rant

I would really like to attend The Rally To Restore Sanity, but alas, taking a trip would be fiscally irresponsible right now. Instead I am going to use the next few minutes as personal rant time.

A while back I posted about Fria Chica's boyfriend, the father of her baby. Well they have been broke up for sometime now. Fresh out of  a six months in forced rehab  he came up for a visit. She made it clear they were still broke up, she would like him to be a part of their child's life, but she needed her space. He moved in next door. Being a group of optimists we tried to see the best. We thought maybe this would work, he could share the responsibility of raising a child while moving on with his own life. Deep down we knew this wasn't going to happen. It hasn't. He sits in his house with the door open, the sound of Eminem spills into the courtyard, watching for her to come in our out so he can rush out to speak with her. He calls the family or stops by to see if we know where she is. She parks her car at my mom's and sneaks back home so he will think she is out. She is starting to talk of moving back in with Mom so he will leave her alone. He is afraid of my mom. She has told him the police will be called if he sets foot on her property. No one doubts that she is excited by the possibility of this actually happening.
To flesh out this character I will explain more about him. He does not call his musical hero Eminem, he calls him Marshall. This is because he believes they are alike. When they meet they will be close friends. They are going to meet because he is working on a project that Marshall will want to be a spokesperson for. He is going to make it rich on the Internet by supplanting facebook. I have no doubt somebody will, that is the way of the Internet, but it will not be him. His only innovation so far is that his sight will be focusing on mentoring. Many people are great mentors, they have achieved something and want to help others to do the same. He has achieved several d.u.i.s , d.w.i.s a few stints in jail and rehab for an addiction problem he has not quit. His justification for not quitting alcohol and drugs is that when you are rich nobody cares what you do. He is working as a waiter, at least I think he still is, he has not kept a job longer than two months in all of the four years I have known him. So if you want him to teach anything to our high school students he is waiting for his chance. That is his target age group. He has already contacted our computer teacher in the hopes one of her classes will help him build his web page. That is right he has no computer knowledge either. She asked me later if I had any idea who this idiot was that had called her. He told her of his plan to make it rich in the networking business. When she asked what her students would get out of the deal he responded with 'the satisfaction of knowing they had helped'.  I do hope someday he pulls his head out and finds some success in something, maybe then he will pay some child support.

I received a text yesterday instructing me to meet at Miss Universe's apartment at 6:30, Fria Chica received this same text. We both assumed something was up and she wanted to talk. In reality she had stumbled onto some weed. Not much in my lifestyle would suggest that my next few moves involved sitting on the floor, rolling around laughing, and eating way too much chocolate, but that is what I did.

I do not remember much of what I found ridiculously funny but the snippets of conversation that do keep popping into my head have made me smile all day. I could have done without the part of the evening that involved me trying to walk into my house without letting the children know what I had been up to. I felt like a sneaky teenager again.

Conversations

Two conversations have struck me lately. Here they are.

"Look what I am sending off to the governor." An older man said. "I think Sarah and Todd will get a kick out of this."

"Oh, that is neat." A lady answers. "My brother sent my mom a copy of her book that they have both signed."

"Have you read her book yet?" The man asks her.

"Not yet, I'll borrow my mother's when she is finished, but I told my brother I was really jealous."

"She starts her tour with Fox News today."

"I am so excited for her."

What makes this conversation odd is that neither of these people have met Sarah. They have the same access to information that the rest of the world does, why then do they still speak in awed tones, why is he still calling her the govenor? What would make this conversation scary would be knowing that people all over the country are talking like this, I hope that is not the case.

The next one is not odd or scary, it just made me think about how much we try to shelter people we love, and how stilted that can make conversations.

Fria Chica, Miss Universe and I were all sitting in a gym watching the kids play basketball. Miss Universe stood up and pulled a cigarette and lighter out of her bag. She turned to Fria Chica and asked if she was coming with her. Fria Chica looked almost sheepish. "Have you quit again?" Miss Universe asked her. I laughed.

"She looked at you with such derision." I said to Fria Chica.
"Quitters never win, winners never quit." She pointed her cigarette at Fria Chica to add emphasis.

