by a good icing job. exhibit one: EvilGremlin’s lancer assault rifle cake, with icing in shades of blood red and home-protection black.
if you play gears of war 2, you are impressed by the fact that, despite being scrawled with icing by a nine-year-old, that black blob actually is a recognizable lancer assault rifle, complete with chainsaw.
“MOM MY LIP IS STUCK IN MY NOSE AAAAAAAAAAAAH!”
“are you SURE nobody makes a cake pan shaped like a lancer assault rifle? did you check ebay? because it’s gonna take me a long time to do this freestyle with icing.”
“don’t worry; i farted on him. he’ll go away now.”
“hey, look! he figured out how to work the light switches! does that mean he’s getting smarter?”
“i think it just means he’s getting taller.”
“but he’s still short.”
“well, yeah. but he’s still dumb, too.”
“awwww. mom, every time i try to dissect out its lungs, my cookie breaks.”
“MOM I CAN’T EAT THIS BURGER THE CHEESE LOOKS LIKE BOOGERS.”
“yeah. and we don’t eat stuff that’s crap.”
like, just now, sitting at my computer in the basement, MonkeyBeef playing at his train table behind my back, i heard the pitter-patter of his little feet engaged in his patented “i’m up to something” skippety-hop, followed by the the sound of drumsticks clinking against each other, followed by the sound of drumsticks thwacking the rubber drum pads, followed by the grunting of him pushing daddy’s desk chair over to the drum set, followed by the sound of the drum sticks smacking the cymbals, followed by some more skippety-hopping (since there was no sound of him throwing the drumsticks back over his shoulders as hard as he can, which is how 99% of his drum solos end, this is the point at which i should have turned around to see what the hell he was up to…)
and then came a sound i had never heard before, but i knew instantly what it was. turning around to find him peering intently into the f-hole of the upright bass confirmed it: i had just heard the little shit throw my damned drumsticks into the upright bass.
so i now get to do what PRM did when the twits, at the same age, filled the thing 4-deep with about 200 mighty beanz: lay on my back, balancing the 7-foot-tall instrument belly-down on my four limbs, gently rolling it back and forth to try to coax the object in question to line up just right and fall back out of the f-hole.
after the little shit is in bed. because he doesn’t need any more bright ideas.
IAlsoHaveADream and i have been playing scrabble online for years. nowadays – me with four kids, him with a job and a fiancee – we play once a week, max. but many years ago, we could blow hours at a time playing games back to back, every night of the week.
our second-favorite form of entertaining ourselves with scrabble (behind manufacturing disturbing dialog in the game chat window to scare the bejeezums out of any random spectators to our games,) is to try to play blatantly made-up words. when the computer boots the fake word off the board, we will defend our words with made-up definitions. if this isn’t dorky enough for you, sometimes the definitions reference dungeons and dragons or star wars.
for his most recent birthday, i got him super scrabble and a scrabble dictionary, complete with all of our made-up words and their definitions scrawled into the margins. there was some procrastination involved… it finally gt so ridiculous that i had to make a new years’ resolution to get the goddamned thing finished already, before january was out. i just got the package in the mail today, about four months after attending his actual birthday party.
the biggest reason for putting it off was that, in order to find all of our awesome words, i had to slog through years worth of saved instant messenger conversations. aside from the sheer amount of text to slog through, it also covered some rough emotional territory that i wasn’t looking forward to revisiting. years ago, i had confided in IAHAD about a bad friendship, and i was afraid that reading over it all – how stupid i was, how much time i wasted on it, the amount of bullshit that i put up with – would leave me feeling like an idiot.
on the contrary, now that i’m finished, i feel good about myself. underneath the mess that it all was, i could see my slow but steady emotional growth. i couldn’t see it then – at the time, it just felt like i was just a tool, constantly taking shit and coming back for more. my so-called friend also did a very good job of making me feel responsible for his problems, which didn’t help. but in reality, i could see that, for all the years we were friends, i always did exactly what he wanted of me. he called the shots, period. even when i though he was making a bad decision, i supported him 100%. the misery that he desperately blamed on anyone but himself – mostly on me – was his own fault.
