born in 1926. She urged me to double-check with Granny, who had to think a lot harder about it than I did to come up with…ta da...1926. Go figure. Many years later, she was talking about her third son and his birthday – you know, January 24th. No, Aunt Anne, says Anne Arky – HIS birthday is January 26th. She insisted that it was the 24th and said, “I should know – I’m his mother!” To which I countered with, “Well, I should know – I’m his cousin.” No, it didn’t make a bit of sense, but it was the best I could come up with on short notice. Some months later, she told me she called that son on the 24th of January to wish him happy birthday, as she did every year, and he was obviously going to let it go at that, until she said, “You know, that Anne Arky is truly one of you all, isn’t she?” He said, “What do you mean, Mom?” “I told her that your birthday was on the 24th of January, and she just insisted it was the 26th. Can you imagine?” He replied, “Well, Mom, I have two things to say about that – first, call me back day after tomorrow; second, never argue dates with Anne Arky – you’ll never win.” I still don’t know how he found out about my calendaric prowess, but it obviously made an impression on him, even before this. After this, she just gave in and called me every so often to find out who had a birthday coming up, especially when it might have been one of her kids.

After we all became “friends”, Aunt Anne responded vibrantly to my teasing her about her ultra-culturedness, and one day she was talking about a recipe to my mother. She was going on in her finishing-school voice, talking about introducing one ingredient to another, and then marrying them in the skillet, and I quipped, “Wow – it sounds like Julia Child meets Dolly Levy.” Another time, she was talking about a disagreement she’d had with Uncle Asshole after their divorce (they continued to live in the same teensy town, and he married her ex-best friend, thus making Son #3’s best friend from first grade all the way through high school suddenly Son #3’s step-uncle). As she went into detail, she said they hadn’t been able to agree on anything, so they had reached a stalemate, to which I replied, “So to speak.” She loved it, and we loved that she loved it.

Granny taught Aunt Anne and my mother how not to be a mother-in-law, and as a result, both have daughters-in-law (now ex-daughters-in-law) who love(d) them dearly. Aunt Anne’s first daughter-in-law wanted nothing more in the world than to be like Aunt Anne, and strove diligently to achieve that, which was only fitting, because the heir to the throne was (and to a great extent remains) just like his father. Not surprisingly, they ended up divorced a few years ago, but not before having Aunt Anne live with them for the last two years of her life after she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. The daughter-in-law took better care of her than her own children probably would have, and they loved each other dearly. She grieved as much as any of us when Aunt Anne died, and probably more than most of us.

The two bits of culture that I can thank Aunt Anne for are going to the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, and introducing me to that most wonderful of drinks, the White Russian. She came to visit us in DC after I moved back in with my folks, and she wanted to go to a service at the National Cathedral, so we did. With respect to white Russians, I, unlike most of my family, was never much of a drinker and am still not, and I didn’t even start drinking until I was in my mid-twenties, despite being allowed to do so when I was fourteen if I so chose. I haven’t had a drink in over fifteen years, not for any particular reason, just because, but when I have drunk, I have always been fond of sweet drinks, and I could drink white Russians by the gallons. Aunt Anne introduced me to Kahlua and white Russians, and on the day she died, I went out and had one as a toast to her.

The day after Aunt Anne died, I went to a flea market, a typical Sunday afternoon thing for me to do at that time, and I went to one particular booth that I knew sold old 45s. I was on a mission – find “Those Were the Days” and buy it in honor of Aunt Anne. I told the guy I was going to look through his collection and what I was looking for and why, so you can imagine the shock of both of us when I lifted a stack to start looking through them, and the first one I came to when I turned the stack over was…you guessed it…”Those Were the Days”. I almost went through the floor upon that, and to top it off, the guy was so nice, he just gave it to me for free. I was blown away. I’m going to play it one more time tonight (I’ve played it three times since I started writing this), and close by saying I still miss her something awful. So here’s raising a glass or two to you, Dolly!

Best Laid Plans

2007-05-08T18:35:00.000-07:00

To quote Henry Higgins, damn, damn, damn, damn. I tried the Selective Call Forwarding, and it works – except for cell phones, dammit! “This number is not eligible for this service.” I tried it on my own cell phone, too, and it shittin’ won’t work Oh, well – back to the old drawing board.

Total Cop Out -- All the Way Out

2007-05-08T18:29:00.000-07:00

The Sergeant called me last week at the office, and after an elaborate game of Telephone Tag, we finally connected. He told me that he had told the judge that the cases I had in my town against Kristie were “inactive” and so the judge would not issue a warrant (or some other silly-assed legalese doubletalk). He said that I will have to go back and petition to have the County issue me a warrant (like THAT’s going to work!). He said my options were:

1. Change my phone number
ABSOLUTELY NOT. I will not change my phone number or my anything else for this silly bitch. It is inconvenient, and it would only slow her down a little bit. If she was able to find my name AND phone number before either one had come out in a new phone directory, AND get past my privacy director, she may be a nutcase, but she’s a resourceful and techno one, and an unlisted number would not stop her. He said, “It’s only a phone number.” I replied that it’s only one phone number now, but how many times I would have to change it (and the frequency thereof) would depend on how many times she goes off her meds.

2. Take the information and the recordings I have to the courthouse, request a PPO, RPO or whatever their term for “restraining order” is. Maybe I’ll get a different judge, one who will listen.
LIKE THIS WILL WORK. As far as I can understand, that will require taking more time off from work, spending money to park, spending money to refile this whole nonsense. He said that he had never spoken to the private investigator about this matter (or anything else). He had the wherewithal to find out more about where she is and what she is doing, but didn’t follow up on it. The judge(s) I have dealt with so far chose not to read my notes or listen to the recordings. I told him I do not have unlimited means, either in time off from work or in money – I explained to him that the logistics of this is tricky at best, since I work two jobs, and I don’t just work two jobs for the joy of it. I don’t have an unlimited supply of money to throw away on people who aren’t going to do anything about this, and I don’t much care to waste what limited resources I have on a revolving door system that is obviously dysfunctional.

He said he didn’t have any other solution to offer unless we have her locked away for the rest of her life in a black hole somewhere, and while that idea is not altogether unappealing, I don’t really see any need for that – I don’t want to hurt her and I don’t even particularly want her arrested – I just want her to leave me the hell alone, and I reminded him that she may have the right to be free and skip her meds if she chooses, but I have the right not to be harassed or annoyed, and part of my tax money is paid out for this right. From the get-go, all I’ve wanted was a restraining order, but for some reason, they said this doesn’t qualify for that. I don’t know what qualifications have to be met, but she needs restraining. I also told him that while she hasn’t called me since 3 March 2007, I don’t feel like sitting around wondering when she is going to go off her meds again and find my phone number again and put a quarter in her mental jukebox to start playing my song one more time. The time between the very first call and the next one was almost two years, but then they started coming in rapid succession, so I wanted to do something about it now. He said they can’t legally forbid her from using telephones or enforce her regularly taking her meds.

He said that if it would do any good, he would call her and tell her to leave me alone before she does get into trouble, but that sometime during the 38 or 39 calls she made to the police department, he had dealt with her before, and it’s like dealing with a child – she doesn’t live in our world. I replied that if that’s the case, I wish she’d stop calling in from her planet. He said she listens for about five minutes, and then doesn’t retain it, and that’s about it – she doesn’t understand things. He said that as long as she isn’t threatening me, there’s nothing they can do about her, and I told him that I didn’t wish to be a victim of the next Cho Seung Hui because nobody takes her seriously enough to do anything and the system just lets her fall through the cracks, because I may be under wherever she lands when she falls through those cracks, and I am not going to wait around in my house until she comes over the wall with an Uzi. (That got his attention, and not just because it was an egregiously run-on sentence.) I told him that if she is so dangerous that she doesn’t understand things when told and not to do something when told and she is living in her own world, she probably is so far out of touch with reality that she needs to be locked up, both for her own safety and the safety of those around her, not to mention that of the little girl of whom she has custody (her daughter). “But she hasn’t done anything to justify it yet.” Why does someone have to DO something before the authorities take action when every possible sign points to her instability and possible danger she poses?

Right in the middle of my conversation with him, I got a bright idea about how Ma Bell can help me out, even if the legal world can’t. I first had to find out if it still exists, and it does, but I told him that if I can still make it happen, I was going to arrange to get Preferred Call Forwarding (which should already be part of my services package – I love bells and whistles stuff on phones and have most of them) and program it so that her phone calls – and only her phone calls – would be forwarded from my house to the local police department. He said I really shouldn’t do that – “I mean, you would be forwarding your CALLS to the POLICE DEPARTMENT.” That’s the whole idea, I said, but ONLY her calls. He hemmed and hawed for a minute and then suddenly said that he could accept that and would accept that course of action if I decided to do that. I asked if his swift reversal of position (from protesting to agreeing) was in any way designed to get me into trouble, or if this was illegal or going to get me in any trouble, and he said no, he would accept that. So I called the phone company, made sure the service still exists, and got them to activate it and teach me the codes to enter to make it happen. Mind you, this will only stop her from calling me on THAT phone line, but then SHE will have to change phones, and having done so, when I get her new number, I’ll forward that one on, also. At the very least, it’ll drive her the rest of the way nuts – awwwwwwwwww! But more to the point, as I told the policeman, it will put the burden of inconvenience and annoyance on Kristy AND the police department, who won’t take any action, and take it off of me. May they live happily ever after together. (The only thing I regret is that I will probably never have a way to find out if she has called again until she changes phone numbers, but knowing her, she will probably go right out and do it the minute her call is thwarted and forwarded.)

Hmmmmm – maybe I should give that candy maker another look. (That’s another story for another day. Stay tuned.)

The Virginia Tech Massacre

2007-04-22T13:46:00.000-07:00

For several days, since we as a nation and citizens of the world began watching the unbelievable events at Virginia Tech unfold as thirty-two lives were taken and untold numbers of lives were forever altered, I have mourned with the rest of the country the loss of bright, promising lives of people who were on the verge of their high flight into their futures. Indeed, the students and staff whose lives were cut so tragically short seemed to be among the best their generations had to offer – the diametric opposite of the disturbed and deranged soul who saw fit to take their lives as he was planning to take his own. People who are deeply unhappy as Cho Seung Hui was are seldom likely to go to their destination alone. As they say, misery loves company.

