dale dates a retard.

swingin' in to costco yesterday and see that their gas is at about $2.40 a gallon, suh-WEET! i'm thinking oh yea AND i have a 10-cent per gallon discount on account, so i pull in and get in line. waiting, waiting, waiting - about 20 minutes later (after i've quietly bitched out everybody in front of me for not knowing how to just gas' n go - let's MOVE it people!) i'm up to the pump and it asks me for my costco card - comin right up - pop it in and it tells me again to insert my costco card. well shit - i just DID, but ok...try it again. nope tells me to swipe my costco card. third time it locks me out and tells me to call the attendant. completely aware of the line formed behind me and the mad mugging being thrown my way, i hand my card to dale and ask for help. he starts to insert the card, looks at it and says "uhm...they don't take Von's Club Cards at costco, derrrrr."

that was bad right? i can own it, trying to insert my Von's grocery store club card three times at costco and not noticing was pretty dumb. it was very obviously brought to my attention that i was not at Von's right? so, the costco attendant comes over and clears the pump (dale did not tell him what i had done, although i could see him struggling very hard) and i insert my costco club card and credit card to get the gas going. standing there while the tank is filling, i look down at the price per gallon and think huh, it didn't give me the 10-cent discount. i seriously thought about asking the costco attendant to come back over and give him the what-for about it, but decided i'd just get the discount next time. so, i finish filling my tank with costco gas, smile and wave to all the pissed off people behind me in line and go park in the costco parking lot. d and i are just starting to enter the store when, still puzzled as to why i didn't get my discount, i say to him, "OH! duh...my gas discount must have expired on oct 31...that's why i didn't get it. bummer." i'm such a maroon. it still hadn't occurred to me that costco doesn't give per gallon discounts r-tard. you can't earn these. they don't exist. they do however, give them out at Von's along with that club card i was trying to jam into the pump a minute ago. jeebus,  can you imagine if i'd actually thrown down with the costco attendant about wanting MY DAMN DISCOUNT?!?

i think i cannot even begin to fathom just how much this man must love me.

just say no to crack.

picture this: it's a lovely 90 degree day last weekend and dell and i had been out yard-sale-ing. we had borrowed my neighbor's pickup so that we could use it and the suburban to haul home a bunch of furniture we picked up. the suburban had all the windows rolled up and was stuffed to the gills with cushions and a whole mess of other carp - i couldn't have added a kid if even i had a wild hair and wanted to. the sub is parked across the street from my house and we have just finished unloading the pickup. while d goes to return it to the neighbor, i cross the street and hop into my car. as soon as the door clicked it hit me---my door handle is broken and i have to roll down my winder to open it from the outside---shit. left the keys in the garage, can't roll down the window. did i mention the cushions? and the closed windows? oy. i start to pound on the window trying to get d's attention as he's walking to the pickup - nope, can't hear me. still picturing, stay with me? after sitting there for a couple of minutes debating on whether or not i really wanted dale to come back and find me a prisoner of my own stupidity - being held captive by my car and 2 tons of cushiony material, i decided i'll rescue myself, dammit. i popped the rear window with a switch on the dash (thank God i got THAT fixed awhile back) and army-crawled across the top of the cushions, scraping my back along the headliner of the car while big booty mountain switched on the occasional reading light along the way. by the time i got to the window i was all sweaty, my hair was absolutely everywhere and my sans-a-belts had scooched down my hips far enough to show butt-crack. had anyone been standing there when i popped out, i imagine ace ventura fighting his way out of the elephant's ( rhino?) ass would have come to mind. sweet sweet freedom. now, do i tell dale of my mortifying adventure while he was chatting up the neighbor or do i keep it all to myself.

myself, it is.

she's just always been there.

my grams had a stroke a few weeks ago and is in a rehab place for the "elderly"...not a good story. apparently she's had a few of them and just didn't know it. hasn't really been impaired in any way except maybe mentally a bit, but she's my grams - who would really know? seems they are giving her some anti-psychotic drugs that she doesn't need that are, in fact making her psychotic and mean. i'm sorry - this really shouldn't be funny, but the thought of my little hunched over gram hanging onto a bathroom safety bar for dear life, granny panties down around her ankles, kicking at her attendants' shins to keep them from bothering her while she trying to have her "BM" (her very pc and sensitive way of saying shit) cracks me up. she's always been a feisty old bird, but i guess she's become a real gem these days.

i don't have the whole story (of course...no one in my family can GATHER a whole story, let alone actually relay it to someone else.) but my understanding is that "they" (the professionals) believe that she is showing early signs of alzheimer's and dementia (again, this is my gram...she's truly been weird, feisty and quirky for as long as i can remember) and are treating her as such. the drugs they are giving her are making her a bit hard to control so they then sedate her with more crap. what the hell, seriously? i'm getting the idea that this isn't all that uncommon.

the problem (well aside from all the bruised shins and my poor gram's sanity) is that she got a wild hair and decided to up and move to humboldt county a couple of years ago and is three hours from the closest of her family. 3 hours - what a ding-dong. my mom can be a tad unstable at best, has put in so much time taking care of my grams and cannot afford to pay attention (which is rather important when driving the roads to humboldt county); my aunt works herself to the bone just to afford living in an un-electrified cabin on a hillside somewhere in the depths of the oregon coast about 5 hours from my gram; my uncle lives in the sacramento area (about 6 hours away from her) and has the stability, but not the time, plus i wonder if he isn't in denial about my grams health and just can't seem to deal. her grandkids are scattered around the state and have their own dysfunctional lives to attend to. this leaves my little gram all alone and probably scared spitless that she will die alone among all these mean people that JUST WON'T LET HER SLEEP.

ugh. have i gotten to the dysfunctional parts yet?

i can't imagine my life without her...she has always lived close, she has always been a major part of my upbringing, she has always been the one that "got" me...even when i was pretty "ungettable". we were raised in a home 50 yards from her and my gramps - she's just always been there. she's funny, she's quirky, she's insatiably curious about sex; she's sharp as a tack and as smart as a whip; she's warm and sweet and bakes yummy things (well except that period just after they found out my gramps was diabetic and then she resdesigned EVERY tasty thing she's ever made into a nasty "diatetic" abomination - it passed along with my gramps, God rest his soul); she prolongs the ending of a visit by beginning a batch of strawberry jam "just for you" JUST as you are loading the car to leave; she has the balls to giggle and excuse herself when she cropdusts you (at nose level, of course because she doesn't want you to have to get up from the ever-so-comfie futon she's just sure is the best thing since sliced bread - even though EVERYONE jumps to their feet when she starts to walk anywhere because they know what is coming) and your silly kids that can't stifle a snort (but almost die trying as they really don't want to inhale "that"), as she shuffles to the kitchen insisting that you have some "fresh homemade" five-week old fig newtons that she traded some fudge for at the old-folks' home bake-sale "just yesterday" - uhhhh, yea...i don't care how much milk you drink, those never go down well - especially after that gas thing.

my point is that she is my grams, i love her dearly and it pains me to know that she is surrounded by people who don't "get" her.

i'll take it with salt, no butter please.

my 8-1/2 year old grill is in a lovely, please-pay-attention-to-me-at-least-18-hours-a-day-or-else-i-will-loudly-interject-some-random-word-into-the-conversation-that-you-are-having-with-someone-else stage.

one particular word happens to be the family code for it now because while visiting my gram (who is old and really cannot tolerate sharp loud noises) a couple of months ago, my girl was evidently not getting enough attention and just belted out, as loud as she could...