"What am I quitting except for a higher chance of cancer?" Fria Chica tensed up as the word cancer left her lips. She was frozen with regret at what she had said.

I turned to Miss Universe and said. "You have been inhaling way too deep."

Young people often try to say nothing offensive at all. Sometimes I forget that there is a nine year age gap between Fria Chica and myself. She has not yet learned that being treated abnormally makes people more uncomfortable than the occasional thoughtless remark. Miss Universe and I were young when a former teacher taught us this lesson with true class. Here husband had died less than a month before. It was in the middle of July; M.U. and I were walking down the middle of the street. She was doing yard work and stood to greet us. We stopped to talk about little things like yard work and weather. M.U. said that trying to work out in the middle of the heat would make her feel like dying. We all felt her tense up. She could not believe she had just said that. Our former teacher went on to agree that the heat would just kill her. She used the words kill or death several times in the next few minutes.

Not much sense or sensibility

I had to question my sanity today. I was scrolling through our dvr list today when I noticed the first half of the BBC production of Sense and Sensibility had been deleted. Since it would be ridiculous to watch just the second half of a movie I deleted the conclusion. I recorded these months ago when PBS ran them on Masterpiece. Fria chica and I have been planning on watching it together one of these days so I have been saving them. The part of this story that made me question my sanity is how despondent I was about the loss. I was angry and sad with small revenge-filled thoughts running through my head. It is not like my family actually broke the last copy and wiped this movie from the human realm. They just, accidentally I'm sure, deleted my only copy. I had to force myself to see reason;it took quite awhile.

Speaking of Fria chica the drama of her current boyfriend continues. On his way to rehab he stopped in Wichita to visit her for a day or two. She is spending the week with Drama Queen, who had agreed to this visit. During this time he seemed to be binging on the drugs he was going to rehab to quit. I would have more sympathy with his whole plan to quit if it was sincere and not just another ploy to stay out of jail for his latest dui arrest. Due to family money and influence he has spent very little time in jail for his last three offenses. Shortly into his stay Drama queen had to explain to him that she would prefer he not do drugs at her house, but if he could not comply with that request would he at least not leave his pop-can bong, complete with ashes, right outside the front door. Later in the night he punched a hole through her apartment wall, broke Fria chica's phone and managed to frighted all of the children. She kicked him out of her house, twice, before she was finally able to get him to leave town. He is now safely in rehab, but he has been calling us several times a day trying to get Drama queen's number. Once when I was out Lane answered the call and the guy tried to convince him it was a matter of life and death. Somehow he thought Lane would buy some line about it being an emergency because he was near cardiac arrest. I am not sure if he thinks my kids are younger or stupider than they actually are.

Where have I been?

This is more difficult than I imagined it would be. I have been sitting here reading over my blog for the last ten minutes trying to work up the nerve to click the new post button. I feel like I have just ran into an ex-lover who I have not seen in years. How do you start getting to know each other again?
I'll start with what happened to me. November was a month in which so much happened that blogging just kept getting pushed back. Fria Chica did end up moving back home;just not with a definite break like I expected. The boyfriend is still a part of her life and therefore a peripheral in mine. He is a nice guy, he just needs to work through his issues. He came up for Christmas and we had a really great time. He was coming up for Halloween, but got stopped halfway here and spent the weekend in jail. Having Fria Chica back is great, I just spend most of my precious free time with her and Pookie instead of updating this thing. In November I was also temporarily transferred back to the local office. They are going to eventually hire a permanent replacement for my last boss, I hope it is me, until then I am running the office. Then at the end of November, just as I was finishing my Nanowrimo novel, my computer crashed. Luckily it had made an odd sound a couple of days before its unfortunate demise so I quickly backed up what I had so far. I walked to DH's office the last two nights and finished up the novel there. That is right, I finished this year and am extremely proud of myself.
Then December hit. With the new job,Christmas,school board (extra meetings because of a teacher who overstepped his bounds with a student or five,depending on how many of the rumors are true),and school fundraisers, I did not even get around to buying a new computer until January.