the day-to-day account of the stupid drama also made it clear that i wasn’t just a constant tool. the written record showed that, as time went on, i became less willing to take the blame for problems my now-ex-best-friend created, and more importantly, less willing to nod and smile as he made up excuses for his personal and professional messes, less willing to enable him to deny responsibility.
he spent years telling me he was miserable, relying on me to make it better… and i poured myself into helping as much as i could, but there’s only so much you can do to help a man sitting in a vat of pigshit to feel better. so when i occasionally suggested, hey, maybe you should take charge and, i dunno, step out of the vat of pigshit, the response was something along the lines of “WHOA! are you crazy? i LOVE pigshit! besides, this isn’t pigshit; that’s so mean of you to call this pigshit! also? it’s YOUR fault this vat has pigshit in it.” because, you know, his wife hates his friends, and drove them all off, except for us… so it’s our fault whenever she’s pissed. about anything. and he hates his job so much that, as he put it, even his WIFE noticed he was miserable… so it’s my fault for making him feel bad by pointing out that maybe he should switch jobs, because it’s only a problem if you THINK about it, apparently. and then, after he’d successfully made me feel like shit about myself, and felt safe hiding behind the shame he instilled in me for (almost) making *him* feel bad… he went back to complaining about the vat of pigshit his life was. repeat cycle ad nauseum.
about six months before we parted ways, the bullshit had gotten so thick and i had gotten so sick of it that i had IM’ed IAHAD that i really wanted to never speak to the guy again, and the only thing holding me back was that he was also PRM’s friend, and it would be wrong of me to end their friendship. i had realized by then that he was cowardly, selfish, and a black hole of need capable only of sucking people dry without ever giving anything in return. under the pretty exterior of a good sense of humor, there was nothing. he had no character, no substance, and he was studiously avoiding ever developing any. he was a shell of a man. and most importantly, nothing was his fault, EVER. things just “happened” to him, through no fault of his own, and he felt no responsibility to ever try to fix anything, because he “couldn’t” for some flimsy reason or another. if you got his back up against the wall, he’d proclaim loudly that of COURSE he took responsibility for his actions, and he’d even apologize… except it wasn’t ever an actual apology. “i’m taking full responsibility for my actions. you know, those actions that were the only ones i could have taken under the circumstances, which, by the way, were completely out of my control. also, there’s nothing i can do to fix it now, even though i TOTALLY wish there was.” everybody makes mistakes. i’ve made more than my fair share. see? i admit them. they’re mine, not anyone else’s. and most mistakes are the fault of more than one person; fair enough. but most people with any interest in personal growth will at least focus more on their part than that of anyone else. it’s a rare form of douchebaggery, indeed, to take denial to the absurd level of absolutely zero responsibility.
the only regret that i have is that i wasn’t the one to end the friendship. sadly, for it to end took PRM listening in on a phone call between me and the douchebag, and overhearing the guy blame me for every stupid fucking thing he’d done in his life, right down to staying married to a woman who doesn’t particularly like, let alone love him. (of course, if i suggested that he should maybe not be married to her anymore, it was because i’m a controlling bitch, not because i’m tired of him being near-suicidal and banging anything else that smiles at him.) PRM yelled at the guy, and rather than apologize, he simply never called back. PRM said later he could have forgiven the guy for being a lying, selfish, cowardly douchebag – he’d done it repeatedly the entire decade they had been friends – but he could never forgive him for being such a sack of shit to me. (together now, on the count of three: “aaaawwwwwwwwwww!” so cavemanly, yet so sweet.)