"POPCORN! HEY, I WANT POPCORN!!!"she interrupted approximately 3 different conversations that were going on around her, without her. by the look my sweet old gram gave brynn, i could tell she totally wanted to say "what the fuck is WRONG with you, over?"

at any given time, the attention-getter could be a loud noise, a random word, an action, a statement, an article of clothing - anything that effectively stops all surrounding activities and draws all attention instantaneously to you. doing this in our house this now causes everyone within earshot to stop what they are doing, scream "POPCORN!!!" at you and then go back to whatever they were doing before being so rudely drawn off-task. this simultaneously gives you the attention that you so pathetically crave - obviously to the point that you don't even care if peeps get pissed off at you in your attempt to get it - and tells you to bugger off all in a neat little one-word package.

brynn (the one who does this the most) generally refers to some sort of food that she wants; braden has revealed his "popcorn" as a huge (and oh, do i mean huge - kid's running 6'2", a buck-sixty) full-on flop to the floor at your feet accompanied by a loud grunt; and bennett happens to be currently perching one of those personalized, stitched pirate's hats from disneyland on the top of his head, one that apparently used to belong to some swarthy, tiny-headed, badass named Captain Carl.

oy. you can't make this shit up.

pics from the coast...

here we go again...

i was asked by ms b and her dad about the possibility of adopting another pup and the one sentence i did utter was: "maybe i'll think consider it, if it was house-trained and if it was a girl pup." the one thing i didn't say was: "no."

after a lucy-mourning period of approximately 4 days, d-dad and the girl brought home winston. sigh. winston is a male dog, approximately one year old and very much NOT house-broken.

so goes the story of my life. now i realize he isn't the most handsome boy - he has a serious underbite, he has a really meaty butt and a slightly little head (i'm thinking weiner/terrier/chihuahua mix maybe)...but he's quiet and very eager to please and seems pretty smart. he also just happens to be a remarkable camper...the shot would have been a good one if i'd cut off the camp-coffee after say, 7 cups. heh heh heh.

but, but, but...

friday morning and things are settling...

company left yesterday afternoon, after a grand week of laughs, love and relaxation.

my dot seems to be doing better every day. i think she feels bad about healing, as she mentions how she misses lucy constantly, but just in a passing kind of way. like it hits her that her pup is gone and oops she had been having fun, so she'll take a moment to kind of sigh and say, "mom, i really miss looby" and then jump into the pool and go back to being the sweet carefree girl that is my daughter.

she has begun "just looking" at puppies on-line. God, kill me now. no, really. just kill me...i SO much don't want to go through another year of raising a puppy, but how do i tell her no? anyone?

because normal is anything but...

in the easy life, one's dog doesn't always die a quiet, peaceful death after living a nice long life consisting of beloved car rides, chasing mourning doves and snoring on the couch without a care in the world. no...because nothing is "normal" in this particular life that leads me from one day to the next. here, my dog dies at barely one year old, sprawled out on the garage floor, strewn garbage around her, with her head stuffed as far as she could get it into an empty beef jerky bag. i so completely shit you not. i'll fill you in on the story, as sad as it is, rather quickly as the easy life waits for no one and i have out of town guests due to arrive in approximately 6 hours. i have a million things on my mental to-do list...the least of which is picking up approximately 5 cat food laced horks that are scattered about my house in neat little mushy shit-looking piles. on my carpet, of course - easy life cats never urp on the tile. got home from isabella yesterday around noon-thirty after picking up the kids from their dad's house. go to back my car into the garage, as i have a ton of shit to unload, and see two of the three dogs run out into the driveway in a happy slobbering greeting. hmmm...big surprise, lucy seems to be busy in the garage eating something. lucy is ALWAYS busy eating something. she lives her life to eat. she is the top scrounge in a world of really scroungy things. i jokingly ask the kids, myself, whomever if she's freakin dead or what - pup better move, cause mama's backing up. nope, pup doesn't move. pup is definitely otherwise engaged. oh look at that, pup has her head stuffed into a bag of jerky. what the fuck, over? it seems that pup has forsaken her very life for what may or may not have been a sliver of beef jerky left in the bag. she is in a sort of crouched down position, legs sprawled in all four directions and she just looks like she just fell asleep while munching away on a delectable, forbidden treat that she, and she alone, managed to discover while rummaging through a bag of garbage that i was in too much of a hurry to toss into the main can last friday on my way out of town. my assumption, after going over and over it in my head, is that she was so intent on cleaning out the bag that she was unaware of the carbon monoxide building up in her little scavenger lungs. maybe thinking "hmmm...this was truly delicious, i'm feeling a bit like a little nap right now. oh yea...right here, right noww-zzzzzzzzz..." pup is now and forever running through the fields of doggie heaven, where pups get to eat whatever and however much they want to. i sure hope pup is fucking happy and oblivious to the mess in my back seat of my car that is my daughter. there is nothing i can do to help my child. she sobs. and sobs. she wraps herself around me as tight as she can and gasps out things like "i just never thought she'd die so soon." and "mom, do you think God will let her eat jerky in Heaven?" i vaguely hear jonsie saying to me, "uhm, mom...i think that was my jerky bag." omg. this isn't really happening, is it? because the way i deal with death seems to be running from it, i simply close the garage door, gather up my child and take her into the house where we rock back and forth and cry. disneyland dad has been summoned, because if nothing else, he is awesome in a pinch that involves a stiff and his near-hysterical daughter. he arrives in tears feeling that if he had only gone back to pick lucy up the night before... they had taken her to the dog-park sunday afternoon and brought her back to the house so they could go for a swim and not have to leave her in the apartment by herself. the plan was to return before dinner and take her back with them. but, starving and exhausted from swimming, they later decide that they would just leave her at the house to play with the other two dogs as ms b would be back home by noon the next day. it's all good. to wrap up this really really sad story, the girl insisted on keeping a sleepover date with her friend alysha because, in her words, "...i think i really need to be distracted, mom." omgomgomg. my heart is just shattering into a million pieces for this child. upon my return from delivering her to her friend's house, i discover that mike, with the help of brader, has already buried lucy with her baby, her bone and her ball out by the pool - it becomes my understanding that braden had to convince him that burying the jerky bag with her was NOT "the right thing to do". thank you God that this man is the father of my children. he has built a crude marker to put by the grave and we go out to say our last goodbyes to the stupid little dog that gave her life for what i hope was an actual bit of beef jerky. to think that she went through all of that for just a bit of juice is just too sad.

in the heat of the night...

found this way cool old Royal typewriter at the thrift store the other day, brought it home and set it up on my way cool desk that i found at the same thrift store. the desk is across from my bed next to a window in my room... sleeping peacefully at around 3am tho nights ago when my cat decides to begin working on her kitty-memoirs. tap-tap-tap-click-click. tap-tap-click-tap. click-tap-click-tap-tap-tap. WTF...are you serious right now? she is tapping on the typewriter keys - walking over them, pushing them with her nose? i yell at her to stop and throw a pillow at her. i hear her bell tinkling as she jumps to the ground, so i know i startled her...hopefully for good. cheese an rice...GOOD NIGHT! tap-tap. click. OMG, what a snot! i yell at her and chuck another pillow in the direction of the desk as i roll over, finding myself face-to ass with the cat. hunhh? if she's right next to me...? OMG my new typewriter is HAUNTED!!! uhhh...yea, that actually went through my head just before i reached for the light to discover that i had left the window open and what i was hearing wasn't, in fact, my brilliantly gifted cat, but the wind tapping the blind against the sill. duh. i knew it all along. for rice sake, how have i lived this long without being officially committed?

baby, baby don't get hooked on me...

where has the time gone anyway? ok, so it's been awhile since i blogged and instead of wasting space giving a buncha bs reasons why, i'll just move forward with a quick little story that i call: "some of my friends are shitheads..."

background check: i have cockatiels that lay eggs every once in awhile - well, one of them does for certain (she's hot for me - what can i say?), not sure about the other one - i'm assuming that they are both females, as i've never actually seen them have bird-sex and the eggs have always been sterile. anyway, she lays them and then stresses out over them for weeks, so for shits and giggles, i usually put a nesting box in there when someone starts to lay and whoever's laid it goes a bit bonkers for the next couple of weeks continuing to lay eggs, rolling them around with her beak to get them in the perfect spot and then sitting on them and puffing up whenever anyone comes near her nest. eventually i take out the nesting box, fry up the eggs and feed them to the dogs, then all in our little bird-world is right again.

