Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!!

So, had 2 of the granddaughters last week for a few days on the farm.

One of them caught a cold, and when she sneezed all over me all I could think of was this……

I feel so funky…

By Now You’ve Probably Forgotten…

…and for me it’s a slowly fading memory, but..

I didn’t leave the planet, I just moved to the country  on Halloween 2016.

You see…we moved.

Gosh, that sounds so…I don’t know, innocuous?   And most of it was not fraught with insanity-inducing happenings, but the stuff that did happen turned me (momentarily) into the hell-bitch from, well, Hell…with a capital “H”.

The packing ladies arrived at the house a couple of days prior to our move, looked around, and proudly proclaimed this an “easy job, 4-5 hours tops” …and then proceeded to pack for 10 hours with one short break.   I had known we had a lot of stuff, but to hear professionals mumbling about “all this stuff…” when they didn’t think we were listening was an eye-opener.

An aside – we’d already spent weeks cleaning/purging/packing prior to this.  There was a lot of stuff…just…so….much.

Anyway, at the point where these two lovely workers were glassy-eyed and looked about ready to collapse from exhaustion, they finished.  We paid them, twice what we’d budgeted, and tipped them generously to boot.

We knew the move would be expensive – though I don’t think either of us thought to double our original estimate, but we’d sold the house and knew that we’d be getting a chunk of change once we closed on it.  So, out came the credit card.  We’re so cute when we’re being all optimistic and totally naïve.

Two days later the moving trucks and six young men came to move our stuff from the big city town (40K population) to the country town (3K population).  They, too, proclaimed this an “easy job” and how it wouldn’t “take long”.  TWELVE hours later, with daylight fading, they were still pretty upbeat but it was not longer an easy job that wouldn’t take long.

It was an epic journey, and everyone was so tired we giggled insanely at every little thing.

Well, almost everything.

The one thing we did not laugh about was the one thing we desperately needed once the packed trucks and our packed vehicles arrived at the new farm in 90-degree weather.

Electricity.  That was the one thing we needed.  It was so important that I’d arranged for it to be turned on three days prior to the move. I’d arranged this, over a series of phone calls, a month in advance.  The last phone call, to confirm, had been the day before the service was turned on to the house.

Guess what we didn’t have?  No, really, guess.

You’re so smart.

I proceeded to call the electric company we’d chosen, and in the country calling someone on a cell phone is an exercise in frustration…and sometimes futility.  I finally found a good signal in a spot about 50 yards in front of the house and within two minutes the helpful young man at the other end of the phone told me his company didn’t service our home. We had to use a co-op.

I proceeded to scream at the top of my lungs at the poor kid, the gist of my screaming was that I wanted to know why someone hadn’t informed me of that sooner.

I scared the absolute shit out of the kid on the phone, and my movers. Every. single. one.

My husband had to tell them I wasn’t normally a maniacal hell-bitch, but no electricity when I had been so careful to make sure we had electricity, that was the proverbial straw.

I’d been working at my job, coming home and packing, cleaning, packing, sleeping little, and so on for weeks.  To say I was at the end of my rope is too cliche.  I was at the end of every rope, ever.

We finished unpacking the trucks, in the dark, and since it was Halloween and we were in the boonies and it was dark, the sounds of the forest scared the shit out of the young movers.  They whispered about curses and witches and ghosts to one another.  I did nothing to alleviate their fears when I said, straight-faced, that the house was built on an “old Indian burial ground” and rumored to be haunted.  One of them asked me if I was afraid of ghosts, and I told him that since I was a witch I had power over the ghostly realm. I honestly think he believed me. Poor kid.

We collapsed into bed that first night, too tired to even care that it was sticky and warm.  All the windows in the house were open, but if any ghosts visited we were too tired to care about them either.

We got the electricity turned on the next morning, but only because I threatened to sit down in the middle of the co-op’s office and cry until they did.  I was desperate, exhausted, in need of a shower, and the nice lady in the office had just told me it would be 1-3 business days before they could get the power on at the house.  Instead, she took pity on me and by the time we drove back out to the house we had lights and air conditioning and a working washer and dryer.

