Day 13: Describe 10 pet peeves you have.

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I’ve been counting down the days until todays prompt. Perhaps that says a lot about my current attitude or patience level, but I have a delicious list of pet peeves that have been stacking up like well-seasoned firewood.

Number one on this list has been hammering splinters under my proverbial fingernails, for months.

  1. That GODFORSAKEN woman who fucks up the entire process of the school drop off lane. Straight to hell with her, because she’s a pain in everyone’s ass. I pull up in the nick of time every morning and she ruins the whole thing. I understand having a timid child who needs a little extra love- I will be the first person to smile at you while your little one melts down… but stay in your goddamn car or park it ANYWHERE ELSE. The school is literally surrounded with options other than the small stretch of seamless beauty that she destroys. I fucking hate her. There are two of her, incidentally and I shoot them both dirty looks any chance I get.
  2. Internships. I know this is out of left field, but my Dick Appointment leaves in two weeks and I’m sad for my poor broken hearted vagina. She’s so much happier when she exercises regularly and there he goes… taking my live sex toy with him. Sad times. I’m all for success… but not when it costs me my favorite playthings.
  3. Cigarettes. Gross. Seriously… quit that nasty habit and put those smelly years behind you. It’s vile, is actively killing you and people don’t want to hang out with you because of it. Boys don’t want to date you. Girls won’t let you borrow cute clothes. It’s because you smell bad. Stop.
  4. Whistling, chewing and chomping. We get it, you’re eating. Now shut the fuck up and chew quietly. I regularly smack a coworker for his infernal whistling. Nobody wants to hear your long-winded, whiny rendition of any song, ever. Shut. The. Fuck. UP. (now). I don’t understand the folks with bad manners because my mother would have murdered me for having sound effects to enjoying my meal beyond expressing my gratitude.
  5. People who can’t spell. For the love of Jesus, your phone does it for you. You don’t even have to learn to spell anymore and yet there are still those people who can’t. It drives me absolutely nuts. You can’t “seen” anything and if you tell me I “aint” right, I’ll agree with you and delete your number out of my phone. Ignorance makes my vagina dry, my eyebrow go rogue and my eyes roll around like marbles.
  6. Vegans. Sorry, not sorry. I love a good creature. I like food of the land, sea and sky and I don’t feel bad if it didn’t have a perfect life. I know that pisses everyone off these days, but that’s life and knowing my financial ability to be a picky bitch. I love chickens, pigs and cows almost as much as fish, shrimp and lobster- but frankly the sad ones taste just as good as the happy, organic set.
  7. Feral Children. If you want to love, nurture and pacify your little beast to avoid being the bad guy, we are not going to hang out. I’d bet my left titty that your kids are monsters and nobody wants to hang out with them. If you let your kids run in the store, a restaurant or something like it, chances are good I’ve already yelled at them and they won’t want to hang out with me either. It isn’t the world’s fault that you’re heterosexual and had sex that resulted in a small human. Parent that mobile fertilized egg or I will help and insult you, simultaneously.
  8. People who are incapable of flying and/or travel. You may pack one carry on and one personal item. This hasn’t changed and they aren’t fooled by your feigned ignorance. The entire airport knows you think the rules don’t apply to you and they’d let you off the hook, just this once. NO. Check your 8 bags, leave the many novels you aren’t going to read AT HOME, and throw your own damn trash away. So help me God if you’re in the 18th row and stand up as soon as the plane lands, I’m going to hope you got bed bugs from your dirty seat.
  9. Self Check Out. For fuck’s sake… I do not work at Walmart and I never wanted to know how. Double fuck you to the 4 digit veggie codes that are different at every store. Ugh. I want to purchase my overpriced groceries in comfort, thank you.
  10. Mice. Always the vermin. They’re making my life hell with their nightly marathon in the attic above my bed. It’s a good thing I love my kitty boys so much or I’d poison the hell out of my entire house. I caught one on the kitchen counter the other day and about lost my damn mind getting the body into the trash. Oy.

What are yours?

Day 9: What are 5 passions you have?