really wanting to raise baby cockatiels, i borrowed Al, a cantankerous male cockatiel, for a couple of weeks in the hopes that his presence would get my girls going and we could have some babies. Al was just spitting mean. had to wear leather gloves to rescue him whenever he jumped his dumb ass off of the cage because he bites - asswipe. anyway, the girls didn't seem to care much about Al one way or another...towards the end of his stay, one of them started sticking her hoo-ha into the air and most definitely begging for some lovin'. unfortunately we had at least one or ten of many possible roadblocks: maybe there are gay cockatiels out there and i found at least one; maybe the girls just weren't sexy enough for Al; maybe Al was a typical male-creature and couldn't read the oh-so-obvious "give me babies, please" signs and thought she was just bitching at him; maybe she was just bitching at him and that rendered him a limp noodle as he just couldn't be expected to actually perform under those stressful conditions; or maybe...just maybe my girls didn't care for Al's big i'm-a-bad-ass attitude. as i said, could have been many things. regardless, i reluctantly took Al back to his real home in isabella and resigned myself to no baby birds.

upon returning from the weekend, i found an egg very ungracefully plopped at the bottom of the birdcage. GASP! could it be? could Al have been the stud i had hoped for? i need to get busy and get her nesting box ready! yay, i may have babies after all! whoo-hoo!

long story short, i had trouble creating my usual nesting box, as i have given them a new cage recently...so off to petsmart to get a "real" nesting box. still excited! bring it home, stress everybody out setting it up and then sit back to watch what happens. mama bird gets in the box and i can hear her pushing around the egg - back and forth, back and forth it rolls until she gets it where she wants it and sits on it, all puffy and protective. waiting, waiting - should have more eggs soon - tap, tap, tap. nothing. week goes by. shit, should have more eggs. mama is sitting plenty, but not laying more eggs. hmmm, egg does look a bit bigger than usual, maybe that's all she could do this time...maybe she put all her eggs in one basket, heh heh heh. well, guess there's just the one this time. that's cool, better than none - now let's wait to see if it's fertile.

every couple of days i check the egg with a flashlight in the pantry. should soon be able to see activity in there...you know veins and such. getting kinda impatient. nothing. tap, tap, tap. hmmm...been about 10 days - should definitely be seeing something by now. sigh. guess i just wasn't destined to have a baby Al after all. brynn still wants to bring in her friends to look at the cute little (kinda big) egg, no problem - hurry cause i'm gonna toss it. kiki from next door comes in all oohing and awwing over the egg and says, "huh, it looks a lot like that mourning dove egg my mom found laying out in the street and put in here a couple of weeks ago when you were gone - weird huh? i guess they all look the same..."

bitch.

restless nights and busy days

CRAP! i have been sleeping like shit lately. i get these lovely night sweats that can be controlled with my clothing and bedding choices, but figuring out what the formula is taking the weather into account is a real bitch. i wake up freezing me arse off and then have a hard time getting back to sleep afterwards. ok enough whining about that.

moving on...

had a ton o' company for about 7 days last week and i think i'm still recuperating, LOL! my house hasn't fully recovered either. but whatever. i had a blast and got to do some quality visiting with my homegrill leaf and a couple of other humboldt honeys along with all of their kids. loads of beer and margis, good food, late nights and side-splitting laughter. my gut still aches and i'm a laugher, just imagine.

my sub took it's second dump since the first of the year. crap-cicles on a stick, this bill was $2200 and i STILL don't have permission to unload it. Disney says he cannot afford another car payment on top of his dumbass BMW payment of almost $700/month. what a douche. i'm driving around in my gas-guzzler (spending well over $100/week in gas), 132K mile suburban that costs easily $3000/year in repairs and maintenance, while he cruises in his, completely impractical, manliness-compensating $60,000 luxury car. this is an ongoing argument with us. the sub is paid off with very little resale value left. he says drive it until it dies (hopefully this doesn't occur in the #3 lane of I-5 at a speed of 80 mph hauling not only my kids, but loads of others as well.). i say unload it in while it is running well (because it will definitely NOT run well again soon) and still holds some trade-in value. but, being that i'm "not good at school", it's understandable that my view is completely stupid and rather womanish, and therefore begs to be discarded without any thought. damn chodesmoker.

what else you ask? let's see - trying to build a fucking website that i have absolutely no clue about. godaddy's custie service rocks...i've made mistake after mistake and they just plod me along telling me what to do rather than where to go, LOL! i see the light at the end of the tunnel after being down for a couple of weeks now. hopefully i can get my traffic back. ah well, it's all good.

been working on a project for fleck using one of her RoundMaps. it must be perfect so it's got me a bit jumpy - but i'm liking how it's shaping up. i have to keep walking out and then back in again for fresh perspectives. one thing i can always count on fleck for (aside from the constant flow of her 'queen's bullshit) is never-failing inspiration with her sketches as well as her artwork. she now has her new book, PageMaps for Scrapbooking, out there.  i know a few peeps still waiting for the bookstores to get more in stock. you go, grillfriend! check her awesomeness at www.pagemaps.com.

gotta run, brats need me. sigh. i keep telling them that food is way overrated

doin' the rat-trap boogie.

you know those neat garden window seats that some people have - miss england, you probably have one - where you can sit in your house and watch birds and butterflies and maybe a squirrel or two, filling their little bellies from your carefully tended feeders and flowers? the kind that you migrate towards when you have had a stressful day and need some peace, or maybe early in the morning when everything is quiet and you reflect on what a joy life really is as you sip your tea?

yea, i don't have one of those. what *I* have is a window that (i USED to think was neat because there is this beautiful blue potato bush right outside it that is trimmed to create a type of awning along my sidewalk and that gives wonderful shade in the summer and is nature's umbrella in the winter.) looks out upon a previously undetected nest of carnage.

been having rat issues again - they really don't bother me (GASP!) for the most part. i hear them frolicking in the attic seemingly happy, going about their little rat lives, raising their little rat families. about 2 weeks ago, braden looked particularly tired so i asked how he slept. he informs me that once he finally let the sounds of the rats playing lull him to sleep, he slept like the dead. well, until they woke him up again at about 3am with what must have been a family reunion of some sort - like maybe a birthday party where EVERYone they had ever known showed up. real nice shawna, you freakin redneck. get rid of the fucking rats already.

i called my stripper/pest control man (true fact, and found only in the easy life) and told him i was having problems again. he came out yesterday and set about a bazillion traps in my attic and outside along my fence. his explanation for why i have them has always been because i have trees close to the house which they use as an overground railroad to gain access to my roof. (some of you may remember that i literally watched a rat scale the side of my house once, so i know the trees make their lives a little easier, but those fuckers pretty much go wherever the hell they want to.) his solution, cut back the trees. ok, haven't done that (went out one day to do it - true story - and found that about 18 billion bees had discovered my acacia tree was in full bloom...yea, didn't trim that day.) but i plan on doing it soon.

cut to last night. while i'm happily cleaning my crap room, my phone rings and it's my friend stacy next door telling me to look outside my window. i pull up the blinds and immediately see her ENTIRE family crowded in their window looking at me. weird, i know, but, for now, the easy life takes place in freakin' suburbia with the neighbors literally 10 feet away. so she called me to inform me of a visitor snacking on something in the tree between our houses. they are watching this big-ass rat eating, gnawing, whatever right outside my window. nice, huh? we watched him for a bit, oohing and awwing over how cute he was (*wink*) and then decided we'd scare him off. he ran straight up the tree to my roof and disappeared. few minutes later, another rat, same spot, ran onto my roof. wth?

i figured there was something nibbly and delicious in there and dammit i was gonna find out what it was. armed with a stick, a step stool and the eyes of the neighbor's watching over my head for any other rats, i started diggin' around in the plant to discover what appears to be the shell of a bullfrog - bullfrogs don't have shells you say? this one was pretty damn dead and leathery, actually barely distinguishable as a frog. i also found some feathers, about a pound of olive pits (tree very close by) and a buncha rat poop. this is apparently the banquet hall for the neighborhood rodents...and right outside my window even!

