Boiling Lobsters
A coworker and I were debating the merits of racism being adopted in areas where it was previously unknown and came to a conclusion: humans are stupid. The boiled-lobster kind of stupid, where they don't notice they're slowly being boiled alive if you only gradually increase the temperature.
This topic came up because we were discussing history, and I mentioned a local church that had two separate "churches" and graveyards - one for the white folk, and one for the blacks. Now, this church had not been known for segregation previously - they are European based - but when they got to Carolina, they began to adopt the highly racist practices that some of the surrounding community was acting on. Separate churches, separate graveyards.
There was a widowed white woman from the church that had taken a black man as a lover, and guess where the church buried her? In the "blacks only" graveyard. I have a hard time trying to choke down that sort of thing. Aren't all people just people? The South tainted the church. In an ideal world, there would have been one church - and one graveyard.
Horribly vague example aside, this also applies to people who commit adultery in their marriage. I'm fairly sure these people never set out with revenge in their minds, "I'll teach them". It just happens. Then, as the affair heats up to a nice bath temperature, the lovers get careless and begin leaving a trail. They are eventually found out... caught in the boiling water before they even realized the water had intentions to boil.
How does the lobster outsmart the boiling water?
Sledding
Today, my son is running around the house, alternating between roaring and flailing his arms and legs like a psychopath and showing me all the awesome spit bubbles he can make. He's telling me he's "bored" and "wants to go to work" (what work??) and in between exasperated sighs I am trying to tell him that if he just stops bothering me for a little bit and chills out, we will leave when his father gets dressed and go out.
It's reminding me of where I grew up, where there were more woods than people... and when the kids woke up the next morning after Thanksgiving dinner (because most families tended to shack up together for the evening, there were plenty of guest rooms) the children would be shooed outside after a light breakfast to go play - and to hopefully not kill themselves - by sledding in the usually-fresh snow that had fallen the night before.
Sleds were pretty much whatever you could find - it was very "Little House". Either you had these crappy plastic sheets that you could buy at the local drug store for $5, or you had a wooden runner sled - which were very common up north - that Grandma and Grandpa had when they were kids.
Flying down the hill at break neck speeds was some sort of exhilaration not to be found in any other thing on earth. Not even roller coasters compare, because you know you'll get off at the end of a roller coaster. When you're sledding, it's usually "don't hit the tree!" (or you'll get a concussion and pass out) or "don't go onto the lake!" (or you'll fall in and drown if the ice cracks) ... total fun.
The equivalent of sledding for the adults was snowmobiling. My mother told me she had a snowmobile with a playboy bunny on it. Why she had the playboy bunny, I'll never know, but once we began discussing snowmobiles she told me about how some folks from her town went into the deep, deep woods, off the normal trail for a ride. Everything went fine until they found the razor wire someone strung about four feet off the ground between some trees to keep deer off their property.
Needless to say, they never made it back to town, and a search party had to be put out to find their bits and pieces.
I miss the snow.
My Car Was Stolen.
I used to live in this rather small town, so it was pretty probable that someone would see you out and about.
My friend and I had gone to Kmart to pick up some things, and had a rather hilarious time inside the store, griefing, throwing pillows at each other, making the staff hate us... but that's ok, because I was a retail employee myself at the time, at a competing establishment.
After checking out, we went to my car to go get something to eat. Or tried to - we couldn't find my damn car. We thought we lost our minds. We wandered up and down the rows, "Is it here? I thought it was here. I FUCKING SWEAR TO GOD I PARKED IT IN SPOT 4D!!!"
Finally, I spotted it. On the side of the building, parked like it was trying to hide from me. I was horrified. How the hell had my car been moved? And if they moved it, why the hell didn't they just TAKE it? At least if they took it I could collect on the insurance.
Then my cell rang. On the other end, my mother was laughing so hard she was wheezing. "Did... you find.... your car?"
Helps if a girl remembers where the hell she keeps her second set of keys.