Now here is January. The kids are back in school. I have not yet taken down my tree. That is going straight on my to do list. I took today off of work so that I could have a day at home all alone. It is great. Earlier I watched About a Boy. I had forgotten how funny that movie is. While I was watching it Lee came home from school on his lunch break to add more hairspray to the sculpture that is his hair. We had fixed it that morning and it was starting to fall. He is not truly dressed up unless his hair is reaching the same heights as Russel Brand's. Lane sat on my bed and watched us while making jokes about how many heroin filled balloons Lee had about his person.
Jason has been sick for the last few days so he spends every morning trying to decide if he can make it through school. Honestly if it were just school he would stay home, but it is homecoming tonight and he does not want to miss his game or the dance.
This morning Lane took off a pair of jeans because they have a rip in the knee. The worn spot they already had when I bought them, at the start of the school year, has finally gave way. I offered to patch them and he declined my offer. I threatened to quit buying jeans that are already halfway ruined if he was not going to try and make them last. He insisted he will still wear them with black leggings underneath. The thing is I just bought Jason a pair for Christmas that have patches that look like he sewed them on himself. So I made it clear I would do a crappy job and make sure they looked just like Jason's new pair. How illogical are we, as consumers, when we will wear worn and patched jeans, but only if we spent a lot of money on them. We've gone mad.

tough choices

Fria chica has believed the story her boyfriend told her about the heroin being old and no longer used as only a lover can. She decided to stay with him. I think part of my lack of understanding comes from selfishness;I was so excited at the thought of having her back. Of course we still talk almost everyday so it isn't like she is that far removed. They are coming down this weekend to visit. On the way they are swinging through Wichita to pick up the girls. I am looking forward to Sunday's breakfast. Lately we have only been having 10-12 family members and it seems very quiet.

I left work this morning at lunch as was struck at the deep blue of the sky. That is one of my biggest complaints about where I work, we rarely see the sky. For lunch I sat on a park bench and ate a couple of corned beef sandwiches while noticing how the still green trees looked as they brushed against the sky. I don't remember noticing the lack of nature as much when I worked at the library. There were a few large windows there that had a nice view, but I wonder if being surrounded by books was the real difference.
That led me to ask myself to make a choice. Say the choice was between a lifetime spent outdoors in a place with beautiful but varied weather conditions or in a beautiful, never ending library with no natural light which would I choose. In the end I think I would choose to live outdoors because I can tell myself stories but nothing can imitate the sun. Now if I could meld the two places together that would be paradise.

The one in which I laugh at the misfortune of others

Fria Chica has been trying to answer the question, "is the man I'm living with back on drugs?", for the last few months. Today she found the answer, heroin, in a sock drawer. One of the quirky clues was that their spoons were disappearing. The money disappearing he explained by loss or theft, but who loses or steals spoons? The spoons were also in the drawer. Today, after I tie up a few loose ends, I am driving to Oklahoma City to pick her and baby up. Since I have had the luxury of being an observer, who needs no concrete proof, I have known the answer to the question since she started asking it. Therefore I am so happy she has decided to come home. I am also selfishly excited because I love having my sister near me; O.K. City was just too far away. Once again I will have somebody to discuss books, watch Elizabethan age movies, and drink white wine with.

On another note, I had something happen to me yesterday that I took way too much pleasure in. A nice person should not be so happy at getting to ruin somebody's day. I have mentioned before that I didn't like my last boss. Over the last few weeks she has been removed from her position because she didn't do several of the required parts of her job. Of course I knew she wasn't doing them. When I worked under her I did a lot of them. I bitched the whole time, but I did them. Instead of being grateful she blamed any mistakes she made on me, and not to my face, she said horrible things about me whenever somebody complained about the office. She was the main reason I transferred out of the office. The person she hired to replace me didn't clean up after her and try to keep things going, she turned her in.
Now my former boss has moved out of town and is job hunting. While I have been following the story with interest, it alone has not given me delight. Yesterday I received a call from a lady trying to hire a receptionist. She had called the listed sources and came up empty. Trying to find out about this person character she took a shot and called someone she knew from our town. That person gave her my name and number. Even with my bad feelings I felt bad about giving a negative reference. I almost just gave a lame 'she'll probably do okay', but I checked myself. If I did this somebody else would be stuck working with her. This lady told me about it being a small office and the importance of finding the right person. She seemed like a very nice, earnest person. So I gave an honest opinion. I didn't rant or go on. I just let her know what working with this applicant would be like. Then I hung up the phone and laughed my maniacal laugh. These are the moments that evil daydreams are made of;rarely are they realized.