Too bad we couldn’t locate a lot of our clothes.  Somehow, in the move, everything seemed to get separated.  We spent four days unpacking and we wore the same clothes all four days. I’d wash them every night, and we’d put them on every morning.  We finally found all our clothes, so with that and electricity things were looking up.

Then, our real estate agent called..the old house may not have sold after all. Maybe, perhaps.  We need to re-negotiate here. With ginormous credit card bills looming, we listened and we compromised and we got the old house and some land we owned sold.

We spent the rest of the week unpacking everything, and in the end were really only missing a couple of small items and only found a couple more broken.

It’s been a few months now, and we are loving our new home.  It’s magical, it’s beautiful, and it’s where I intend to spend the rest of my life.  I told my hubby that if he ever got the notion to move again I’d go straight for his throat.  After seeing me react to the whole electricity debacle I’m pretty sure he believes it.

Crazy Mother Trucker

Last Friday a snowflake fell on Dallas and the entire world went batshit crazy.

In all fairness, a few pellets of sleet joined the snowflake so there’s that.

Now, my normal commute these days is about an hour.  On Friday, it took me THREE AND A HALF hours to make it from work to home.

I think a Kardashian or two got pregnant, gave birth, and started a search for the baby daddy all in the time it took me to get from Point A to Point B.

I saw TWELVE accidents in a 20-mile stretch of highway.  All of them single-car, none of them looked like anyone was hurt, and every one of them avoidable if people would just pay attention.

But that’s not the worst of it.

Stuck, sitting on the highway with no exit in sight, I had to pee so badly I created a makeshift bedpan for my car’s front seat and prayed that a. I wouldn’t have to use it, but if I did then b. I’d positioned it properly.  (fyi, I didn’t have to test my MacGyver-ish work but I’m seriously considering carrying an actual bedpan for future disasters it was that close)

But that’s not the worst of it.

Then there was the part where I was watching big rigs get stuck on bridges with slight inclines because the bridges were solid sheets of ice, and praying that fishtailing trailer didn’t slam me as I crept past them.

But that’s not the worst of it.

You wanna know what the worst thing was?  Other than having to hear my hubby on the phone telling me how pretty the snow looked from in front of the fireplace at home while I struggled to maintain some control over my bladder?

It was the mother trucker from hell in front of me. She appointed herself shoulder police, and since we were in the far right lane and no one was really moving, she had ample opportunities to block drivers who tried to take advantage of the unused shoulder of the highway to move up in the world. She’d pull off to the shoulder every time someone broke from the pack and tried to maneuver their way around.  Once an SUV came up alongside me, and I guess she saw them at the last second and pulled hard to the right forcing the SUV off onto the embankment and down in some slick/frozen grassy area. I thought for sure he was going to roll it, but he managed to maintain control and got around her.  She wasn’t happy, so she decided to stay on the shoulder because no one, by God, was going to do that to her – the SHOULDER POLICE – again.  Since she seemed content to now be the person using the shoulder to move along, I inched my car up until I was about halfway down the length of her trailer.  It was at that point she rolled down her window and started gesturing wildly and screaming at me.  I rolled down my window, utterly perplexed as I had not tried to use the shoulder to pass her but was, in fact, passing her in the lane. You know, the right of way, the part you’re supposed to drive on.

The conversation went…

CrazyMotherTrucker:  Do you want to get run over, bitch??!!

Me: What?

CMT: DO YOU WANT TO GET RUN OVER??

Me: But, you’re the one on the shoulder and I’m nearly passed you now so why don’t you just let me get in front of you and….

CMT: I’M COMING OVER NOWWWWW!!! RIGHT NOW!!

Me: (realizing at this point she had about 40,000 lbs. on me) Uhhh….

And she did…she just kept coming, and I had nowhere to go because right next to me was another truck and he had nowhere to go and so on.

So I stopped.

And I prayed.

And I held my breath and my bladder…the last one just barely.

And she juuust missed me by an inch or two as she did just what she screamed she would.

Crazy. Mother. Trucker.

 

 

The Strange Wonderfulness of it All

I’m really working hard on a post detailing the insanity of our move to the sticks.  It was like a bad “B” movie, but with worse lighting.

Anyway, as I work on that, some random observations from things that’ve been going on.