By tracing Cho’s actions in the days and weeks prior to his snapping, and investigating his history while at Virginia Tech and prior, the authorities have been fleshing out a profile of a young man whose shyness and anti-social behavior had seemingly alienated him from the whole world. Before everything is said and done and this incident is all over, the authorities will have to answer for ignoring the red flags that showed that underneath the shyness and anti-social behavior lay a seething rage that was buried, but rather than being dormant, it was growing in such intensity that anything other than a massive volcanic eruption was probably not even an option. Depression is anger turned inward, and by the time one of the members of the English department tried to reach out to him and help him get the counseling he so obviously needed, he was already out of reach of a mere layperson (even a learned one).

When she tried to persuade school and law enforcement authorities to strike an intervention on his behalf, both for his safety and that of those around him, her pleas were met with deft pass-the-buck “not our problem” dodging tactics designed to absolve them of any responsibility in the matter. This was their take on the situation, despite the fact that the Virginia General District Court found him to “present an imminent danger to himself as a result of mental illness.”

As the days have passed since the attack, tales of his shunning even the most basic friendships and, conversely, stalking and seeking out the attentions in inappropriate ways of girls he probably felt were “unreachable” have come to light and show that he himself was probably already beyond reach except by the most diligent professionals. As authorities have delved further into his background before he came to Virginia Tech, they heard accounts of his having been steadily picked on for his ethnicity, his unclear manner of speaking and other things. The average person might respond that “everyone gets picked on sometime”, but not everyone truly understands the difference between being picked on or made fun of and being targeted. Like his “martyred” idols Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the teenagers who put Columbine High School on the map in a similar massacre in 1999, it would seem that Cho was (or felt he was) targeted rather than just garden-variety teased like most people have been. Since most people can’t distinguish the difference, perhaps it’s time the authorities teach them and work toward putting a stop to it – not just because it’s wrong (it is, you know), but in the interest of public safety.

For people who can’t distinguish between being picked on and being targeted, I suggest you sit down and watch the movie “Carrie”, and when she erupts in telekinetic fury so strong she is able to throw cars at people, insert a more realistic vision of Carrie with an Uzi. If you can’t figure it out after that, you are probably the same kind of person who would poke a stick at a dog continually like water torture, and then scream out at the unfairness of it when the dog attacks you.

There is also the “Get over it!” crowd who says, “All that happened X years ago (fill in the blank with the correct number). Why hasn’t he gotten over it?” Try asking that question of an adult Helen Keller, blind and deaf since an illness took her sight and hearing when she was two years old, or Christopher Reeve a few years after his horseback riding accident left him a quadriplegic. The answer might be chillingly similar – some things can’t be gotten over. Or sometimes they can be gotten over, but only through intensive therapy. Everyone is born with a different psyche, some more sensitive than others, and sometimes the emotional abuse leaves wounds and scars that cannot be healed but people can learn to function around them. Sometimes they can’t.

I am in no way defending, condoning or justifying Cho Seung Hui’s actions, and like most of us, I am still trying to come to grips with the loss of the lives of people who probably never even saw or heard of him before they were staring down the barrel of the gun he thrust in their faces. This is not an entreaty to turn this dangerous psychotic into a “poor Cho” victim. What I am saying is that people like Cho don’t just “happen” – they are created, shaped out of their experiences. When Michelangelo was asked how accomplished the transformation of a piece of flawed marble into the striking sculpture the world came to know as “David”, he said that “David was already in the piece of marble…he merely removed everything that wasn’t “David”, including the flaw. Creating a human target has the opposite effect – it chips away at everything that is human until little or nothing is left but the monster that is in all of us but that lies dormant in most people. The monster is unleashed when everything else is chipped away and nothing stands in its way.

We all knew them – the kids in our schools who didn’t measure up to our standards of “normal”. You remember -- the girl whose clothes were faded and too big because all she had to wear were her sister’s hand-me-downs; the fat boy who was always the last one chosen to play on the sports teams; someone whose ethnicity or religious background wasn’t the same as ours; someone who looked “funny” or was just “different” from us. The outcasts. While it would be nice if everyone could be blessed with good looks, popularity, a “Father Knows Best” home life and/or many other good things, it isn’t likely that it will ever happen, but to make targets out of people for whatever reason is cruel and shameless – people should be taught early just to walk away from those they don’t like for one reason or another and leave them the hell alone. Usually the people doing the targeting are not the upper echelon of the social caste system – they’re on top, so they don’t have anything to gain from such actions. Generally it’s the mid-level echelon – the top-level wannabes who can’t quite reach that euphoric level of social nirvana, so to make themselves feel better about it, they find someone who is lower on the social totem pole than they are and terrorize them – as if being on the bottom of the social totem pole weren’t already bad enough, thank you. There are, of course, those top-level folks who might feel they are slipping in the social ratings and are in need of an ego boost, so they weigh in with their two cents, but usually not. So the targeted ones are no longer simply social residents at the bottom of the caste system with the rest of the social ne’er-do-wells – they are virtually disenfranchised. With nothing left to lose. Doesn’t sound like freedom to me (with apologies to Kris Kristofferson).

We don’t all have to like each other, but we do have to live here together on this planet. Someday people are going to teach their children that it is inarguably wrong and unacceptable to bully people and treat them as human targets, and figure out means of preemptive intervention when it does happen. Most importantly, they will teach that there are consequences from their actions, sometimes deadly, and sadly, one lesson that we can take away from what happened at Virginia Tech is that when the shit hits the fan, it is almost never distributed evenly.

No X in Espresso

2007-04-16T17:19:00.000-07:00

I would like to go on record to tell my friends, the world at large and anyone else who gives a damn a few things of very little importance to anyone but, perhaps, me.

There is no “X” in Espresso – don’t they put enough stuff in it that it doesn’t NEED an X?

Johns Hopkins University has an “S” at the end of John, just as it has at the end of Hopkin. More than one John and more than one Hopkin. I don’t know if this means they have a number of toilets at Hopkins or a multitude of people named John – I do know that it is not possessive, because there is no apostrophe between John and his “S”. But however it got there, it’s a very audible “S” (okay, an audible “Z”) and they really mean it.

There is no “H” at the end of height, and I think it’s the heighth of stupidity for someone to say otherwise.

There is no “T” in “across”, and it makes me cross to hear a T in “across”. It makes me want to dot my Ts and cross my Is.

There is no “T” in “Alzheimer’s”. The word is not “all timers”, and only in jest can it be called “Old Timer’s”, although that’s a pretty sorry joke.

The words “athlete” and “fiscal” only have two syllables apiece.

To thaw means to unfreeze. To unthaw a chicken is to put that sucker back in the freezer. They’re harder to cook when they’re unthawed, and when someone tells me they are going to unthaw a chicken to cook for dinner, I assume it’s an unthawed-out plan, and it freezes me right in my tracks. (Oddly enough, my spell checker did not throw a rod over or any funny wiggly lines under “unthaw” or “unthawed”. Who’d’ve thawed it?)

Just so you know.

Thirty Years In Baseball and Happy Jackie Robinson Day

2007-04-15T17:20:00.000-07:00

Somehow I feel like I should hear Mel Allen’s voice announcing this topic. This year is the 30th anniversary of my becoming a baseball fan. I have a huge baseball display in my basement that includes very little of any real value to anyone but me, with the possible exception of the sheet music from the original 1908 version of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”, which I bought on ebay for next to nothing. I saw a copy of it at Cooperstown at the Baseball Hall of Fame and was very pleased to see it, in an “I’ve been validated!” sort of way. (Makes me sound like a parking ticket, doesn’t it?)

The reason it took me until the age of 20 to become a baseball fan is because when I was growing up, any time I joined my father in watching any kind of sport on television, my questions were met with “Shut up! I’m trying to watch the damned game!” Although he really was a nice person, my father was not noted for his patience in general, but especially with children and animals; oddly enough, though, the more impatient he got, the more kids and pets loved him, until he or they crossed the line and he reached the point of being almost abusive. By the time I might have been joining him in front of the TV to watch sports, I already knew not to cross that line, so I never asked too many questions after the first one, and never learned much about sports until I encountered someone who had the patience to answer all of my questions, no matter how inane they might seem.

Even though I didn’t become a baseball fan until 1977 and didn’t care a rat’s ass about it before then, oddly enough, my dad and I shared a baseball moment three years earlier that was pretty special, even to me, and lo these many years later, I cherish it. One April evening in 1974, just about 33 years ago today, I was about 16 years old and full of myself in a way that only 16-year-old girls can be, and I was going through the house to do something really important. My dad said as I went by him, “Hey, baby, come here.” That sounds sexual, but he always called me “baby” because I’m the baby of the family (not because I did some dirty dancing with Patrick Swayze and nobody puts me in a corner). Anyway, when I answered impatiently, my dialogue was “WHAT?!” but my tone of voice said, “What the hell do you want? I’m busy!” “Come here a minute.” “What do you want? I’m busy!” This time I articulated the words and not just the tone of voice. “Come and watch this. This is important. That guy at bat, Hank Aaron, is about to break a record.” “Well, that doesn’t sound like such a big deal. Last time I broke a record, all I got was a fight from my brother.” “No, not that kind of record – a sports record.” I was getting nowhere with my argument of having something better to do, so I sat down and joined him in watching Hank Aaron break Babe Ruth’s homerun record. At the time, it was merely an act of shut-up-Daddy, but with my later becoming not just a baseball fan, but a Braves fan, and Daddy’s being gone for almost three years, now that moment looms large in my memory and it feels so damned good to have that memory of sharing something really special with my dad, even if I didn’t appreciate it as such at the time.

It’s actually Hank Aaron’s fault I’m a baseball fan anyway. He was supposed to show up for a promotional game for which Mike had bought advanced tickets that even had Hank’s name on them, touting him as the guest of honor. That night, I showed up and he didn’t, and I still haven’t ever seen him live and in person. But it was that night that I started getting a serious tutorial in the finer details of baseball.

When Hank retired from playing in 1976, his homerun total was 755, a record which Barry Bonds is getting closer to breaking every year, and frankly, this will probably be the year he does it. However, what saddens me is not that Barry Bonds will break Hank’s record – Cal Ripken, Jr., broke Lou Gehrig’s long-standing consecutive games played in 1995, and I am passionately fond of Lou Gehrig, but I cried like a proud mama when Cal broke his record. (I can almost hear Tom Hanks saying, “There’s no crying in baseball!” Tom doesn’t watch baseball at my house.) What saddens me greatly about Hank’s record-breaking performances is that every time I have ever heard him interviewed on the subject, all he talks about is the racism he faced at the time. So rather than taking pride (and I mean pride, not arrogance) in his accomplishments and being proud to represent baseball so stunningly, all he seems to have taken away from his achievements is the negative side of it. Granted, I’m sure it was no fun receiving death threats and being targeted with overt racism; I’m sorry it overshadowed the event and I don’t mean to minimize it, but damnation, Hank, if that’s all you got out of it, you might just as well have stayed home. Isn’t it about time you stopped focusing on that and look at it and say, “Hey, I did something fan-damn-tastic that nobody else ever did before, and as for the racists, well, fuck ‘em. They can’t take that away from me, even if someone else comes along and breaks my record someday.” Well, anyway, I’m proud of him and glad he did it and proud to have his likeness on my Wheaties box and a Christmas ornament in my baseball collection.