i'm happy to report that the traps have yielded several monstrously huge rats in the last week - in and out of my house. in fact, stripper boy is out there right now dancing around in his g-string happily collecting rat carcasses, whilst i sit and enjoy the quiet that is my house at this particular moment in time.

ah...the easy life

it's a great day - to wipe some kitty's ass...

anyone else spend 20 minutes this morning trying to cut fresh shit out of the ass-fur of a wildcat?

no?  what a surprise...just me.

bitch.

i have three dogs. sutter is old. and blind and deaf. but overall, she's healthy as a freaking puppy. she's a great dog, but has developed uhm...shall we call it "selective hearing"? i have buddy (aka ASSMUNCH) who is an obese, highly anti-social kennel fighter, but super sweet to people. then there is lucy. lucy is still a pup, so i keep getting told to cut her some slack...she has my neighbors pissed off at me because she's a barker ---no, she BAYS. why in God's name didn't someone tell me that beagles were BAYERS before i got her? she's really cute and really smart, but stubborn as a mule on steroids. also, she's a runner. little bitch.

yesterday morning dale and i were getting ready to make a home depot run for a few things i needed to fix up a few things around the house. i'm inside cleaning up and he's outside looking at my back gate. the door opens and he pops his cute little head in and rather timidly says..."hey sweets, can i get a little help rounding up three dogs, please?"

greht. just fooking greht.

all three pups are about halfway down my road - now i live on a cul-de-sac inside a development surrounded by pretty busy streets. only two ways in or out. my dogs are heading for way out #1. fortunately i was dressed (things like this usually happen to me in my jams), but still had my slips on - i can run in them, but i run like a special person; incredibly special. i yell for my dogs and the only that stops is buddy (have i mentioned what a good boy he is, why yes he is a such a good boy.) lucy is beside herself, drunk with the freedom, going wherever her stupid nose takes her. sutter has her head down and is making a beeline for absolutely anywhere but here. the good dog came right to me and dale put him back in the yard, the two bad dogs might have glanced at me for a second and quickly dismissed any ideas of willingly returning home - i can see it in their eyes - the moment that they decide the pleasure will definitely be worth the pain.

i am at the circle-drive entrance to the neighborhood and the bad dogs have stopped to sniff and pee, i'm gaining ground all the while yelling at both of them to "COME!" i get down on my knees on the sidewalk and start being as sweet as i can be to get lucy to come. kissy noises, patting the ground, sweet baby talk, bribes of prime rib and broccoli - you know, whatever it takes. WHOO-HOO! it works, she sees me down on her level and is so overjoyed that i don't sound mad anymore, that she's a running up the sidewalk towards me as fast as she can go. no wait, now she is going as fast as she can. huh...still picking up speed - she must really want a hug from me and to tell me how sorry she is for being a bad bad girl! racing right at me and, i swear not 3 feet in front of me, she cuts just enough to her left to shoot past me at, oh i dunno, maybe 73 mph? shawna, with absolutely no mind to what the hell the neighbors are seeing and absolutely no fear for her own safety, lunges to her right as hard as she can from her knees, right arm outstretched and in slo-mo she grazes (yes, grazes) the little snot's back with her fingertips...in a flash i see lucy's mouth wide fucking open in absolute, complete and utterly hysterical ecstasy. as i land with an "OOOOOOOF!" flat out on my side on the neighbor's lawn, slippers having flown off long ago, baseball cap still laying in the middle of the street, i swear i heard her laughing. [who'll be laughing when the garbage truck pancakes your ass into the concrete in about 3 seconds from now missy? hmmm...yep, pretty sure it won't be you."]

oh wait, no that wasn't lucy laughing...that was my neighbor stacy (the one who's hubs is pissed off), who was heading out for a walk, only to be treated to the site of me rolling around (for no apparent reason i'm sure, from her point of view) on someone else's lawn. she crouches down and calls for lucy, who joyfully runs to her and leaps into her arms, all lickey and happy and cute. omg, i swear, this dog is going to be the death of herself. you'll read all about it and IT WON'T BE MY FAULT.

now, PRIOR and UNRELATED to this incident, i was getting her a static (read: SHOCK!) collar to help curb her incessant barking at anything that appears to be any different from anything else she might have seen at any time in her life before. (again, with the pissed off neighbor) so, needless to say - i'm doubly determined. in fact, give me extra batteries and lots of extra shocker remotes - i'm handing them out to all my neighbors.

heh heh heh.

miss morgan

December 12, 2013

revisiting this, as i do every year around this time - a few thoughts occur to me:  the absolute worst thing (for me) in what you are about to read, the one thing that makes me literally sob every time i read it is the vision of her tear-stained cheeks as she lay sleeping.  knowing now what she went through with that spinal tap, not understanding - just feeling pain and not being able to find her mama's eyes, arms or voice anywhere...i left her alone with strangers that hurt her.  my one real regret is not being there for her at that moment.  it wrenches my heart and breaks me all over again.  still - after 23 years.

(February 15, 2008)

today is the day my oldest daughter turns 18 years old. holy shit - think of the access to cool clothes i would have had...

(Friday, December 21, 1990):

i woke up to the sounds of my little girl "talking" to herself in her crib - she was sporting a bit of a snotty nose as she had had a few ear infections in the last month or so and one was just hanging on. never one to whine for long, her mood was as cheery and as anticipatory as ever. it was a few days before Christmas and we (and i use this term very loosely) had made cookies the night before and had them all wrapped up to give the other few kids at daycare. it was 8 am and we were off to lucille's house and my office. i had come to terms with having to leave her with someone during the day so i could work. lucille hollingsworth was a very sweet white-haired 70ish grandma that loved everything about baby's - this chick was a howitzer too; all of the reservations i might have had about her age were loudly answered by her strength, her stamina and her zest for life. i hated that i had to leave her with ANYone, but morgan and i had developed a nice weekday schedule and where sometimes i simply fell asleep on the floor while she crawled all over me, we spent some yummy mom/girl time each evening after work.

as i remember it, work was uneventful except for the coolness of it being friday and the girl and i were going to wrap up our Christmas shopping and have a birthday dinner for my mom (her birthday was coming up on the 23rd) the following night. i got a call at about 2 pm from lucille saying that morgan didn't seem to be feeling well, she was running a fever but that she had taken some children's tylenol and was now sleeping. we decided she would call me back when she woke up and take it from there. as i mentioned, she was prone to ear infections and had been on antibiotics for what seemed like forever - fevers were definitely not unheard of with this kid. i ended up leaving work about 4pm when lucille said morgan had woken up but was still feeling crummy - i cleared it with "the boss" aka my MIL and off i went.


i don't remember a whole lot about that evening except we tried to read a book on the couch but she was too crabby to sit still, so i fed her and gave her a warm bath. she took more tylenol at about 6pm and she fell asleep in my arms around 7. i put her to bed and, for whatever reason, opened some peas (the things we remember) and ate them cold from the can as my dinner. i watched a bit of tv and talked to mike on the phone. things weren't going so well between us for various reasons, but it was Christmas and we had decided that he would come up from sacramento that night to spend the weekend. i remember thinking i wouldn't be surprised if he didn't show up until the next day, as he was out with friends when i talked to him at about 9pm. i fell asleep on the couch and my girl woke me up at about 11pm chatting to herself in her room. she was cool to the touch and seemed happy. i got her up and warmed a bottle for her. we snuggled for a bit and then i put her back in her bed and off i went to mine. thank God her fever had broken, we hadn't finished up our shopping, but still had a couple of days for that. also, i wouldn't have to call off the birthday dinner for my mom. mike still wasn't here when i went to bed around midnight.