1. Our new ranch has a house and guest house (insert sarcastic “yay” for doubling the square footage I have to clean) and in both houses we got satellite television. Except in the guest house we didn’t get…something..some piece of equipment – a router? – that let’s us access the Internet on the television. This is important. Because Netflix and Hulu.  So, I called my provider to get that fixed.  And I spent a SOLID HOUR on the phone with a tech as she told me, I shit you not, her ENTIRE LIFE STORY.  She is in her 20’s and has had a rough go. Dad’s done time, Mom died when she was young, she’s raised her sister. It’s a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie waiting to happen, kids.  She kept saying to me “I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I haven’t even told my sister or Granny yet.” as she relayed recent events or innermost feelings.  Since we only get landline coverage in the hinterlands I was trapped at the kitchen table, listening, as my husband kept going in and out looking perplexedly at me as each time he passed he saw the glassy-eyed look on my face.  Finally, we got to the end of her story and she said a tech would be out to fix the problem.  I hung up the phone with a headache, and I think a small country might have gone to war and won in the time it took for that conversation to end.
2. Yesterday, I went to the post office to drop off my out-of-town packages for mailing. I’d already printed the postage and put it on the box, so I normally just set the packages on the counter and leave. But, yesterday I needed to get stamps so I stood in line. I’m so glad I did. The woman in front of me was 80 if she was a day, and she had on BRIGHT green pants, a trench coat over a simple blouse, and a matching BRIGHT green floppy hat with a long purple/pink/green paisley print ribbon wrapped around it.  She was carrying a backpack that had skateboards and graphics all over its black exterior.  Inside, she had a few packages she was sending.  She giggled as she tried to extricate them one by one, saying “I wrapped these up so  neat, and now I am going to tear them up just trying to get them out of here!”  I offered to help her and her smile lit the room.  Just when I thought she couldn’t be any cuter, the clerk called her to come up to the counter asking, “And how are you today, ma’am?”  to which she LOUDLY replied, “I AM BLESSED IN THE LORD, YES I AM!!” Everyone in line, myself included smiled broadly and a few chuckled softly.  Floppy Hat turned that sunny smile on all of us and said, “MERRY CHRISTMAS Y’ALL!!”  And I thought as I watched her, ‘I want to be her. Just like that. Now and always.’  It was a magical moment, and I hope I can keep the memory.

So, I’m Gone for a While, and What Do I Do?

……I come back with a purely political rant……go away now if you are an easily offended fan of Mr. Obama.

 

 

….you’ve been warned…

 

 

When Pres. Obama first ran for office, I listened to his campaign speeches and realized there was zero substance. It was too bad, because he was the most magnificent orator I’d ever heard.  He spoke of “hope” and “change” and had nothing to offer.  Still, I waited and listened and researched. I found a man who spent more than 20 years listening to his pastor damn America from the pulpit. He followed Saul Alinsky, and firmly believed in the man’s socialistic ideas.  For me, these were the first red flags.

Then, “Joe the Plumber” happened, and I watched then-candidate Mr. Obama tell Joe that while it was great he was doing well, wouldn’t it be even better to “spread the wealth” around?  There’s a word for that, friends, and that word is socialism.

I realized we were about to elect a socialist to the office of President.  I didn’t think the American public would be that stupid.  But they were.

Shortly after taking office, Pres. Obama spoke out on a local police matter involving a black professor at Cambridge, calling the local police “stupid”.  I was shocked to hear a sitting President criticizing a local law enforcement officer’s actions.  This is simply not done and is the height of idiocy and arrogance for a President to give voice to his personal feelings over something that’s none of his business.  I began to really worry what he might do next.

Well, it wasn’t what he did, it was what he didn’t do.  He didn’t have that ‘open’ and ‘honest’ Presidency he boasted about. He didn’t post legislation for review, and he didn’t apologize for it.

In 2010, he said “Let me say this as plainly as I can: By August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end.” I couldn’t believe my ears. A Commander-in-Chief just announced our withdrawal date to the enemy forces.  I began to wonder if he was naïve or just plain stupid.  Turns out, I believe, he’s a little of both.  And that is a dangerous combination in the leader of the free world.