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  1. Truth. I don’t like grey area and I don’t like games. If you want to know how I feel, ask. I’ll tell you. Lying pisses me off more than anything and liars are weeded out of my life like the dandelions in my garden. I have a lot of patience, but I don’t fuck around with lies. Hurt me with the miserable truth and I’ll love and respect you forever, but lie and you’re dead to me.
  2. Knitting. It’s a guilty pleasure because I rarely have the time to turn my yarn into anything but silky soft loops of therapeutic peace on my needles. I have half a toy elephant dress finished and my baby nieces are growing at the speed of light. My Dumpling had to go with her daddy last month and it always makes her a little anxious at first. I knit her a bunny with a tiny heart on it’s chest that we spray with my perfume when she has to go. It’s a snuggly soft reminder that home is just a state of mind, a smell or a person. The bunny goes a long way towards making her feel right at home, right away… with her dad. Knitting is magic at your fingertips, all you need are a few sticks and some string.
  3. Writing. In the last year I’ve written three times as much as before, with most of it private or contracted. The work I’ve turned in professionally has earned me more financially this year as well. That’s not what has stuck with me though. I find it so much more satisfying that I wrote my own self out of feeling like warm trash this year. In yelling at the world through a keyboard, I taught myself to let shit go and move on. I love the entertainment of it all, but the therapy of it all is why I began writing in the first place. Sorry to all of you along for this crazy ride, and thank you for your shared perspective.
  4. Love. I love out loud in ways that make me painfully uncomfortable on occasion. I still wouldn’t have it any other way. I smile at strangers, I help people who are grumpy… it’s just who I am. It comes from my adorably sweet grandma Elaine and my equally spicy red-headed firecracker Grandma Afton, both of whom taught me to love the whole world and everything in it, to my toes. Sure, sometimes it ends badly and I end up hurt again… but at the end of the day, purely because I refused to give up, I like to believe my life will have been full of more love than I knew what to do with because I never let fear stop me from having faith.
  5. Gardening. My beautiful obsession with the dirt has gotten me through things I never thought I would survive. Losing my son, my house going through foreclosure (twice), an epic water leak in the yard, countless cheating boyfriends, 5 years of celibacy, having a baby alone from birth, poverty, depression, etc… You name it, I’ve coped with everything by putting on a headlamp and pulling weeds into the wee hours of the morning. Some of the worst and most insurmountable pain can be soothed by digging potatoes and beets. Some of my greatest heartache has only been kept company by tomato plants in need of staking, peppers in need of picking and long, quiet rows waiting for a fresh blanket of straw. When I’m at my breaking point and in desperate need of a reminder to keep myself grounded… I take my shoes off and stick my bare feet in the dirt.

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What are you passionate about?

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Day 6: What are the 5 things that make you most happy right now?

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It’s a shit day in the grand scheme of things. I wish this prompt came at a time I were feeling grateful, happy or hopeful. I sent an honest text and prompted another verbal slaughter from the man that was lodged in my heart for far longer than he deserved. Wiping tears away, I forwarded them to my Fancy and she said it best.

F- Ouch.

So forgive me while my bleeding heart drips on the keys as I type. I’m not happy and it’s incredibly hard to wipe the grief off today.

What makes me happy?

  1. My Fancy Best Girl. I regularly refer to her as my red headed security blanket and when I count my blessings I count her a dozen times, then a dozen more. This has been the hardest year and when my whole world tilts on its axis and I’m drowning, she reminds me who I am and why there’s not a soul in the world worth sacrificing that for.
  2. Exercise. This one will forever shock me, but I have finally found the magic behind sweating to the point of nausea. I like the sting of sore muscles that are getting stronger and if you can’t sleep, nothing knocks your miserable ass out like a few miles on the elliptical machine. CrossFit was too expensive and I had to quit, but it’s only inspired me to workout more at home. Misery loves sweat, trust me.
  3. Books. I stopped reading for myself when the Dumpling was born and it’s only in the last 6 months that I’ve picked them back up again. I’m too busy for a vacation and my personal life has been nothing short of prison, so Harry Potter it is. I forgot how much peace you can find when you escape in a few hundred well-worn  pages.
  4. Music. Yeah… some of it’s crippling and the tears running down my cheeks say this may not actually be one that should make the list right now, but even when you’re crying you’re at least feeling SOMETHING. Numb is worse than sad and there’s definitely no shortage of sadness motivating my playlist. I love showtunes, Top 40 and 90’s love songs, but Etta James is saving my soul these days.
  5. Mr. Dick Appointment. Bless his smoking hot heart, sometimes what you really need is a hot youngster to fuck the devastation and memories right out of you. He’s like an animated sex toy at my beck and call. I adore my vibrator but it can’t rip my clothes off and pull my hair. I sent him a text the other night, letting him know I was leaving the door unlocked and going to bed. I was tired, inspired and hopeful. My alarm clock will forever disappoint me after that. Lord have mercy… he reminds me exactly why I’m single and worth so much more than feeling sad. I wish I could clone him and hand him out.