Funny Stuff at the Court House

2007-04-15T17:16:00.000-07:00

In my recent court experience, I encountered some pretty funny stuff at the courthouse. They have all kinds of signs there, with all kinds of rules and regulations. One of them is that if you are there to proffer charges against someone, you must pay $10, and it must be cash. You do this at a certain window, where they have a sign that says:
Business Licenses
Marriage Licenses
Criminal Cases

How thoughtful of them to lump “marriage licenses” and “criminal cases” together – although it strikes me as being somewhat redundant.

For marriage licenses, the sign says it’s cash payment only – checks will not be accepted. I suspect they are afraid the marriage might not last for as long as it takes to clear the check. (Who, me, jaded? Nahhhhhh! Well, yeah, I guess so.)

I guess this funny stuff makes up for all the people who work there who are decidedly lacking in a sense of humor, which seemed to be pretty much everybody I encountered. Guess they had to check it at the door.

Car 54, Where Are You?

2007-04-10T18:49:00.000-07:00

Early yesterday morning, I called and left a message on the voice mail of the Sergeant in the criminal division of the police department of my town who called me last week.

Meanwhile, later on that same day – 0930 – Got a call from a Sergeant about Kristi. He said that after researching this case, he found that they had some 38 or 39 separate reports by her of people watching her, stalking her or bothering her while she lived here in town (none of them mentioning me), and had pretty much written her off as the town nut. (I bet that file really is three feet thick, too – see “Call of the Wildchild”, Part 1.) He said she was so paranoid that when the police came to the door to answer her calls, she wouldn’t even talk to them. He said that she obviously “has some mental problems” (no shit!) and sometimes people like this can go along for years doing just fine, but when they go off their meds, you never know what will happen. I told him what had been happening in my case with her, including the two officers who’d been out to the house and told me not to worry my pretty little head about it, and about the recordings I have of her six calls, the last of which was more vicious than the others and sounded like it was a recreational harassment call and she was having way too much fun. The Sergeant advised me that I should have my phone number changed and made unlisted, and I said absoLUTEly not – why should I be inconvenienced because SHE is out of control? (Besides, that wouldn’t stop her – it would only slow her down, at best.) I offered to send him a copy of the recordings of her phone messages, and told him I’d even autograph a copy if he wanted me to. I also gave him her PI’s name and number, and he said he would call him and try to get the pertinent information on her, and then drop (draw up?) the warrant for her arrest. He didn’t think there would be any problem getting it done, once we find her, because of their history with her and mine, which is recorded. The first time she’s arrested, it will be a misdemeanor, and if she contacts me after that, the next time it will be a felony. And awaaaayyy we go!

But Wait -- There's More

2007-04-05T19:08:00.000-07:00

The good news is, while I was working at the bookstore tonight, I got a call from a policeman from my town with “new information” about the case. He left his name and number and a message for me to call him.

The bad news is, I didn’t get the message until after the 5 PM deadline he’d set for talking to him tonight, and he won’t be back to work until Monday. But hey – maybe I’ll invite him over for notes and a CD (preferably the extended dance version). Cross your fingers.

Here Comes The Judge, There Goes My Case

2007-04-05T18:56:00.000-07:00

Well, that was a bust. All in all, the afternoon that started out holding a great deal of promise, both from the standpoint of venting my spleen and getting something done about her Kristiness and from getting a little free entertainment in on the side (at the expense of the others present for their day in court) turned out to be pretty much of a loss, and I feel rather like a deflated balloon.

The courtroom didn’t look much bigger than the classroom that housed my first grade class in 1963, so I’m guessing that this was Inferior Court rather than the Superior one. The place was absolutely jam-packed, seemingly with people who had bona fide business there rather than the press and your average court groupies.

First thing, the court clerk instructed everyone to turn off cell phones and pagers, warning us that the judge does not like to be interrupted by them and, should he hear one go off in his courtroom, he is likely to put the offender in jail for 20 days. (Would that we could do that when people come through line at my bookstore talking on the damned things while we are trying to conduct business!) People started scrambling into their purses and pockets to turn their electronic gizmos off, and even though I had already turned mine off before even going into the room, the mere threat of 20 days in jail was enough to make me double-check.

Second thing, the clerk told us where we would stand when the judge called our case, with the complainant (formerly known as plaintiff) on the right and the defendant on the left of the podium in front of the judge. She then said that because the judge could possibly literally hold the lives of these people in his hands, there was to be no talking whatsoever in the courtroom when the judge was in the courtroom, other than from those whom he was addressing, so if there are adults in the room who could not refrain from making comments or talking during the proceedings, they should leave the room or risk the wrath of the judge.

Third, the clerk said that we are all courteous to one another in this courtroom, and there would be no interrupting when someone is talking and no confrontational remarks. The tone she used brooked no argument, but it also sounded a little like Romper Room once removed, and I would not have been surprised if she had ended it with, “Now, children, play nice.”

Because I have a total terror of standing and speaking in front of large numbers of people (anything larger than three qualifies), I was hoping to have the luxury of observing a few of these episodes go by before it was my turn so as to see exactly how it was done and perhaps get an idea of what else not to do that the clerk might have omitted from her instructions. The more people who went before me, the less of a packed house I would play to, so this was a factor, as well. I also admit that as we were waiting for the games to begin, I was observing a few situations in the embryonic stages that I thought might be interesting to watch unfold, so I was hoping to see at least some dramas come to fruition. (No, I don’t stop at wrecks on the highway; why do you ask?)

One scenario was developing right before my eyes. A lady who sat down in front of me was having a very serious case of the twitchies, and was almost convulsing. I surmised this was an attack of nerves, since I was apprehensive about my own upcoming ordeal, even though I knew I was in the right. (DTs also came to mind, but I was not the judge there, so I didn’t.) When they began calling out the names of all the players, one man’s name was called and the person had trouble pronouncing it; the woman in front of me pronounced it for them, and the man didn’t answer the call. Obviously the flipside of why she was there. A few minutes later, a man entered the room and took the only empty seat in the place, a chair at the end of the bench where I was sitting. They asked him his name, and he said the name the woman in front of me had said previously. A little while later, another woman came in, wearing long, curled-under fingernails and other accoutrements of tackiness; when they asked if she had business here, she said no, she was “with” someone, located him in the court and came around to the other side of the guy in the chair beside me and we scooted down to make room for them to rotate. A few minutes later, the woman in front of me (the one with the severe twitchies) turned around and gave the two of them an “if looks could kill” glare and held it on them before turning back around. Presently the man said something to the woman with him, and the one in front of me turned around and hissed, “Liar!” So much for playing nice and not talking. A couple dozen possible plotlines went through my mind as to who they might be to each other and how this would play out, but alas, I didn’t get to stay and watch.

When the roll call was given, Kristi’s name was called and no one answered. I, of course, showed up with my CD, police reports, notes, photographs of my deck to show that even if the latticework weren’t in place, it’s much too close to the ground for anyone over the age of three to be hanging around under it and a couple of pictures to show that the latticework was in place when I bought the house, as well as a CD player upon which to play the 7-call CD in case they had no such in the courtroom. So being the first one called (but of course!), I had to climb over the people who were a soap opera waiting to happen, complete with my folder and purse and CD player.

The good news is that unlike almost every other occasion in my life when speaking before more than three people at a time, I didn’t hear my heart thundering in my ears like a teenager’s car radio turned up full-blast, my breathing was normal and the butterfly farm normally present in my gut on such occasions was blessedly absent.

The bad news is that the whole thing was a bust. The judge said since I don't know Kristi and can't prove that she is the one making the calls, I can't have her arrested. He is going to "look at this case a bit more" and ask the police to get "a little more involved and investigate some more", and get back in touch with me. I offered to let him listen to the CD and even take it with him if he didn’t want to hear it there in open court, and he declined. I came to the realization that it was a typical case of American blind justice, and there wasn't nothing he could do about it, and the judge wasn't going to look at the twenty seven eight-by-ten color glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against us. No, wait, where did that come from? (Apologies to Arlo Guthrie, but the whole thing just seemed so damned familiar, I had to include that!) In other words, I'm screwed. Thank you, judge, I appreciate throwing away $15 ($10 for filing and $5 for parking) and half a day's leave, for not one damned thing. So now I’m back to wait-and-see. The police would have had a lot more to go on if the judge had listened to the CD (the last policeman that answered my call to arms declined to listen to the extended dance version and listened only to the most recent call that was still in my voice mail), including the PI’s number, with which I can do absolutely nothing but which might have been at least moderately useful to the cops.

Since I would have had to take my purse and folder and CD player and climb back over the seething threesome to get back to the only vacant seat in the courtroom, I elected to make a graceful exit and not stay to watch the rest of the show.

I did realize later that the judge’s last name was the same as my great-grandmother’s maiden name; I wonder if things would have gone differently if I had asked him where his family was from and intimated that we might be forty-seventh cousins twice removed?

Acourting We Will Go

2007-04-02T19:14:00.000-07:00

The judge who heard my complaint asked me how I knew this woman, and I told him as I had told the cop, I don’t know her – that’s the whole point. I have never seen her, met her, spoken to her (other than the brief moment when she caught me off-guard) or had anything whatsoever to do with her. He asked how I knew where the calls were coming from, and I told him that her number had shown up on my caller ID. He asked if there was a printout of that, and I said “no”. “Then how do you intend to prove it was her?” Well, Judge, how about a recording of all the calls save for one? Oh, okay. He told me there will be a hearing for probable cause, which means that I will present my evidence as to why I think she should be arrested for my charge, and determine if I have a legitimate complaint against her. He told me to obtain the police reports from the times I had called the police, and bring the recordings, and they will send me a letter to let me know when The Big Day is going to be. She will get a copy of the letter also, and is entitled to be there to present her side, but who knows if she will? The Big Day is this week, so I will let you know how it goes.