During his tenure, our national debt has increased by $7 trillion dollars.  That’s more than every president before him combined.  Despite his spending like a drunken sailor, more people are permanently out of the work force (some 11+ million), more people are on assistance (20% of Americans are now receiving food stamps as of 2013), and nearly 11 million Americans are on disability.  And our economic growth is pitiful, if not downright stagnant. These numbers do not lie, and point to massive problems.  One of which is our President’s inability to understand and accept how a free market society operates.

Then, the ACA – or Obamacare.  Get to keep your doctor? Riiiiiiiiiiight.  Costs will go down? Riiiiiiiiiiiight.  Yet, Pres. Obama said both were true.  He either lied or is so naïve as to believe that insurance companies would simply absorb the costs associated with his massive plans.  Not to mention the fact that the ACA forces the average American to buy something he/she may not want. Smacks, again, of socialism.

Pres. Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder, is the first AG ever…ever..to be held in contempt of Congress.  How bad does one have to behave to earn that distinction?  And how poor is the judgement of the man who appointed him? Frighteningly bad.

His administration gave guns to Mexican cartels that were used to murder hundreds of Mexicans and border agent Brian Terry. Now, the Obama Administration has refused to cooperate with the investigation or hold anyone accountable for that illegal behavior. More recently, his administration gave cash to the Iranian government in return for…nothing.  We got nothing in return for giving money to terrorists hell-bent on destroying the United States.

For 8 years, Pres. Obama has attempted to thwart Israel’s every move to secure their sovereignty in the Middle East.  Our most staunch ally in the region and he has insulted, harassed, and personally stopped the shipment of necessary arms to the Israeli military.  It’s a wonder Netanyahu doesn’t tell him to go fuck himself.  I can only think he’s just biding his time, knowing this clown will be gone soon.

So, my dear readers, these are just a few of the reasons (sweet jeebus, as I think about it I believe I could write a novel on all the reasons) I feared an Obama presidency.  And just a few of the things I saw happen.  It got to the point where I wasn’t even surprised by his stupidity anymore, and I, too, was just biding my time knowing it would end eventually.  Thanking God for term limits as the end of this particularly horrid chapter in our history came ever closer.

Does President-Elect Trump have the answers? I don’t know. I only know he loves this country, loves the ideals it was built on, loves capitalism, and believes in the American dream. How far can that take us? Again, I don’t know, but I’m willing to go along for the ride and find out.  I think we should check back here in a couple of years to see where we might be.

 

 

Random Shit – Just So You’ll Know I’m Not Dead…Yet

So, a few weeks ago we bought a farm.

Sweet clothespin jeebus, what were we thinking?  Not only did we double the square footage of house we will now occupy, but we like bazillioned the amount of outdoor space we will now occupy. Thankfully, most of the outdoors looks like a forest and that’s exactly how it will remain.

Oh, and hubby doubled, yes fecking doubled, his commute.  Mine will remain about the same, because traffic.

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. are we doing???

We’ve also listed some other property we own for sale, put my mother’s property on the market – and it sold in three days, but now we wait for probate and try to figure out the drunken monkeys who wrote the damned mortgage on the property’s thought patterns – and hope/pray/cry/scream in frustration over the whole fecking mess which boils down to will I really be able to sell it at all or must I back out of these deals because when I do sell the property the mortgage company will come after me for the entire mortgage when I’m only responsible for half?  Jeebus, I hyperventilate just thinking about it all.

Then, this past weekend we spent 745 hours cleaning, packing, and de-feckifying the current house so the listing agent can come take pictures of it tonight and put it on the market.  Let me just say it’s been a while since I dusted anything properly. Apparently. Trust me on this.

We told the kids, they got weepy, the grandkids cried, and everyone decided we had to have a farewell potluck in the old house in a couple of weeks before we actually move – which will happen on Halloween, as you do…or at least as we have done the last two moves.

So, I’m a wee bit distracted and a wee bit exhausted, and a wee-wee-wee all the way home aching from head to foot.

Oh, and this morning my tire alarm went off in the car so I stopped to put air in the tire and was harassed by a homeless guy on a bicycle.

Good times.