i woke the next morning about 6am to a moaning sound accompanied by a bumping noise coming from morgan's room. i went to check her and found her on her back, kind of lolling her head back and forth, unaware that i was even there. she usually did this excited little dance when i went in to get her in the mornings, something was definitely wrong. i picked her up and she was still cool to the touch, but she was moaning as if her body just ached. i put her into my bed and called her pediatrician's office, told them she was acting kind of weird and to please have the doctor call me back as soon as possible, she knew of morgan's medical history and i figured she would be the best place to start. when she called me back about 15 minutes later, my daughter had seemed to be perking up a bit. i explained the situation from the previous day to her and she advised me, that even though she seemed to be feeling better, i should still head to the emergency room "just to be safe". ok, doctor's not freaked, i don't need to be but it's hard, i was shaken just didn't really know why...just gonna get her checked out, we'll be home for lunch - i pulled something out of the freezer to thaw, grabbed a blanket for my girl and off we went. looking back on it, i now know that her doctor was worried, just composed as to not instill any panic in me.

i remember vividly what an absolutely gorgeous day that saturday was shaping up to be. it was a clear, breezy, crisp day in late december...i remember thinking we could probably go to the park later if morgan was feeling better, well if i bundled her up really well because the wind might hurt her ears. i parked at the hospital, went around and collected her up out of the car seat and wrapped her chubby little legs in the blanket - jeez what a loser, i hadn't taken the time to get her dressed, she was in a diaper and t-shirt. i carried her into the emergency room and she just kind of laid her head on my shoulder, she had moaned a bit when i picked her up and she seemed to be falling asleep again. not one to freak out without a really good reason, i waited my turn in line at the emergency room window and calmly explained to the nurse that i wasn't sure what was wrong but that she had had a fever and just didn't seem to have much energy. previous visits had prepared me to sit and wait for the triage nurse to evaluate her and fit us in when possible, so as i prepared to do just that, the nurse reached over the counter and just took her from me. she urgently called to someone named laura and whisked my daughter back into the depths of the emergency room.

being a bit disoriented and still pretty clueless, i just stood there at the window. "laura" motioned for me to have a seat and told me she'd be right back. a few minutes later she called me back into the room and explained to me that morgan shouldn't be as listless as she was. she quickly asked me about any medications she was on and told me that they would need to run some tests. i could come back with her "for now". huh? what the hell does that mean? i found out rather quickly. after hooking morgan to a few monitor wires and taking numerous notes, the doctor said something to the nurse and i was whisked outside the privacy curtain where she urgently explained to me that they needed to run a particular test that was going to physically hurt my daughter quite a bit. they explained something that i had heard of before, but only as a joke about a rock band. i had no idea what a legitimate spinal tap was, what it was for, or why it would hurt my child but hey, they seemed to think she needed it - the only decision i needed to make was whether or not i wanted to be in the room when they did it. the nurse suggested that i should probably wait in the waiting room, that i would be rejoined with morgan as soon as they were finished with their test. she also asked if i wanted to talk to someone. i had no clue what this meant and said that i was fine.

confused and rattled, but not yet completely alarmed, i kind of wandered out to the waiting room to think about what the hell was happening. i was all alone. i had called my mom and morgan's dad, craig to tell them where we were and that i didn't have any other information, but maybe they should come down so the doctor's could explain it, and i sat down to wait. that's when the nun and the priest walked in and sat on either side of me; that's also when the first of the real fear began to creep into my heart. within minutes i would begin to process the very high possibility that my life was more than likely about to be turned upside down. what i would fail to process was the probability that my world would be completely shattered before the morning was over.

i don't remember the nun or the priest actually telling me what i should be worried about, i only remember them asking me if i wanted to pray. uhm...ok? never having been incredibly religious, and certainly not catholic - they made me nervous. they were so serious and i still had no clue why they didn't have anything better to do than to wait with me. surely, there were people in greater need around here, it's a hospital - people are dying around here. but ok...praying couldn't hurt right, whatever it was for? i realize how naive and clueless i sound and looking back i truly was. i was 25 and, although i was basically raising my 10 month old daughter alone, i had tons of love and wonderful support from everyone around me. my life had been fairly "normal" up to this point and because of that, i had developed a good deal of trust and a lot of faith in the "good things happen to good people" rule...what's the worst-case scenario? my daughter was in good hands, i mean where is better than the hospital right? whatever was wrong with her would get cleared up, we'd go home and life would continue. yea, it might screw things up a bit regarding Christmas if she was still too sick to be around everyone, but hell that could be worked around. when the nurse came out to get me, i was ready...bring it on, i could handle whatever was wrong, just let me get back to my girl. i was sure she was wondering where the hell i was and why i was letting all these strangers poke and prod her. she needed her mama.

when i went back into her curtained-off area she was laying on her back with all kinds of tubes attached to her. she had tear stains on her cheeks, but she seemed to be sleeping peacefully now. relieved, i asked them what the heck had just happened? when could i take her home? her pediatrician had finally arrived and i could hear her at the desk, on the phone scrambling for what sounded like large amount's of type A+ blood. while i stroked my girl's still almost-bald head, i watched her sleep and found myself saying "please feel good, please feel good, please feel good...you're my baby girl and all i want is for you to just feel good." the doctor came into our area and sat with me explaining that my girl had a severe case of meningitis. she explained that she had been moaning because her head hurt terribly and then she explained what happens to the lining of the brain with this particular infection. she explained that she was gathering enough plasma for a complete transfusion in the hopes that getting the infected blood out of her as soon as possible would lend her little body a helping hand in fighting what had invaded her body. she prepared me for the possibility of her having to stay in the hospital for a few weeks and i remember thinking "crap, over Christmas and New Year's". i was still so, so stupid - within hours i would be making deals with God, begging him to keep her in the hospital for a year, ten years, the rest of her life, whatever just please, dear God, keep her here where she will be safe, where they can help her feel better. please don't take her away from here for good.

shortly after the doctor bustled off, i was standing at a desk signing my name to papers that gave them permission to do whatever they deemed necessary to "fix" her; when i noticed increased activity behind me. i don't remember much about those next moments, what i do remember is finding myself in a closed-off room with morgan's dad and maybe some other people, maybe my mother-in-law i'm not sure. i don't know when i got there or when they got there. i don't know how long i had been there before i was being told by a nurse, i think, that i should get to morgan's side as soon as possible. she was dying. next thing my memory shows me is her body laying on her back, arms and legs spread with so, so many needle marks on her little body. both sides of her pelvic area and her armpits were covered with bruised pinpricks where they had searched for veins large enough to start IV's in, hoping that flooding her body with new, fresh, purely uncontaminated blood would breathe life back into her perfect little body. it hadn't worked. she had stopped breathing before i pulled back the curtain. she was gone.

i know that i was being led back to that room. i know that i collapsed trying to get to a counter to lean on. i know that i was back in the room and my entire family was now there. i was in a chair with my mom kneeling on the floor in front of me, gripping my hands and trying, in vain, to not only channel all of the strength she could possibly muster into me, but to do it while trying to control her own stunned disbelief and piercing grief. i know that i was inconsolable and i remember vividly seeing her finally give into the weight of her grief when she realized there was nothing she could do for me. neither one of us could help our daughters in the time of their greatest need. i watched her literally crumble onto the floor in front of me. i realized that i was seeing nothing but a shell where she had just sat. i believed at that moment that something devastating had happened to her soul. i swear i watched it all but leave her body. i still remember the blue sweater she was wearing, i know that i never saw it again. kathy's call was transferred into the room and i remember her voice pleading with me to tell her everything was alright. i will never forget her sobs and her repeated screams of "no, no, no, no...!" coming through the phone.

i was asked if i wanted to spend some last moments holding my little girl. i know i was petrified. i was afraid of how she would feel physically and i told the nurse that. she told me that my daughter was now an angel sleeping on earth. she told me that she was beautiful and at peace. she was no longer in pain and she was holding hands with God. she told me i had nothing to worry about - my daughter felt absolutely perfect. she was right. morgan looked as if she was falling asleep...her eyes were almost completely closed and she looked like she did when it was snuggle time just before bed. her daddy was holding her when i got there and he looked up at me with what has to be the most concentrated, pure and raw grief i have ever seen. his eyes still haunt me.

my baby girl was wrapped up in her blankie and she was still so warm. i snuggled her up and buried my face into her neck and pleaded with her "please let me see your smile one last time. i didn't know the last one was the last one. i didn't cherish it long enough. i didn't know i would never see it again. i need to see your goofy smile one final time - please just wake up and smile. just one smile would save my heart from breaking into a thousand pieces." i don't know how long we sat there passing her back and forth, kissing her fat cheeks, smelling her yummy baby smell, stroking her soft skin. just waiting for a smile that never came.

i remember refusing to go back into that room of sorrow. i couldn't breathe in there. the grief was literally suffocating. i couldn't look at my mother knowing that her inability to console me had cost her something she couldn't afford to give up. i'm not a wallower. i need to move, i need to breathe. i headed outside to stand overlooking the hills. i felt the cold breeze on my face and thought, "i woke up this morning with my girl, tonight i will go to bed no longer being that sweet little girl's mama." it was the clearest, most awful moment of my life. how do you go about your life when your main reason for it is so suddenly taken away?