At some point during her recorded ramblings, Kristi kept saying my girls were watching her from under my deck. I have seen decks on houses in my neighborhood that are high enough that people can actually sit under them in lawn chairs and have a party, but at its highest point, my deck is only about two feet off the ground. Its entire underside is enclosed with latticework all the way around, so unless “my girls” were either leprechauns or able to walk through walls, I don’t see that happening, but that’s just one of many, many unlikely things she is alleging in her diatribes. A friend advised me to take pictures of the deck, using a ruler for scale, to prove that no one over the age of four could hang out under it even if the latticework was not there. The same friend advised me to take a CD player so I could play the CD of her calls, in case the court doesn’t have one available. Excellent advice, which I plan to follow. For “scale”, I am even thinking of getting my friend who is 4’9” tall to stand by the deck and show that even as little as she is, she couldn’t hang out under it. This will work especially well if she comes to court with me, which I think she is planning to do. Her husband is the one who converted the cassette to CDs for me, and we are considering putting them into mass production and selling them on ebay after all this is over. At $2 apiece, I could probably recoup any costs I may incur (not to mention the ones I have already incurred – the cost of a cassette recorder and the price of having charges filed against someone) pretty quickly.

Other friends have had some other entertaining ideas about what we could do with this, if we but dared. Most of them are totally out of the question, but quite amusing to think about doing, even if we can’t really do them. One friend said that she is just begging to be messed with, and suggested we take all the phone numbers I have and post them somewhere on the internet and set up some kind of crazy thing for everyone to say. Another friend suggested we go en masse to the O’Charley’s where she works and see if she recognizes me. (This friend is one of many who thinks she is going to be so surprised when she sees me and I’m not who she thinks I am.) As tempting as all this would be, of course we can’t do it, or it would become a self-fulfilling prophecy, as we WOULD be stalking her. Too bad – this could be fun!

I have not scotched the idea of mass-marketing the CD. Who knows – she could be the next American Idol! (Does American Idol have a comedy category?)

Call of the Wild Child, Part 5

2007-04-02T19:11:00.000-07:00

Call 7: Early March, exactly two years to the day since the first call, Kristi called yet again. Fortunately, I was asleep, and my ringers were off, so the voice mail recorder got her call. Now “my daughter” has a name – Trina. She also has some job skills of which I was unaware – she and her friend Tammy are running a whorehouse up in north Georgia while they are stalking Kristi. Hey, I’m all for multi-tasking, so what’s the problem? Kinda makes me feel like a proud mama! Yeah, that’s my girl, all right! Rock on, little one.

So how does one go about proving one doesn’t have a daughter – or children of any kind? This call did it – this one was the last straw. At the beginning of this call, Kristi can be heard laughing, and throughout the entire call, as she is ranting and raving in a most maniacal way, someone else can be heard laughing in the background. It sounds like she is having entirely too much fun at this, so after I added this one to the long tape that was being developed, I started looking through my notes again (I didn’t want to have to listen to all the messages again – it’s rather creepy the first time, let alone multiple times later) to see what else I could find as to her current location. (I’m such a lousy stalker, I don’t even know where she lives.) [Guess I should ask Trina, eh?] All I have for her is a cell phone number, and although numerous people have told me those can be used to locate someone’s address, despite numerous attempts, so far it hasn’t happened. I suppose I could go to the PI for her address, but he was such an asshole the last time I talked to him that I’d just as soon not. He probably wouldn’t give it to me anyway. I googled one of the numbers I had written down in my notes, and it turned out to be the O’Charleys where she works, complete with street address, so now I had a work address, even if that was the only one I had. Now we can play hardball. (Perhaps the POE-leece will have to go to the PI for her address if they can’t find her at O’Charleys, and I don’t see him not giving it to THEM.)

I left the cassette of her messages with a friend to convert to CD, and the following Monday I went to the county courthouse and filed charges of telephone harassment against her, because I was told that what she has done so far does not entitle me to file a restraining order against her, since she isn’t calling me a certain number of times a day. With the work address, I at least had a fighting chance of getting some action taken against her.

Call of the Wild Child, Part 4

2007-03-28T18:55:00.000-07:00

Call 5: In early February, Kristi left me yet another golden message, telling me that I need to stop following her all over town and tell my girls to stop following her and to call her PI, etc., etc. I called her PI AGAIN and reminded him that I had asked him last month to tell her to cease and desist calling me; he said he had not seen her to tell her. I told him I want him to CALL her RIGHT NOW – I have the number – and tell her. He said I can’t tell him what to do, his work day is over, and he is not calling her tonight, he will call her tomorrow. I said to see to it that he does, because his work day may be over, but her calling me is not, and she keeps calling me to tell me to call him, and he needs to tell her I have called him before I file a stalking charge against her; he said I may HAVE to file charges against her. Gee, that’s encouraging!

As soon as I hung up with this charming man, I called and filed another police report. An officer came and took a report, listened to most recent phone call (says he didn’t have time to hear the extended dance version of the whole tape), advised me to go to the county Magistrate’s office, get a TPO (restraining order) and block her number on my phone. He asked me how to spell her first name, and I said I didn’t know – there are about 28 ways to spell Kristi, and since I don’t know her, I don’t know what her way is. Then a bit later, he asked me, “What does she look like?” I threw up my hands and yelled, “I don’t KNOW! I have never seen this woman before in my life! That is my whole point!” After listening to the most recent message (still on my voice mail), he asked, “She’s a white female, right?” I said, “I have no idea. I have never seen or met her.” He tried her phone number from his phone to tell her to leave me alone, and he got voice mail, did not leave a message, said he will file this report.

Call 6: The next day, Kristi called yet again, with more of the same delusional ramblings and accusations of my girls and me following her everywhere and using devices and so forth and so on, and this time she told me I had promised to help her (NOT!) and that God would want me to help her. (Probably not as much as he would want her to stop calling me.) [Don’t you just love when people attach God’s will and wants to their agendas?] She gave me another phone number, which I still wasn’t going to call, but later found to be quite useful. About 45 minutes later, I called her PI AGAIN to see if he had called Kristi yet; he said that he had just gotten off the phone with her and told her not to call me again, and she said she wouldn’t; I asked him if he had told her that I am not the person she is looking for, and he said yes, he did, but she said I am lying. I said “Okay” and hung up. I don’t care if she thinks I’m lying. She can think I came in from outer space on a blue horse if she wants to (I certainly think she is an alien life form of some kind), so long as she leaves me the hell alone, right?

Call of the Wild Child, Part 3

2007-03-28T18:49:00.000-07:00

Call 4: In mid-January, I got yet another message from Kristi, telling me that I need to make my girls stop following her, that they have now gotten an apartment in the North Georgia town where she now lives (about 100 miles north of where I live) and they are using their devices [sic] to harass and follow and bug her. She told me that she is a nice person (yeah, right) and she used to be in law enforcement and then had a career in adult entertainment, but now she is a real estate closer and works at O’Charley’s. (Anyone out there needing a real estate closure with a lap dance and handcuffs, here’s your girl!) She told me this has been going on for three years, because her baby is almost three, and I need to make my girls stop and call her PI and more of the same. Considering that I had just barely been in that house for two years, I didn’t see how I could possibly be the person she is convinced is doing something to her. But then, who needs reality when you have such an active fantasy life?

I called her PI that night and told him to pass on to her that I don’t HAVE Tammy or any girls, I don’t know Kristi OR Tammy, and I don’t have either the time or the inclination to fight with my neighbors. I don’t know who she is or what her problem is, but I don’t want any part of her dramas and traumas, real or imagined, and I don’t need a real estate closure with a lap dance and a pair of handcuffs. I told him that not only do I not have any girls, but that the only other living being inhabiting my house was male and feline, and he can’t even be accused of having pooped in her yard, because he is an indoor cat. I am single, divorced, no kids, working two jobs, and do not have time to deal with this garbage. I told him to tell her to cease and desist calling me because I don’t want or have any part of this and she needs to leave me alone. I told him that in the event that someone is actually doing these things to her (which I seriously doubt), I’m just as sorry as I can be and hope that something can be done about it, but that I have nothing whatsoever to do with it, and at best, this is a case of mistaken identity on her part, and at worst, she’s just plain delusional. He said he would tell her, and for the first time, I knew what her last name was after he told me.

Call of the Wild Child, Part 2

2007-03-26T18:15:00.000-07:00

Call 2: In November 2006, after almost two years of silence, I got a call one Sunday afternoon while I was talking to my mother. The call waiting kicked in, but the caller ID didn’t, so I took the call. To my everlasting shock, it was herself – Kristi the nutcase neighbor. She said she had been trying to find me, she had to move but she was not thrown out. She has a private investigator because of “that girl Tawny who has been harassing her”. I told her I was talking on long distance, she asked me to call her back, I agreed (although I had no intention of doing so), she kept on talking, I said give me the number NOW, I cannot talk to her. She gave me her PI’s phone number and her cell phone number. This marks the first and as yet only time I have ever actually spoken to her. (Oddly enough, as calendar driven as I am, it wasn’t until I was going back over my notes and recounting things here that I realized that this call took place on the twenty-third anniversary of the last time I ever laid eyes on or spoke with Mike. Oh, well – you know me – every day is an anniversary.)

Call 3: Two days later, I got another message from Kristi, so it looked like this time she was going to continue what she had started lo those twenty months ago. I bought a cassette recorder and some blanks, came home and recorded the first one from my office voice mail and the second one from my home voice mail. She was still giving me phone numbers to call, but frankly, I was afraid to talk to her. I figured if she could manufacture this bizarre scenario of my watching and stalking her out of nothing more than my having moved into the neighborhood, I could only imagine what kind of thing she could come up with based on a real conversation, especially since I have no use for such nonsense and would probably call her every four-letter word I know but “nice” once she started spewing her ridiculosities. I had no intention of talking to her if I could possibly avoid it, and I hoped that if I kept ignoring her, she would just go away. Considering how well it had worked so far, obviously that was a foolish thought, but hope springs eternal.

Oh, well. If wishes were horses…!

Call of the Wild Child, Part 1

2007-03-26T18:07:00.000-07:00

I have something unusual going on right now that, in point of fact, has really been going on for two years now. Or at least it started two years ago, and then lay dormant for twenty months until this past November. Since November, it has escalated to the point that I have had to involve The Authorities. The reason I never blogged about it in the first place is because the first episode took place about two weeks before I launched Anne Arky Ology, and I figured it was a non-issue.
Somehow or another, I have acquired a stalker, and very soon, we are going to court.

