Tuesday about lunch time, I headed over to Hospice because I am in desperate need of pants and long sleeve shirts. I have just run out of long sleeve shirts, we wear them a lot in my climate, and pants, well I lost weight and my old ones keep falling. Not even a belt can keep them up and I can put both arms down them. It is just getting annoying now. I won’t go into chaffing on the thighs from the droopy crotch!
I have had good luck at Ho-Spice before, so I thought I would give it another shot. I looked through the clothes and there I saw the clothing of the LL Bean lady. More than I had ever seen before. I got a true feeling for her, that bitch is down right plain and boring and she has no fashion sense. I am greatly disappointed in her. I had to leave her there. I took home the Land End woman instead, she is functional and comfortable and fits just right. Also her tags don’t make me want to crawl out of my own skin. I am buddies with the Lands End lady. I think I am getting over my LL Bean lady envy. Only time will tell.
For ten years, I haven’t seen a single trick or treater. They never wanted to venture into my yard. No matter if I decorated or not. I would prop my gates open and wait. Not a soul would ring the bell or knock on the door. Now that I have moved, I am starting to wonder if I need to buy candy. I haven’t put out a single decoration. Is trick or treating a dead art? Have sick people ruined the fun sport of trick or treating? Heck there has to be hungry college students out there! Do children now trick or treat at the mall, standing in line, to get a goodie, or walking around the plaza to the storefronts and standing in line.
When I was a kid we went till we dropped. When I got older, I moved from the plastic pumpkin to the pillowcase for my collecting tool. The last year I trick or treated I was 14 and I can’t even remember what I was. I think I was a mime. We trick or treated really fast. I had a shit load of candy. We shaving creamed peoples garage doors. The later that night we hung out in the drainage ditch. What happens in the drainage ditch stays in the drainage ditch.
When I was 15, I went to the youth center’s skate night for Halloween and I wore nothing but a black Glad trash bag. I also sprayed my hair funky colors and a can went a little crazy in the bathroom and painted the walls a hot pink that my dad could not get paint to color up. Primer dad, primer! I lead my friends to believe the trash bag was a great costume. Well it worked for me. Nita on the other hand needed duct tape at some point during the evening. She was a little too tall for the trash bag.
When I was 16, I went to school as a pregnant teenager. I wore a maternity shirt that said “organically grown”. I was just hoping this costume would get me sent home. It didn’t, I think I might of blended in too well.
This year hopefully, I will hear the chime of the door bell. I am going to have to start asking the neighbors if we get those rare things called trick or treaters.
When my sister Pam and I were little my mom used God to get us to behave. It was like she and God were a secret team. Secret tag team or something. She used the rearview mirror to keep tabs on us. There was no riding shotgun in my mom’s world if we both were in the car. She had to be fair, and make us both ride in the back. Later I will explain how this fairness screwed me up in life.
Oh no let’s get into it now. My mom wanted so badly to have a sibling but she didn’t get one. She also didn’t have any guidance on how to raise two lovely little girls, or one, me, lets not count my sister. Okay, only if we have too. I guess we have to count little Miss evil.
My mom wanted us to both get along so much. She must have some fairy tale idea of what it is like to have a sibling. Well there is always good and evil in fairy tales. (clears throat). Okay she wanted us to love each other so much that she figured out the only way to get this point across was to treat us as equals so there would be no sibling wars. (Only when she was at work, war was on!) My mom, measured out all our favorite foods and our least favorite. She had it down to a science. If I got a shirt, my sister would just get the same shirt in a different color. Don’t push it people, I have pictures! Well I grew up thinking the world was fair. Only because for the most part, in my house it was. My mom ruled over the court and fairness was the game.
Oh sure my mom would say…”Life is not fair”…yeah prove it!
Picture my sister and I sitting in the back seat… a fight begins, my mom uses the eyes in the back of her head aka the rear view mirror. She gives one warning and one warning only… “Don’t make me pull this car over and whip you in front of God and everyone”. (silence). Nothing scared us more than God and everyone.
I did not want God and everyone to see us get a whipping. I guess little Miss evil didn’t either because as soon as my mom gave the first warning, we didn’t push it. God and everyone was not getting to see an ass whipping on the side of the road in our family.
When I lived at my dad’s I witnessed many things. The many things that Travis would eat. One night I noticed him with some Bengay just a snacking away on it. I was in horror and snatched it away from him and told his mom. Next afternoon my dad was in charge of the household because they worked different shifts. He proceeded to rant to me about my behavior again, just imagine someone beating a dead horse and you get the picture. I alerted him that he should be happy that he has us, we almost lost Travis last night to muscle rub. Travis nodded about his evening taste testing. Which made my dad fly to the olive green phone that hung in the kitchen over the non-working portable dishwasher. Yes, it was a totally non-functioning household too. He quickly dailed poison control. He told them that his son had ingested Bengay, and they asked when…”Um, last night”. They wanted to know how much. My dad then had to ask me. I had to reply not enough he is still here. The whole time Travis had a Bengay eating grin on his face.