in a strange coincidence, as i slogged through the instant messenger history, the douchebag himself made a reappearance. and, true to form, it was about as ‘baggy as a reappearance could be. i once told PRM that i bet he was just soooo sad that we don’t speak; he probably had it built up in his mind that he just “can’t” talk to me for god knows what reason, even though he’s the one who stopped contacting me – it’s not like my email or cell number have changed. but in a prime example of how he loves to pretend that things “just happen” to him, not long after i joined facebook, surprise!, he suddenly signed up for facebook. then he friended my friends. then, rather than send me a friend request or contact me directly, something that i could have at least respected, he started leaving comments after every single freaking thing i wrote on my friends’ pages – if i commented on a photo, so did he. if i commented on a status update, so did he. if a friend posted a picture of one of my kids, he commented. deleting my posts (which also made his responses to my comments disappear) and even asking my friend to delete the picture of my kid didn’t stop him.
this is a process he refers to as “putting out feelers.” i’d call it “setting up circumstances exactly the way you want them to try to manipulate things into happening while maintaining total deniability that you had any responsibility when they actually *do* happen,” but hey, that’s just me being wordy again. i told PRM about it, and when it got down to me deleting his comments and him persisting, and then me completely blocking him from seeing me on facebook, PRM just shook his head, told me i was getting sucked into playing the douchebag’s passive-aggressive game, and took actual action. you know, the kind he admits to taking. due to circumstances that are totally under his control.
anyway, PRM called the guy to tell him to knock it off. the douchebag of course acted completely surprised, because he was TOTALLY not taking any action whatsoever. PRM told him to quit playing stupid, because he knew what we’re talking about, right? and then the douchebag acted like a kicked puppy, but i’ll be damned if he didn’t actually admit to it and agree to stop. sadly, this represents a huge step in maturity. in our last conversation with each other, i actually stood up to his bullshit and called him out on invariably blaming all his shit on me, so that he could then wash his hands of the whole mess… and, drumroll please… he made the stunningly earnest declaration that “it really hurts me to have washed my hands of it.” earnestly, and accusingly. as if it was something he couldn’t help in the least, and he was pretty sure, in fact, that it was actually MY fault. what. the. bloody. fuck. but hey, now that he’s been told in no uncertain terms to stay away, i bet he’s really, really relieved to have a rock-solid excuse for continuing to be a coward. yay, i helped!
so anyway. overall, creating the custom scrabble dictionary was a pretty surreal experience. and i thought that i’d end up pissed all over again even thinking about it, but it’s just so goddamned stupid, it’s impossible to muster up any feeling about it even if i try. reading over the instant messages, there was no emotion left to muster. it seems that even the strongest, most eternal of emotions known to mankind can eventually be brought low by the magic eraser that is utter, relentless douchebaggery. the only emotion left over that history is that happiness with my decisions – i don’t regret being his friend, and i don’t feel bad for him or regret NOT being his friend/scapegoat any more. also, happiness that, now that it’s over, the time that i used to pour into sitting on the phone, listening to the tales of wifely frigidity, shitty mothering, and career helplessness are now free for… well, fencing, mostly. yay, stabbing!
that quick look back into the past, rather than bringing me down, just adds to the joy of the new year. it doesn’t matter that there’s a douchebag out there that will never admit to the things he’s broken that can never be fixed, and thus will claim to feel bad about it with a maudlin crocodile tear without ever *actually* feeling bad about it; what matters is that i gave my best and i have no regrets. also, when suddenly reminded of the life of a douchebag, the inevitable comparison really makes me proud of the life that i’ve built (and grateful that my marriage rocks.) so… fuck the past, and happy fucking new year! a new year, a new president, a new banjo that just arrived in pieces this week, and new bruises all over my right thigh and forearm because Y’ALL BITCHES CAN’T HIT MY TARGET AREA BECAUSE I AM A NINJA GODDESS, WOOOOOOOO!!!