Call 1: I moved into my house in November 2004, and spent the better part of the next two months working on putting up Christmas, with a lot of GMHT thrown in. The following two months, I spent taking down Christmas, with a lot of GMHT thrown in. Combine those, my two jobs and a fairly active social life, and even if I were so inclined, I didn’t and generally don’t have time to harass my neighbors. At that time, I didn’t even have time to know who my neighbors were. So you can imagine my surprise when I got this really strange, out-of-the-blue phone call on my voice mail from someone claiming to be not only my neighbor, but my neighbor who (she says) I have been stalking.

Although I am listed in the phone book, at that time my very new phone number had not come out in a new phone book yet, and I have the Privacy Director feature which stops any number from reaching my home or voice mail if it doesn’t identify either a phone number or a name. Somehow, she found out my name, my phone number and the code to bypass my Privacy Director, and she left a message that sounded so ridiculous, I almost felt like it was made by a delusional teenager. She introduced herself as Kristi and alleged that we all (the cat and I, I guess, since that’s what “we” consists of at my house) had been watching her and making her nervous and I had been talking about her to other neighbors, saying that she didn’t have a husband (like who gives a rip?!) and that she talks tough (she thinks she does, anyway). She said that we all had been making her so nervous that she and her baby had had to go to a motel and stay, and that she used to be in law enforcement and that if she caught us watching her tonight, she will file charges. The whole thing was so silly, but there was just enough of an undercurrent of threat that I decided to call the police and file a report. Not that I expected them to do anything other than, perhaps, pat me on the hand and tell me it would all be all right and not to worry my pretty little head about it. That’s about all they did, and I felt better, hoping that she would be watching me and see that I had invited the cops to come for a visit.

Because my voice mail at home generally drops off saved calls after about five days and I wasn’t sure if I would need to keep her message, I called my voice mail at work and recorded it there, since I didn’t have a cassette recorder handy at the time. I left it there for almost two years (I told y’all I’m a packrat of the first order).

A few months later, I became friends with a neighbor whose teen-aged son was mowing my lawn. I called one evening to tell him to come and pick up his check, and she (his mom) and I began talking. She gave me the lowdown on a couple of neighbors to avoid, and why, and I asked her if she knew anyone in the neighborhood named Kristi and if so, where does she live? She said that Kristi had lived across the side street from me, and that she was truly a nut job, but she had just moved out, thank goodness. Oh, yeah – I vaguely remembered seeing a moving van, but didn’t figure I would be that lucky. She proceeded to tell me of an event that happened a couple of years before, when her son was 14. He had taken a business card to Kristi and asked if she would want him to take care of her yard. A few nights later, he and his mother were at the grocery store about 9:00, and Kristi called him on his cell phone and said that there was someone outside her house watching her and asked him to come and protect her. He told her, “Ma’am, I’m just a 14-year-old boy. If you need protection, you should call the police.” I should think that in the time she lived in our city, the local police would have amassed a file three feet thick on this nutcase. Boy, was I glad she had left the neighborhood! Hopefully, I was through with her!

Not so fast, there.

MacArthur’s Bark – or I Shall Return and Here I Am

2007-03-26T17:49:00.000-07:00

At long last, I have returned. I bet you didn’t even know I was gone, did you? Sorry for the prolonged absence, but I got quite busy with numerous projects, chief among them being Christmas. I started Christmassing in mid-October and finished in mid-February, although if you think I am late, my friend is even later – she just bought a Christmas present for me this week. Of course, that could be construed as really, really early, but it isn’t. So anyway, here I am with at least one new story to tell, and probably lots of others.

Regionalisms

2006-09-21T09:13:00.000-07:00

Sorry for my prolonged absence from here. I just keep getting busy and not getting back to doing things I enjoy, like writing my blog. Thanks for not giving up on me.

I was on another website recently where folks were talking about southern expressions, and I have seen a lot of pass-it-on emails about how to talk southern, a phenomenon which came into vogue when Jimmy Carter was elected President in the 70s, and which Jeff Foxworthy has raised to an art form all its own. I guess every region has expressions indigenous to their area, but thanks to television, the language is becoming almost homogeneous and regionalisms are disappearing. So many of them will go away as the Depression/WWII generation leaves us, and my generation (the baby boomers) are called “Cosmic Possums” because we’ll be the last generation (as a whole) to remember some of these expressions and know what they mean, even as we cease using them.

I was born in Texas, raised in Tennessee, have roots in Virginia so deep they come out in Asia, never lived north of Washington, DC, and have lived in Georgia for 17 years, so I am definitely southern. I always crack up when I hear southerners (usually women) who “swan” or “swannee”. I assume this was originated as a genteel form of saying, “Well, I swear”, when, fiddledeedee, evahbody knows we southern flowers are much too delicate to out-and-out swear (yeah, right!), and maybe “I do declare” wasn’t emphatic enough for the occasion. Sometimes I even heard “I swan to goodness”, which I guess was like swearing to the Almighty. My ex-mother-in-law (God rest her AKC-registered soul) used to swan and swannee with the best of them, and I always wished she would be honest enough to come out and swear, just once, instead of hiding behind water birds. She was so pretentious that she had a plaque in her house that said “something something something well, something something something hell” (sorry – I can’t remember exactly what it said), and someone (I feel sure it was her) marked out the word “hell” and wrote in “heck”. To me that was the most absurd thing – if you find it that offensive, just don’t have it in your house in the first place. Anyway, I digress. I don’t hear people swan or swannee much any more, but I still hate it, mainly because of her and because it sounds rather pretentious, if not outright ridiculous. I never could figure out how to conjugate the verb “to swan”. (Would the past participle be “have swun”?)

My sister pointed out the absurdity of my asking for a chocolate Coke when I was 10. At the time, I thought I was the only one who did it, and later realized what a southern thang it is. I also used to hear “pop” and “dope” for a soft drink before “dope” meant another kind of coke. Of course, every southerner knows that the proper pronunciation of Coke is “Co-Cola”.

My grandmothers used to say “directly” when they meant “soon” or an indeterminate time in the future, but they pronounced it “dreckly”, and for years I thought they were two different words. One of my former bosses, who couldn’t spell his own name to save his life and wouldn’t know correct grammar if it had bitten him on his hindquarters, used to tell me that the southern pronunciation wasn’t “dreckly”, it was “toreckly”. He kept on until I told him I was not going to argue with him about the proper MISpronunciation of a word.

My grandfather had a book of song lyrics he wrote down so he would be able to sing along, and they are not songs he wrote – just songs that were popular when he was a teenager. One of them is called “Holading”, and from the gist of the lyrics, I can only guess that “holadin’” was a term in the late 1800s/early 1900s for “courtin’”. If anybody knows this word, please confirm or explain. No one I know is familiar with it. All I get when I search the Internet for it is things where people have misspelled “holding” and a site that mentions bile salts, whatever that is. (I’m not sure I want to know, but I bet it doesn’t have anything to do with going courtin’.)

I would love to know some expressions from other areas around the country, and from other English-speaking areas of the world, either current or past, just to be able to compare notes.

Weekend Happy Dance

2006-09-05T08:12:00.000-07:00

I did it – I finally finished assembling my tins! That noise you heard coming from Atlanta was me shouting with glee at having accomplished this monumental task. I finally finished them Sunday of Labor Day weekend. My goal set a few weeks ago was to finish them this weekend, and I am so happy that it’s done, you can’t believe it. I put the last one in place Sunday at 9 PM, and I thought about calling CNN or Ripleys or even the United Nations (this has to be as important as the other issues they are grappling with, right?). Instead, I just called a bunch of other people who knew how much of a struggle this has been. Now I can do other fun things without feeling like the “Do Something” police are dogging me. If I can get a few pictures hung up in the next week, I will have finished unpacking everything I packed to move from my apartment into my house. Mind you, I will still have boxes and boxes of stuff yet to unpack, but these are boxes that haven’t been unpacked for several years, and they are not nagging at me or vying for my attention. Them, I will get to eventually. I am in no hurry.

The top photo is the smaller of my two right-angled "tin walls". The bottom one is the larger one. I couldn't get all of it in one picture without climbing on a couch that already has stability issues. I'm going to be moving that couch to access some other stuff, so maybe when it is pulled out, I can get a better shot. (I'm sure everyone in Blogland is on the edge of his or her seat waiting for this! Anne as an acrobatic photographer.) I have another couple of displays of tins elsewhere in the house, but this is all I could get on this post. Maybe I will post them later.

Only 114 Days Until Christmas

2006-09-01T09:58:00.000-07:00

This might not scare some people, but it absolutely terrifies me. There are plans to be made, gifts to be bought, cards to be bought, addressed and mailed! A party to be planned! Trees to be trimmed! Yes, that’s treeS, as in more than one. Every year I try to plan early and get things done so I am not sitting in my living room three days after Christmas addressing cards, wrapping presents and still decorating trees. Yes, really! Mind you, the main tree (the big one that rotates) gets decorated last (ideally) at my annual tree-decorating party. Several years ago I thought about having “a couple” of theme trees because I have enough decorations to decorate a third-world country, but one theme led to another and another, and now I could probably have my own tree show and charge admission.

Last Christmas was the first time I’d been able to do any theme trees, and I not only didn’t get all of them done – I decorated three of them after Christmas and still didn’t get all of them done. I got all but one finished. I have higher hopes for this year. I need to try to find some new trees – bigger than my small ones and smaller than my big ones – all artificial, of course. I envision asking some poor, harried sales person for five in-between trees. “In between WHAT?!” he says. I wonder how many languages have their own equivalent of “Bah! Humbug!”? Or into how many languages it can be translated?

I will probably start putting up my theme trees at Thanksgiving this year. That way, I might stand a better chance at getting them all up before Valentine’s Day. At last count, there were five of them – the music tree, the Santa tree, the places tree (ornaments from places I have lived or loved very much – NOT just random ornaments from places I have traveled) [considering how little I have actually traveled, this would be a very skimpily-clad tree], the “It’s A Wonderful Life” tree and the hobbies tree. There is also a small flat-backed tree that is the jewelry tree, but it didn’t start out to be a theme tree so much as a “what the heck am I going to do with all this Christmas jewelry that I never wear any more but can’t bear to throw away?” tree. I have considered having a postcard tree, which I have seen done, and I certainly have enough Christmas postcards to support it (they are the single-largest topic of cards that I have), but postcards are already represented on my hobbies tree (as are baseball, Monopoly and every other thing you can think of), so I’m only rather half-heartedly considering it. I have another tree idea for the front porch that doesn’t involve anything but weather-proof ribbons, but I have never been ambitious enough to carry this one to its fruition. Maybe this year. (That's what I said about the Braves winning another World Series, too. Oh, well.)