What makes me happy, changes regularly. What makes me sad, has been the same damn man for too long. My children keep me going, my family sustains me and this list of favorites keeps me smiling when I’m more inclined to cry.

 

Day 3: Describe 3 legitimate fears you have and how they became fears.

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I’m a huge true crime junkie and listen to farrrrrr too much murder for a woman who lives alone. Oddly enough, I don’t worry about being murdered as much as I worry about something happening to someone I love. I’ve read this prompt three times and realized that my fears are basically trivial and not terribly… scary.

This requires a little more soul searching and a little more time spent delving into the scary stuff… those dark areas of my heart that I try not to give much light to.

It’s been a year of loss in my life. I’ve buried too many friends and let some friendships fall by the wayside in being overwhelmingly depressed. I have to admit that my biggest fear is being stuck in this sad place instead of having enough love for myself to want to climb out of the swamp.

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The world lost a truly incredible man this week. Kirk Miller was a beloved member of my community and a dear friend. His son played at my house as a little kid and my heart is in my throat as I realize for the umpteenth time that “I’m sorry for your loss is a hollow sentiment when it feels like your entire universe has imploded. Kirk made the world beautiful, with no expectation of profit or success. He lived a quiet, remarkable life that filled the world with beauty. I spend so much time going through the motions, folding the same laundry, scrubbing the same floors, making the same recipes… etc. Having someone so quietly spectacular leave the world so suddenly, reminds me that I need to light a fire under my own exceptional life. I worry that I waste so much time doing the necessary stuff and focusing on the things that are missing in my life, that I neglect the truly important things I should be more focused on. I absolutely fear the idea of running out of time having wasted all of mine on stupid shit that makes me unhappy.

I worry most about being in a situation where I can’t protect my children. I have two over the age of 18 and I’d bet my life they’ve been in some sketchy situations that would turn my hair grey. I don’t even want to know. I have my own scary list that would send my poor mother to her grave early.  Yesterday was the 8 year anniversary of my stupid ass flying to Puerto Rico for a first date with (surprise!) someone else’s husband.  I’m lucky  my mother didn’t lock me in a box after that and I was in my thirties. I suppose after having put myself in such an awful situation that gave no respect to the hard work she put in to get me to that point, I gained a fresh perspective about the value of my life.  It’s one thing to lay my own neck on the line… it’s quite another to have my children in danger and not be able to help them. I’d rather fly to meet that moron again before watching any of them do something so stupid and reckless. I can hardly stomach the thought of something happening to any of my beloved trio, let alone in my presence.

Then we have the damn vermin. Those awful mice. My biggest childhood fear and the source of all my screaming. I grew up in a 100 year old farm house and the attic was my bedroom. My dad was a chef, not a builder, and his idea of making the attic into bedrooms was nailing some drywall up to the existing lathe and plaster walls. I spent much of my childhood listening to those awful creatures chew on the chalky white drywall, as they tried to get back into the rest of the house. I regularly woke up with mouse turds on my bed in the morning. My sister slept with her mouth open (shudder) and I was forever afraid she was going to have one climb in. Ack. As an adult… I have less patience and more fear than ever. Their shitty little descendants have recently decided to use the ceiling above my bed (my very own attic in my house) to run laps in the night. I haven’t slept well in weeks because I wake up wide eyed, horrified… and contemplating putting the Dumpling in the car with our cats and dogs, lighting a match and burning the whole damn thing down.

I grew up with my mama telling me that many fears were borne of fatigue and loneliness. I have learned a million times over how very right she is. I had a phone call from a beloved friend last night and it broke my heart wide open. She told me about the man she loved, who worked overtime to hurt and disrespect her. He has one foot in her life and one foot in someone else’s, and the saddest thing to hear was how much love and understanding she has to offer someone who can’t be troubled to worry about her feelings or how destructive his selfishness is. With no thought to her own shattered heart, she told me how much she hoped it would work out and how happy she was to see him again. My greatest fear is that I encouraged such lunacy or fed the idea that disinterested men, change. They never do. If he can shit on your heart from the beginning, he will never turn into that guy your friend’s and family hope you’ll have in your life and heart. Nobody ever says “When we met he was a miserable fuckboy but now he’s an incredible husband and father.” As sad as it is and as hard as it is to reconcile that you could possibly love someone who could so flagrantly disregard you… it’s just the way it is.