we celebrated the new year with the kids and TexasRoadKill and MyEvilTwin, who stopped by before going out on the town. we had a token flute of champagne, and then definitely did not set off any fireworks in the front yard, since that’s illegal in iowa. when PRM said we were finished not setting off fireworks, SpazMonkey asked why, and PRM said it was because the cops were coming. without a word, DramaQueen grabbed SM and dragged him in the house, up the stairs… and after saying goodbye to TRK and MET, we found the twits, half an hour later, huddled quietly under their blankets in bed, still in snowpants and coats. never had such a quick and easy bedtime in their lives. in fact, i don’t think they’ve ever held still and not spoken for that long before. it’s now difficult not to end every night with “THE COPS ARE COMING!” that’s a REALLY useful instinct we’ve discovered in them. then we went to bed early, too, because we’re lame, and stayed up late, because we’re actually not lame. life is good!
we got another 3 inches of snow in the early hours of wednesday, leaving us with 6 inches on the ground and school cancelled for the day. it was the PERFECT snow day – sun shining on the white snow, a morning trip to the mall for big soft pretzels, the wanton consumption of barnes and noble gift certificates, an almost-incident-free run on victoria’s secret to redeem my “free valentine’s day thong” coupon, and a cruise through the clearance rack at target for a new coat for MonkeyBeef (he was popping out of his 2T coat like the Incredible Doughboy, and somehow, none of his three older brothers has ever owned a 3T coat.) so, with a new bakugan in one hand, an icee in the other, and one horrendously ugly-ass $5 coat on the back of an unsuspectingly unsexy MonkeyBeef, we headed home for an afternoon of driveway shoveling, snowman building, and sledding.
day 2: we got the 6 am robo-call from the district superintendant that, due to the cold – no new snow, just straight-up COLD – school would again be cancelled. the boys played wonderfully all day, i had made it to the grocery store the day before, all was civilized, with a couple hours of evening video gaming taking us into the home stretch of being confined to the house without incident.
day 3: the temperature at 8 am was -24 degrees. negative. twenty. four. degrees. the wind chill on even a modest gust of wind is -50 or so. since i had hurt myself going to get the mail at 30 degrees warmer the day before, the trash didn’t make it to the curb at all. fuck. that.
there will be no stepping out of this house again today, and hints of boredom are seeping in around the edges of things as space-time subtly distorts. the twits have been wanting to cook dinner, and i’m about to break down and just let them make the “casserole” they’ve been plotting, despite the fact that the long ingredient list has nothing but cheeses on it. MonkeyBeef, having, from the sound of it, just broken what i believe is baby gate #4, is now amusing himself by throwing progressively heavier things down the basement stairs. and i made the breakfast-time announcement that, since the milk was frozen solid and would take several hours to thaw, there would be no milk for breakfast and they should all go choose a soda.
upon hearing this status update, my somewhat-sympathetic friend in southern florida emailed back:
From: IAlsoHaveADream
Sent: Friday, January 16, 2009 9:27 AM
To: WelfareLoser
Subject: RE: Receipt # 25XP90SUCKIT1
I just got this email from Vegas on the odds for various reactions of your children to the statement that they could have soda for breakfast:
2-1: Silent staring for 2 seconds, followed by a mad dash towards the refrigerator and thoughts of “Holy shit, I don’t know what happened to mom, but I’m sure as hell gonna take advantage of this until she gets better!”
3-1: The boys scurrying in a mad dash towards the refrigerator, tripping over each other, and then being trampled by an overexcited MonkeyBeef The Wonderpup, who doesn’t understand why we’re all running towards the refrigerator, but he assumes there is sugar involved.
5-1: EvilGremlin, tempted by the possiblity of soda-drenched Captain Crunch, still cannot resist the opportunity to ask you whether milking a cow in current weather conditions would cause it to produce ice cream.
8-1: One child pulling his shirt over his head, putting his arms at a 90 degree angle, and yelling “I AM CORNHOLIO! I NEED TP FOR MY BUNGHOLE!”