Oh and Bengay is not enough for Travis. I had refinished the inside of a dollhouse and there was a tiny gumball machine in it. One day I entered my room to find Travis crunching on something. The metal part of the little machine was in his hand, the plastic and tiny beads were in his mouth.
Adrain is not to be left out, oh no. She once entered the frontroom, chewing on a white looking wand. My dad asked me…”what does your sister have in her mouth”, to which I replied, “a douche applicator”. My dad can run, like the wind, when toddlers with douche applicators enter the room.
I guess that Pam can’t even escape this one. I wish it were true, but she is as guilty as the rest. She was a rapid, rabid crawler, a carpet beatle connoisseur.
Can I walk away from this unscathed, no, not quite. Someone will come into my attic and dig around and let the whole world know that I too am a Ramsey that ate something they shouldn’t have. I was about three, and I slammed a bottle of St. Joseph baby aspirin. The bottle with the little soldier and they were orange flavored, like candy. That is my defense over the others, at least what I picked tasted good.
Today I am feeling oh so crappy. I decide to check out Vinnie’s, for those of you who do not know…St. Vincent de Paul’s. So I go into the grand Vinnie’s. Not much in there today. I look through the jackets and I come across an LL Bean one. I look at the color and cringe, okay lack of color. It was off-white cord. I put it on and look in the mirror. I think the LL Bean lady wore this, the one with a way better life. The one with peace and serenity, you know the shit you don’t have, Dee. I think, it is okay, looking. Not something I would normally wear. Then I take it off, I inspect it. It has white paint on it. So… the LL Bean lady paints, I paint. I sat there thinking that I might not be too different from the LL Bean woman. I am sentimental so the next thing I do is what any sentimental human being does, I smell the fabric of the jacket… it smells like cigarette smoke, blah! I have never smoked (unless you count my parents second hand cigarette smoke, stuck in a car, going 60mph on the freeway, in a smoke filled chamber) and I hate the smell even. The smell annoys the crap out of me, hence the trauma of being forced in the back seat of the smoke chamber. I don’t even think we had windows to roll down in some of our cars. I get carsick on even short trips, add that to the smoke chamber and you have all the makings of childhood trauma.
Yes, you have that right and my mother would gasp if she heard me say it. I have always been very independent. Did she raise me that way? If you ask her, she would say no, but I would say yes. She put a key around my neck sent me to school. Made me the keeper of my sister and shouldered me with many responsibilities. She left me with no one to rely on during long summers with a key around my neck and a younger sibling. Vacation Valley Bible School does not count; I still had to be the keeper of the Velcro sister. Ora Weber swimming lessons did not count; I still had a sister that was afraid of water to attend too. Also a chore list to have done before anyone got home. No my sister did not do her chores alone. Many summers alone and no stitches or broken bones, no house fires or flooding, no long lasting permanent damage. Nothing terrible happened on my watch. One slightly damaged toe is nothing and the theft was not my doing either.
I travel thru life not really looking for anyone to guide me or a travelling partner. I prefer to travel alone in most cases. The burden of caretaking is gone, when I am alone. Since Jan. of this year, I find myself waiting on a man. Waiting for some man to show up and do what I consider male work. This is what would make my mother gasp as well. Okay it would be natural for all the other women in my family to wait on a man, but not me. I don’t have those clear cut lines. I think illness has made me slide back. Makes me remember my Nona so much and miss her dearly. Incredible sense of humor, lots of love, a back bone of steel, a rough exterior and a soft interior. She would invent adventures for us. She would come to relieve me on burdens and she understood my little self so well. The same rules did not apply with her as they did the rest of the adults. She torn the rules down and let me be me. She taught me to be daring as I dared her and she never, ever passed up a dare. She taught me how to curse like a sailor. She taught me how to make the general public go out of their way for me and enjoy it. I have a whole other spin on it. I might just have one up on her on this one. She was a fighter, a true warrior of life.
Yes, mom she might have dirtied you kitchen with flour from floor to ceiling, but on this days, I was able to stop being the keeper. Nona stood guard instead, and there was nothing getting past that.
Since Jan. I have been waiting for sheers to be hung in the front room. My kitchen weather report/radio/CD player to be hung under the kitchen counter. Since Feb, I have been waiting for a Wes Green run of yard waste. To have help hanging art that still sits in the garage and the bedrooms. Runs to Vinnie’s of things unwanted. Window cling for back door from Bay Area. Fixing of shower rod. Repair of back yard. Sound to come out of my computer speakers. Since Jun, an oil change. Now can’t get DVD drive to work on computer. I have decided for the speakers and the DVD drive, I might have to sleep with one of the guys from the local computer repair shop. I am sleeping with the wrong repair man.
So either, I am waiting on a man, or I am sleeping with the wrong man.