Things That Freak Me Right The Hell Out

We all have them, the things that you see or do or see others doing that freak you right. the hell. out.

Here’s a partial list of mine:

1.Getting a text from my dentist’s office about how excited they are to see me on such and such date.  Really? You look forward to inflicting pain?  Dentists are freakishly weird.

2. Having the vet’s office ask me which of my “kids” or “babies” I’m calling about, AND when I’m there and go into an exam room, they announce that so-and-so’s “mommy” is waiting in such-and-such room.  I’m pretty sure mating with animals is illegal…wait, it’s still illegal to mate with critters, right?  Tell me I’m right. PLEASE. Because, if it’s not then I’ve crossed over from freaked to full-on fecked up.

4. I skipped 3.

5. You just went back to look.

6. Drones.  I actually swatted at my hair the other night, thinking the drone overhead      was a swarm of bees trying to kill me.  In my defense, it was my first droney-bee           encounter, and it was high enough above me that I missed. Dammit.

7. My frat-boy neighbors, a/k/a  The Dronemasters.  They NEVER sleep. Never.  Go to       bed at midnight?  They’re up.  Get up at 2:00 a.m.?  They’re up.  4:00 a.m.? They’re             up! They do this every night, then all their vehicles leave during the day.  I think       they’re vampires…and now I’m really freaked out.  And lest you think I’m that             neighbor peering out my windows at the frat boys, may I remind you that I can’t see their house from the only window I have that faces them.  I have to go outside to verify this.  I’m just looking out for you.  You’re welcome.

So, what freaks you right-the-hell-out?

Did You Ever?

Did you ever just have so much going on in your life, some good, some not so good, that you felt like you should build a blanket-fort, get inside with some cookies, milk, and a stack of books and threaten anyone who dared peek in with maiming?

Yeah, me either.

I was just checking.

Heh..heh…

This..THIS Is Why…

…why I love my husband. so. very. much.

Picture a blender, filled to the brim with:

1. Milk
2. Greek yogurt
3. apple
4. banana
5. raspberry
6. strawberry
7. blueberry
8. honey
9. protein powder

And by “filled” I mean 8 cups full.  The above is what goes into my blender every morning to make the smoothies we drink/eat for breakfast every day.

This morning was no different, at least not until the moment when I pushed the button and the bottom of the glass jar separated from the plastic fluglebinder what screws onto the bottom and fits over the pin that makes the whirly-whoosh go ’round.

It’s very technical, so try to keep up.

Suddenly it looked like some unfortunate soul had blown chunks all over my stove, the counter, the tiny space between the two, the blender and me.

“Feckity, feckity, feckity, FUCK!” I screamed.

Hubby, from the bedroom said, “What happened?”

To which I replied, “The blender came apart and there’s blender-puke everywhere!”

He came out of the room, obviously not able to grasp the concept of “blender-puke” and upon surveying the carnage said, “But, what happened? I mean how?”

“I don’t know,” I said, grabbing paper towels to try and stem the river before it hit the floor. “but, it looks like it separated.”

“How?” He asked, his voice registering agitation.

“Look,” I began, getting pissed, “I don’t have time to argue with you about how it happened right now.”

“What? You can’t multi-task?” He said, his face a deadpan.

I started to giggle, and then he started to giggle, and then we cleaned up the barf.

And that is why I love him. He makes me laugh, even when I don’t want to.

And you thought I was going to relay some sappy story about hearts and flowers and shit like that, didn’t you?  It’s like you don’t even know me.

 

Texts With a 4-yr. Old

One of my granddaughters is 4, and this is what happens when she gets a hold of her Daddy’s cell phone.

First, she figures out how to get to the text message screen, then she figures out how to find me in the Contact list, and then she starts sending me texts.   This kid is brilliant, I tell you, just brilliant.

But, I may be prejudiced.  Below is a screenshot of the actual conversation.

You be the judge.

I don’t know, I think it’s rather poetic.  Don’t you?  Look at how she cleverly inserted an actual word – derided – into the message, and then left me wondering…am I being derided? Did I do something that deserved such an outburst? Or is she simply pondering the condition of man, and his inhumanity to his fellows?  Or is it just ‘Ed’? And who is this Ed person anyway?

The kid is a genius.