Thanksgiving
There are about four days until Thanksgiving. I have done nothing to prepare. As I sit here contemplating, all I keep thinking is that I want to go home. Home to my husband's family, to sit and be surrounded by people I'm not forced to interact with but can just watch and listen to the jokes, play the games, and drink with them.
Right now, we are about 627 miles away from all of that, and I feel every mile. I've lost my own family save for one or two, and they are further away than 627 miles. I feel disconnected. I hold it in, but last week I found myself sobbing to my husband trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with me and couldn't find it.
I think it's the pressure. The pressure of working full time, of being a mother to a three and a half year old, and being wife, friend, mother, confidant, and lover to my husband while at the same time missing the man I used to call Dad. I held that man in high regard, always did and always will. I can't talk to him - the last time I tried, he hung up on me. It hurt. Bridges have been burned and I must move on, but how do you move on from the man who loved you most in this world, who you saved from death one day?
I woke up that one day three years ago, not knowing there were going to be problems. At some point in the middle of the afternoon, my father sat down in the rocker, winded. He looked across the room at my son, and his head began to roll. He turned an ugly, horrible ashen grey color and he started to lose consciousness. Panic began to rise within me but I knew I had to shut it off, because I was the only one who could fix this. My mother had ran out of the room to go do lord knows what, but I don't felt she was trying to help. As I dialed 911, I was commanding my father to look at my son, to talk to my son, and for fuck's sakes, to stay awake.
After they sent two ambulances (I still have yet to figure out why they sent two, each packed two EMT's... one was my father's friend, that might be why two came) and transportation to the hospital was completed, the tests said my father had too many Beta blockers. Basically, the VA Hospital screwed him up. Bad. I'll never forget my anger at the VA Hospital for their mistake, for almost letting my father die because a doctor there can't read his charts.
So now, I'm finding myself having to resign myself to the fact that my father will probably die before I ever get to speak with him again. The last time I spoke with him, I told him I loved him. The last time I tried to speak with him, he hung up on me.
It hurts, but I guess... life goes on.
Sex in the Shower
While in the shower today, I sat on the floor of the tub contemplating sex. One of the stronger memories that came to mind completely attached to a series of "OMG AWKWARD" feelings was of the father of a boy I used to tutor. The father was a family friend, and his son was going through that time in his life when he either couldn't or wouldn't learn. I was called in to assist, to edit his English papers, to help with his history, and to attempt to assist him in math - not one of my strong points. I was over there three times a week.
The father and I became friendly, in the "tell a joke and hope it's funny" sort of manner. He told me about a lot of his life and I told him some of mine, but that was the extent of it - at least on my part.
One of the days I went over there, I had been wearing heels and my feet were absolutely killing me. Not long after I arrived I thankfully threw off my shoes and complained about my sore feet to the father. The son had not arrived home yet.
The father, to my horror, bent over out of his wheelchair (he had MS) and began rubbing my stockinged feet. He kept talking the entire time, as if it were the most normal thing in the world to rub your friend's daughter's feet. But I guess that wasn't the end of his intentions, because he began giving me very heated looks. Heated looks that made me want to crawl into a hole and die.
My mind was going a mile a minute. Obviously, this man thought we were going to have sex, or he was sure as hell going to try to convince me. I had never, ever given him the impression that I was even interested, or thought I had not. This man had a girlfriend. This man was as old as my father, and in a wheelchair. (At this point as well, the complications of wheelchair sex began running through my head which just made things worse.)
I. Did. Not. Want. To. Screw. This. Man. At all. Ever. Ever, ever.
I gently removed my foot. I put my shoes back on, stood up... mumbled something about forgetting to run an errand for my fiance before I got over there for the day's tutoring session, ran the fuck out of there, and never returned.
Blahgs
I don't know why I started yet another blog. I always have had blogs, ever since I was 15 and on Dead Journal, that goth-cry-for-help LiveJournal fake. Dead Journal was pretty good, but for some reason every time I opened the website I had an overwhelming olfactory memory of patchouli.
So here we are again.