Wine, food, and Jane Austin

On my way home from work yesterday I stopped by the deli and picked up some black forest ham and a couple of different cheeses. On Monday I had baked some Sally Lunn bread and had a loaf left over. The sweet flavor of the bread was screaming to be made into a ham sandwich. It had its way. Fria Chica came over and we called our mom to pick up a couple of bottles of my favorite white wine on her way home from work. By the time the six hour Pride and Prejudice was over we had finished off the food and wine. My mom had left after hour four and only a couple of glasses; she had to work today. It was almost two in the morning when I drove Fria Chica home. Two bottles may sound like a lot but stretched over that long of a time period it didn't feel like overindulging.
Fria Chica is nine years younger than I am. That is why it is odd that of all of my sisters she is most like me. Not only does she look like me she shares my love of Jane Austin, Possession, and Lord of The Rings. Miss Universe stopped by to pick up some creamer last night while I was making the sandwiches. She was standing by the butcher block eating cucumbers and tomatoes while I sliced them. When I grabbed the loaf of bread and started slicing it she asked, with genuine concern, if I was out of normal bread, by this she meant store-bought bread. I laughed and answered that we had plenty of bread I just wanted to use this loaf. She shrugged and said that she only asked because it looked like I was using scraps. I truly have the best family. I know it sounds corny but sometimes I look around at the people surrounding me, my siblings, my mom, and my children, and realize I am one of the luckiest people in the world.
My emotions ran a wide gauntlet yesterday. All morning at work I felt like I was fighting back tears. At the church next door there was a funeral being held for a three year old little boy. I only knew the mom in passing, but my heart was broke for her, it had been broke since the little boy had died. He had went in for a basic tonsillectomy and for some reason didn't live through it. As the funeral was ending a lady came into our office and was outraged that the cars for the funeral had taken up all of the parking spots in front of our building. Jean, my boss, and I were in shock. In comparison to what the family was suffering her having to walk an extra few feet didn't seem like much of a problem.People are funny, so is life. It seems odd for me to be rejoicing about my family while this other family was in so much pain, but that too is life.

Not much to say

Well I did not reach the goal of 50,000 words. I came close with 48,000 words, about 40,000 of them I am happy with. Not bad, at first I was mad at myself for failing, but I wrote more than I would have if I would never have tried.

Pookie is in the hospital so I stopped in after work and watched him while Fria Chica had a shower. He is so stinkin' adorable. He is a chubby ball of sunshine. He has had bronchitis and wasn't getting enough oxygen so he has to sleep in a tent. He sounds a lot better today.

Not a lot to say really. I'm not even angry about anything! I am tired though, so I am off to bake a cake for the cake raffle, then to bed.

It is late, and I am rambling

I am wasting time instead of writing. My brain needs to recharge before I move on. Somebody please go in and make me another cup of tea.
We went to Jason's fall sports banquet earlier this evening. I am sure there are more boring places to be, but I really can't think of any right now. For the last five years I have had a child playing sports both in the Fall and the Spring, the two times of year they have these things. That means I really should have attended ten of them. So far this is my second.
Lee hates them as much as I do, so he never went to his own banquets, and I sure wasn't going to go if he wasn't. Jason doesn't like them either, so I thought I was going to get out of it again tonight. Dh loves these things, that surely has to be a sign that something is odd, so this year we went to please him. I am glad we don't have to do that again for a few months.
Some days I hate to walk into the school because I know someone will corner me and say 'your on the school board' and then they will go on to complain about something. It isn't that I don't care about the school, or want to hear their opinions, I do. It is just that some days I want to just be a mom, and forget I'm a school board member.

Oh, I forgot to mention that Fria Chica and I found a solution to one of the world's problems on our long drive home the other night. I'm sure it only makes sense late at night, in the state we were in when we thought of in. Here it is: There should be one rule every government in the world has to follow. All religion is personal and can not be encouraged by any government. Churches should be local and not national entities. The U.N. should give up all of its other duties and have an army to enforce this rule. Not peace keeping troops, an army. Before you dissect this, I know it is too vague, and that it gives the U.N. to much power, but in my late night version of the world it would work.