Christmas was 3 days later and we half-heartedly went ahead with our plans. it was to be morgan's first Christmas and there were so many gifts for her - what do you do, shove them all away in the closet? leave them under the tree unopened? some were pulled and shoved away, some sat unopened. i left the room  in tears a couple of times as it hit me that my baby girl would never shred Christmas paper, she would never play in the empty boxes. she was truly gone and my life felt completely void of anything but excruciating grief.

i think the hardest part for me was looking at the world around me go on as if nothing had changed. for most of them, it hadn't. not their fault, just something i was so totally aware of. driving down the road, seeing people in their cars just living their lives - happy, mad, whatever...they were still living, i no longer felt that i was. another obstacle was overhearing moms yelling at their kids. hearing kids crying. looking at the people who didn't deserve to still have their babies when mine was gone. why mine and not theirs? the one thing i needed was a reason - and there was none. never have i been more sure of the fact that i could not care any less if tomorrow never came. i dreaded tomorrow. tomorrow meant pain. tomorrow brought more disbelief and tears. tomorrow brought memories, but worst of all...i knew that tomorrow would begin to erase her face a little more.  i have never more desperately wanted my life to end.

i never returned to our home - never, not one time. my friend kathy and my SIL monica went in and packed up everything. it was a wonderful gesture that i didn't really appreciate until later. i didn't want any of it - i wanted to walk away from everything that morgan ever touched, ever looked at, ever thought about. i had no need for any of it. later of course, i was grateful to have everything i could get ahold of. there is only one thing i've never been able to face in 18 years. kathy had a saved message on her answering machine from the week before morgan died. we had called her for some reason and i gave morgan the phone to let her "talk". kathy tells me that they are the sweetest sounds she's ever heard - i still can't listen to them.

morgan's funeral isn't incredibly clear. we had her cremated, as the thought of my child laying in the ground was absolutely unbearable to me. her favorite little white bear was cremated alongside her - weird, i know - i just didn't want to send her in there all alone. at the funeral, [for which, her daddy gets full credit - he did everything, all i did was sorta show up] there was the smallest casket i had ever seen. like for a doll. i remember a story the pastor told about watching morgan drift over the horizon on a boat...he said that we were seeing her depart, but that, at the exact same time, others were watching her arrive. whoa.

when it was over i remember walking to the front of the room, turning and seeing what seemed like hundreds of people...sitting, standing - they were packed into this room, two days after Christmas, on this most miserable of all days - showing their love, their support and their grief. it hit me that she had affected every single one of these people in her 10 short months; imagine what she could have done in 10 decades. i remember feeling an actual smile, followed by a wrenching sense of loss at that.

i had a dream about a month after she died...it's hazy now, but i know that in my dream i was looking for her and couldn't find her. i was running around the house calling for her, getting increasingly panicked - i thought she was hiding from me. i yelled for my mom and when she came into the room i asked her where morgan was. she looked at me, smiled and pointed over behind a big table, "she's right there shawna, she's been there the whole time." i looked over at her and she showered me with the greatest smile i've ever seen. the relief i felt was almost unbearable...and interestingly, it continued to flow through me even after i woke up. something had changed - she had touched me. i have no doubts that she had come to me in her way and reassured me that she would never really be gone. she brought me that last smile, i began to heal.

it's been 18 years since i bore that little 10 pound, 4 ounce girl, 18 years since i looked at her in awe and wondered what in the hell i had done to deserve such a gift. it has been just over 17 years since i last saw her, but december 22 isn't a day of mourning for me. it's a day of remembrance and a day of love. it's a day that changed my life. it's a day that made me a better person, and more importantly a better mom. it's a day that i thank God for the days that He gave me with her. i wouldn't trade any of them, not even december 22, 1990.

***sigh***

i'm in deep mourning for my boy brett. i'll always be a packer's fan, don't get me wrong, but it will be a whole different game without him. wah. i wondered if he wouldn't retire after the great year he just finished up - kind of a going out on top (ok, not on top so much, but still good) thing. anyway - i just love him, his dedication and loyalty to not only the game, but to his family as well, his ability to scare the beejebus outta me with 25 seconds to go in the 4th quarter, his values and his sense of humor. no one (not even you fleck) can watch him play and not see his absolute adoration of the game. so here's to you farrv-vara, you will be so missed. did i already say wah? wah.

pictures!

been dorkin on my computer - GASP! so unlike me...


anyway downloaded a few pics, thought i'd share...YAY! this is homer hawk hanging out off d's deck in isabella. not a great shot cause i'm a klutz and tripped over something (my own damn foot maybe?) and skeered him off. whatever homes.





here is one of the gorgeous foxes eating some nasty meat. their coats are incredibly beautiful - what you can't see is bozzie and mama growling at him all badass from the otherside of the door. yea so tough.





one of coyotes we saw out playing one morning in isabella...there were 4 of them and they were a hoot to watch - chasing each other around just like puppies - all rolling around and tripping each other up, hunkering down behind sage only to jump out when another stumbled by. this one came down the path right off d's deck. he watched us for a bit and then trotted up the hill to meet the others as they went off on a walk.

"can you feel the loooooove tonight?"

ok, my boys are now 15 and 12 and as gross as they have ever been. overheard in a conversation between the two of them earlier today:

"knock it off chode!"

"shut up, queef!"

"you're a douche."

"you're face is a douche"

"dude, at least MY face isn't a coinpurse."

"MOM! BENNETT SAID MY FACE WAS A COINPURSE!"nasty little chodesmokers...

over the river and through the woods: the 4th act

sunday night we left braden to destroy---er, i mean, spend the night at---leaf's house and headed over to my gram's for a bit of a visit and to pick up that coffee table i was so totally taking from her. i called ahead to see if she needed anything or wanted something to eat - she asked for matches. [whoa, wait...matches? has my little bent-over grandmother, having lived in humboldt county for all of about two months, already developed a hankering for puffin' the fatty?] ok, matches it is...but only because we have to stop anyway for some electrical tape to fix the pesky side-view mirror that i ripped off a couple of years ago backing out of the garage, that was now banging annoyingly against my door, because the super-glue i used to hold it in place had balked at the torrential downpours of humboldt county, . i convince the runts that we should wait for food until we have finished our visit with gram (never know, might catch a contact high and the food will taste even better.).

she is waiting for us in the great room, cozied up to the fire on a couch with the local Sub-Standard paper, chatting with some ladies that were wrapping up a cutthroat game of follow-the-bitch. of course, she had to introduce us to them and she couldn't remember bennett's name (the funny part is that when i told him we were going to visit her, he said, "mom, i bet she doesn't even know who i am anymore". the other funny thing is that he has the exact same name as her dearly departed husband of some 60+ years.) i pointed and laughed at him behind her back and then she went scooting off to introduce us to an elderly hispanic man (oh yea, my grams digs the dark guys) who was sitting approximately 4 inches from a giant tv that had been muted. not sure if he was a lip-reader that couldn't see very well or if he just assumed that his hearing had taken a turn for the worse...regardless he was intently watching a show about the family structure of the meerkat - which just happened to include mating habits and conception, eek.