12-1: EvilGremlin quizzing you about why they were being offered soda for breakfast, and your response being something along the lines of “Well, I’m letting you guys prepare a meal that involves only various types of cheese cooked together. Something has to get the brownworks going after you eat that Constipation Casserole.”
From: WelfareLoser
Sent: Friday, January 16, 2009 11:07 AM
To: IAlsoHaveADream
Subject: RE: Receipt # 25XP90SUCKIT1
that’s SO in my blog.
if you bet on #1, you just doubled your money. #2 probably would have been a winner, too, but MonkeyBeef was busy with the superman learning computer, which has spoken nothing but spanish since he first laid his miraculous hands on it.
it’s almost lunch time. mmmm, peanut-butter-and-crack-rocks sandwiches. on homemade sourdough. because i’m all about the healthy eatin.
if you watch enough tv – enough being an hour a week – you have seen the commercials for the stupid-ass blankets with sleeves in them. seriously… some motherfucker is getting rich off cutting two holes in a blanket and sewing sleeves to them. it comes in two varieties – the slanket, made of thick, fuzzy plush for $36.18 shipped, and the snuggie, made of not-so-thick fleece, $35.85 shipped for TWO SNUGGIES PLUS ACT NOW AND GET TWO FREE BOOKLIGHTS ABSOLUTELY FREE OH MY GOD I JUST WET MYSELF WOOOOO!!!
despite the fact that i loudly ridicule the damned things every time the commercial comes on (which is about every 15 minutes during any cartoon on any channel, as far as i can tell), EvilGremlin is convinced that he wants one. why wrap a blanket so you can use your hands… why put on a sweatshirt… when you can have a BLANKET/SWEATSHIRT HYBRID WITH A STUPID NAME? i dunno, folks; it just sells itself.
TexasRoadKill and MyEvilTwin got slankets for christmas. i told EvilGremlin about this and he just nodded knowingly and said, “yeah. somebody must love them VERY MUCH.”
dammit. i’ve waited the requisite 4-6 weeks from the first request to see if the fascination with the object in question would wear off, and it hasn’t. so… the boy gets his stupid-ass slanket. except that slankets were apparently hotter than cabbage patch kids at christmas 1983, because they’re freaking sold out. which makes me fear for humanity on several levels. i almost went with the snuggie, but dammit, we’ve already got 8 million pieces of shitty thin fleece in this house, and in the raging online debate over “slanket vs snuggie,” (the existence of which is another reason i fear for the future of our species) people overwhelmingly prefer the slanket. and i must say, the silky plushy fabric is really pretty nice… the kids currently line up on the sofa to share the one plush blanket we own (which works fine until MonkeyBeef decides he needs to share, too, which quickly turns into him yanking the blanket over the nearest brother’s head and sitting on him.)
so. my cheap-ass solution is the SNUGLET. i found a ruby red plush fabric on clearance for $3.25 a yard, and it’ll seriously take all of about 30 minutes per snuglet to cut two holes and slap on sleeves. so for just under $40 shipped and 2 hours of time, we’ll have 4 snuglets (because if EG has one, his brothers will suddenly desperately need them, too.) and the Loser Household Male Sexiness Quotient will skyrocket!
fabulous 70s rummage sale decor… really good tea… awesome funky blues on the speakers… and jackass friends. a great way to warm up after shewting skeet for all of about 90 minutes before our digits had had enough. i was warm enough everywhere but my hands… leather + thinsulate is no match for 6 degrees not including wind chill + gripping cold gunmetal.
in spite of the fact that it was MyEvilTwin’s first time shewting, and she really did need a quick lesson, and in spite of the fact that they are engaged… TexasRoadKill still managed to be as creepy as any 20-years-her-senior golf, tennis or band instructor by wrapping himself around her to “teach her how to hold the gun.” AccidentProne was also out, shooting his muzzle loader. and not complaining about the cold. hell, i think he had been out for an hour before the rest of us showed up. of course this is a guy who will strap himself to a tree for 37 hours with nothing but a jug of mountain dew for company, so wind chill of -20 degrees isn’t very high on his discomfort scale.