I am still in shock over what has happened to my novel today. I was way behind this morning when I started. After writing 3,000 words today I was still behind but a lot closer to being caught up. Somehow today, and I'm still not sure how, I deleted the whole thing. I can't find it anywhere.
My sister Fria Chica was here when it happened. She was actually the one on the computer when it happened. I sent her over to read what I had wrote. She tried to open it but a warning came up saying it was already open. Since I had just closed it right before she arrived I rashly told her to click yes and open it anyway. Now it is gone. I actually felt tears coming to my eyes, but I banished them out of fear of making her feel guilty. It wasn't her fault at all, but I was afraid if acted too concerned it would make her feel bad. I forced the whole thing out of my head. We went for a five mile walk. Pooky, her baby was bundled and slept the whole way in his stroller. The wind was cold and Fria Chica lost her breath. Neither of us had thought to bring an inhaler. I was pretty worried about her; She was having trouble taking any deep breaths. My asthma hasn't been giving me problems for the last few years. Listening to her I could remember how tiring it was to fight for every breath. How hopeless it felt to be away from home and have to keep walking, every thought focused on getting to an inhaler. It made my problem seem very small. When we got back here I dusted off my inhaler for her to use. Then I rushed to my computer to search for the missing file. It is gone. Now that she has went home to rest and I know I have to start over I feel like giving up.

A baby and a party

Fria Chica had her baby on the third of July, which happens to be Miss Universe's birthday. He weighed eight lbs. two oz. At one day old he is already being spoiled. On his father's side he is the first grandchild so his paternal grandmother bought him gifts every time she left the hospital. On our side he is number eleven. There is not one of the ten before him that has not been spoiled rotten, so there really is no hope for him either.
While we were in the hospital we were adding up how old Lee would be when this new little guy graduated from high school. Lee will be thirty-three, the same age as I am now. When my age was mentioned my mom was noticeably shocked. She never thinks of us as that old. To her we will always be kids. The shock goes both ways, when I realized she was about to be fifty-five I went into denial. My mom never seems old. In our minds we have as a family frozen at a certain age and will probably always stay there.
We had our annual block party on the third also. I don't know if we ever intended it to be an annual party, but we had one two years in a row so this year people in town kept asking what day we were having our party. We call it a block party because we close the street on both sides of the block and have a party that fills the whole block which starts at my yard and finishes at Anna's yard, but Anna and I are the only two on the block that actively participate in planning the party. We really don't have many families on our street, which is why we get away with the noise until three in the morning every year. Evelyn, an older lady who lived next door to me, passed away last month, so her house is empty. She never came out into the street, but she sat on the porch and watched all night. The older couple who live in a travel trailer across the street surprised us by coming out and joining the fun for the first two years, but this year they left right before we blocked the streets and came home as we were cleaning up. For years my children called the man Grouchy ass, not undeservedly, which is why we were surprised whenever he showed up with homemade ice cream. His wife is in advancing stages of Alzheimer's, so that may be why they stayed away this year. Next door to him is a trailer that changes occupants frequently. We usually invite who ever is living there but this year nobody was home. Across from Anna lives Miss Universe's mother-in-law. For the last two years they have been out of town in July. This year I have no idea why they didn't come out. Three out of four of their son's were the last people to leave. I have taken too many words to explain that while we call it a block party very few of the people who come every year are actually from our block. It is more of a community party. Every year, and this one was no exception, we end up with quite a few people from out of town here. Last year we had a group of men from South Africa show up, this year it was just a group from Elkhart. Our philosophy is the more the merrier so we always make enough food for over a hundred. With the drunks making a second pass at the table around midnight we end up with very little left overs.
My little brother is driving up from Tuscon this weekend. He is bringing his two boys, but leaving his wife at home to work. They come up so rarely it becomes quite an event when they do. Out of the six kids in our family he is the only one who lives more than four hours away. Three of us live in this same small town. I know he feels better knowing he got away, but I think life is too short to live so far from the people we love.