Fear keeps you in places you shouldn’t stay. Fear borne of hard lessons gives your heart too much fuel to keep fighting losing battles.

I wish all of mine were as easy to deal with as mice.

Day 1: 20 random facts about me.

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  1. I spend more on yarn than makeup. Always will. While I realize that I should probably care more about learning how to make myself pretty.. I just don’t care AT ALL. I’d rather be ugly, with mittens.
  2. I apologize for everything. It makes one of my sisters yell at me… and you should hear her flip out when I apologize to her for her being mad at me for apologizing. Oof… I can’t help it. I’m still learning to like myself. (Sorry).
  3. I can’t wear mismatched socks. I don’t understand those of you who can.
  4. I don’t eat eggs because I had a violent stepfather who forced me to eat them until I vomited. He had a monumental effect on my life because I’m so careful not to inflict the same life long suffering on my children or those that are in my life. Don’t like it? Don’t eat it. I will cut a bitch defending your right not to.
  5. With a Catholic foundation I built for myself and Mormon roots that run deep into the heart of Utah… I am an atheist. I would love to believe in God, Jesus and all their friends… but I’m pragmatic and have suffered enormous trauma. Two things that make faith a whole lot less available. I have a serious weakness for a faithful man though. I don’t know exactly why, other than the sight of a man on his knees in prayer makes mine buckle. Go figure.
  6. Thread count is my religion. Call me shallow AFTER you sleep on some 1000 thread count Egyptian cotton. I dare you.
  7. I can’t love a man who hates tomatoes.
  8. Same goes for men who love Android phones. I hate them and I want to see those three dots from the man I adore. I’m an apple girl, through and through.
  9. Brewers yeast on your popcorn is not optional if you’re eating it at my house. It’s NOT called nutritional yeast, either. I’ve eaten it since I was born and this whole “nutritional” trend annoys me. I will re-label any jar that refers to it incorrectly.
  10. I quit CrossFit and I’m heartbroken over it. Between the $334 a month (for an hour a week) it costs and missing work, I was going bankrupt trying to be healthier. I’m really proud of myself for transitioning my workouts to home and determined to stick to my goals, even if I have to light a fire under my own ass. It cost me $1200 to lose 10 pounds and I gained them all right back as soon as I started eating again. Live, learn and lift.
  11. My best friend is my therapist. I owe her my life and all the good things in it.
  12. I believe in love, marriage and building a life with someone. That has taken a decade and is still painful for me to admit. I fell in love for the first time in my adult life last year and it destroyed me a whole lot. I didn’t like who it turned me into and I spent a year working on my character so that I didn’t deliver the same thing to some poor unsuspecting man.
  13. I’m happy. I work really hard at it.
  14. I sincerely regret getting a puppy… but I know it will all work out in the long run. Commitment is challenging for me and adding more stress to my life was perhaps not the best idea I’ve ever had, but she’s such a big part of what helps me breathe instead of scream, laugh instead of cry and cling to that last tiny shred of faith I have.
  15. I’m afraid of a lot. This year is bringing a lot of ENORMOUS change and I’m learning to just have faith and keep walking forward. Where we land doesn’t matter as long as we are together when we get there, right?
  16. It’s 4:11 AM and I got up at 2 AM to write. I’ve lost my ability to sleep again. Virtually anything that disturbs my sense of peace and tranquility results in me being exhausted. Yay for undereye concealer.
  17. My son hasn’t spoken to me in 10 years. My mother and one sister have a relationship with him and that precludes me from really loving either of them as much as I’d like to. I’m just being honest and fallible. I don’t think I’ll ever hear from him again. I was a damn idiot 10 years ago and I don’t blame him for bailing. I would’ve too if I could have.
  18. I’m stupid dramatic when it comes to my feelings… of which I have too many.
  19. I can drive anything, learned to fly a plane when I was 16 and use Google to fix or do anything I haven’t learned yet. I am incapable of asking for help until the whole dumpster is on fire.
  20. At 43, I’m still absolutely fucking things up left and right, but I come from a place of peace and reliability now, where I used to have such a chip on my shoulder and expect so much more from the universe than I was ever promised or “owed.” I don’t hitch my wagon to anything… I carry it myself.

Did I really agree to this? 🙂