A friend of mine once told me that he gets deeply depressed at Christmas because of a lot of unpleasantly-spent holidays his family had when he was growing up, and seeing all the decorations all around makes him very sad. I instructed him not to set foot within ten feet of my house during the holidays, because if Christmas depresses him, he'd be positively suicidal after coming to my house.

Christmas cards present their own brand of merry hell. A full two years before I began actively collecting postcards, I started sending Christmas postcards instead of cards with envelopes because of their cost effectiveness. When your Christmas card list outnumbers the dishonest politicians in the world, you have to do something to cut costs, and postage for postcards is cheaper than regular first-class. When I first started this tradition, the difference was negligible, but the cost of postage was comparably negligible, too. Now the difference is greater than the whole stamp used to be, so at 15¢ apiece, I save an average of $15 a year on postage alone. That will buy half a Christmas present, or three whole ones, depending on who you are buying for. I’m surprised the cost alone doesn’t create more of a market for them, but gradually, over the past 15 years or so, the market for Christmas postcards has all but disappeared, and with it, Christmas postcards themselves. Fifteen years ago, my quest was to find more Victorian-style Christmas postcards like the ones I had been sending for quite a few years at the time. Ten years ago, the objective was to find some Christmas postcards that weren’t icky-cutesy or overly religious. A few years later, I was endeavoring to find postcards at all. In 2001, after Nine-Eleven and the subsequent anthrax scares, there was a one-time-good-deal-only run on Christmas postcards, and they were remarkably patriotic, but since then, they are nigh onto impossible to find. I sometimes start looking for them around March. I suppose I could make my own, but I haven’t been very lucky with that endeavor so far, so I’m not counting on it as a future solution.

Why, you might ask, would any single individual be sending out upwards of 100 Christmas cards? Well, I can’t speak for any other individual, but this one is a keep-in-toucher, and I maintain close-to-loose contact with most of the people I’ve called “friends” in my life. My sister swears I’ve exchanged birthday cards with everybody I’ve ever passed in traffic, and maintains that the same must be true for Christmas cards. Not so. Just most of them. People do actually get deleted from my list from time to time, without having to die first. Every so often I go through my list and try to determine the last time I have heard from this or that person, and if it’s longer ago than, say, five years, I might put them on the Disinterested List, where they might stay for a couple of years before I consign them to the Probably Dead List. I have a few friends who give you one year to appeal your fate, and if you don’t send them a Christmas card, they place you permanently on the I’m Never Sending That Ingrate Another Christmas Card As Long As I Live List, never to be redeemed even if you send them Christmas cards from now on.

Some people I know recycle their Christmas cards either as colorful gift tags in future years or just into a random recycling system. Not me. (I’m sure you expected that.) Mine get all rounded up after the holidays and placed into the Current Year Letters box.

I have never been much on outdoor decorations other than a wreath over a door here and there, but now that I have a house, I suppose I should make it as festive outside as it is inside. One of my friends who has such a passion for outdoor decorating that his house made the Atlanta “Tacky Lights” tour three years in a row thought that my having a house meant that I should now decorate outdoors. To that end, last year he gave me one of those two-dimensional (shaped, but hollow) bobbing-head deer that lights up. I had neither the time nor the energy and patience to assemble it last year, and I told him I would need his help with it, so maybe this year I will have a deer grazing in my front yard. I only hope it doesn’t inspire him to contribute a whole menagerie of outdoor Christmas tackery, because I think garlands and ribbons on the back of the house, a well-placed wreath or two and a grazing deer are enough. If you want festive, you have to come over and come in the house to find it.

Only 114 days until Christmas. Yeehaw!

Overheard at the Office

2006-08-18T12:09:00.000-07:00

I absolutely love working here. I wouldn’t miss this for anything in the world.

“I feel like a nap.”
“You look like one, too.”

“Neil, you stood me up!”
“Well, someone had to – you keep falling down.”

Girls Named After Their Fathers

2006-08-16T04:15:00.000-07:00

Now I think namesaking is a fine thing. It perpetuates a family history of sorts, and it honors the old farts of the family. (If you’re lucky, it might even get you in the will. I have known people who were given some really god-awful names for just that reason.) I even think naming a girl after her father is very sweet, especially since little girls have such a tendency to be “Daddy’s Girl”s. We all know them – Stephanie, daughter of Stephen; Roberta, daughter of Robert; Donna, daughter of Donald; Michaela, daughter of Michael (although illiterate bandwagon jumpers would have you to believe it’s spelled “Mikayla”, the name actually pronounced that way is just plain old Michael with an “a”), etc.

Some of the more unusual feminized men’s names can sound pretty, and even kind of exotic. I knew a Nedra and a Kendra when I was in high school, and there is an author named Phillipa (although I think I would be inclined just to stick with the tried and true Phyllis if it were me). Patty Duke’s “Valley of the Dolls” character Neely O’Hara may have been a feminine derivative of Neil or Neal; whatever it is, I’ve always thought it was pretty. I’ve run across a Davida or two along the way, and in my opinion, Norma is a much nicer name than her masculine equivalent Norman (but that’s just me). I also like Erica better than her male counterpart, Eric. I’ll take Olivia over Oliver any day of the week.

But you really have to be careful in this naming the daughter after her father, grandfather, uncle, etc. Let’s face it – some masculine names were just never meant to be feminized, no way, no how. I have been collecting these for years, and they range from the unusual to the obscenely dreadful. In the last year, my collection of non-feminizable (you ought to try getting that one past the spell checker) masculine names has virtually exploded. In the past two months alone, I have come up with some seriously bad ones: Arthralyne (daughter of Arthur) and Chesterine (presumably daughter of Chester). The earliest contenders (from my Way Back machine) include Cliffogene (friend of a friend from college, who swears she actually knew two people by that name) and Billyetta (friend of a friend from West Virginia, whose own daughter was named Harrietta – no, not Harriett, but Harrietta). More recent live entries are Bensonetta (a judge in Atlanta), Overtis (daughter of Otis), Herma (Herman’s daughter), Hughina (Hugh’s little girl), Jamesia (“jahMEE-SEEa”) (hard to say if she’s the apple of James’ eye or named for a hydrangea bush) and Doneva (a former coworker of my sister’s and undoubtedly daughter or granddaughter of Donald). Friends have contributed some doozies, too – Winshinai and Winbrielle, twin daughters of Winston; Noelani, daughter of Noel (and maybe Annie, I don’t know); Floydeen, daughter of Floyd (“Pink” might have been an option, and she still would have been named after her dad – sort of); and Willisa, daughter of Willis. Some that I have culled from on-line obituaries while reading them to keep up with friends and their families have been Calvalyn (daughter of Calvin and Minerva, of all things!), Archenia and Fredella. [I am sure there is a special front-row spit in hell for people like me who can’t help but laugh at the names of people I find in obituaries – the dead, their forebears or their survivors.] I once knew Marvin's daughter Marvina, and I even have an ancestor Melvina, who was Melvin's daughter (who else could she be?!).

At the bookstore where I work, an expectant couple were purchasing a baby name book that they were apparently only moments away from putting to use, and because I had just learned of Arthralyne, I cautioned them to consider very carefully naming their daughter after a favored male relative. I urged them to use mercy wherever feasible and consider the possible ghastly results. They looked at each other and, in unison, cried, “Bobwina!” We all got a good laugh out of it, but sadly enough, I surfed the net the very next day and found one – a real live (now dead) Bobwina, who I found in an obituary in a faraway place I had never heard of and don’t even remember. Let me hasten to say that these can’t be written off as just “ethnic” names from some other “ethnic” than any of us might be – I’ve seen them in all flavors, all ages.

When one of my coworkers was debating what to name her unexpected blessed event-to-be (it’s a second marriage for both, and both had kids from their first), she decided she didn’t really want to name it (whatever it might be) after its father, because she wasn’t really crazy about his name (Walter). [With apologies to all you Walter people out there. She said it, I didn’t.] I asked her what his middle name is, and she said it’s DeLande. (Don’t ask me – I just work here.) In about two seconds, I came up with and suggested twisting DeLande into Delaney, and she came back the next day and said that whatever it is, boy or girl, it will be named Delaney. And so she was – named Delaney, that is. I asked my coworker recently (five years after the fact) if she wasn’t sorry that she hadn’t named the little princess Waltrina. I don’t know why she threw that stapler at me. Go figure!

What’s next? Herschellana? Wendella? Joshaletta? Jasonina? Gordonia? Matthewla? Warrenita? Dextrose (daughter of Dexter and Rose)? Reubencia? Bufordessa?

If your spouse or family member gets really insistent about namesaking, just say, “You get to name the dogs, I get to name the kids.” Not everybody has a namesake (not everybody should), and sometimes you might just have to suck it up and get over it. If you are considering what to name your (or someone else’s) little girl and you think you want to name her after her father or yours, be kind – be merciful – and just name her Daddy or Gramps and be done with it.

A Visit From Beyond (or the Back Thereof)

2006-08-15T05:26:00.000-07:00

Last weekend (the 5th and 6th), my friend Fran came to visit from L.A. – that is, Lower Alabama. She used to live here in the Atlanta metro area, and a few years ago she sought sanctuary from The Big City and moved away to the back of beyond. I had only seen her once since she left Atlanta and she hadn’t seen my house before, so we had a great time catching up and stuff. For a house warming present, she brought me two new tins – O JOY! No, really – I love ‘em. I collect only advertising tins, although I do have some that are just decorative, because some people don’t realize that I only collect the advertising ones, so they give me whatever, and being the kind, gracious and grateful person that I am (see cat food and greeting cards), I readily accept them without a word. A grimace, maybe, but no words. Fran is well aware of the parameters of my collection, so she knows what to bring. One tin was one I had never even heard of – a Slim Jim tin – and it was awesome. The other one is not, in the strictest sense, an advertising tin, but it’s a cross-collectible, and one I had let go by without me some years ago and had been trying to find since then – a Vincent Van Gogh tin. I had bought one of these for Christmas for another friend who is also a Van Gogh fan, thinking that after Christmas I would go back and get one for myself, but of course Murphy was at work and they were all gone when I went back and I missed out on getting one. Lo and behold, it was the very same one Fran brought me, so after I came down from the deliriosity of finally getting this long-sought-after tin, I have added it to my ever-growing collection – of Van Gogh stuff, not my tins.