fat plates of ethiopian food downtown with TRK, MET, AP and MilkShake (who had enough sense to skip the whole shewting outing), followed by cherry-cinnamon-coconut tobacco, followed by orange blossom tobacco, and a huge pot of passion fruit red tea… and we could almost feel our toes again.
every friday at noon, iowa public radio does a music show at a downtown coffee shop (which, by the way, makes the most awesome coffee concoction ever… even MORE AWESOME that an eggnog latte… a smores latte. latte topped with a mound of whipped cream, mini marshmallows, chocolate syrup, and graham cracker crumbs. oh. my. fuck.) java house hadn’t updated their website since last month, so i had no idea who was playing today, but i was pleasantly surprised when MonkeyBeef and i arrived to find a woman singing and playing a banjo.
the banjo was gorgeous – it looked like it had just jumped out of an antique photograph. everything, from the wood to the tailpiece to the ancient drumhead, were sepia-toned. she was frailing backup and singing (also on my long list of “things i want to learn how to do.”) as i cruised back and forth following MB around the restaurant, DayDreamer’s mom walked in… turns out, we were listening to Rachael Davis, who collaborated with her brothers’ band Steppin in It on the album Shout Sister Shout. good to know, since i had already decided i needed every album she’s ever made. (also, the one year old who was following MB around the restaurant admiring his red mittens as they exchanged monosyllables, was her son.)
now, both davis and steppin in it are based in MI, but if davis is here, it hought i’d better check… and, yep! steppin in it is FINALLY playing a show in iowa, an hour south of here, this coming spring. not that i was that averse to go going to MI to see them sometime, since they play regular shows at the Greatest Brewery on the Planet, bell’s brewery.
yay for good music in the middle of nowhere! we’re in hog heaven lately… next weekend, we’re headed downtown to see catfish keith, an awesome slide guitarist, and in march Po’ Girl, an incredible voice and really innovative acoustic music, is finally coming south from canada to play downtown.
also? tonight i’m drinking a fresh growler of IPA and then playing rock band 2 drums in my underwear. iowa: the sexiest music scene in the midwest.
after two weeks of laying on the couch at my parents house doing nothing more strenuous than playing super scrabble (which is not as sedentary as you might think… it’s on a long list of games – donkey konga, dance dance revolution, bridge, etc – that regularly turn into physical altercations in my family) it’s back to fencing. winter break is still on until sweet, sweet inauguration day, so the turnout is small and it’s a great time to get some one-on-one attention from the ass-kickers in the club. i kicked off with a private lesson this afternoon from the women’s epee coach in my brand new fencing gear… yay, no more borrowing club gear! shoes, socks, knickers, plastron, a chest guard that actually fits (because those 34B’s “smalls” that the club has a dozen of make me look like i’m playing dress-up in a life-size barbie doll porn movie… “children’s” is my size) a jacket and, most importantly, a patch on the sleeve of my non-weapon hand: a mandalorian insignia. because i’m awesome like that.
some shots of me fencing that were taken before christmas (i’m the one on the right.)
it’s REALLY nice to get back after two weeks off. seriously. hitting stuff for points. like shooting skeet and banging the drums on rockband 2, it’s a perfect pastime for my personality type, which is “true neutral with a cream filling of violence.” that’s the clinical terminology, anyway.
this cock, specifically. i had some extra sourdough. i asked PRM if he wanted it in a hoagie roll shape or a breadbowl shape, and he said, “it better be in a dick shape. for AccidentProne, of course.” so he delivered it to him for lunch (in a takeout box with a side of creamy white ranch dressing, just to really drive the point home). note that “lunch” = “noon conference,” where all the residents and attendings gather to eat while listening to a lecture.
he’s probably shoving jelly beans in it right now.