the old guy, upon being introduced, pulls me aside to inform me that my gram is constantly flirting with him and that he has to keep an eye on her. omg, this is SO my gram - she got tossed from her previous retirement "village" for perpetuating a sordid rumor involving the 50-something groundskeeper and the (way, as in 80+) older chick across the hall. something about him moving in with this other lady, while pining away for my gram in silence. i know it doesn't make much sense, but this is the same gram that gasps and asks me about blowjobs - "they really want you to do THAT with your mouth?" - i can't explain her...i just have to love her. so anyway, i told him to watch his back or my gram would probably try to grab it and then we went upstairs to visit for a bit.

she started to talk about the "incident" at her old place and i managed to steer the conversation elsewhere despite the fact that my girl wanted all the gory details. ugh. we stayed for about an hour and then she blatantly hit on my man saying she was "very pleased to meet you and i hope i get to see alot more of you". she's such a horndog.

over the river and through the woods: section C

the motel we stayed in in eureka was another 2-star-er in my old AAA book, again with the "free continental breakfast" for which we weren't holding out any high hopes. it was downtown - which is a nice way of saying that there was sure to be sleeping transients within 20 feet in any direction, not to mention the, ahem...ladies of the night. (a humboldt hooker should definitely be at the top of your list of Things to Do Before I Die [eek! i mean SEE...should definitely be at the top of your list of Things to SEE Before I Die. if you still want to DO then go for it, but it may very well be the last thing you manage to cross off, so personally, i'd put it towards the bottom of the list.] there is just nothing quite like it anywhere else. it's a very natural [read: totally granola] area where the bathing and the shaving of one's body are ritualistic pressures laid upon us by the man and sometimes actually scoffed upon. oh, and evidently teeth are not necessarily necessary either). the chick behind the motel counter tells me to be sure and park in the lighted, covered parking area...not that, you know, it's not a safe neighborhood or anything. it's just that SHE wouldn't park out on the street, and neither should i. ok, good enough...i can take a hint.

keeping in mind that i am basically an honest person, i lied like a rug about how many people we had staying in our room. i am not about to pay an extra $10 per person, per night or shell out another benjamin for another room so a couple of kids can actually sleep on beds. i figure they are lucky i even like them enough to allow them to sleep on the floor and breathe my motel room air...they certainly aren't getting their own room. this place was much nicer than the previous night's motel, lots of body-sprawling floor space and a tv that was actually bigger than my purse. everyone slept well and we awoke fresh and ready for a day of FOOTBALL with the mcbirdie clan. we had wanted to go out to the beach first, but gee...oddly enough, it was raining. huh, who knew?

[side note: humboldt county is an absolutely gorgeous place of huge redwoods and beautiful exotic-looking plants...lush greenery almost everywhere you look. as with most everything, there is a reason for this - they get something insane like 7 feet of rain per year. oh yea, it's pretty, but dang do you pay the price]

i sent the kids down to the "free continental breakfast" in twos with instructions to not talk to the other pair, so you know, no one would know they were together and therefore here illegally. deportation at this point would have put a serious kink in our plans...turns out that this place actually had a nice breakfast. waffle maker with pre-measured little cups of batter, biscuits and a crock-pot full of yummy country sausage, cereals, oatmeal, breads, muffins, fruit, juices, again with the lukewarm coffee, but hey who's keeping track? everyone had a bit of something (even little-miss-picky-pants brynn) and with a warning phone call, we were off to la casa de mcbride.

playoffs weekend...those damn undefeated patriots were playing in the first game of the day, my beloved packers in the second. leaf and her family were kind enough to allow us to invade her lovely, clean, quiet home for the day. the kids all paired - or tripled - off and stayed outta our hair for the most part. braden had to be threatened a couple of times as he was, on occasion, being particularly braden and making people want to throw him off a bridge. or hit him - whatever. the girls went for walks and got muddy, the boys pretty much stayed upstairs in front of the ps2 all day. we ate yummy whore's-derves and just vegged with my leaf and her man. oh and leaf got sick to her stomach - well that's what she said anyway. it did happen right about dinner time, so she may have just wanted us OUT. heh heh heh...i did manage to forget a kid at her house that night. score one me.

over the river and through the woods: part deux

as requested by my friend fleck - cheese grill, keep (or go put) yer panties on...you're asking for two posts within a 12 hour period.

hmmm...let's see where did i leave off? oh, ok - 7 peeps (at least 5 of them them rather smelly) crammed into my suburban headed into snow country (read: closed windows - again with the smelly) over one of the most remote highways in the country; meaning very curvy roads, no cell service, no bathrooms and !gasp! no fresh coffee (generally i take a thermos of coffee when i travel, as my name is shawna and i am a caffeine addict, and i had left my house the previous evening with one [strangely, it happened to fall over and drain all over my carpet about 20 mins into our drive] and we stopped at a convenience store to refill it. somehow...amazingly, it got broked. no one knows how, all i can tell you is that i went to fill it with my free lukewarm "continental" coffee the next morning and it made this disturbing rattling noise. to top it off this was a mr. coffee carafe/thermos TREASURE i had gotten at the thrift store for...yes, 89 cents. dammit, this is why we can't have anything nice.)

so anyway - really nothing too exciting about this leg unless you consider nauseated children totally unprepared to play in the snow sinking into 5 foot drifts and almost falling off the side of a mountain while taking in the beauty of life that only a boy can know (yes, i mean peeing in the wilderness - standing tall, hands on hips, masters of all that they survey), a dead cammie battery (again, so me.) and then the re-situating of steaming wet children into a car already packed to the gills. we passed exactly three "shoe trees" - have you ever seen these? the ones where peeps throw their tied-together shoes up into a tree? can someone tell me why? - and five deer (OMG we are SO suburban...with the way most of us reacted to the deer, you would have thought that bigfoot, WITH the loch ness monster growing out of his ass, had stopped us on the side of the road to politely ask us directions to the nearest public toilet - bennett does get his props here, he looked up only once from his gameboy to ask disgustedly, "am i really related to you people?").

we got to humboldt county (oh yea..."wake & bake" country [not that i would know mom...whatever my older bro mark told you is a lie :-/ ] around 2ish and i realize that i don't have directions to my gram's place (she lives in a senior center, but i have no idea which one) so i set dale up with a pen and paper and instructions to write anything and everything i said that sounded even remotely necessary for finding my sweet gram. see, she tends to get rattled under pressure, she's new to the area and she rambles incessantly...add those together and you have a 25 minute phone conversation where all you really figure out is that you want to turn left at the red lion [which turns out shoulda been a right but you give her a break cause she's old.], the name of her street and that she does not live in the salvation army thrift store. really glad she cleared that up, because that would have just been weird. yes we found her, (despite her best efforts to get me hopelessly lost). hey, wait a minute...

she was waiting outside for us, freezing her brittle little bones off and immediately began to squeak - when she gets excited she makes this little noise like a puppy that is just beside itself with joy. so cute. she then proceeded to parade all 7 of us into the center's great room (by the way, i loved this room...huge blazing fireplace, lots of comfy couches and chairs, books, coffee, CRIBBAGE! - oh yea, when i'm old, and if i can remember, this is where i'm heading when the people i love can no longer can stand me.), introducing us to anyone who happened to be breathing (some were a tad questionable) and continued her squeaking. we stopped to check her mail and were practically run over by esther and her walker-posse as they headed down the corridor, three abreast, jockeying for position as the hallway narrowed. dale and my kids tromped up the stairs making sounds that vaguely resembled mating buffalo, as gram and i took the oh-so-achingly-slow elevator.

although she still has boxes everywhere, her apartment is small and cozy. we took over any and all available places to sit while she started to give us her things. this is what she does. she will direct you to something and tell you to just take it that she has no need for it. for example, she told me to take her coffee table (which i must admit is very cool and hell yea, i took it)...this would be the same coffee table that, at that particular moment, housed her computer and numerous plants, not to mention books and a bowl of cereal. yep, she has no need for that particular piece of furniture. at one point she told me to look at some tins she had been collecting and to take some with me. while i'm rummaging, i notice the variety of baggies sitting next the the group of tins. a kid was looking for one earlier and so, as i began digging through trying to find one the right size, she pushes her way in there and says: "no, not those shawna, i'm using those - i said the tins next to them". like i'm loading up my purse with her ziplocks. dammit, she had caught the tater.

we took her to an early dinner at hometown buffet (oh yea, only the best for my gram.) and everyone went their separate ways in search of goodness to put upon their plates. i followed her around for about 20 minutes carrying two plates as she loaded them up with a variety of things. (for the record, this chick can pack it away). after i got her settled in her seat with her mountains of food before her, she requested a "rut-beer" with no ice and she was a happy little (chatting - always with the chatting) clam. off i went in search of my own monster plate of food and i joined my little family in a savage flurry of fists and forks. after we ate so much we were all groaning, dale and i sat with my gram and bagged on people, while the kids ran across the mall for some...i dunno, crap of some sort. when we finally felt we could actually stand up and walk without barfing, we made our way back to the car and back to gram's house, being very careful not to hit any speed bumps or jostle our seatbelts in any way.

it had been a long, but very good day and we were ready for our beds...