Before Fran came, I cleaned the house from top to bottom (with the exception of the on-going GMHT project), and from what I had left of the pecans she sent me awhile back, I tried to make candied pecans. I had a good time trying, and rather than baking them in a big hot oven, I used my little toaster oven, which made a good substitute, but obviously I’m candied-pecan impaired, because I ended up with small bits and pieces of individual pecans, a few individual pecans and large globs of pecans held together by the sticky gluey mess created from the sugar mixture, a/k/a pecan sugar stew. It was a total mess, but delicious, if you didn’t mind going at it with a small ice pick

The first night Fran was at my house (Friday night), we stayed up until sunrise, talking and catching up and snacking on pecan sugar stew, so we slept away a lot of Saturday. However, we did get some mileage out of the rest of the day by going to one of our favorite old haunts for dinner. We used to work on a club newsletter together, and every Thursday, we would go to our favorite Mexican restaurant for dinner and work on the newsletters. We called this our “staff meeting”, although this implied that we were actually official staff of some paying organization. Not so. We only did it for the joy of newslettering and the joy of Mexican food.

We came back to the house Saturday night and watched “My Cousin Vinnie”, which she had never seen. I personally do not think people should be allowed to live in Alabama (or that would be Ala-fuckin’-bama, according to Vincent Gambini) without having seen this movie, and I could not in good conscience allow her to go back there without having seen it. I don’t know if she liked it as much as I do – I don’t think anybody likes it as much as I do – but she seemed to enjoy it, and after that we once again talked late into the night.

On Sunday, we watched our Sunday Morning show and then went out and got pedicures (Fran’s treat). This was fun, as I was overdue for one. I bought us each a toe ring – I just needed a new one, and Fran had never had one -- and we debated as to which toe should be graced with the toe rings we had just bought. Everyone I’ve ever seen wearing one seems to favor wearing it on the second toe, the one next to the big toe. I personally favor wearing mine on the toe next to the little toe, with the idea that if your finger next to your pinkie is your ring finger, then the toe next to your little toe would naturally be your ring toe. I always wear mine on the right foot, ring toe. I suppose if it were a wedding toe ring, or even an engagement toe ring, I should wear it on my left foot, ring toe. I’m told that I have given this way too much thought.

We took our fancy feet to dinner at Olive Garden, which they do not have in her newly-adopted hometown. The waiter offered us samples of wine, one for each of us, for 25¢ apiece, and since I was driving and don’t drink anyway, she got her sample and mine, too. After we got home, we watched “The Banger Sisters” (if you haven’t seen it, don’t bother – it’s not all that, even though I have always been very fond of Goldie Hawn) and I appointed Fran as the bedtime police, so she would make sure we didn’t stay up all night and talk when I had to get up at silly o’clock in the morning and go to work, and she had to leave when I did. So Fran drove off into the sunrise to visit other friends, I went to work and our visit was finished. We had a grand time.

Weekend Lament

2006-08-14T08:32:00.000-07:00

I didn’t really mean to be an absentee blogholder, but that is what’s happened. My apologies to one and all. No real reason for it – I’ve just been uninspired. I’ve also been busy, but that’s really no excuse.

After moving into my then-newly-purchased house in November 2004, I have been trying almost incessantly to “get my house together”, which at one time had some concrete meaning. I am still trying to do that, although I am now finding the phrase to be overused and somewhat meaningless. I am aware that when one buys a house or even moves into an apartment, “setting up housekeeping” is an ongoing process wherein one completed project leads to another newly-started one, or in some cases, one uncompleted project leads to several other uncompleted projects, but I swear I am not going to allow the latter to become my lifestyle. Finishing that part of “getting my house together” is not really what I mean, since I don’t ever expect to be completely satisfied with whatever the status quo might be at any given time. What I have always meant by that phrase is getting unpacked and put away or situated all those things I brought with me from my previous residence (not to mention all the stuff I’ve had in storage at Mother’s for years, some of which is still there).

Time and energy seem to be the main stumbling blocks for my “getting my house together” (herein known as GMHT). I work two jobs – one day job, 40 hours a week Monday through Friday days, and one night job, two nights a week (Thursday and Friday) for about 10 hours a week. The latter is a retail job (a perfectly wonderful job in a bookstore), which means that I am abusing my much-overweight body by standing on sore feet and inflicting myself on my arthritic knees for several hours at a stretch. I don’t work weekends, but Saturdays I just die.

Working two double shifts in a row (both jobs Thursdays and Fridays) incites the metabolic law that means on Friday night (or whatever time I get to bed that is closest to it) my body will collapse upon impact with my bed and not be roused by anything short of a nuclear holocaust until it gets damned good and ready. This even includes neighbors who mow their lawns before noon on weekends, which is some kind of suburban crime that should be punishable by weeds, if not outright death. Of course, this metabolic law doesn’t reckon on O’Malley, my otherwise wonderful and thoroughly adored cat who racks up thousands of frequent flier miles per year, usually three feet at a time and mostly on Saturday mornings.

Having slept away the whole Saturday until I am spent, I usually get up and stumble into the kitchen, pour a glass of iced tea for myself and set up camp on one end of my couch (Command and Control Central, my equivalent of Archie Bunker’s chair – no one gets to sit there but moi) and begin to plan my day. Sometimes this involves actually doing something, but more often than not, it involves reading the television guide to see what channel I want to put the TV on while I ignore it and read whatever book I’m involved in at the moment until I decide it’s time to get up and go back to bed for awhile. This process is repeated throughout the day, usually without anything productive having been accomplished in any way, shape or form. During this time, I am often visited upon by the “Do Something!” police, but I usually choose to ignore them. I do, however, at least make plans for what productive things I will spend the impending Sunday doing.

Sundays. Although I am not a particularly religious person (I was using the term “spiritual” long before it became a yuppie rationale for attending church), I do belong to a church, and I used to be active in attendance and choir and Sunday school teaching and ladies’ circle and all that good stuff. All that was before I took an intense dislike to our then-minister (circa 1997) and then took a second job (circa 1998). [I have always had an intense dislike for mornings in general.] When I was working on Saturday nights, getting out of bed on Sunday mornings to go to church wasn’t even an option. I did, however, show up in church on the first Sunday after our then-minister left, figuring at the very least to make a statement with my presence. I had intended to continue doing so, especially now that I’m not working Saturday nights, but for some reason I just don’t feel moved to go to the trouble, even though I do go to the trouble to set my alarm so I can get up before 9 AM and watch my favorite show on all of television outside of Braves baseball – CBS’ “Sunday Morning”. I have inspired my friend Fran and my mother to watch this show, and usually when it’s over, one or the other of them (or both) will call me and we will spend incredible amounts of time on the telephone talking about not a damn thing and enjoying ourselves thoroughly while we do it. (Unlimited long distance was created with me in mind, thank you very much.)

If I can gather some momentum, I actually manage to accomplish quite a lot on some Sundays, but other Sundays (like yesterday), I can manage to accomplish nothing whatsoever. Most of what I need to do to GMHT is downstairs in the guest bedroom or the garage, and it’s stuff I am really beating myself over the head to get done, but my poor knees are so resistant to stairs that I can sometimes manage to come in from the bookstore (and dinner afterward with a friend) Friday night, climb the stairs and not go downstairs again until Monday morning, when it’s time to go to the office. Other times, I can actually manage to make myself go downstairs, whereupon I manage to get quite a lot done. Yesterday wasn’t one of those times.

If I can finish putting up my tins, I can pretty well manage to get the rest of that room pulled together, and then I can drag my feet and get the garage done at my leisure, in and around other projects I have in mind. The projects are related to fixing up the house, as such, not unpacking anything I brought with me. You would think that putting up a few tins wouldn’t be such a big deal; would that it were “a few” tins. It’s actually more like a few hundred tins, to the tune of over three thousand tins, many of which have already been put up. I have rebuilt the “main” walls of tins three times now, and I’m getting ready to rebuild the secondary walls as soon as I can get my lazy arse down the stairs on a weekend. I have done as much in that room as I can by working around the tins awaiting their eventual fate, but the only possible next step is to finish the tins before I can do anything else.

I have decided that should I have reason to move again in the future (when I bought this house, the very idea was totally unthinkable, and my plan has always been to leave the place no other way but toes up), I will not take the tins with me. I have moved them about four times, the last two times of which they were numbering in the multi-thousands. No more. I will find some poor soul who is willing to come and get them and pack them up and take them with them, or willing to move into the house to live with them. There are way too many to try to sell them on ebay onesie-twosie, so I’m not even going to go there.

And how was your weekend?
(The tins pictured above are about one fourth of my tin collection, when I had them on display at my apartment.)

Dieter’s Diatribe or Ode To Coke – The Real Thing

2006-07-20T10:59:00.000-07:00

That I am demented is definitely no shock to those who know me and little surprise to those who only know me here. Just how demented I can be, especially at silly o'clock in the morning, is evidenced below. When I was driving to work this morning, Paul Simon's "Kodachrome" came on the radio, and when he started singing, "Kodachro-o-ome, give us the nice bright colors...etc.", for some strange reason I started singing, "Coca-co-o-la" and then made up some more lyrics to go along with what I was singing, but with his tune. After I got to work, I set about putting it down on paper and creating a whole parody that is completely autobiographical. Mr. Yankovic, look out!

Dieter’s Diatribe or Ode To Coke – The Real Thing
(sung to the tune of Paul Simon’s “Kodachrome”
– with apologies to Paul Simon)

If you took all the snacks I’ve had for food addiction,
Put ‘em all together on my thighs,
You know it’d never match my sick imagination,
Because I never thought I’d reach this size.

When I think back on all the pounds I’ve gained since high school
When Mama started sayin’ I was fat,
You know I only weighed at most a hundred thirty,
Now my weight is almost three times that.

Coca Co-o-o-la, give me some nice bright comfort,
Give me the high-igh-ighs of sugar
Make me think all the world is a happy place, oh yeah.
I've got a diet cola I’d love to flush in the toilet
“Isn’t it a shame she has such a pretty face?”

Mama don’t take my Coca-Cola away
Mama don’t take my Coca-Cola,
Switch it for lo-cal granola,
Mama don’t take my Coca-Cola away.

If you took all the food I’ve had in search of comfort,
Put it all together in the road,
It would be small surprise to those who’ve never seen me
That I’ve applied to get my own zip code.