'

over the river and through the woods: the first evening

took a road trip this past weekend. wasn't enough to take my three kids on a 9+ hour trek to gram's house. nope, decided to invite my niece and nephew along for the ride as well. i prepared dale as best i could and he assured me he still wanted to go - was excited to go, no less. yea, ok. we'll see how you feel in two days, champion.

got all my ducks in a row, motel resies made, clothes washed and packed, phone calls made warning folks that it hadn't been the nightmare of all nightmares, i really was going to show up and it really would be loud. i picked the kids up from school on friday afternoon and waited for d to arrive so we could take off. i had made plans with the disney guy to take care of the pup while we were gone (i wasted calling in a marker on that, dammit, but more on that some other time), because, where i may be a bit off, i'm not completely stoopit - i did not want to deal with her on top of everything else, plus she takes up a lot of room. and she has gas. eye-bleeding horrible gas. truly, i get enough of that from my kids.

we arrived in the lurvely town of anderson, CA (where we would pick up the extra two mouths to feed) at around midnight after an uneventful 5 hour drive. i had made a reservation (using a 2001 AAA travel book, silly me) at a two-star (read: cheap, but not necessarily life-threatening) motel that had advertised a free continental breakfast. we checked into our room which, while being a tad sparse, seemed clean enough for our hamburger-helper tastes. we did find out the next morning that either the AAA book flat out lied or something had definitely changed because the "free continental breakfast" consisted of some lukewarm coffee and...well, some sugar for those who prefer to grace their joe with it. in all fairness they did offer some rather greyish looking bananas or nasty lemon-jelly pastries for "each 50 cent". needless to say, we decided to skip this veritable plethora of goodness and went in search of a subway. now in the matter of hours that we had been away from home, we had discovered that i forgot my shoes (so me) and my toothbrush. bennett had broken his i-pod earphones and was having a serious freak-out because he couldn't drown out the sounds of his family's incessant breathing in and out, and my niece had decided she really wanted to take up crocheting this weekend (because she knows her aunty shawna can rock a crocheted blanket), but had no hook. or yarn. off to walmart and no shit, they had a subway.

getting about a 2 hour later start than we had hoped for (and therefore, leaving right on time), we started out across the beautiful klamath mountain range in search of snow and eventually, hopefully grandmother's house.

gah. 7 is such a dorky number.

do you remember the day that you looked at one of your kids and said "good God, when did he/she turn into such a complete dork?"? ok, maybe those of you not in the running for the MOTY award have never experienced this, but each and (now) every one of my kids have hit this stage and jeez it is almost unbearable to watch.

my dot is currently walking around with the phone stuck to her ear talking with a friend that lives down the street. she is walking around and around in circles talking absolute dork-speak. in the last 10 minutes she has informed her friend that her dog farted and it smells really bad; that her cat farted earlier and it sounded like this: "puhh"; she has stopped the middle of her conversation to ask me what time her brothers go to bed so her friend can be completely up-to-date; she is doing (her version) of plies and falling into furniture; she has put her friend on the speaker phone and let her listen to a TV commercial; she has passed the phone to her brother so he can talk to her friend and then shrieked for it back...was i ever this much of a dork?

in all fairness, i do remember doing one particular thing that, in retrospect, has GOT to be the stupidest, most retarded thing ever done by two girls...kathy and i would spend the day together at school, ride the bus home and do our homework together, hang out together until dark and then walk each other halfway home. now being the observant geeks that we were, we discovered (probably took a year or two) that, in the middle of the street, at the halfway mark between our houses, there was a manhole cover. here we would stop and gab a bit more, (because you know there was never enough time to say everything we had to say to each other) and then we did this bizarre little ritual that i can't believe i am about to expose to the world. sigh...here goes.

we would stand on the manhole cover facing each other. one of us would bend at the waist and yell, "i'm a BONER!" and the other would do this weird contortion that involved hands clasped above the head and feet together with knees bent out to the sides and yell, "i'm a NU-NU!" and collapse in hysterical laughter before we collected ourselves and raced home to call each other on the phone.

seriously. totally seriously. what the fuck?

must. stop. apologizing.

i'm beginning to accept the fact that i just plain and simple blow at some things. sometimes i blow because i don't try hard enough. sometimes i blow because my brain and/or my body can't keep up with my intentions - which are generally good. but sometimes, sometimes...one just blows for the inexcusable sake of blowing.

i am a pleaser, and by extension an apologizer. this comes to my attention as i threaten to shock-collar treatment my dot if she says "sorry" one more time. seems no matter who says what to her, that's almost always the first word outta her mouth. for example, i say "thank you for cleaning up the cat poop that your dog snacked on in the kitchen" and she will say (with plenty of 'tude) , "well, SAW-REE, at least i cleaned it up!"; one of her brothers will say (ok, yell), "hey brynn, will you turn down the music?" and she will sweetly reply in her little girl voice "JEEZ...SAW-REE! you guys play it loud all the time"; once i called her to me to see how she was feeling saying "sis, your tum still feeling funny?" and she thought i said something about stealing money and about burst into tears, squeaking out "SAW-REE! i didn't do it, dad gave me that, i pinky-swear, mom!" took me a bit to figure out what the hell had just happened (bottom line is, whatever she was talking about she was sure as hell telling the truth - you don't just throw that pinky-swear thing out there without being able to back it up.), she may have been a bit paranoid about the money thing as she has been known to lift a sawbuck or two from others, but my point is that somewhere along the line she has become annoyingly apologetic. i realize that there are worse things for her to say out of habit. granted, "sorry" certainly has carries bonus points over "fuck you", but you must get my point. she doesn't even listen to what is being said before she blurts out how sorry she is.

i'm now becoming aware that i apologize all the time myself. someone backs into me and i'm sorry for getting in the way. i'm riding in someone's car and they hit a bump and slosh my coffee---oops, sorry should have anticipated that pothole. after letting the phone ring 15 times, someone answers the second i finally hang up...shit-sorry! hair-goddess has to fix my 'do because i trimmed it crooked while trying to get a piece of hair she had left hanging in my eye. i pay her enough to feed a small eastern country to cut my hair perfectly and i'm sorry? i leave behind two plates while cleaning the table off as my hands are too full as it is, and someone brings them into the kitchen after me. sorry about that, should have balanced my load better so you wouldn't have to help me. seriously. wtf?

so, the beginning of my quest to end the unnecessary apologizing is here. this all started because i was going to apologize for not updating my blog in the last month. well screw that. i'm really not sorry, i've been a busy little buffalo this last month. it's not like i've been sitting around with my feet up whilst others wait on me hand and foot. well ok, part of the time i did that, but mostly i was really physically exhausted and mentally incapacitated by responsibilities---responsibilities that i brought upon myself, but still they needed tending to and i managed to tend and survive and now i'm here to update you all. instead i rambled on about something stupid and mundane and wasted all the time i have to catch everyone up...sorry.