If I had all the money I’ve spent joining programs
And buying all those diet scams and books,
I could afford to get myself one of those mirrors
That tells me my butt is not as large as it looks.

Coca Co-o-o-la, give me some nice bright comfort,
Give me the high-igh-ighs of sugar
Make me think all the world is a happy place, oh yeah.
I've got a diet cola I’d love to flush in the toilet
“Isn’t it a shame she has such a pretty face?”

Mama don’t take my Coca-Cola away
Mama don’t take my Coca-Cola,
Switch it for lo-cal granola,
Mama don’t take my Coca-Cola away.

Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't

2006-07-19T07:18:00.000-07:00

I’ve just been to visit my mother, and it was, as always, a mixture of enjoyment and teeth gnashing. I spent a week with Mother and the first two days home trying to unclench my teeth. First, let me say that I love my mother very much. But like everyone who is still lucky enough to enjoy it, my mother makes me crazy. On “Providence”, the younger one of Mike Farrell’s character’s two “daughters” asked the older one (before the mother died and was only a recurring phantom), “Why is it that Mom always knows just how to push my buttons?” The older one replied with the obvious answer, “She’s the one who installed them.” Correct.

I’ve heard that when you “go home” or go around your family (those who don’t live near their families, anyway), you revert to a certain age and remain there for the duration. Just what age you revert to is unclear, and who decides what age is the one for reverting to is also unclear. In any case, I seem to revert to age 8, and I’m not sure what is significant about age 8 that that’s the chosen age of reversion, but there it is. My mother certainly goes along with it in a big kind of way. She’s all too happy to treat me like I’m eight years old, including “shushing” me in front of my friends when I swear (like that ever stopped me, even when I was eight years old!) or speak louder than she thinks I should. (What will people THINK???) [Who the hell CARES???] {And that is the crux of our on-going lifelong argument.} The third and final time she did this while I was home this time, I returned the favor and told her -- right there in front of God and everybody -- not to do that any more, because I really hate it. She turned away and pouted the whole rest of that visit with my friend. Should we ever have it out over this issue (and we will, I’m sure), the argument will go, “Mother, please don’t shush me. It embarrasses me.” “Well, you’re embarrassing me.” “Maybe so, but I’m embarrassing you in front of people you are likely never going to see again, and you are embarrassing me in front of my friends, so shut up.” *sigh*

I’ll be the first to admit, “shut up” is not my best thing, but Mom’s not best thing is “back off” or “take no for an answer”. She has no clue how to do either. She figures if she just pushes and pushes, the pushee (usually me) will eventually be worn down and give in and acquiesce to her wishes, and she seems terribly shocked on those occasions when the pushee (usually me) blows up in frustration. Her favorite “don’t take no for an answer” occasion is when she is trying to give me something that I just plain don’t want. Two years ago, after Daddy died, I asked her if I could have a few of his V-neck undershirts – great to sleep in, and kind of like sleeping in a hug from my dad – and she happily obliged, following up by offering me some of his pajamas as well. I couldn’t really think of a good reason to say “no”, so I accepted with a “thanks, Mom”. She then offered me a whole drawer full of his socks, to which I hastily replied, “No, thanks, Mom.” This was met with, “But there’s nothing wrong with them.” “No, thanks, Mom,” I repeated. “They’re perfectly clean,” she insisted. I thanked her again and explained that I just don’t prefer men’s socks or black, brown or blue socks of anybody’s. “But there aren’t any holes in them or anything – they’ve hardly even been worn.” “Mother,” I stated emphatically through clenched, “I do not want the socks. Thank you anyway. Give them to someone else.” I suppose a more reasonable argument might have been, “Mother, I am morally opposed to blue, brown and black socks and refuse to allow them in my house or on my feet.” But since we are of the same religion, she probably wouldn’t have bought off on it.

In recounting this incident to friends, they all hastened to suggest, “Well, you should have just taken them and then given them away or thrown them away later.” Well, I tried that during this trip as a last resort, and now I remember why it doesn’t work.

Mother’s cat recently died, and she told me before I left home that she was going to give me all the cat stuff she had left over – a couple of litter boxes (they’re perfectly clean, she hurriedly assured me), some food dishes, some food, some cat litter, etc. I thanked her and said that I could use some of the stuff, but that my poor cat, O’Malley, has a very weak stomach and is limited to only two or three different foods (one type of dry food and two flavors of the same brand of canned food) that he might not hurl, if I’m lucky. Anything else I give him is almost guaranteed to give him the carpet-ruining happy, hairy, hunky hurls. Mind you, O’Malley is not a finicky eater – he would eat anything I put in front of him that didn’t gobble him down first – but then I get to see it again, and if there’s anything I hate more than recycled cat food, I don’t know what it is. (I only have to clean it up if I get to it before he does, which grosses me out worse than having to clean it up myself.) So Mother, kindly understand when I say this – thanks, but no thanks.

By the time I got up there and got treated to a whole week’s worth of “But it’s perfectly good/clean/sanctified” arguments, with her reacting as if I had accused her offerings (lipstick she can’t use any more, generic greeting cards, etc.) of having three kinds of venereal diseases and cheating on their spouses, I decided that whatever cat stuff she was sending me home with would be received with as much “shut up” as I could muster. I could always give the cat food and litter (hers isn’t the kind I like to use) to someone in my circle of friends or coworkers. So on “going home” day, she loaded up my car with all manner of cat stuff, and I drove home secure in the knowledge that the stuff would go to good use and my mother would be none the wiser. This way, she could save her “But it’s perfectly whatever” argument to use on someone else (although I personally feel she saves them all up for me) to be named later.

Last weekend, the weekend after I got back from Mother’s, she and I were on the phone and she asked conversationally, “What are you going to do this weekend?” I mentioned needing to go to the grocery store sometime, but I wasn’t sure when – I needed to pick up some garbage bags, frozen foods, cat food and cat litter. (Like I said, “shut up” isn’t my best thing, and I’m a lousy liar.) She said, “What about all that cat food and stuff I sent you home with?” Ah, shit – busted! With a long-suffering sigh, I reiterated, “Well, you know O’Malley has a weak stomach and can’t eat any of it, or he’ll throw it up all over hell and half of Georgia.” She then demanded, “Then why did you take it home with you?” Like I mugged her cat food stash, for God’s sake! Shit, I can’t win for losing sometimes! Insert longer-suffering sigh and throwing up of hands. (At least that’s a throwing-up I don’t have to clean up after.)

Lost Movie Found

2006-07-19T07:09:00.000-07:00

I have just recently solved a long-held mystery in my life. When I was 11 years old, I was in the hospital for some tests. On the last day of my two-week stay, I was watching the local Saturday morning television fare, which included some old black-and-white mystery and horror movies. I didn’t much care about either one of them and paid no mind to their titles or anything else about their credits (actors, etc.). The first one was kind of cheesy, with all the guests at a hotel getting systematically killed off one by one in an Agatha Christie sort of way, and ended with some creepy guy hanging out at the basement stairs saying to the audience, “They think they have the killer, but it was really I who killed them all, and you’d better not tell, or I’ll come and kill you, too” or some silly-assed thing. I had no reason to believe the second movie would be any more frightening than that one, but it was.

I was never afraid of anything as a child – not ghosts, goblins, monsters under the bed or in the closet. In fact, I was never afraid of anything tangible until I was 17 years old, and still yet, the things I am apt to fear are intangible – abandonment, rejection, speaking in front of a group, things like that. The boogie man and monsters under the bed are the least of my worries, both then and now. However, on this day in July of 1968, I saw the one movie – the only movie – that ever scared me, and it scared the flibberty-gibbets out of me in a big kind of way. It scared me so much, I even had to change the channel before the end, so I watched about 1 hour and 45 minutes of it instead of the whole 2 hours. I had no idea what the name of the movie was, when it was made, who was in it or anything other than it scared the living shit out of me. Over the years I have watched out for it in the TV Guide (which I subscribed to and read religiously until a couple of years ago), but I never saw anything that remotely made me think I had found my personal font of filmation fear. I had never really pursued it with the same vengeance as some of my other pursuits, but I had also never heard anyone else mention having seen it, so it pretty much faded from memory, surfacing only occasionally as a reminder that I was not totally fearless after all.

A few months ago, a friend and I were discussing things that scared us as children, and as stated above, I had limited contributions to the conversation (easier to list all the things that didn’t scare me), and I mentioned this movie, still without a name or list of players. She knows that I have great good fortune finding things on the Internet, so she suggested I google it. I had actually already looked on the internet for it at some point in a fit of boredom, but after we talked, I went back and looked again – again, to no avail. So back into the “occasional” file it went.

I am working on retyping a collection of quotes I have been amassing since I was in junior high, and because I enjoy putting creative graphics with certain things (see recipe cards, March 29, 2006 post), I am chasing down interesting graphics on the internet to use with the quotations. One quote came from A&E’s “Cold Case Files” in reference to remembering someone as they used to be, not how they ended up, and I started searching for an appropriate graphic of a cadaver. Of course, there never really is an appropriate graphic of a cadaver, and I quickly realized this, so I started looking instead for a graphic of a skull. Unfortunately, all I found were smiling happy skulls that had grins that looked like Whoopee Goldberg’s smile, and while I have always wanted a smile like Whoopee Goldberg’s (you know – the kind that looks as if you have 208 teeth), I wasn’t at this point looking for a happy skull, so I thought, maybe I should look for one that’s screaming.

I typed in “screaming skull”, and one of the things that came up was a movie poster for a movie of the same name. I clicked on it, and it took me to a description of a movie called “The Screaming Skull”, and it sounded exactly like (and turned out to be) the movie from long ago that had terrorized me. Once again, I felt like I’d found the holy grail, for no real legitimate reason, because finding this movie, and even perhaps buying it (which I will be doing), will in no way change or impact my life, but it was just the fact that its identity had eluded me for so long that made it such a great find. The movie was made in 1958, and even now I don’t recognize any of the players, so it probably ranks as a C or even D movie, since I tend to recognize B movie players from that era. Amazon-dot-com gives it three stars, although a lot of reviewers pan it dreadfully. A friend is planning on buying it for me as a belated birthday present, and I’m really looking forward to it in a weird sort of way. It will be interesting to see if the 11-year-old me is still in there, capable of being terrified beyond words by this movie, or if I will just laugh my head off over it at this late date. In any case, it’s a blast from the past that I’m sure I’ll enjoy, either way.

NOTE: Yes, this is a rerun from Anne Arky Ology. It seemed a festive way to launch my new blog.